Life Of The Lorigans

An Update From The Box

Written by Lunchbox on May 5th, 2009

I’ve decided that I’m tired of letting the humans write my posts for me, so I decided to get my own account and take care of things myself. It’s only fitting since I’m such a grown up dog now (2 years old!). I’ve got my own email address (lbthedog@gmail.com), and I’m even on Twitter (http://twitter.com/lbthedog). I’m quite the Web 2.0 puppy (I guess that makes me “Lunchbx”).

This weekend was the big yard sale in my ‘hood. For the humans this means lots of sunscreen and shopping. For me, it just means a super long walk. Last year was crazy. It was really hot and there were humans everywhere. Cars were parked on the median, and on every curb. There were so many crotches to sniff! Of course, Mommy still had babies inside her (the good old days as I call them) so we had to take lots of breaks. This year it was a lot cooler and there weren’t as many humans.

After the humans finally got out of bed and fed me and the babies, it was time to go on our walk. I was so excited about the yard sales that I grabbed a $5 bill out of my private stash (I’ll never tell where it is) and brought it to Mommy to buy me stuff. Of course, we couldn’t just go walk. I threw on my pirate outfit (you never know who you might meet at the yard sale, gotta impress the bitches (I can say that, I’m a dog)) and was ready to go, but the human babies take forever to leave. They had to have cute outfits, hats, sunscreen, bottles, and everything else the humans could find. Those little things sure are a lot of work. It’s bad enough when they wake me up at night, but getting in the way of my walk is completely unacceptable. Anyway, eventually all of the humans were ready and it was finally time to go out and get our walk on.

Since my human parents don’t trim my toenails often enough, it’s a little tough to type everything up so I’ll just skip to the highlights. We walked all over the area and saw tons of humans and even some other dogs. Apparently the humans didn’t find anything they liked, because they didn’t buy anything but some breakfast burritos (they spent my $5 and didn’t even give me any, totally not fair). I got to play a little with a Wiemariener (any idea how hard that is for a dog to spell?) at one of the houses, but we had to leave before the W and I started breaking stuff. The craziest thing I saw was two dogs being walked in strollers like the human babies. Why would the dogs agree to that? What’s the point of going on a walk if you don’t, you know, walk? Some dogs are lame. You won’t catch me riding in a stroller. Mommy’s ankle has been acting up lately, so we had to cut our stroll short (if an hour-and-a-half is short). I was so tired when we finally got home, so I pretty much napped the rest of the day. I can’t wait until next year’s yard sale.

The humans want to use the laptop so I guess I better wrap this up and go get some water. Typing is a lot of work. I’m exhausted. Time for a nap.

Posted in Lunchbox | No Responses »

2 Years

Written by Pat on April 28th, 2009

Tomorrow is April 28th, which means it’s been two years to the day since Lunchbox was born. There was something about a wedding on that day, too. While it’s easy to see LB is only two-years-old (he seems more like six-months), it’s hard to believe that a couple of years ago Shae and I weren’t married. Two years ago I didn’t really expect to have one kid by now, much less two. Nevertheless, here we are. Quite a couple of years.

I’ve been pretty swamped between work and home lately, so I hadn’t noticed it has been almost three weeks since the last post. I guess that means it’s time for an update on how things are going around here.

The babies are doing great. They keep growing, and their personalities keep developing like crazy. They aren’t crawling yet, but Ella’s close and they both roll enough to end up across the room if you take your eyes off them for a second. A couple of weeks ago Shae took the little ones with her up to Lockwood for a week, and it was hard to believe how different they were when they got back. They’re on a pretty good schedule lately, and are sleeping through about half the time now (Or so I’ve been told. Shae quiets them down so quick I don’t even hear them).

Lunchbox is doing his thing. As much as he acts annoyed by the new additions, he loves his babies and missed them when they were gone. Even though he got taken on lots of extra walks and got tons of attention (funny how that works when there are no babies around), he was a little depressed while they were gone. Every morning after breakfast he would run into the baby-room to see if they were there, go check Shae’s side of the bed, look at me with a sad puppy-look, and then go plop and his bed and pout until he got put out for the day. He was VERY happy to get the rest of his family back. Almost as happy as Ella was to see him. Seriously, she might be a little too into her dog; she loves him more than she loves either of her parents.

