Terrible (almost!) Twos

I know it isn't Tobias' birthday yet, but I wanted to write down some things about the almost 2-year-old while they are on my mind.

Sometimes being almost terrible two is so exhausting you can't even make it all the way into bed.

Tobias is talking up a storm now, but he is often pretty hard to understand. He really favors his "b" and "p" sounds. You really have to pay attention to the vowels. For example, "bup" means cup, "boop" means boot and "buoop" mean book. (Random side note, why don't we have a way to write the unique vowel sound found in the words "book" and "look"? It is neither an "oo" nor an "u" sound. We need umlauts or something.)

This happened during a brief "time out" after a serious tantrum.

He is still a fruit addict. Two of his most frequent words are "bapple" and "nanana". Specifically, Tobias loves tropical fruits. He eats multiple bananas a day and I have seen him single-handedly eat an entire papaya. He loves mangoes, pineapple and fresh coconut.

This shirt is an actual x-ray of Tobias's chest. His esophagus and stomach are filled with candy.

I think he loves fruit so much because he has a sugar problem. The kid loves candy. He begs for "canny" a lot. He has stolen and eaten an entire bag of jellybeans. But when I say he has a sugar problem I don't just mean that he has a sweet tooth. I mean that I have come downstairs in the morning to find Tobias inside the baking cabinet and spooning sugar directly into his mouth from the sugar canister with a measuring spoon. I also found random piles of sugar in other places in my cabinets. Delightful.

He doesn't just open the fridge he climbs right in there. I'm pretty sure he's searching for tropical fruits.

In Tobias' constant quest for food, he often opens the refrigerator and freezer. He doesn't always close them. As a result, we often find a pool of water on the floor from melting freezer contents. I'm sure we will someday be replacing our entire wood floor. He's also broken our glass coffee table, destroyed several books and tried his best to lose our cell phones. We paid thousands of dollars in our efforts to get Gabriel, Elijah and David John here via expensive fertility treatments. Tobias came for free, so we figure he's just running up his tab as a toddler.

Here is our poor coffee table post Tobias. We still have the frame. I'm tempted to invite someone over and serve them a drink just to see if they set their glass down on the clear tabletop only to see it fall on the floor. Of course, that would get the carpet wet and possibly stained. Ah, what the heck. We'll just put the carpet cleaning on Tobias' tab.

Speaking of running, Tobias never just walks or runs anywhere. He gallops or hops. It's adorable.

Tobias loves to go outside. He says "hat" and pats his head, then runs around like a maniac. The minion hat is so appropriate.

He is a super active little guy in general. He climbs everything. Recently we went to the indoor pool with David John's and Benjamin's preschool class. Tobias tagged along. He got the whistle blown at him more than everyone else combined. *Tweeeeeeeeeet! Tobias is climbing on the pool railing. *Tweeeeeeeeeet! Tobias is climbing the pipes. *Tweeeeeeeeet! Tobias is climbing on the dividing wall between the kiddie pool and the deep end. *Tweeeeeeeet! Tobias is climbing up the water slide. *Tweeeeeet! Tobias is running by the edge of the pool. *Tweeeeeeet! Tobias is jumping into the water inappropriately from the side of the pool. I promise I was aware of what he was doing, the lifeguard's whistle was just faster than my arms reaching out to stop the illicit activity.

Yes, he is behind the glass in the skeet ball game. He is showing us that we are bad parents, also that we could cheat at skeet ball. (For the record, we did not have him cheat for us. We didn't need it. Both Elijah and I totally got a ball in the 10,000 point ring in the corner.)

Yeah, this kid keeps us on our toes. We took the boys to a fun restaurant and arcade place in Bismarck called "Space Aliens". We were having a great time until I realized that in the moment I had turned my head to watch David John doing the virtual jump rope game, Tobias had disappeared from the car racing game where he had been sitting and playing with the steering wheel. The arcade area wasn't very big, neither Marc nor I had seen him galloping past us but he must have gone somewhere. We frantically started scanning the area and Marc was just about to go search the restaurant when I shouted, "Found him!" He was hiding in plain sight.

He's naughty but he's so dang cute, especially when he's napping.

We love this boy and it's kind of sad that he just keeps growing up but it's so fun to see what he's going to do next. His almost two behavior is trying, but maybe it's not so terrible.

