Woah it’s Mother’s Day!  Often, i use my wife as just a character, or comedic foil, for the benefit of my blog.  But today in truth i will say how grateful i am for her.  She’s my connection to reality, and sense of reason.  She’s the one who teaches me it’s not a great idea to carry babies around exclusively by their feet, no matter how funny they look when i do it.  She’s the one who teaches me you actually have to read all that crap the school sends home for parents, no matter how boring it is.  She’s the one who teaches me it’s not all that nice to laugh at the babies when they cry, no matter how ridiculous their faces look.  She’s the one that teaches me that ‘i guess they’re clean’ usually isn’t all that acceptable when it comes to washing baby bottles.  And the most important, she’s the one that teaches me you gotta wipe the suzy front to back.

We’ve been together since i was 15 and we haven’t been apart since.  She’s not just my wife, but my best friend.  And i’ve always known she’d be a great mother.  Whether it was from her 18 younger sisters, or even me, she’s kind of always played the mom. After many many years together, i’m happy that she’s finally a real mom.  I’m grateful that despite decades of me driving her so crazy that she’s got one foot in the grave and the other in a loony bin, she still chose to make babies with me.  And naturally she does a great job.  It amazes me that she has time to beat all three kids equally and still have time to play her video games.

Happy Mother’s Day, mama!   With 3 kids, it’s now economically impossible for you to get rid of me!  Sucks to be you!

I’m surprised i haven’t told this story already.  It’s been a while, so i’ll likely tell it wrong, and as my wife is reading it, she’ll shout at me from behind her laptop, ‘That’s not what happened at all, jackass!’  Anyway, despite my earlier concerns that i would eat my babies, i originally wanted to name the twins Pumpkin and Jellybean.  Like, for real.  Or something else ridiculously cute and, well, ridiculous.  I thought it would be awesome if they had names that made you want to smile every time you heard them.  And come on, it would be an instant ice breaker, in case my babies grow up to be socially awkward like me.  My wife is the voice of reason (ie she’s a square) and put a smackdown to that early on.  But i persisted.  What about middle names then, i said?  She was wary.  I don’t think she was mean enough to say no immediately, but i could feel the ‘no’ emanating off her like stink lines in a comic book.  Then, i got clever.

By this time we had pretty much settled on the first names – Cordelia and Juliette.  But we were throwing a lot of middle names around, kinda like a blind guy throwing darts.   Names were just everywhere, and they weren’t sticking.  Then i got this idea.  See, i’m Cherokee.  And yeah, so many people say they’re Indian, that their great grandmother used to wear feathers in her hair and people used to call her Running With Turkeys or something.  But i’m like an actual member of the Eastern Band tribe, i have an enrollment number and card and everything.  And i do my best to learn about the history and culture, because its badass.  The Cherokee language is cool, and the alphabet (the first tribe to ever have it’s own written language) is awesomer.  So we sat down with an online translator and plugged some words in.  I think we tried words like spider and midnight and superfly, but the Cherokee language, as cool as is it, sounds a little ugly.  But i circled back around to pumpkin and jellybean.  As fate would have it, they were very cool.  Pumpkin translated to Iya (ee-ya) and Jelly translated to Chaylee.  Going fullblown Jellybean would’ve been Chalyee Doya i think it was, but that sounds goofy, and be honest, Chaylee is a beautiful sounding word.  So suck on that.

When the babies finally popped out (or rather, were torn from wife’s gut), i pretty much stuck to calling them Cordy & Jules.  I mean, i would pepper in little pumpkinfaces and jellybellies, and it determined the type of airline they were when i threw them up in the air (jelly jet or pumpkin plane), but i thought sticking to their actual names would help them learn their names faster.  Cordy picked up on it at maybe 6 months, and Jules just a few weeks ago.  So now i feel like i can phase more of the pumpkinheads and jellybean superstars in.  Here’s the problem – months of handling twins has melted my brain.  It’s too common that i call Jules Cordy and Cordy Jules.  Sometimes i catch myself and it winds up like a Ju-uh-Cordy.  Cord-er-baby!  So it’s become harder to give each baby two names when i can’t get just one straight.