Shae’s doing fine too. She’s back on one of her photography kicks, so she’s been playing with our cameras and taking tons of pictures. That would be fine, except then she wants me to look at them. “That’s a nice picture of a window.” “Good picture of the door there.” “Oooh, that’s a great shot of a window and a door.” Repeat. Oh, and somewhere in between taking pictures she finds time to take care of the kiddos.

As for me, I’m doing fine. Work is a little crazy lately, but everything is pretty good. I took over as the lead of our web team, so now instead of doing any real work I spend all of my time answering email and preparing PowerPoint briefs. Fun. It would be nice to be able to do some development occasionally, but overall things are going pretty well at work.

That brings us to the Great Rodent War of 2009. Since our last update, things haven’t changed much. We don’t have any more casualties to report, but we’ve deployed the weapons of mass rodent-struction (AKA D-Con) up in the attic and are just waiting on the little mice to eat themselves to death. Don’t worry, we will emerge victorious.

Posted in Lunchbox, The Kids | 1 Response »

Six Months

Written by Pat on April 8th, 2009

Today is April 7th, which makes it six months since Ella and Jackson popped out of Shae. It feels like it’s been much longer than six months, but it’s also hard to believe that it’s already been half-a-year. I’m not sure how to explain it other than it feels like the babies have been around forever, but at the same time it seems like only yesterday that Shae was pregnant. Very weird.

The babies just keep on becoming little people. Ella’s bottom two teeth are all the way in, and they definitely work (Shae and Jack both have the bite marks to prove it). She bites Jack, and he pulls her hair. It’s a fun game they play. It’s also getting really hard to keep Ella in one spot. She rolls all over the place, and even goes after her favorite toys. Her favorite thing to go after is Lunchbox. She sees him, gets all excited, and rolls/squirms over to him.

Jack’s doing great too. He’s not quite as mobile as his sister, but he is a very happy baby boy. He has a great laugh, and loves to play (if by play you mean lie on his back and kick and laugh). His hair has grown back from his friar hair-style, and his reflux is almost all gone. It’s great to feed him and not get puked on 20 seconds later.

Last weekend, Shae took the twins up to Escondido to visit the Wild Animal Park and Kit Carson Park. She got a few cool pictures, and the babies are even in some of them. She’s uploaded a few of them, and will be uploading more as she processes them. You can view them over in our gallery.

Posted in The Kids | 1 Response »

At War

Written by Pat on April 7th, 2009

March 20th, 2009:
I’ve been living in denial for months now, but the signs are too strong to ignore any longer. The mouse droppings in the sun room, the glimpses of a rat scampering back up into the palm tree when I go out to the patio late at night, (worst of all) the sounds of plotting coming from the attic. There really is no other explanation: the rodents are plotting to take us out. They’ve finally decided to put the information gathered by their mouse-spy months ago to use and launch their attack.

So far, the traps we’ve setup to defend against the rodents haven’t netted us any prisoners, but at least the enemy seemed to respect them and stay away. now it sounds like that’s all changing. It’s time to stop playing defense and go on the attack. We’ve carefully setup some traps in their territory (the attic), and hopefully we can take out a few of their warriors.

March 24th, 2009:
Well, it’s been four days since Shae and I launched our counter attack against the rodents and so far we haven’t had any real success yet. The rat seems to have retreated to the palm tree (or at least he’s doing a better job of hiding), but our traps in the attic have not succeeded. In fact, it seems that we are just feeding the mice peanut butter while they dodge the traps. Instead of capturing the enemy, I fear we’re actually giving them the protein they need to grow strong enough to launch a full-scale attack. We have no choice but to deploy the “Rat Zapper” that we acquired from Shae’s parents. I fear escalating the war, but the mice seem to be too smart for our outdated traps.