Say What?

New phones. Mostly, they're great. When texting, there are helpful little suggestions about the word you might be trying to type so you can write messages faster. Supposedly, the algorithm used to create the suggestions takes into account the previous word so that if you type the word "happy" it will automatically suggest "birthday" as the following word. My question for the software designers is this: Why does my phone suggest the word "children" after I type the word "rotisserie"? Granted, it's probably not a word used in everyday parlance but I'm sure there are hundreds, nay thousands, of people each day who might text to a loved one, "Would you mind picking up a rotisserie chicken for dinner?" or "I simply must have that new $500 turkey rotisserie and fryer from Williams-Sonoma." One would think common words that follow rotisserie would be "chicken", "grill" or "yummmm", but no. Children apparently is what comes to mind when the programmers think of a rotisserie which brings up the very disturbing possibility that our phone's messaging app has been designed by a ruthless tribe of cannibals. We switched to a Samsung Galaxy from an iPhone because we valued the way we could personalize it so much easier, and the way that it talked to our computers nicely instead of swearing at them in a foreign language or worse, refusing to communicate at all- but now I am concerned that we may have erred. As much as I didn't love things about our iPhones, at least we weren't propping up a corrupt regime of child cookers! Yeah, I'm looking at you Verizon Message+. I guess I'll just have to find a new app, preferably one with a catchphrase like, "People. We don't eat them." That would be good.


Update January 2016: My phone no longer suggests "children" following the word rotisserie. It now suggests "chicken", "?" or "the". See? I must have made a difference in the world. Either that, or my phone just figured out that we really like rotisserie chicken....

Frustration, Thy Name Is Children

So, even though I still have a huge backlog of unwritten randomness and cutesy pictures from last year, I thought I should forge ahead with some fresh thoughts from this blessed New Year. I fear that if I wait until I'm completely caught up I will forever be behind and this blog will turn into some weird version of a History Channel special. When you are a harried mother, last month can feel like eons ago. Trust me.
Anyway, today I was noticing that my toddler drastically affects the way I view and interact with the world. This might sound obvious. Of course, having a toddler is different than being childless. But I'm not talking about the normal life differences one associates with having a child. I'm not talking about lost sleep or the fact that it takes twice as long to leave the house because you have to repeatedly chase the toddler down, sit on him, and cram some article of snow gear onto a randomly selected wiggling body part. (Boots, mittens, what's the difference? You can't really pick anything up with those giant puffy water-proof mittens anyway.) No, I am talking about drinking straws and sub sandwiches and vision benefits. These are the parts of my life that were changed today by having a toddler.

For those of you living in Dickinson, or really within 50 miles of Dickinson, you are aware that a Schlotzsky's Deli just opened. Anything new opening in Dickinson is a BIG DEAL, but to sweeten the pot Schlotzsky's was offering a free sub every week for a year to their first 100 customers. This is not the story of me battling crowds and trying to win those free subs, no, this is the story of how when I saw the advertisement for the grand opening I thought, "Meh."
If you know me, and if you are suffering through this blog post you must know me, then you are aware that I LOVE food. Too much, really. The single, childless me would have been up at 5 AM with a strategic plan on how to win said free subs. The toddlerized me, however, quickly realized that having a free sub every week for a year just wasn't worth it. I mean, who has the time? First, there is no way that I would remember to get a sub every week. Whenever I missed a sub opportunity I would have extreme feelings of guilt, like I wasn't living up to my privileges, like I was wasting a gift that someone else could have enjoyed. A child in Africa, for example, would never have forgotten to pick up a free submarine sandwich. What kind of spoiled, first-world person am I? Second, if I did remember, there are the logistics of actually getting the sandwich. Picking up the sandwich would mean a minimum of one extra unloading and loading children out of and into the van. Assuming that I load and unload children around 32 times in an average week, this would be an increase of over 3%! Three percent! Who needs that extra workload? Finally, once I actually had the sandwich in my hands there would be the issue of sharing. Eating alone is the fantasy of many mothers. It is the ultimate luxury. It never happens. Thus, I would be faced with two choices: Share my delicious sub with my child(ren), feeling grumpy and resentful the entire time or refuse to share my delicious sub with my child(ren) while feelings of selfishness and self-loathing accumulated. Also, there would be child(ren) attempting to snatch the sandwich out of my hands and/or mouth.
Having run through the scenarios in my head, all I could muster was apathy for free food. I know, it's almost unbelievable.

