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Scootin’ Kiddos

Monday, July 13th, 2009

Just thought I’d chime in with another update on the babies. They are nine-months old, and it’s hard to believe we’re closing in on a year already. My, how time flies.

Both Ella and Jack are crawling all over the place. Ella has mastered the more traditional crawl, while Jackson prefers the army-crawl. Ella scoots all over the house pretty well, but when Jack sees something he wants (a fan, power cords, etc.) he can get there surprisingly quick. They’re also both sitting up on their own. Even though they’ve been at it for a while, it is still funny to walk into their bedroom in the morning and find them sitting up “chatting”. Neither of them is walking yet, but they are both trying to pull themselves up and I wouldn’t be surprised if Shae walks in one morning to find one of them (most likely Ella) standing up in the crib.

Ella is a little terror. She loves to pick on her younger brother and take anything he’s got in his hands. Pacifiers, toys, bottles, whatever he has she wants. She’s also super-skinny. She eats and eats, but she just keeps getting taller and skinnier.

I hate to say it, but my son is kind of a pansy. In addition to getting picked on by his sister (although he has finally started fighting back and has almost mastered the hair-pull), he is terrified of loud noises. In the rare cases when we break out the vacuum, he cries and screams the whole time it’s on. He does the same thing whenever we have to turn on the air compressor to put air in the stroller tires, and he HATES it if Shae or I raise our voices at him or his sister (although he doesn’t seem to mind when we yell at Lunchbox). He is really sweet, but I sure hope he toughens up pretty soon.

That’s about it for now. We’re heading to Arizona for the weekend so hopefully we will have some more pictures of the kids swimming and riding in backpacks. It should be fun, and hopefully Shae and I will be able to get in some relaxation.

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The 4th

Friday, July 10th, 2009

Last weekend marked our first 4th of July with Jack and Ella. As much as I hate travelling on holiday weekends, I somehow got sucked into heading up to King City/Lockwood at the last minute. There was a lot of driving, but the babies were big hits, and it was pretty fun. Here’s a recap:

Wednesday
After the longest 3-day work-week I can imagine, I got to top it off with a 380-mile drive after work on Wednesday (with the stylish top-carrier strapped to the roof, of course). The traffic was pretty light considering the upcoming holiday, but a brush fire on the Grapevine slowed us down a lot and the trip ended up taking over seven hours. The fire was about five miles from Smokey Bear Rd., and I couldn’t help but think that maybe Smokey should stop telling us to prevent forest fires and take care of his own backyard. Oh well, what can you do? Eventually we got to Lockwood, dealt with upset babies (Ella did not like being moved into the Pack-N-Play in the middle of the night), and got a couple of hours of sleep.

Thursday
Thursday was pretty quiet. We spent most of the day recovering from Wednesday’s drive and trying to get some sleep. Shae had a (paying) photo shoot in the morning, so she left the kids with me and went to take some pics. Luckily, I was able to pawn the kiddos off on Grandma Grace and Kat (Grace’s 17-year-old cousin who was visiting Lockwood and hitched a ride back to SD with us) and get in a nice, long nap. Outside of Shae sneaking in her own three hour nap later, not much else happened on Thursday.

Friday
Friday, however, was not quite as lazy. We decided to take the babies and Mr. Box down to Cayucos to go to the beach. Shae, myself, the babies, the Box, Shae’s parents, my mom, and Kat piled into two vehicles and headed down to play in the sand. It was a beautiful day down in Cayucos, and everyone had an awesome time…especially Lunchbox. In fact, I think I should turn things over to LB to recap his day.

Oh, my God! The beach was awesome! The humans told me that I would be able to run free, but of course once we got there they pointed to some stupid sign with a dog on a leash and said I was on lockdown. What a crock! Oh well, I was so happy to be able to get to go with everyone that I didn’t really care I had to walk the humans all day. Eventually we got the human babies (and all their crap…seriously, I have a leash and a collar, why do the babies need so much stuff?) out of the car and headed over to the beach. Daddy had a lot of trouble pushing the giant stroller through the sand, and he was taking forever to get close to the water. It wouldn’t have been that bad, but the sand was HOT. I mean really hot. My feet were burning up, and eventually Mom had to take me up to the cooler sand because someone finally noticed me “suggesting” we hurry (as in move quickly, not pee).

This seems like a good time to make sure everyone reading this understands how awesome sand is (the cool stuff, not that super hot crap…that SUCKS). I hadn’t been to the beach before and couldn’t believe it was full of soft dirt perfect for digging. How come the humans hid this from me for so long? We live in frickin’ San Diego! I’ve said it before, but my human parents are lame.