The Rat Zapper is an odd weapon. I thought we would bait it using cheese, but apparently you can’t use anything “cheese-like” because it will complete the circuit and fry the bait. I would think burnt cheese would be hard for a mouse to resist (it’s hard for me to resist), but I have no choice but to trust Shae since she has training on our new weapon. I guess the ideal bait for the Rat Zapper is cat food. This seems absurd to me. If you have cat food, it would stand to reason that you also have a cat. If you have a cat, why the hell do you need the Rat Zapper? Whatever, war is strange. We’ll have to make do with dog food and hope the Box doesn’t get his nose zapped trying to get a snack.

March 26th, 2009:
It seems we have vastly underestimated our adversary. Somehow, they found a way to disable our Rat Zapper; our new technology is no match for the rodent wits. (Either that, or the last rodent caught in the trap burned out the device. Whatever the cause, the Rat Zapper is not going to help us.)

In fact, instead of gaining a technological advantage over our enemies we seem to have upset the mice by escalating our attack. Today when I went to check on our attic trap I discovered that the trap was missing. That’s right, the rodents have stolen our weapons. I wonder what their plan is. Are they planning to set the traps up where we’ll set them off? Is one of the mice a mini-McGyver disassembling the traps for parts and building a super weapon? Things are not looking great for the humans in this war.

April 4th, 2009:
Our efforts seem to finally pay off. My scout (aka Shae) reported back that her morning trap-check was successful. We got one! Of course, my scout is of no use in disposing of our enemy’s body so up into the attic I go.

My examination of the battleground revealed some interesting intelligence. The scariest part of the scene was the trap itself. The casualty lay next to the trap, but something had eaten all of the peanut butter from the trap. That means that another mouse finished off its meal while his comrade lay dead just inches away. These rodents are heartless. They will stop at nothing to grow stronger in preparation of the next attack. Again, I may have underestimated the enemy.

Next to the successful trap, I found something even more interesting: the previously stolen trap. What could this mean? Was the fallen mouse attempting to setup the trap to use against us when he was taken out? Could he have been defecting and bringing us our trap as a peace offering to gain our trust? Did another mouse catch on to his plan and take him out before he could defect (and then feast on peanut butter afterward)? Was the trap never stolen in the first place, but instead just got pushed out of sight where we couldn’t see it until we went into the attic to clean up the carcass (that can’t be it). Today was a good day for our side, but the determination of the rodents is intimidating.

April 6th, 2009:
The mice seemed to go into hiding for a day or so after the fall of their fellow warrior, but they seem to be getting back to plotting again. As I sit on the couch typing, I can hear them scurrying about overhead. I fear what their next attack will bring, but after our successful attack we are optimistic. We have set out additional traps hoping to keep our momentum going. We have drawn first blood, and we are hopeful that we can end this war quickly. I guess it’s back to the battlefield. More updates as the war unfolds.

Posted in House | 1 Response »

Baby time

Written by Shae on March 21st, 2009

It has been awhile since we have done a real update on the babies, so I figured with all my free time I will sit down and do one.

Ella:
Ella is such a funny little girl. She comes up this these little expressions that just melt your heart. She also does this little giggle when we wash her face and hands after she eats that is just hilarious. I think I start laughing every time she does it. She is one of those babies that just lights up the room.

This last week was a pretty big deal in the life of Ella. First, I was playing with her and she does this thing where she grabs my finger and starts chewing on it. Well this time when she was chewing I thought she picked up something hard off the ground and had it in her mouth. I was wrong. It was two little teeth. Yup, that’s right, Ella is teething. At almost 5 1/2 months, she has two bottom teeth pocking through and they HURT! She has been doing pretty well with it. If she didn’t bite me, I would never have known they were there. The next day, Ella rolled onto her stomach. She got stuck, but at least she made it. She is very good about going from her stomach to her back so now with a little practice she will be rolling around in no time.

Ella is growing FAST. I can’t believe how big she is getting. I mean wasn’t she just 7 pounds not too long ago? With this whole growing thing, comes movement. She is the squirmiest little thing. When I have her on the floor she will do this little crab walk and scootch all over the living room. Just today she was laying next to Jack on the blanket and the next thing I knew, she was half way across the living room. I guess we will be child proofing soon.

She doesn’t like sitting at all. I take that back, she just can’t do it. She has this need to be moving all the time, so when we practice sitting, she is sooo wiggly. Now the thing she loves to do is stand. Of course she needs us to support her, but she wants to do it every chance she gets. Maybe we will just skip the whole sitting step and go strait to standing!