Another toddler-affected experience today was calling a number of customer service lines in search for the truth about what vision plan we had and what it covered. (As it turns out, we currently have none, which explains a great deal of the confusion.) Most of these customer service lines had a voice recognition menu which asked you questions or required you to verbalize your member ID number. I used to hate these voice menus because the computer never seemed to understand what I was saying. Happily, the software has improved greatly over the last few years but, oddly enough, when you have a toddler the computer is still unable to understand your answers. This is because your toddler is climbing all over you and making monkey sounds whenever you start talking.
Me: three, two, seven...
Tobias: Ooh, ooh, ooh, aah! Aaaaaah!
Phone: I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that. Please say your nine digit member ID number.
Me: *raised eyebrow
Tobias: *innocent smile, silence
Phone: Let's try again. Please say your nine digit member ID number.
Me: three, two, seven, five...
Tobias: Oooh, aaah! Oooh, ooh, aaah!
Phone: I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that.
This went on for quite some time. There really ought to be a menu option for those of us with toddlers. Something like, "If you are the parent of a toddler and need a live customer representative right away, please make a random animal noise now." "Moooo! Moo!" "You said, 'Mooooo'. Is that correct?" "Woof! Woof!" "Please hold while I transfer your call."

Today we had the rare treat of going to lunch with Daddy. Marc called me in a state of disbelief. He was actually going to get his lunch break. Benjamin, Tobias and I met him at the only restaurant close to his work. It's fairly new in town so we hadn't been yet. I was happy to see that they offered little hats for children, coloring pages and over-priced kids meals. Clearly, they were prepared to deal with my kiddos. Things went well at first. It's a sporty place so there are TVs everywhere. This was extremely helpful during the long wait for our food. Tobias would point at a random screen, give me a meaningful look and say, "Ball." Benjamin was too enthralled by the sight of so many TVs in the same place that he didn't speak at all. However, I am sad to tell you that this restaurant is not really kid friendly. How do I know? They brought regular straws for the kids drinks. Regular. Straws. When will they learn? I have come to hate regular straws. I mean, here we have two children sitting at a table. Even with booster seats, their little mouths are, at best, six inches above the table top. That's being generous. Those straws are at least 7 1/2 inches long. Where is that extra inch and half supposed to go? Tobias, foolishly expecting that he could actually drink his water, nearly pierced the roof of his mouth trying to get his lips around that straw. When that proved uncomfortable, he bent the straw with his hand and put it in his mouth. That method didn't deliver any water. I showed the poor kid how to put the cup down in his lap so that the straw was at an appropriate height for his mouth. He promptly spilled cold water on his pants. I am going to start bringing scissors every time we go out so I can cut those bad boys in half, but come on restaurants! How much would it cost to buy smaller straws? Or bendy straws for the love?!? How much longer will we let this sad charade play out at table after table of small children? How oft will we hear our little ones, like the ancient mariner, cry, "Water, water, everywhere but not a drop to drink"?

As you can see, I had a very emotional day. I kind of exploded during dinner, already breaking my resolve to be a nicer mommy this year. The boys were all purposefully annoying each other, Marc was at the hospital and wasn't expecting to come anytime soon and I knew I had the task of getting everyone ready and out the door on time for gymnastics classes ahead of me. When three of them abandoned their bowls of chili to start chasing each other around the table, nearly spilling milk and water everywhere I yelled. "Enough!" I then, in a loud strident voice that I am not proud of, outlined exactly how they were to behave for the duration of dinner and then what they were going to do afterwards. Then, I heard an echo. I looked down to find Tobias standing beside me, chest puffed out and mimicking my tone of voice and hand gestures. He looked like a mini Mussolini complete with scowl. I wasn't sure whether I should laugh at his antics or cry because I was so embarrassed to see myself mirrored in this little person. I think I did a little of both.
The score for today was Toddler:3 Mommy:0. Luckily, tomorrow is another day, another adventure, another chance to discover how becoming a mother has completely changed my life. Fascination, they name is children.