Anyway, my grandmas picked out the best spot on the beach, and then the humans set up blankets and towels for the babies and ate some food (I didn’t get any of course, although I asked very nicely). While they were eating, I noticed a lot of other dogs running around the beach without leashes. One dog was actually carrying his own leash in his mouth (Mom and Dad told me that’s not what the sign meant when it said dogs had to be on a leash, but the other dog didn’t seem to care). I pointed all of this out to my human parents, but they just ignored me (as usual). Once Dad was done eating, he and Grandma Jane took me on a walk down the beach. That’s when the fun really started.

Dad took me over to the ocean and let me play in the water. I just want to let everyone know you shouldn’t drink the ocean water. It’s gross, just trust me on this one. After a few minutes of playing in the water, I guess Dad and Grandma decided we were far enough from other people because I got let off my leash. AWESOME! The first thing I did was run up and say “hi” to a jogger. She didn’t mind, but Dad wasn’t too happy so I decided to behave before I got put back on my leash. To any dogs out there: stop reading right now and get to a beach. I got to play in the water (it’s fun to chase…way better than a lake where the water barely moves), chase after birds, run all over the cool, soft, wet sand, and even play with another dog for a little bit. I could barely contain myself. Eventually it was time to head back, so I had to go back on leash (but not before Mommy came over and got some pics of me playing). Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

Back at “camp” (AKA three blankets and an umbrella), I decided if I couldn’t play in the water I’d do the next best thing: dig a giant hole. I got in trouble for kicking sand all over the babies, so I had to go away from camp and dig. Beach sand might just be the best digging sand ever. I dug, and dug (Kat helped me a little), and eventually had the perfect hole. Then, just for fun, I peed in it. Back to digging. A few minutes later I had a perfect hole again and it was time to take a break. The beach was exhausting, and I was pooped (not literally, and not in my hole…that would be gross). I can’t wait to go back to a beach, I hope the humans read this and take me sometime soon. Like tomorrow.

–Lunchbox

Wow…I guess LB had a lot to say about the beach. We’ll have to take him to one of the SD dog beaches sometime soon since he was so good at Cayucos. The babies seemed to have fun (well, they got lots of sand all over so I’m assuming they had fun), and didn’t get burned (more than I can say for Shae, myself, and my mom). I’m not a huge beach guy, but it was a lot of fun.

Saturday (the 4th)
After our day at the beach, it was time for the babies to have their first 4th of July. It took us a while, but eventually we got packed up and moved the party into King City. After unpacking at my mom’s house, we headed over to San Lorenzo Park for Heritage Days (basically, the annual 4th of July car show/festival). The babies were dressed in some very patriotic outfits, and they got lots of attention. We did some visiting, had some Swiss sausage, and then went home so the munchkins could get some naps.

Saturday evening, we headed out to Vicki and Ed’s for some dinner (more Swiss sausage). Jack and Ella were quite the hit, especially Ella. She was sitting in the middle of the room “singing” and swinging her arms like the conductor of an orchestra. The ladies thought she was the cutest thing ever, while the guys sat in the other room and chatted. Jack was cute too, but Ella was the attention hog on Saturday. At one point, she crawled over to Shae and actually begged for some of Shae’s dessert. Seriously, she begged just like a dog (complete with puppy dog eyes). I was appalled when Shae actually gave her a taste of her dessert. We don’t reward LB for begging for food, why does Ella get a treat (Jack got some too, but I didn’t catch that one).

Sunday
Sunday was another quiet day. Shae wanted to get a picture of Ella in some leg warmers for some photography/prop contest and got it in her head that the train tracks were the perfect place for the shot. My mom stood guard over LB and Jack, while I tried to keep Ella in one spot and limit the amount of railroad-track-rocks that made it into her mouth (I did better at keeping her in one spot than keeping rocks out of her mouth).

The rest of the day was pretty quiet. The babies took a couple of really good naps, and I actually completely forgot about them for a few hours. That was kind of nice. A few people stopped by to see the kids, but mostly it was a very laid back day.

After Ella and Jackson were down for the night, Shae and I snuck out to catch a movie. Just a slight rant here, but why do people think it’s OK to bring babies to R-rated movies (or any movie for that matter)? If I wanted to hear a baby cry, I could have stayed home and startled Jack. I really don’t understand why they allow parents to bring babies into theaters, but I really wish it would stop. Any theater that comes out with a policy that no babies/toddlers are allowed into movie showings (except for the “Mommy Movie” showings, and maybe the G-rated flicks) will have 100% of my movie business (assuming they actually play the movies I want to see). Either that, or make it more expensive to take a kid to a movie than to hire a baby-sitter. That would probably fix the problem too. OK, done with that rant.