Overall, Ella is the sweetest squirmiest little girl ever. Oh, and cute!

Jack:
What can I say about Jack? He is one cool little boy. He also has started doing a hilarious giggle when the wash cloth gets near him. He is so sweet.

Jack wants nothing to do with rolling over. I think he watches his sister get stuck and doesn’t want to go through that. I keep telling him he’s gonna have to get over it. He did make it to his side the other day so I guess that is progress. Today he went from his tummy to his back for the first time. YAY! He still hates to be on his tummy and really has no desire to scootch around on the floor. He is pretty content just laying or sitting there. It is kind of nice because I only have to really keep my eye on one baby for now. When they both start moving, YIKES!

When we went home for my dad’s retirement party Jack actually sat up on his own for awhile. When I say awhile, I mean he didn’t immediately fall over.

No teeth yet for Jack. Part of me wishes he would get his first teeth right now too, so they can both do it together and we only have to deal with the first teeth thing once, but on the other hand, He is just too sweet to teeth already.

Jack is strong. He has an awesome grip and can pull hair like a pro. His legs are also strong. He doesn’t like to stand up, but he can sure kick. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and he is kicking Ella in the head. Ahhh, it starts already. I think he will be the future kicker for the Chargers!

I think Jack is such a cool little boy!

I have added a few new albums to our photos. Go check them out!

Posted in The Kids | 3 Responses »

For the Love of Peas

Written by Shae on March 12th, 2009

Jack and Ella recently turned five months old. Do you know what five months means in the world of babies? Time for food! I cheated a little and started the cereal a few days early. They don’t really like it unless it is mixed with juice. As for the other foods, they have been doing pretty good. They love bananas and applesauce. Ella is a pretty good eater. For the most part, she will open her mouth for us to stick the spoon in and she only spits out a little bit. Jack is an awesome eater. He doesn’t spit any of it out… Until today. We are supposed to introduce one new food each day so we can check for allergies. Today was the day we introduced peas.

I LOVE peas! I get this trait from my dad. My mom does not share this same love. When you grow up in a house where the main cook hates peas there were not very many meals that included them. Pat also hates peas. Now, if I had known about this before we got married… Just kidding. I am still able to sneak them into meals from time to time. Today was the test to see who the twins take after, me or Pat.

The twins definitely take after Pat! As soon as I started feeding Jack, he got this horrible look on his face. It was such a pleading look. You could almost see him begging me not to feed him any more. It was so funny I had to start laughing. As soon as I laughed, he started laughing. This was the perfect opportunity to sneak some more peas in his mouth. We did this for a few minutes and then he started spitting. No, it was more like spraying. I swear it was like a scene out of The Exorcist. So, Jack does not like peas.

Ella was a little better with the peas, but she still spit everything out. Between the two of them, I really don’t know how much they actually got down. So, now I have a bunch of canned peas and mashed peas in the pantry and no one who will eat them. It is a sad day in the Lorigan pantry.

Posted in The Kids | 3 Responses »

Traveling Fool

Written by Pat on March 11th, 2009

Well, Shae and I made it back from our trip up to King City/Lockwood. Overall it was a pretty good trip. Shae’s dad’s retirement party was lots of fun. Good food, a few beers, and lots of funny game warden stories. My dad and Dorothy made a trip down for the party so Jack and Ella had lots of grandparents to play with. As a bonus, it was my mom’s birthday on Sunday so it was nice to be able to spend some time with her on her b-day. Like I said, it was a good trip and a fun weekend.

I could probably recap the party and grandparent visits more, but I’d rather bitch about my travels. Since Shae drove up with the little ones a week before I headed North, I caught a flight up to Monterey to meet up with them. There aren’t a lot of flights from San Diego to Monterey so I had little choice but to hitch a ride on a tiny plane from SD to LAX and then another puddle jumper up to Monterey. I’ve had the pleasure of flying in the tiny American Eagle planes in the past so I wasn’t exactly expecting first class accomidations or anything. In fact, my first flight was cramped but nothing too bad. The SkyMall magazine was in rare form this trip. From a replica Capt. Kirk seat to $70 dog nail trimmers there was tons of great stuff. It was once I got to LAX that my trip soured.