A Poet and He Knows It

Gabriel enjoys writing poems. After Christmas, he made me a very cute book with three poems in it. It is too cute not to share. The cover reads:

By Gabe                To Mom
Three
Poems
For Mom

Cooking
Bed
Dinner

Each poem is then written on its own page with its own illustration.

Cooking
I lover her cooking
It smells so good to me
When I smell it
It smells like victory

Oh yeah, my cooking is just that good. Victory!

Bed
I love when it's time for bed
She gives me a hug
And kisses my head
And thats why I like 
When its time for bed

This one made go "awww". Warm fuzzies for sure.

Dinner
I love her dinners
She loves them too
All I have to say is
I Love You

Also sweet, although I'm starting to worry he has a food obsession. I was feeling pretty good about myself until I saw the book Gabe was making for Marc. The cover of Marc's book listed six poems titled:
Popcorn
Work
Loving
Great
Perfect
Wonderful

It reads like a verse from Isaiah about the Prince of Peace. Good grief. I think this kid loves his dad. Just a little. I'm trying not to have an inferiority complex. I'm going to go read that poem about my cooking tasting like victory again.

I'll Be Home for Christmas

This year was the first year that we got to stay home and have our very own Christmas. I guess, technically we stayed home for Christmas in 2007 because the twins were less than a month old and had only gotten out of the NICU a week and half earlier so we definitely weren't going anywhere. It wasn't the same though. That year, being home was thrust upon us and I wasn't ready. My Dad was so sweet and sent us a tree so it would feel more like Christmas at our house. It's the same tree we still have, although a little worse for the wear.

This year, we embraced having a Christmas at our home without the hassle of holiday travel. It was simple, and lovely and so fun.

I enjoyed getting our house ready, putting up the Nativity and hanging stockings.

(I've learned the fastest way to get Marc to do something like putting hooks under the mantle is to just start doing it myself. If he sees me with a drill, his danger sensor goes off and he happily comes and takes over to prevent disaster. I always get the job done, it just takes me a few tries sometimes. Marc prefers if there is only one hole.)

The snow had melted the week leading up to Christmas but, like magic, we woke up to this on Christmas Eve morning.

Christmas Eve is doubly special for us because it is also Marc's birthday. We were having too much fun to take very many pictures, but we spent the day with good friends. We had dinner together which ended up consisting of mashed potatoes, asparagus with bacon, jello salad and rolls because the turkey decided that it did not want to cook in a reasonable amount of time. We had the traditional root beer tasting in the evening featuring 12 different kinds of root beer. We also attempted a Christmas puppet show about Christ's birth. Our boys were not terribly cooperative. We all worked on a Christmas puzzle together and sang Christmas carols. For dessert we had Marc's peppermint ice cream birthday cake, some homemade Buckeyes and the turkey which had finally been cooked to a safe internal temperature.

Christmas morning was awesome. The boys waited patiently while Mommy made sure everything was ready and Daddy dragged himself out of bed. They didn't get us up until 6:30. It could have been so much worse.

Just to be mean I made them take another picture or ten on the stairs, but then we finally went in to see what Santa brought.

Again, we were too caught up in the joy of the moment to do much with the camera, but we did get a couple of candids that were too good to pass up.

After everything was done, we had the boys pose with their loot and we took video of them telling us about their Christmas. This is a tradition from my family- one that I hated as a child. (Sorry Dad!)

But I think it will be fun to look back and see what they were interested in each year.

My bet is that there will always be a lot of books in the pictures.

We just can't help ourselves when it comes to the written word.

Every Christmas I always feel like we've gotten them too much that they are going to be spoiled brats, but every year they are so grateful, so excited, so happy.

I still think we should try to cut back but I also feel like we must be doing something right. We loved being home for Christmas.

Random Recall

Here are a few random things I found as I was clearing out my phone in preparation for a new one.

What do little boys do with lacing cards and bike helmets? What any sensible person would do... booby trap the stairs of course. They were planning to fill the bike helmets with water or dirt, or possibly both before I put the kibosh on their operation.

 

The boys love watermelon, but every once in a while we get a really bland one in our bountiful basket. The boys in general seem oblivious to the taste of watermelon, they will gobble it down regardless, but one day Elijah, who was on his fifth piece, suddenly stopped eating and looked up at us. He asked, "Is it possible for watermelon to be.... not... good?"