Monday
Another travel day. After getting everything packed up, we loaded up the car (with extra cargo since we were giving Kat a ride back to SD), wedged Shae in between the babies, and hit the road. I somehow forgot we were driving on a Monday instead of a Sunday and timed our departure completely wrong (causing us to end up in LA at 4:00…great timing), but we got lucky and hit minimal traffic (all things considered). When got home, we discovered the house hadn’t cleaned itself up like we had hoped, but we were just happy to be back so we weren’t too hard on it.

That’s about it for our weekend. We’re still working on getting all of our pictures uploaded, but here’s some pics of our day at the beach. We’ll throw some more on this post in the next couple of days, and you can always check out our photo page.

$\"Hi Guys!\"$

$\"Don\'t drink the water, guys\"$

$What happens when Grandma\'s left in charge$

$\"Get away from my hole!\"$

$\'Sup?$

$Chillin\'$

$Our \"camp\"$

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Pool Time

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

With the temperatures shooting up and a trip to Sedona coming up in a few weeks, we figured it was time to give the babies their first swimming experience. Nate and Kristen invited us over to their new apartment for a BBQ, so we packed up the babies and some pool floaties and headed over to Mission Valley. After a few minutes of visiting, it was time to cover the kiddos in sunscreen, get them into their “Little Swimmer” diapers, inflate their party rafts, and do some swimming.

Ella was not a fan of the water at first. When I put her in her floaty, she started crying and I could feel everyone lounging by the pool thinking the worst. I was actually “That Guy”, who takes his screaming kids down to the pool and ruins it for everyone. Chris was nice enough to point that out to me (and everyone in a 2 mile radius). After a minute she got over her shock, and realized she liked floating. She started playing and having a great time. She loved kicking and squealing, and even though the water was a little cold for her liking, she was a very happy baby girl.

Jack, of course, was happy and laid back right away. He just kicked back and enjoyed the ride; at least until he figured out that he liked the taste of the salt water. Once he got his first taste of the water, he was like a shark who smells blood. No matter what we did, we couldn’t keep him from trying to drink the pool water. Oh well, at least he was having fun.

After about 15-20 minutes in the water, the babies were getting cold so we decided it was time for their first pool experience to come to an end. They played around for a while next to the pool, and then it was time for us to eat some dinner. Back up in the apartment, we ate our BBQ and Ella found her self a boyfriend. She was very interested in Nate and Kristen’s 2-and-a-half-year-old son, Reese. He gave her (and Jack) some toys, and Ella gave him a kiss on the cheek. Everyone thought it was cute. I thought, “Crap…she’s already into older men. Just shoot me now.” No seriously, just shoot me now.

$Ella stealing Jack\'s pacifier$

$Ella still has Jack\'s paci$

$\'Sup?$

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Dad’s Day

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

This past weekend I got to experience my first Father’s Day as a dad. I was expecting a tie or maybe a some tools from the kids, but instead they gave me some stinky diapers. They’re the best. Since Shae got a tote bag and a table saw for Mother’s Day, I was half-expecting a screwdriver and a vacuum. Instead, I got a digital picture frame (thanks Shae) and some steaks/chicken/other tasty goodies (thanks mom). Besides the gifts, here’s the rest of my first Father’s Day weekend with the kids.

Lunchbox’s toenails had gotten pretty long and he wasn’t very cooperative when we tried to trim them, so on Friday I took him to Petco (the store, not the ballpark) to get a pawdicure. It would be an understatement to say that LB wasn’t excited about this, but he got through it. As a reward for being so brave Lunchbox got to take a trip to the dog park. It was quiet at the park, but one of the two other dogs looked like Mr. Box’s twin. There were a few times I actually found myself getting the dogs mixed up. The easiest way to tell them apart was that Baxter was the humper and LB was the humpee. After quite a while of being humped, Lunchbox was exhausted and it was time to head home.

As soon as I got home, Shae somehow suckered me into going to REI to look at baby-backpacks. We are taking the babies to Sedona next month, and Shae convinced me we need the backpacks so we can take the kids on some hikes. The plan was to try on the packs at REI and then buy an old model from someone on Craigslist, but of course we ended up leaving the store with two new backpacks. Funny how that happens. (Actually, the new ones have some additional storage that is really nice…I think we made a good decision…I’m going to keep telling myself that.)