When we landed at LAX, our flight attendant read off the gates of connecting American Eagle flights and I was happy to learn that my flight to Monterey was only three gates down from the gate I was arriving at. I would soon learn that was because the crappy terminal we landed at consisted of about six gates. There must have been a whole thirty people waiting at the terminal. Talk about life in the big city. Anyway, after hanging out at the hub of LAX for a bit (and typing up a blog on my phone), I realized I should probably make a quick stop at the restroom before boarding my next flight. After about 30 seconds of exploring the entire terminal, I finally found the one men’s bathroom in the terminal and of course it was closed. Seriously, if you only have one freakin’ restroom in a terminal maybe you should clean it sometime other than the middle of the day. Perhaps try cleaning one of the 50 other terminals that have been graced with multiple crappers during the day and hit up the solo terminal when the place is empty (well…emptier…at full capacity the puddle jumper terminal is pretty close to empty). Just an idea.

About an hour or so after my arrival at LAX it was time to board my next flight. Once again, I folded myself into my tiny seat and got ready to get airborne. Here’s the part about my entire airplane experience that really got to me. My flight was pretty full, but it wasn’t packed (I saw about 10 empty seats when I glanced around). However, as we were waiting to leave the gate a representative from the airline got on board and told us that the plane was too heavy and one passenger would have to get off (“This plane will not leave this gate until someone gets of.”). I understand that the airlines are hurting and need to sell every ticket possible, but if the plane can’t fly with a full load of passengers then why the hell don’t they take out a row or two and give everyone more leg room?!? How does it make sense to make seats smaller to get more on the plane if you can’t even fly if the plane is full? If it was one or two empty seats I would think maybe the luggage was heavier than normal but there were at least 10 open seats, and I’ve heard from several other people that this has happened on their flights too. It cost American a $200 travel voucher to get a passenger to wait an hour for another flight, which is more than double what the full-fare LAX-Monterey ticket costs. That’s some good business there.

Anyway, once the plane got airborne the flight was actually pretty nice (even if I could really have used the extra leg room that removing a row or two would have provided…go read the rant in the previous paragraph again while I calm down…OK, I’m good now). The flight from LAX to Monterey goes right up the coast for a while and then over some coastal hills that were beautiful. We landed right on time (although I would like to know how a “50 minute” flight can take off 20 minutes late and land on time…shouldn’t they just schedule it as a 30 minute flight and list the real departure time?), and was met at the airport by Shae, her dad, and the twins. After a week apart, it was actually pretty great to see Jack and Ella again.

A few other random notes on my travel experience:

As usual, I checked in online and printed out my boarding passes. The difference this time, however, was that American placed ads for hotels and tourist attractions on the boarding pass screen. I was able to find a “Print without attractions” link so the ads weren’t on my actual boarding passes, but still…wow. The airlines have resorted to selling advertisements on boarding passes now. I wonder what’s next.
This is not the first time I’ve been on a plane since they started selling peanuts and almonds, but it’s the first time I actually caught the price. $3.00 for almonds? What the hell?!? Beer/liquor bottles are $6.00, but a little bag of nuts cost 3 bucks. Out in the “real” world a can of Heineken or whatever costs what, a buck-fifty? That would put the markup at around 400% which is a lot, but nothing near charging $3 for a $0.25 bag of nuts (1200%). Does anyone actually pay three dollars for the almonds? I’d like to meet that person and ask them how long they had to starve themselves before they were willing to pay that much money for half of a snack.
I got to the San Diego airport around 10:30 (for an 11:30 flight), and got off the plane in Monterey at 2:50. So it took me almost 4.5 hours to get from SD to Monterey, of which all of about 60 minutes was spent in the air. Factor in the hour to drive back down to King City and it actually took the same amount of time to fly as it would have to just drive (pre-baby). Of course, if I’d driven I wouldn’t have gotten to learn about the replica Capt. Kirk chair and the $70 dog nail clippers. Thanks SkyMall.

