Weed whacking

Even in the best of times, I'm not really a lawn guy.

I've lived near lawn guys. My next-door neighbor at my first house was a lawn guy. He used to work on his lawn every week from about 9am Saturday morning until 8pm Sunday night. Maybe he really enjoyed it or maybe he was trying to avoid his family. Either way, his lawn looked great. The guy across the street from my current house is a lawn guy too. He had a sprinkler system dug into his lawn, which is beautiful, lush and green.

I'm sure they appreciated me, since the terrible shape of my lawns made their lawns look that much better.

One benefit of having a disaster of a lawn is that I don't have to cut it very often. It's just not growing that much. Except for the weeds. They are growing just fine. So I do have to go out with my weed whacker and cut down the weeds much more often than I mow the lawn.

My weed whacker is this lightweight rechargeable model. I plug it in and don't have to deal with gasoline or power cords or anything. It's pretty convenient, as long as I don't actually have to use it, that is.

Last night I had to cut some really impressive weeds that were growing along the sidewalk. The weeds were thick and had some staying power. The weed whacker sort of bounced off. I think it actually started whimpering. I finally pulled some of the weeds out with my hands.

My pitiful weed whacker isn't even a weed whacker. It's a weed-whackee.

Twelve Hours

Twelve hours.

When I got home last night, after 7pm, the Missus met me at the garage door. "Shhh," she said. "The babies are asleep."

I was a little disappointed, because I hadn't seen them all day and I wanted some daddy time.

"They've been asleep for two hours--ever since I got them home from daycare," she said.

I felt a little better. They should be up at any minute, yelling for some food. So I ate dinner myself and watched some TV.

At about 8:30, they were still asleep. We thought about waking them up, but decided to just bring them upstairs and put them to bed. That would probably wake them up. They had to be hungry.

We checked them again before we went to sleep. Still snoozing. Oh boy, I thought, they're going to wake up just as soon as I fall asleep. The little punks.

They finally did wake up--at 5am. They slept for twelve hours. They must've been pretty busy at the daycare. Were they doing the baby marathon--twenty-six and a half steps? Were they given some large research project? Were they doing people's taxes? What?

Whatever it was, I hope they do it again next time.

Twelve hours!

Faces

I finally put together some bouncer chairs that we received from my family. They are going to stay in the basement, hopefully to entertain the twins while I get some work (or surfing) done on my computer.

The chairs have a plastic arch that goes over them and plays music for them. They love it! They were laughing and giggling (at least what passes for laughing and giggling to them). I got a couple of pictures of their faces as they played. Take a look by clicking here.

Too Much

We're having a block party in our neighborhood a week from Saturday. Our contribution to the gathering is going to be plastic silverware. Which is fine.

Yesterday I stopped by Costco to get, no surprise, diapers and formula. A perfect time to pick up the plasticware.

Here's what I found: a box of 500 plastic spoons, a box of 500 plastic knives and a box of 500 plastic forks. I almost bought them. But then I thought, what the heck was I going to do with 500 forks? Even if everyone at the party took a bite of food with one fork, threw it out and used a new fork for the next bite, I'd still have maybe 350 forks left over.

Don't even get me started on plastic knives. Is there anything more useless? And I'd have 500 of them!

I guess I'll go somewhere else. I'll be back to Costco for more diapers though--we really need to buy them in bulk!

Mr. Mom's Weekend

The conference the Missus went to lasted from Thursday through Saturday, so Mr. Mom was pretty busy this weekend. I had a list of things I wanted to do this weekend:

1. Clean and organize the basement
2. Clean and organize the mudroom
3. Clean the garage
4. Cut and trim the lawn

I almost got the basement cleaned and organized, and that was about it for my list.

I did accomplish a few other things. Speed and Trixie now know how to stick out their tongues. Tessa does it and then smiles. She lifts her chin and giggles quietly. The boy does it and smiles his big toothless grin. Both are sights guaranteed to melt their dad's heart into protoplasm every time.

I also got to hold them a lot. They have different styles. When you hold Tessa, she makes herself into a little ball, perfect for cuddling. Adam kind of melts into you, and wraps himself around you like a comfortable sweatshirt.