Father’s Day weekend was one of three “fee-free weekends” at a bunch of national parks (details here), so we decided to head over to the Point Loma Lighthouse/Cabrillo Monument with the kiddos. If nothing else it was a good excuse to get out of the house and try out our new packs, so we loaded up the car and headed to Point Loma. We met up with Chris, Patty, and Chris’ cousin Andrew (taking a break from his stay on an aircraft carrier to get some training in SD) for lunch at Olive Tree Market and then drove out to the lighthouse.

If you’ve ever been up to the top of the Point Loma Lighthouse (or probably any old lighthouse for that matter), you know how tight and crowded the staircase is; adding a framed backpack and a baby makes it a real challenge. After quite a bit of squeezing and contorting we managed to get up to the top and Shae took a few pictures (surprise). When we were done at the lighthouse, we took a nice downhill walk back to the car, made a quick stop for a chai tea freddo at Peet’s, and called it a day.

Sunday was nice and relaxed, so there’s not a lot to retell. Shae made me a nice breakfast, the kids were (pretty) well behaved, and we just hung out and didn’t do much. Lunchbox’s Father’s Day gift to me was to take me on a nice walk around the neighborhood. What a thoughtful puppy. Given the choice I think I’ll take LB’s walk over the babies’ poopy diapers, but they were both very nice gifts. Shae cooked me up some steak and potatoes for dinner (again, thanks mom), and we called it a day.

That’s about it for my first Father’s Day as a dad. Here are a few pics from my first Father’s Day with Jack and Ella:

$Daddy and the babies on Father\'s Day$

$Our first Dad\'s Day$

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Slow Times

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

Well, nothing much has changed since my last post. It’s weird how the babies figure something out, make no progress for weeks, and then make another major jump. Ella basically figured out how to crawl over a week ago, but since then she’s made very little progress. She can crawl well enough to get to a toy she really wants (or to get into trouble if we look away for a second), but really hasn’t gotten any better since the first or second day she figured it out. Not that I’m complaining, of course. The longer we can delay the baby chasing, the better. Jack, on the other hand, seems to have everything figured out. He’s not really into this crawling thing yet. Why crawl when you can sit on the floor and stare a the toy you want until Mommy gets it for you? Crawling is for suckers.

Even though she hasn’t quite mastered the whole crawling thing yet, Ella’s moving on. The past couple of days she’s been trying to pull herself up into a standing position using whatever is available. I actually had to tell her, “You’ve gotta crawl before you walk, baby girl.” Who would’ve thought I’d ever get to use that line literally?

Other than that, there really isn’t a lot going on. Shae has finally decided to put her love of photography to use and is starting to line up some photo shoots with some of the other moms in her “Mom’s” group, so we’ve been a little busy setting up a new website for that. Along the way, we got a couple of extra domains so we will probably be moving our blog and image gallery over to another server in the next few weeks. We really needed more space for our photos since we’re almost out of space on our picasaweb account, and we should also be able to host extra stuff (like the March Madness site) on our new server (which will be nice since it should be more reliable than my home server). Don’t worry, if/when we move we’ll make sure everything is transferred over to the new site and redirect this blog to the new URL.

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First Bath Together

Sunday, June 7th, 2009

For whatever reason, Shae and I got motivated to do some work on the babies’ bathroom today. Since Jack and Ella can sit up on their own now (take that Dr. who said they needed to work on sitting), we decided it would be nice if we could bathe them together in their own bathtub. So today we finally got around to replacing the shower doors with a shower curtain and rod. Of course, somehow the tub ended up covered in frogs (I’m sure Shae had nothing to do with that). After a little bit of work and a lot of caulk jokes (I put caulk in the hole, hehe), we could finally give the munchkins a bath together. They seemed to have a good time. Here are a few pics (more over here). Oh, and if you don’t think you’ll be seeing about 20,000 bath pics of the babies over the next couple of years you don’t know me at all.

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Time For Another Crib

Friday, June 5th, 2009

The babies have finally started to pay quite a bit of attention to one another. That would be great, except they’ve decided they’d rather bother each other than go to sleep at night. They’ve been sharing a crib, and every time we put them down to go to sleep Ella rolls over to Jack’s side and starts bothering/hitting/chewing on her brother. I guess tomorrow we’ll be putting together the second crib so they can get some sleep. Shae and I are both too tired to write up a real post, so instead I’m just going to post some pictures of the kiddos. Besides, I figure everyone would rather look at pics of the babies than read my babbling.

That’s it for now. There are a few other pics over in our gallery.