Well, that’s about it for my travelling rant. The drive home was much better than our last trip. Shae was able to squeeze in between the car seats so we didn’t have to stop for 30 minutes every time Jack and Ella had to eat, and we actually made pretty decent time. The trip still took longer than it used to before Shae and babies, but it wasn’t the 10 hour ordeal of our last drive from King City to SD. Overall it was a pretty nice weekend and it’s good to have Shae and the babies home, even if I do miss being able to sleep. Shae took something like 350 photos (seriously, for once I’m not exagerating) so hopefully we’ll have some new pics over in our gallery sometime soon.

One last thing: if you haven’t checked out Shae’s “Daily Photo” blog (not really daily, but I’m giving up on that battle), she’s actually been updating it lately and has some cool photos (and edits).

Posted in Family, The Kids, Travel | No Responses »

The Bachelor

Written by Pat on March 5th, 2009

Shae and the babies headed up to Lockwood last Thursday, so I’ve had a full week of “vacation” where all I had to worry about was work and Lunchbox. I did miss Shae and the kiddos, but it was definitely nice to be able to relax and get some rest. I’m sitting in LAX waiting for my flight to Monterey so I figure it’s time to recap my week as a bachelor.

Thursday:
After helping Shae get the car and the babies all loaded up and on the road, I just kind of sat on the couch and soaked in the silence. It was great to relax and watch some tv. After watching some of my non-Shae shows (24, Lost, etc.), it was off to bed.

Friday:
Wow. I had forgotten what eight hours of sleep was like. Except for a quick interruption to feed the Box I got to sleep until 10. Awesome. I love having every-other-Friday off, especially if I don’t have to get up and take care of the munchkins

Anyway, after finally getting out of bed I put all my rest to work watching some more TV. Of course, Lunchbox decided he should be getting some attention so I got off my ass and we went on a little stroll around the neighborhood. Once we finished exploring the streets, I finally figured it was time to put some of my free time to use and clean the kitchen. It’s kind of nice to clean up and know that it’s going to stay clean for a while. That’s one of the benefits to not using the kitchen much.

Other than a call from Chris to set up a man-date for Saturday that was about it for Friday. It was great to do almost nothing all day. Awesome.

Saturday:
Another baby-free day, another eight hours of sleep. Still super. I think Lunchbox enjoyed the baby-break too because he let me sleep in way later than be used to. Good boy Mr. Box.

Around noon, Chris came over to get some help setting up a home-theater PC. I’ll spare everyone the details, but pretty much everything that could have gone wrong did. 14 hours, two cheeseburgers, and three movies later things were finally working well enough to call it a night. A task I thought would take us about three hours took until 2am. Fun.

Sunday:
Since I didn’t have babies keeping me at home I was able to get out and play a round of golf. There are a lot of great things about living in San Diego, but playing golf in 80 degree weather on March 1st is towards the top of the list. Nate and I met up at the course and about ten minutes later we were on the first tee. Awesome.

I’d like to say the golf was as good as the weather, but that would be a huge lie. I played pretty much the worst round of gold I’ve played in about 10 years. Of as terrible. Oh well, it was still a great day and I had a great time even with the golf “performance”.

After golf, I decided to head over to Nate’s apartment for some dinner. Since LB hadn’t been getting as much attention as he would like I loaded him up on the backseat of my car and took him with me. Nate has a five-month-old puppy so she and Lunchbox spent the evening running all over the apartment. When we finally got home the Box was exhausted. He was a happy boy.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday:
Not a ton happened during the week. Basically, I got up, went to work, came home, watched TV, folded laundry, and went to bed. Not exciting, but I got plenty of rest and Lunchbox got lots of attention. Hopefully neither one of us got too used to it.

Thursday:
Well, it’s finally time to head up North and get back together with the family. I went into work for a few hours this morning and then hitched a ride to the airport. Shae, her dad and the babies are picking me up in Monterey and then it’s down to King City for the weekend.

I’ve definitely enjoyed my week off, but I’m looking forward to seeing Jack and Ella again. I haven’t gone more than 10 hours without seeing them since they were born so it’s been kind of weird. I’m sure they’ve changed a lot in the week they’ve been gone. Hopefully they remember me.

