Not mud dada...

Disclaimer: the following really happened and it is really gross. Consider yourself warned.

For those of you who know me, feel free to skip down a paragraph or two. For everyone else, I have some faults that I willingly admit that I really haven't tried to fix. Today, two of those faults collided in spectacularly disgusting fashion. I am a chronic procrastinator and I hate doing laundry.

I have a research paper due that I should have been working on for weeks, but instead I am doing in in the closing days of the due date. Unfortunately, for Jaycee, that means she is on her own playing. She has been a good girl all day and has been playing nicely and, for the most part, quietly.

I took a moment to check on her and see what she was up to and found her in her room. She was in her bed laying down and reading a book. Happy with the situation, I left her there to enjoy her Elmo book.

About 10 minutes later, I was typing away when I heard her walk up behind me. I turned to see what she wanted and she asked "Dada, what's that?" as she held up her hand. I looked at it and saw poop all over her hand. Realizing I was going to have to do something about it, Jaycee quickly retracted her question and told me "its mud Dada".

She could tell I wasn't convinced and I told her to go to her room so we could figure out what happened then clean her up. When we got there, I looked all over for a diaper she may have found or removed from the bin but I found nothing. Then the stink hit me. I lifted up the back of her shirt and saw "mud" coming from her diaper going all the way up to the middle of her back (no exaggeration). I momentarily contemplated taking her outside to the hose. Then I looked at her bed. It looked like some sort of war had taken place. The picture is the load of laundry generated by this disaster. (If you look closely, which I don't recommend, you can see that her little stuffed doggy got the worst of it.) While Jaycee was in the bath, she wanted to make sure she cleared up the situation and she told me "Dada, not mud".

What did we learn today? When I have something really important to do, something will go wrong. I also learned that if Jaycee is talking about mud and she isn't outside, I should probably get the hose ready...

Happy Mother's Day!!!

Another year as a Mother has arrived for my wife. I just wanted to take a quick second to tell her how appreciated she is today and the other 364 days. If she ever wonders if she is a good mother to our little girls, all she has to do is see how much they love to be with her and near her. Jayden can be having a horrible day with dada and as soon as mama steps in she is back to smiling. She doesn't even have to see her, she only has to hear her voice and Jayden is fine. Then there is Jaycee. When she hears her mama's car pull up, she starts dancing around yelling "Mama home, mama home!" Then the rest of the day she spends asking when she'll be here.

Jess is the best mom I know. She lives and breaths for our little ones and I know that her time and attention she gives to them will help our little girls grow into loved and loving people. They are so lucky to have an example like their mama and I'm enjoying watching them turn more like her everyday...

Its a jungle in here...

Jaycee loves animals. She is interested by them, no matter the species, size, or abnormality. We have 3 little dogs and a huge cat. The dogs are pretty good at avoiding the Jaycee train and staying out of her way. The fat cat on the other hand is hindered by his size and can't get around as quickly as the dogs, so Jaycee can pretty much catch him whenever she wants.

For some reason, she is infatuated with Toby the cat. She will not leave him alone. She just wants to lay on him, with him, and just generally love him. The cat isn't very receptive and usually cries but cannot escape the toddler grip. The weird thing is, Toby is probably the least entertaining animal here, but Jaycee only wants him. I know I'm not exactly a cat person, but I am perplexed. I thought kids like dynamic and active things, which Toby is neither. You would think with all the running around Jaycee is making Toby do, he'd lose some weight. Then again, she makes me run around a lot too...

Quick and gross...

Hopefully you aren't eating or getting ready to eat (that was a fair warning). So I was getting breakfast situated for Jaycee and I the other day. She had her bowl of Cheerios and I had mine. She was eating Chocolate and I was eating Honey Nut. She saw that I had something different, so she decided she needed some of mine. So she stood on the other side of my bowl and looked inside to figure out the best way to steal Cheerios. As soon as she popped her head up and hung her face over the edge of my bowl, she unloaded a sneeze that made the milk splash in her face. Now, for the gross part. I had just poured the bowl and couldn't justify throwing it away, so I finished eating it. Hopefully none of you think less of me than you already do, but when it takes 20 minutes to get situated enough to get my breakfast together, it was a matter of weighing the pros and cons. Add it to the list of "things that I never would have done before kids"...

All I need is an excuse... I mean reason...