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What’s The Big Deal? – Updated

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

OK, I’ve given this whole baby thing about 8 months and I have to say I just don’t get what all the fuss is about. Don’t get me wrong, I love my babies and they let me clean food off they’re mouths (awesome), but they seem overrated. Everyone makes such a fuss over every little thing they do, but I’m not impressed. I wish someone would get all excited about taking me for a damn walk.

Every little thing the babies do is such a huge event to the other humans, but I don’t understand it. They’re 8-months-old and everyone makes a big deal out of the girl baby learning to sit (Mom said to make sure to tell everyone that Ella is sitting now. See what I mean? I can’t even write a blog post without having to plug the stupid babies). When I was 8-months I had already graduated my obedience class as Top Dog. Sitting? I was sitting by 4-months. Not just sitting, but sitting on command. Did everyone make a big deal out of me figuring out how to sit? Nope, they gave me a tiny treat and told me to do it again. Totally unfair.

Speaking of unfair, the double standard that Mommy and Daddy have between me and the babies is ridiculous. There is baby crap everywhere (and they’re toys look exactly like my toys), but I never chew on any of their toys. Not even the stuffed animals, and if you know me at all you know how hard that is. (I have chewed on the occasional pacifier, but seriously they’re delicious and they’re everywhere.) If I ever did eat a toy I would get in lots of trouble. Then there are the babies. They eat everything, even my toys. Today the baby girl threw all of her toys to the side and started eating my rope. When Mommy took that away she started eating my Kong. Did she get yelled at, or even scolded? Nope. Hell, the babies chew on ME and no one says anything to them. I just have to lay there and take it (although I secretly love the attention). Daddy got new glasses last week and the babies are always grabbing and pulling them. Of course, no one says anything to them. I licked his glasses today and got in trouble. One lick. Total crap.

I haven’t even mentioned all the stuff that the babies can’t even do yet. Apparently even something as basic as Ella crawling about a foot forward is worth talking about. Really? Crawling? She’s 8-months-old! I was running around before I was 1-week. Don’t even get me started on the house-breaking. I never took one dump in our house (I did drop a deuce at The Learning Garden once, but it wasn’t ours yet and it smelled weird), and it only took 2 weeks for me to figure out that I’m supposed to pee outside. The little humans have taken about 10,000 poops in the house and no one seems to care. I’ve heard rumors they even poop in stores. Imagine if I stopped and squatted in Target; I’d never hear the end of it. They just throw diapers on the babies and act like everything is fine. The worst part is no one seems to be trying to fix the problem. They don’t even take them out to the lawn to teach them to “hurry”. How are they ever going to learn?

There’s plenty of other ways I’m way better than the babies, but Mommy and Daddy want the laptop and I still have to check on all my Twitter friends so I better go. I love my babies, but I’ll love them a lot more when they can take me on a walk. Until then I’m going to go hide my toys so they stop eating them.

[Update: Here are some pictures of the babies torturing me!]

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The Beginning Of The End

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

Well, crap. We all knew it was only a matter of time, but Ella finally figured out how to crawl. As we were putting the twins to bed tonight Ella started crawling forward. I’m sure by tomorrow she’ll be scampering all over the place and Jack will probably be a couple of days behind. I can’t wait to spend my weekend chasing them yelling “Ella! Stop! Jack!! Put that down!” Super.

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Sitting Around

Sunday, May 31st, 2009

Not that there was ever any question, but if we needed any more proof that Jackson is my son we have it. In general, Ella develops ahead of Jack. She leads the tooth race 5-0 (yup, she just got another one), smiled first, rolled over weeks ahead of her brother, and seems ready to crawl any second (while Jack is happy to just roll around). However, there’s one area where Jack is kicking his sister’s butt: sitting. That’s right, my boy is awesome at sitting on his ass. Just like his daddy.

At the twins’ last checkup, the doctor told us that they should be sitting better than they are. We hadn’t really been working with them on sitting up because they were doing so great rolling around and didn’t seem to want to sit still. Well, after the doctor’s visit we (we being Shae) started working with the babies on their sitting.

A few weeks later, Jack is a sitting pro. We can sit him on the floor and he’ll hang out for 15 minutes or so. Like I said, just like his daddy Jack is skilled at sitting around. Ella on the other hand has no interest in sitting, at least not when we want her to. When she’s sitting in her bouncer she has no problem sitting up and looking around. If we sit her down on the floor, she just flops down and starts rolling all over the place. She’s going to be super fun to chase when she finally figures out how to crawl. Yay.

Anyway, here’s a pic of our baby boy sitting:

And just because, here’s a pic of Ella (not sitting of course). There are a few new pics over in our gallery:

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