More often lately it’s been more like ‘this baby’ and ‘that baby.’  Or when the wife is around, ‘my baby’ and ‘your baby.’  This isn’t predetermined, mind you, it’s just whichever one is closest to us, or whichever one is fussy.  The fussy one automatically becomes the other one’s baby.  It’s like a game of ‘not it,’ only we try to be the first one to yell out ‘your baby’s crying!’  And that’s pretty much our parenting strategy.

In the future, once they’re talking and starting to learn colors, i feel like i’ll just call out whatever they’re wearing.  Hey red!  Blue baby!  I’ll tell them it’s a game to help them learn colors.  I think i can get away with it for at least a year.  Yeah?

Hey BTW, if you’re on the facebook, fan my blog!  Check out the badge right over there ->  Do it, or be a square like my wife!

An unheard of two posts in one night.  But i caught some cool video i wanted to share.  So suck it.  And watch.

Jules just learned how to stand yesterday.  Here’s where i didn’t catch her:

And here’s where i did:

Abby:  i want to ride the bus in the morning.
Mama:  you’d have to leave earlier.
Abby:  then daddy set my alarm.
Mama:  it’s not a matter of  getting up earlier.  you just have to focus and do what you have to do.  like this morning when i asked you to brush your hair and you just played around.
Me:  Well it was probably hard for you to brush your hair with you being so burnt.

(at a restaurant)
Abby:  can i have the peanut butter pie?
Waitress:  we don’t have that anymore, we have the key lime pie now instead.
Abby:  ok i’ll try that.
(waitress leaves)
Me:  Hey, when the waitress comes back, you should ask her for an icepack.
(Ab pauses for a few seconds, then realizes she’s just been burnt.)
Abby:  Shut up!

Abby:  my friend told me i should get the new Justin Bieber album.
Me:  Bieber?  JB?  The Biebs?
Abby: maybe we can go to the store.
Me:  Wal-Beib?  Bieb-mart?   McBiebles?  Bieble King?
Abby:  i want to go over my friend’s house.
Me:  Oh yeah?  What’s her name? Justin Bieber?
Abby:  No it’s Sophia.
Me:  Oh Sophia Bieber?
Abby:  No it’s Sophia (something italian sounding).
Me:  She’s italian?
Abby:  No.  I didn’t know her last year but i knew her sister.
Me:  What’s her sister’s name?  Justina?
Abby:  No!
Me:  You gonna hang out and listen to Justin Bieber records?
Abby:  NO!
(hours later, after dinner, wife is home)
Abby:  Mommy, do we have plans saturday?  i want to go over my friend Sophia’s house.
Mama:  Oh yeah?
Me:  Yeah she’s italian and she has a younger sister named Justina.
Abby:  STOP MAKING THINGS UP.

Abby:  daddy have you seen my bra?
Me:  Not my territory!  It’s probably in your shithole of a room.
Abby:  how would you like it if i called your room that?
Me:  My room is messy.  It’s not a shithole.  Your room, on the other hand, is a shithole.
(this last conversation i thought you’d just need to be there to be amusing.  wife said to post it, it’s funny, and if you don’t think so, you can ‘suck one.’)

The girls are very excited and wanted to welcome their newest cousin! Photoshoot!

Have you ever started yelling at your kid in that voice?  You know, the ‘voice of god’ voice.  The one that you hope instills fear.  The one that makes you want to quit your job and front a punk band.  Anyway, have you ever found yourself in the middle of a screaming session, because the kid has broken some kind of rule one too many times, but you don’t really have a plan for what you want to say?  And you’re in the middle of sentence, and you’ve totally started it wrong?  But you can’t stop, because you’ve got the whole momentum going, and the kid is looking up at you.  But you totally start saying the wrong thing.  So at full volume you wind up getting out “YOU NEED TO START NOT DOING THAT THING THAT WE TALKED ABOUT.”  Or like, “WHAT IS THE PROBLEM THAT YOU HAVE.”  It comes out so ridiculous, and you just want to laugh, but if you do, the kid is gonna start laughing too, and you can throw discipline out the window.  What do you do?  Memorize a script beforehand in the event of a shouting match?  Avoid words altogether and just make crazy noises?  Will the kid go running in fear?  Think i’m possessed?  Call a priest and throw holy water at me?