On Friday, I cut their nails, which is a very stressful time for me. The last time I did it, with the baby nail clippers, I managed to cut the tip of Tessa's thumb. She cried, I cried, it was terrible. This time I used small trimming scissors, and it went much better. It's still tough to cut them well enough, periodically a new little scratch shows up on one of their faces and upsets everyone but them.

Saturday, they were a little fussy. I think they just wanted to stay awake to be around dear ol' Dad. Since they didn't want to nap, we turned to the awesome Turner Classic Movies and watched the Cary Grant film festival together. Trixie liked the pink submarine in Operation Petticoat. Adam preferred the gritty submarine realism of Destination: Tokyo, but of course enjoyed the great Alan Hale as "Cookie" the comedic cook. Tessa fell asleep by the time Monkey Business was on, but Adam and I thought it was pretty good. He liked the monkey. I liked Marilyn Monroe.

It was a pretty good weekend, but I'm sure glad the Missus is back!

Mr. Mom

Mr. Mom is my name for the next couple of days. The Missus will be going downtown each day to a conference for diabetes educators. That means it's just me, the boy and the girl.

It's two against one. Wish me luck.

"Welcome to Fatherhood"

Last week, when I picked the twins up from daycare, the ladies there were a little upset with me because I didn't bring a stroller. I had planned to carry both carseats out to my car together. They didn't like that plan. I guess they thought I would drop one of the kids or something. One of them came outside with me carrying one of the kids.

So this morning, since I'm due to pick the kids up today, I went outside with the M1 Main Battle Stroller to load it in my car. (The Missus carries the LSS [Lightweight Scout Stroller] in her car.) My golf clubs were still in my trunk, leftover from the golf tournament I played in two weeks ago. Since the M1 is such a big sucker and barely fits in the trunk by itself, the golf clubs had to come out.

Then I noticed my neighbor shaking his head sadly. He looked at the stroller--in the trunk. He looked at the golf clubs--out of the trunk. "Welcome to fatherhood," he said.

Opposable Thumbs

Adam loves his binkie.

Tessa is not as much a fan of pacifiers, but the boy will happily suck away for hours. He's sort of like Maggie on the Simpsons.

The other night, I noticed that his binkie had dropped out of his mouth. Usually when this happens, he starts yelling for either the Missus or myself to reinsert it. This night however, he was trying to put it back in himself. He tried, mouth agape, to roll over on it several times. When that didn't work, he tried to flip it into his mouth by slapping at it. Then it looked like he was trying to construct some elaborate Rube Goldberg device using some of the plastic toys that hang down from the Gymini Gym, but that may have been my imagination.

Once he discovers that he has opposable thumbs, he's going to be something!

Our Trip to the Mall

The Missus and I took Frick and Frack out yesterday for a little shopping. First we had lunch in this new burrito place in Ashburn. There's no such thing as a quick bite anymore. We had to drag the car seats in, find a booth in the corner to stash them out of the way. We ate our food, and then Adam had to have a bottle.

Eventually we made it to our next stop, Babies R Us, where the Missus found the twins costumes for Halloween. We didn't actually go to the store for that, but there you go. (I'm not saying what the costumes are quite yet.)

Finally we went to the mall. We hooked the carseats into the M1 Main Battle Stroller (thanks, Diane!) and off we went. The twins were fine, sleeping most of the time, although they both ate, appropriately, in the Food Court. The Missus and I got some much needed exercise as we strolled along with all of the other families.

A good day. You can find some more pictures of the day here.

From the Dept. of Silly Worries

Before Frick and Frack were born, I thought a lot about what life would be like as a parent. I thought about the myriad of duties I would have, like changing diapers, taking them to Little League, fighting with them about their homework.

Also, I knew that I'd have to pick them up from daycare.

I had this silly fear about that. I was afraid that I would go in to pick them up, there would be fifty babies there, and I would not recognize them. The daycare ladies would stare at me, laugh and talk about what a bad father I was. Babies do all kind of look alike, don't they?

Turns out, I had nothing to worry about. I picked them up yesterday and I could recognize them just fine. It was easy to pick them out of the crowd--they were the most beautiful babies there, by far.

All the other babies did kind of look alike though.