Valerie is in Utah to put her grandfather to rest; may he rest in peace. In preparation for leaving, she practically spoon-fed me everything I’d need to get through the next 36 hours: 4 night diapers for the twins,  [...]]]> It’s 2039 hours and all the kids are finally in bed — not all asleep, but hopefully soon.

Valerie is in Utah to put her grandfather to rest; may he rest in peace. In preparation for leaving, she practically spoon-fed me everything I’d need to get through the next 36 hours: 4 night diapers for the twins,  4 sets of pajamas for the twins, pajamas & night pants for Maia, clothes for everyone to wear to the zoo tomorrow, and a fully stocked and prepped diaper bag ready to go — just add hot water. Ohh, and not to mention, she prearranged help to arrive in the evening to get all the kiddos through the bed-time routine. How could it possibly go wrong?

Enter: The Daddy.

I literally had an average of 1.5 kids screaming at me for the last 3 hours.

We got home from dropping Valerie at the airport around 1650. Not a minute afterward, Stella starts wailing. A fresh diaper helps a bit, and into the Boppy so Elise can get her turn on the changing table — which prompts Stella to immediately go to 11.  No biggie, a couple of bottles and all will be happy again. By the time the bottles are ready, there’s a 2-part harmony on the couch as I settle down and try to make amends; which are patently rejected.  Holding them to settle them down is not helping, so, off to the bouncer/swing and futile attempts at giving paci’s. No joy.

Quick departure from the twins to help Maia through the potty. Afterward, she wants some juice and I offer her a sippy cup of water since it was handy and I’ve still got 2 screaming babies to settle down. She makes her displeasure known by throwing the sippy cup — landing her straight into the corner for time out.

Perfect! Now I’ve got all 3 kids screaming at me. And, what do I do?  Straight to the fridge and crack open a beer and take a good long pull from it and ponder my navel for a minute.  Which, all joking aside about being an alchoholic, was just the medicine I needed.

At 1830, I’ve round-robined through the kids and gotten to the point that Stella is fed, in PJ’s, and in bed (screaming), Elise is nearly ready for bed and rubbing her eyes, and Maia is running around with drawers full of smelly filth asking for me to clean her bum — which I ignore and, bad parent that I am, privately tell myself she deserves to fester a while since she had passed up a perfectly good opportunity to deposit said filth in the potty just a few minutes prior.

Seeing that I’m on the down-hill slope and feel like I’m 2/3′s done with bed time, I call up Rebecca to see where she’s at. Oh, not out of the driveway yet; well, she can save herself the drive (and not a small one either!) — I think I’m good. After all, when I needed help the most was an hour ago…

Har! Har! Har!

Stella gets transferred into the swing in order to get Elise down into a moderately peaceful crib. Now to the spackle job in Maia’s pants and into PJ’s for her. Then back to Stella to check on her bum to determine if the source of her continued displeasure is gooey in nature — it was not. But, a fresh diaper is still needed. While tending to this, Maia declares she needs her bum cleaned a second time.  I thought she must be joking. No, no; she dropped a second bomb in her pants.

At which point, it dawns on me that had I not called Rebecca, the cavalry would be arriving any moment now.

Finally, all the bums are cleaned, and Maia is fed, I’m fed, and Stella has finally contented herself in my arm after ~3 hours of nearly non-stop sceaming since we got home.  And, all that screaming was good for something: she’s finally got the sleepy eyes. So off to the crib for her, which restarts the fussing the moment her head is down. So, we rock and she settles into her paci’. But, the toddler is very keen on coming in and out of the darkenend room, over, and over again — to the point that Stella is taking note and looking more alert because of it. Sorry kiddo, ready or not, into the crib a second time …

At 2018, Valerie calls — which was good timing as Stella had just cried herself to sleep shortly after putting her down. Maia gets to say good night to mommy and we brush teeth and read stories.  But, not her favorite book, Richard Scarry’s “Cars and Trucks and Things That go”. Her Aunty Chellie got her that for Christmas and she hasn’t wanted to read any other book since then. Which is great as it’s a powerful incentive to get her to do things — eat her dinner, clean up her room, sit still for teeth brushing, and now: going poo in the potty. You got it — as of tonight: if she poos in her pants, no favorite story before bed.

There’s a point to that long winded recap of the evening, and this brings me back to the original point of this post — how much my wife rocks. She handles all this hell chaos EVERY DAY! And most of the time, she makes it look easy. Granted, bed time is almost never done single handedly. But while I’m at work there’s all the same stuff going on and she still has a smile for me when I get home.

Thank you, Valerie, for making this family run so well.  I wouldn’t be able to do it without you!

For the non-parents out there, let me just state that parenting is at least 75% dealing with the bodily functions of your children. There’s nothing sacred about it — so if you [...]]]> Today was day 3 of Maia’s potty training (revisited), and we have a new milestone:  it was her first accident free day wearing big-girl pants!

For the non-parents out there, let me just state that parenting is at least 75% dealing with the bodily functions of your children. There’s nothing sacred about it — so if you don’t want to hear a poo story, bail out now…

And to top it off, it was also her first time ever going poop on the potty.  Not just any potty, but, a full sized toilet in a public restroom. She wasn’t so keen on it at first, but, I made silly faces at her and she giggled and played for a minute. And then suddenly, she got very serious, and sternly said, “I have to go pee pee” and stared off into the distance. Then she grimaced and grunted, and tensed up, and grunted some more with a slight convulsion. At first I thought she was just being silly and trying to squeeze out a drop of pee, but the grunting and grimacing kept on for about 20-30 seconds and I suddenly felt slightly embarrassed — maybe she needed some privacy.

What could I do or say?  “Go Maia! Push! Push!” Or, maybe adapt the Lamaze breathing techniques for toddlers? “Take a big deep breath, now hold it and push for 5, 4, 3 keep pushing, 2, 1 … and relax.”  Uhhh, yeah….

So, I sat quietly and made no fuss. She finally relaxed and declared, “all done potty!”, and behold, there was a ripe brown trout in the pond. The paper work proved much more challenging than normal without 1) wet wipes and 2) a changing table, but, we managed.

As we stepped away from the toilet, the auto-flush kicked in and Maia looked over her shoulder and said, “bye bye poopy!”

All in a day’s parenting…