So anyway, we just had our 9 month checkup.  Our babies are 3 times the size they were when they were born!  Still small though.  Poor Jules is less than the 5th percentile in weight.  And Cordy is just a hair over that.  This is with us super-concentrating their formula for the past few months, too.  Maybe i should be supplementing their formula with lard, or steroids.  I could dip all their finger foods in bacon grease, and watch those tummies of theirs pudge out so fast they’ll be doing the truffle shuffle by 12 months.

I should be careful though.  Too much and i could make them balloon up.   Carrying two babies around at a time gets heavy.  Unless i made them balloon up literally…  What if i filled their little baby cheese curls with helium?  Not enough to make them float above the baby gates.  But enough to where they slowly skipped across the ground like astronauts on the moon.  We’d have no more heads hitting the ground, because they would just bounce.  And dude, we could just tap one lightly if we wanted to pass a baby to someone across the room.  That would be totally awesome.

But if that’s never scientifically possible, why not make a helium laced onesie?  You know how they have air filled floaties built into suits for swimming?  Just fill them up with helium instead!  Yes!  Someone please make this.  But i get royalties.

I found that no toy compares to my iPod while it’s playing music.  I have a decent case that’s fairly slobber proof, so sometimes i’ll start a song and let them play with it.  They love it.  And by playing cool music i hope it’ll steer us away from another few years of disney-pop and instead into an appreciation of 70′s punk and 80′s metal.

Here’s videos!

And here’s a bonus video of Cordy’s new talent of clucking. She does it all the time and it’s great.

My biggest peeve on the 8yo front: birthday parties. I cringe whenever we receive an invitation for someone at Ab’s school or camp. The invitations always come with an unanswered question – do we come and stay or do we just drop her off? It’s a very important question. It dictates my whole day. I have to plan around it. Do i get an hour or two to make out with my wife? Or do i have to stay, and pack a million things to keep the twins occupied?

Do you know how much i have to pack for two babies for two hours? A bag full of diapers, wipes, diaper doggie bags, creams, salves, lotions, and a minor arsenal of toys. Things that talk, sing, ring, jingle, and jangle. Extra clothes. Bottles full of water. Nipples. So much formula. Do we take the massive double stroller, or both the umbrella strollers? One holds more, but will it fit where we’re going? Do we just carry in the car seats?  Do we need to bring the Bumbos?  TOO MANY DECISIONS.

Why doesn’t anyone say? Why is ‘parents welcome’ or ‘just abandon your smelly kids here’ so hard to write? Are we supposed to know already? Is there a handbook or a code of etiquette that i didn’t receive? Are they sending this crucial little information out, i’m just not seeing it? Is it in invisible ink? Do i need a black light? Is it encrypted, like in the Davinci Code? Do all the capital letters create some sort of anagram? Is the secret hidden in the picture of the puppy dog holding the balloons? So stressful. I don’t have a Tom Hanks to call every time i need to unlock the mystery of what i’ll be doing while 10 kids are busy shouting at the top of their lungs over cake and ice cream.

And you can’t just ask. What if parents are welcome? They’re gonna think i don’t want to hang out and get to know them. What if i ask if i’m just dropping her off, and they think i’m a bad parent for pawning my kid off on them for the afternoon? What if they say its ok just to be polite, but they’re mad the whole party and she never gets invited back again? What if they get pissed off, and key my car in the middle of the night? What if they pop my tires, and carve THANKS FOR RUINING THE PARTY in the siding of my house?

Worse yet, what if i stay, and i don’t have to, and i waste an opportunity to go to Outback crayon-free? So many choices, and so many life-altering outcomes.

Think about it.  And next time you throw a party, consider my feelings.

For those of you who just came for a baby fix, here’s a video we took a bit before we misplaced the camera