Gabriel had had a rough day in the ladies department. He had announced my age to the entire church congregation and told a girl that he has a crush on that she was "big". Marc explained to him that you shouldn't talk to women about their age, or their size. You never use the words, "old", "big", or "fat". Gabriel took all of this in and then asked, "Why can't I say anything to a girl without it hurting her feelings?" Marc was proud that his son had come to this conclusion at such an early age. Marc was well into adulthood before he figured it out.

Our boys love to play Plants vs. Zombies 2 on the iPad. There are several different themed areas in this game including what David John refers to as "Agent Egypt" and "Pirate Seasons". (It's actually Ancient Egypt and Pirate Seas.)

Speaking of seasons, David John recently informed me that he could name all of them in order. I said I would love to hear it. I had to stop myself from laughing as he listed them off. "First, Easter. Second, Hallowing. Third Christmas. Fifth Thanksgiving. Last, Fall." Nailed it, buddy.

The boys, like me as a child, do not always love casseroles. Recently, however they became concerned not just by the contents of the pan but the name of the dish. "Why are these called castle rolls?"

One more. Gabriel and Elijah have been learning about parts of speech in first grade. Marc was having a discussion with them and Gabriel correctly defined the word "noun". Marc then asked the boys if they knew what a verb was. David John, who happened to be walking by, said, "I know! Verbs are things that build nest and sit on their eggs." The twins couldn't stop laughing.

Seven-up

Yup. We are up to seven. SEVEN! How can these boys be seven? That's just crazy talk. I mean, they still have all of their baby teeth. I've done the math several times because it just doesn't seem right, but I come up with seven every time. I guess it's time to just accept that another year has gone by despite my pleas with them to stop growing.
Since we were headed to Denver for Thanksgiving, the poor kids spent their actual birthday in the car. I did take treats to their classrooms and they got a book from their school but then we loaded them up in the van for a very long drive.
I think this actually worked to their advantage because then we felt the need to give them some travel-friendly gifts on their birthday and some additional presents the following day when we had cake and sang to them. So, in the van they got the LEGO Movie to watch and some giant activity books. They also got the thrilling experience of hitting a giant patch of black ice in the middle of nowhere Wyoming and spinning off the road into a ditch. Marc did a great job, making sure the van went between two posts instead of hitting them. When he walked up to the road to talk to some good samaritans who stopped to help, he said the road was so slick he could barely stand on it without falling over. Anyway, we called roadside assistance who were having an extremely difficult time finding our location on a map. Welcome to Wyoming. Three separate vehicles stopped to help, all full of North Dakotans on their way home for Thanksgiving. I've said it before but I LOVE NORTH DAKOTANS. Nicest people on earth. Between the three vehicles they managed to pull us out of the ditch before roadside assistance could even get there. We felt very very blessed.
We did make it to Denver safely, and the next day we celebrated their birthday for real. Uncle Marcus made these amazing Star Wars cakes.

In case you can't read it, the Yoda cake says, "A Happy Birthday you must have." Marcus totally free-handed those. Amazing.
Here are Gabriel and Elijah getting ready to blow out their candles. They've got that competitive gleam in their eyes. They wanted to see who could blow out all the candles first.

They got many Star Wars presents including mugs, some awesome chapter books, Lego watches and some markers. I also made them a set of pool-noodle lightsabers. Best time and money investment ever. These kept the boys entertained the entire trip and they continue to be useful at home. I made ten because, you know, there are five boys and they each have two hands so clearly ten is the bare minimum. I don't think they fully appreciate how awesome the handles are or that each one is completely unique but I was pretty proud of myself.

As seven-year-olds Gabriel and Elijah are still loud and rambunctious, but they are also helpful and usually trustworthy. They really helped out with the puppies at Marcus and Rebecca's house. They both love to read and tear through books, although they like to read different things. Gabriel has read the entire Magic Treehouse series and loves fiction. Elijah prefers books about nature, or graphic novels. They both love anything by Roald Dahl. Both take gymnastics and art lessons and both excel in school. We love these boys so much and are so proud to say we are the parents of these amazing people. Happy Birthday Gabe and Elijah!