Posted in Family | No Responses »

Boxing Babies

Written by Pat on February 25th, 2009

I don’t know what Shae does all day around the house with the babies,
but today I came home from work and it looked like they had been in a
brawl. Jack has a scratch and little red mark under his eye and Ella’s
cheek was all scratched up. I guess while they were laying in their
crib “talking” to each other they got bored and decided to start
hitting each other. Fun.

Posted in The Kids | No Responses »

Kissing Siblings

Written by Pat on February 24th, 2009

Well it’s been a while since our last update so here it goes. As usual, I’m too lazy and tired to write up a coherent post so it’s time for another list.

Thursday, Shae and the babies are heading up to King City/Lockwood to help prep for Shae’s dad’s retirement party. I’ll be flying up next Thursday, so that means for a week it’s just going to be me and Mr. Box down here. I’m sure I’ll miss Shae and the munchkins, but it’s going to be nice to have some quiet and relaxation around here. I’m not even sure what I’ll do with all that extra sleep.
The babies are doing great but have taken a step backwards in a few areas, most importantly in their sleeping habits. For a while, things were pretty good. We put them down around 7 or 8 and Jack slept through the night and Ella woke up once (at most) to eat. Let’s just say that’s not the case anymore. Both babies are up at least once, and usually twice every night. Several nights recently Shae has spent half the night sitting in our glider in the baby room.
They also seem to have forgotten how to drink out of their faster speed nipples. We moved them from the slow nipples to the “variable” nipples because they were taking so long to eat (and because the variable speed nipples don’t spill if the babies fall asleep with them in their mouths). They did just fine with the new nipples for about a week, and then apparently forgot how to drink out of them and just started making a mess. We had to go back to the slow nipples for a while and now we’re back to trying to get them on the faster ones again. We’ll see how it goes.
This is a little awkward, and I’m not sure I would have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, but Jack and Ella french kissed this morning. They were laying next to Shae in our bed facing each other and all of a sudden they were kissing. Seriously, Jack’s tongue went into his sister’s mouth. Gross. If you don’t think I’m telling this story to every single date either one of them brings home you obviously don’t know me very well.
Ella is doing great, and is growing up pretty fast. She has so many expressions and loves to smile. Unfortunately, she keeps losing her hair. Between her cradle cap and Jack pulling her hair out she’s getting pretty thin up top. Looking back at her newborn photos it’s hard to believe how much hair she had then.
Ella may not look as much like a mini-Pat like her brother does, but there can’t be any doubt about whose daughter she is. The other day she was laying on the couch laughing at her own farts. Fart, laugh. Fart, laugh. Yup, that’s my daughter.
Jack is doing great too. His reflux is getting much better, and he doesn’t puke after every meal anymore. It’s nice to be able to feed him and not have half of it come right back up all over us. We still have to be careful not to feed him too much, but it’s way better than a week or two ago.
Both Jack and Ella have started to get into an oral phase. After not having much interest in pacifiers, a couple of days ago Jack became obsessed with them. Now whenever he gets fussy we just shove a pacifier in his mouth and he’s happy as can be. On one hand, we really don’t want a baby who’s addicted to pacifiers, but on the other it is really convenient to just shove a pacifier in his mouth and shut him up. Ella kind of likes pacifiers too, but she is happy with her thumb, my hand, Shae’s neck, or pretty much anything else she can find. The other day she almost left a hickey on Shae’s arm.
The babies really love Lunchbox, especially our baby girl. She stares at him and smiles, and loves it when he gives her kisses. It’s hilarious to watch, and Lunchbox enjoys it too.
You can already kind of see which kid is going to doing to do certain things first. Ella is going to roll over, crawl, and walk WAY before Jack. She’s already about to roll over, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she starts flipping onto her stomach while she’s up North. I think Jack’s going to talk first, but Shae disagrees. Ella makes a lot of noise, but Jack seems to already be trying to talk. He just lays there and babbles to us all day.

That’s about it for now. If you haven’t checked out our gallery lately, take a look because we add pictures all the time. I’m sure there will be plenty of pictures from Shae’s trip North. Also, Shae has been playing around with some images lately, and her pics blog has some cool new images.

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