After the dismal night’s sleep in Chemult, OR, we headed for the Lava Cast Forest to start day 3′s adventures.  Takes 9 miles [...]]]> OK, so, it’s not quite a year ago (yet) that we did this, but, you know, the pictures keep the memories fresh. Here’s part 1 and part 2 for those that aren’t so fresh.

After the dismal night’s sleep in Chemult, OR, we headed for the Lava Cast Forest to start day 3′s adventures.  Takes 9 miles of dirt roads covered in a powdery dust to get to — ohh well, after 4 drops of rain per square inch the night before, this dirt was just the icing on the cake for the new car:

The lava casts were fascinating. Quick blurb about it here:

Which, to be perfectly honest, a nice paved trail was ideal for the pregnant mama and todler. This is a fairly shallow cast — only a couple feet deep. Some of them were 7-8 feet deep.

You can really get a good idea of how the trees stopped the lava flow before they burned out. Valerie is standing tall on her feet here.

At the end of the trail, this tree stump was too perfect of a todler photo op. If only she’d look at the camera.

This is my favorite of the bunch.

Many more photos of the lava casts in the second and third pages of the gallery.

The drive back down the dirt road was done largely with the engine off, you know, because I could.  Alas, I lost the bet and had to fire it up before we got to the end of the dirt.

Heading north on HWY 97, figuring we really hadn’t had enough lava for one day, I really wanted to do some spelunking. Lava tube spelunking in the Lava River Cave. I seam to have forgotton to take the camera on this adventure.  The sheer size (height/width) of the lava tube was impressive considering it used to be full of swiftly moving magma. We didn’t make it all the way to the end (1.0 miles) because Maia was D.O.N.E being in the backpack carrier. We bundled her up for the cold temps, but, just riding along probably left her a bit on the chilly side. No worries. It wet our apetite to see more lava tubes and convinced us that the Ape Cave in St. Helens would be well worth a vist later in the tip.

With all of the stops and side trips, we only did a bit over 200 miles of purposeful travel on Day 3 of the trip.

We did stop and gander at the shoe tree at mile post 53 on Route 97, just out of Shaniko. Good shot of it here. When littering turns to art.

Once we got on the freeway, Valerie was busy on the iPhone checking out possible places to stop. The “Rufus Rocks” motel called to us to check out simply for the name alone. Turns out, it was under new management for the last few months as the “Hillview Motel”. All the better, since the friendly family that took over was renovating it room-by-room on their own. Wasn’t anything fancy, but, they were happy to have us as guests, even if we didn’t didn’t spring for one of the newly renovated rooms.

And it turns out, that was probably for the better.  After having a shower, Maia was running around nakey while I zoned out in front of the TV and Valerie had her turn in the shower.  Next thing I know, Maia starts hysterically yelling, “clean it up, clean it up” and she was jumping up and down while pointing at the floor.  I look over the edge of the bed and realize she’s pointing at a perfectly formed log of poo that was about the dimensions of her forearm. And, if you haven’t already glanced at your forearm and pondered that for a moment, needless to say, it was huge! Poor kid; no wonder she was hysterical. At least she had the good graces to drop it on the tile entry way instead of the carpet.

Don’t worry, I’m sure that room has been renovated by now…

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…

I didn’t sleep prior to the 1 AM feeding, [...]]]> For the singleton parents out there, let me just say that having twins is not twice the effort of having a single baby and puts a distintly non-linear increase of stress on parents of multiples. My present state of sleep deprivation is doing nothing to help this opinion.

I didn’t sleep prior to the 1 AM feeding, which is my own fault because I chose to read TDIClub forums and get things prepped for the evening.  Both kids fell asleep on half-full bottles. Not 15 minutes after putting them down, they decided it was “non-productive poo time” and proceeded to grunt and scream for the next hour. Failing to find any useful appeasement, another round of bottles was warmed in hopes that they just hungry. Stella powered hers down and contentedly dozed off; Elise found no such satisfaction.  She’d calm down just long enough to think, “FINALLY, peace and quite”, and just as I was about to nod off she’d belt out more screams.  Valerie had been getting small bits of sleep throughout this, but, she’d been up since 5:00 AM that morning and was dragging too heavily to be of any help for Elise. So I returned the favor of sending her to the office as she had done for me the night before.

The discomfort continued on. Elise would not stay quiet. Somewhere along, Stella filled her diaper (literally — it’s unreal the volume of poo she saves up) and proceeded to wail from the discomfort of all that smelly gooey goodness left for me. By now, it’s 5:00 AM; both are in high grump for food.  At 6:00 AM with the twilight glowing behind the curtains, both kids are quietly pulling on pacifiers and slumber falls upon them.  That left me pondering if there’d be any value in getting 1.5 hours of sleep (best case) before Maia woke up. I’d convinced myself that I might as well just start my day without a wink of …

7:15 — Wah! Wah! Wah!

As I groggily woke up and searched for Stella’s pacifier, Maia and Valerie bound into the bedroom. A brief synopsis of the night was exchanged, and was sure she’d have pity on me and take the terrible twosome away to let me sleep under the silence of my earplugs. Work would be there at noon, or whenever I’d be rested enough to be functional — I’d be useless with only an hour of sleep.

And she did take the screaming Stella. And then she brought her back, with two bottles in hand. And a toddler in tow. A toddler that was very happy to see me. And the lot of them climbed into bed. My night was clearly over and so the day started with a brusque departure from bed and hardly a word to Valerie as I staggered out the door for work.

I wasn’t totally useless at work. Absentmindedly stumbled through the day; dumped coffee and cocoa on a wall, of all places. Dumped soup on the kitchen table as sat down for dinner.  It was like being drunk, but without the warm fuzzy happy feeling.

Those with triplets or more, my hat’s off to you. I’d have rolled the dice to figure out who goes up for adoption.