I really need very little encouragement when it comes to buying new gadgets and devices. Jess, on the other hand, is a lot more logical in her approach. She asks questions like, do we really need that? and will we use it? I ask questions like, what store should I buy it from? and what is the quickest route to that store? With that in mind, I was very excited when Jess finally caved in to the pressure I have been putting on her to buy a DSLR camera. She was never opposed to the idea of having a nice camera to take awesome pictures, but that logic thing got in the way and she thought that the money was better spent (or saved) on something else. With enough money saved, she gave me the green light.

I am obviously stoked to have a new toy to play with, but I am most excited about the prospect of taking some awesome pictures as our little ones grow. I won't kid myself into thinking I am Ansel Adams or anything, but I have already noticed how much more forgiving this camera is. As a matter of fact, I think Canon should hire me as a spokesperson. I see the ad campaign now: "Real Pictures, Real People, Canon". Or Nikon, or Sony. I can be bought. Really. My wife will negotiate the details, she's the logical one...

Temporary Insanity...

The insanity of parenthood is real, I could easily be a case study.
I am not just talking about how I go crazy sometimes with life or how sometimes the household is crazy, I mean those moments when you stop for a second and think "did I just do that?" or "that just happened" or better yet when you don't even know what you did until someone else notices.

Allow an example, long long ago(2 years), before Jaycee's arrival, I think back on some of the phone conversations Jess and I had. We talked about the day, the news, and other goings on. Just the other day when Jess called to check in at her lunch, we spent about 4 minutes on the phone talking about Jayden's poop of the day. Jess wanted all the nasty details and I was giving them without batting an eye. Our conversation was only cut short by the screeching of the cat whom Jaycee was sitting on top of giving him a "hug".

How about the time I answered the phone and it was one I actually had to take and Jaycee thought that'd be the perfect time to throw her toy across the room and start screaming about it only to cause Jayden to start crying because she was roused from a dead sleep. The insanity comes in when I held the phone with my shoulder made a bottle with my left hand, held Jayden's pacifier in her mouth and pinned Jaycee down between my ankles so she'd stop throwing stuff while I was on the phone.

And don't get me started on the stuff I have done, that I remember, when I was half asleep at some unholy hours. Now I know I am not the only one who has done this kind of stuff, so I am going to propose an exemption for us. Temporary insanity is loosely defined as temporarily not knowing the difference between right and wrong or not being able to process that concept, right? Well, I can think of many times I didn't know which way was up or down let alone right or wrong. So maybe traffic tickets and other annoyances can be defended by the temporary parental insanity approach. If anyone wanted evidence, they could come hang out with me for about 7 minutes...

Validating Affirmations...

Life has been about as busy as it can get around here. Jess is fully immersed in work. As schools head into the sacred standardized testing phase of the year, she has been pretty loaded up with work/stress. I am pulling into my last year of school and I am finding out what a big difference there is between upper and lower division courses. I am in a hurry to get this done, so I am carrying a full load and also added on some classes at the community college. So now that Jess is back to work, I am working nights at my job on the weekdays, then I work Saturday and Sunday, most of the day. So during the week, three days a week, Jess is home all of 10 minutes, then I have to go to work. On the weekends, she is basically on her own since I usually have homework to do when I get home from work.

I don't write this in an attempt to solicit sympathy, I am fortunate to have all of the opportunities that I have been given and the above mentioned is me taking those opportunities. The reason I share this with you has to do with a recent minor event.

Lately, I have found myself driving to work in the dark after having kissed the girls goodbye and brushing shoulders with Jess on my way out and her way in, and I think about how not fun this is. I hate leaving when my family is home, knowing Jess is tired from her day and now she has to do night routines on her own. I wonder why I am stressing at school and why I go to work, the answers are not in the immediate future. Instead, they are a little ways down the road. Obviously, I go to work to pay the bills and I go to school so when I'm done, I can pay the bills with style, but I can't help thinking about today and the sacrifices we make now.

Then just when I think I can't take it any more, a tiny little event happens and sets me straight. Yesterday, I had to do some stuff around the house and it worked out that Jess had an invite to a party. So I helped Jess get everything ready for her trip, dressed Jaycee, put Jayden in her car seat, got bottles packed up, checked the diaper bag for supplies and some other routines. Then I carried Jayden out to the car and put her in, then said bye to everyone and watched them leave down the road. That's when it hit me like a Frisbee to the head. As I loaded my little family into the safest vehicle I could think of, I knew they were well stocked, comfortable, and most importantly, happy. All the "whys" disappeared and I got to work. To end this post, I tried to think of some famous and altruistic quote that would sum up my conclusion. As Dora the fish from Finding Nemo would say: "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming...