Crawling to March

February brought on the most sickness we've had to deal with in at least a year. Croup swept through the family with Martin and Josephine getting it twice. Elliot, Mummy, and Daddy were fortunate enough to only each come down with croup once.


Before the croup was to infect our home we were able to celebrate Chinese New Year with Josie enjoying her first ever pork dumplings.


The following night we had Mardi Gras breakfast for dinner followed by paczki which surprisingly the boys did not seem to enjoy as much as I would have expected considering they are the most delicious pastry I've ever consumed in my life.


Before falling sick herself Josie was on the move, inching closer every day to crawling. She has also had a great time playing the piano with me on my days off.


The boys have continued to expand their love of Hamilton with impromptu performances of new songs. Here they are singing a slowed down, soul version of "The Schuyler Sisters."


Martin eventually developed a fever of 103 and was so miserable that I had to take him out for a walk in the freezing cold air to help his lungs. It worked well but you could tell he was sick because he was silent for our entire 45 minute walk where normally he would have spent the entire time telling me about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He managed to put on a great fake smile for me when I came around to see how he was doing. His hat was completely covering his face but he was too sick and tired to even bother asking me to remove it.



On Valentine's Day Jen set up some great breakfast tables for the kids while I was at work. That night we had dinner with the family.


Soon after that Josephine got sick and while she spends most of her days laughing and smiling she was a wreck. There was little or no sleeping or napping while she fought a fever that got up to 104 one night despite our intense regimen of alternating ibuprofen and acetaminophen.


After a few days everyone shook off the last round of croup and were able to play inside to build a bear cave on the freezing cold days.


Josie's mobility increased every day. We wouldn't see her do anything but when we would check back she'd be across the room.


The kids had a "Noodles and Doodles" night at school where we ate immense amounts of spaghetti and I got to make a macaroni necklace for the first time in over thirty years.


With Josie moving about I brought up the boys' old play center from the basement. Unfortunately she was evicted from it immediately and they set it up as a jail where Batman could put bad guys, something they had previously only been able to enjoy in the basement.


Josie has had tons of new foods including pancakes, waffles, strawberries, grapes, and oranges. All of that has paled in comparison to her first go at some chocolate brownies at Auntie Lauren's house.


We were able to get a small portion of the basement carpeted again after our December sump pump flood. This has been just enough for me to set up the music studio again for the boys to play. One day I may even get to use it again. It is a huge relief to have this back up and running.


Elliot has spent a lot of time playing the trombone and violin.


Martin has mostly focused on his guitar and keyboard chops.


And, finally, a couple of nights ago Josie made her first real crawl across the floor, beating her brother Elliott's record by almost a month. As I write this she has made tremendous progress and now can crawl extremely quickly. With her brothers this was a pivotal moment in our lives getting harder. I fear that the ease of having three children has just been washed away.

We had it easy anyway.

Sleep Deprivation

October has greeted us with lots of joy and practically no sleep. Apparently we had suppressed the memory of the five month sleep regression and were blissfully unprepared for it on the second time around. That's when Josephine decided she would only sleep for one hour blocks in the night and that most nights would begin not see us getting to sleep until midnight after Jen took her into the other room to rock her to sleep.

Mornings would begin around 4:00 AM with me bringing the baby downstairs to push her around our downstairs in her stroller. Luckily we are not in our New York apartment or those trips in the stroller would have been considerably shorter.


We got some spaghetti squash from the farm and the boys warmed up to the concept more quickly than I would have thought.


In a miracle I was able to watch Brian Regan's live show with Josephine after getting the boys to settle down to bed about ninety seconds before it started. She didn't laugh as much as I would have thought but she did seem captivated throughout the special.


The boys helped Jen harvest from the garden. We now have huge bags of dirty multicolored carrots filling our fridge.


Jen made a stuffed pumpkin on one of the last days of September so the boys were able to enjoy a little taste of the fall early on.


I turned the leftover pumpkin into a creamy pasta sauce for some tortellini which also went over well.


We were able to take our third trip to the Brookfield Zoo since getting our membership, thus making the membership pay off financially.


We spend the entire time at the children's play zoo where, among other things, Elliott was able to call the zoo director from a phone.


Martin got to be the zoo director which was a very popular activity.


They also got to put on lemur costumes and crawl around. They also were able to use their tails as swords and sword fight in the way that is common to the North American lemur.


We were also able to return to the carousel for the ride I promised them earlier in the summer before their meltdowns on our first trip of the year. Martin gleefully picked the elephant.


Elliott, on the other hand, picked the bench seat.


They have been regularly playing "Wesley" and rolling down the hill on our way home from daycare. Martin usually rolls down the hill and loses his mask. Then Elliott runs, leaps in the air, and lands on Martin's ribs with his knees. Surprisingly Martin finds this just as funny as Elliott does.


Every morning opportunity I wake up the boys around 7:00 AM, after being awake with Josephine for at least two or three hours, and we very quietly go downstairs and watch Saturday Morning Cartoons.


After one such morning we went for a hike in the woods with Auntie Lauren, Uncle Doug, and Evelyn.


Josephine got a beautiful quilt in the mail from our other Canadian extended family in Toronto. Lynn made her this beautiful quilt. The boys received approximately thirty five quilts so this is one of only two personalized quilts that Josephine has. Josephine doesn't mind but Jen and I are particularly happy about it.


Then, of course, another stomach virus ravaged our family. We suspect it to be a mutated version of what we had earlier since Jen and I were spared. When Evelyn recovered Lauren and Doug were knocked down and we watched Evelyn for the evening before bed so they could recover.


Josephine, while not sleeping, also got a chance to watch the Cubs clinch their playoff spot. This has been a highlight of her life so far. She's super jazzed about the Cubs.


The boys have enjoyed doing "construction" a lot lately. Construction consists of them dragging all the loose wood and boards out of the garage and putting it into a giant pile in the driveway. It's hard to be too upset about it because Martin informed me that they were building a house for all the children that didn't have houses.

Some girls that live in the neighborhood rode over and observed this humanitarian project in action. Martin was more than happy to tell them about it, talking a mile a minute, while Elliott continued to pile the wood higher and higher. Then Elliott came over and told them that their bike helmets were very beautiful.

The boys have game.



Auntie Lisa and Uncle Adam came over for Canadian Thanksgiving. The boys hadn't seen Adam since Christmas and were really impressed with how cool he was. They enjoyed watching baseball with him and, of course, sword fighting.


Canadian Thanksgiving took a different approach this year, focusing on a nearly vegan meal. Everything was vegan . . .










. . . except for the standing rib roast.


We fed Josephine some of the mashed butternut as her first solid food. It went over pretty well. She's been eyeballing our food intently for the last six weeks so I think she was wondering what took us so long. She was probably also wondering why she wasn't getting a taste of the prime rib.


If the boys had started watching baseball at any other point in the last 107 years they would not be witnessing the Cubs winning. What a great time for them to discover the sport. That way they don't have to experience the pain their father did watching the Red Sox in the 1986 World Series and potentially killing their love of the sport.

Of course we don't know how this will end, despite the Nostradamus like predictions of Back to the Future II.


So we have a couple of sports fans on our hands at the moment. Martin is still a little vague on the concept of baseball but he does have a makeshift diamond in the backyard using flower pots as bases. Though I'm pretty sure the Cardinals made more of an impression on him than the Cubs. He still brings them up daily despite their elimination.


Josephine has almost officially graduated from the bath in the sink. Some would argue that she became to big for it a month ago but I just can't give up the simplicity of the sink bath.


Elliott continues to have a huge passion for puzzles and sometimes does between two or three daily, sometimes just disassembling and reassembling the same puzzle in one sitting.


Their Halloween costumes are coming together and they even stumbled upon the knight helmets that we ordered and have been using them regularly.

Jen left for Canada with Josephine yesterday morning. Elliott has not been happy about this the past two bedtimes but they have been fine throughout the day. Elliott misses Mummy a lot and tells me nightly that he is going to dream about her. Martin tells me that he is going to dream of "only Daddy" because he's kind of a jerk. With this split in the family we all somehow got our best sleep in a month last night. I can't remember a time I woke up feeling so well rested since the boys were born.

Elliott woke up sick a couple of nights ago. After giving him a bath and changing his sheets (then doing it again) he stayed home from school and spent most of the day on the couch. However, when Martin returned from school he was able to summon some extra strength to have one knight confrontation.

There is not a sickness in existence that can keep them from sword fighting.

Picky Eaters

Jen and I have spent a significant amount of time patting ourselves on the back over how openly the Wombats have accepted all new foods. Over the past six months or so whatever we put in front of them, they ate.

Then they decided to get different ideas. When we were in Rhode Island last week they must have held some sort of meeting where they decided that they would no longer eat just anything. In fact, for fun, they decided to dislike different things than their brother so that we now have to prepare separate meals for each of them.


This lead me to breaking open a lovely recreation of a beer from the 1800s in this East India Pale Ale from Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project. It was a tasty beer but when I opened it I was really more interested in having the alcohol dull the pain of culinary horror that the Bubses had put on me.


Wednesday night began with me retrieving the babies after a long day of many, many chores. They were apparently delighted in themselves and their love for torturing me with their particular food likes and dislikes.


Once in their high chairs they continued to delight each other. Martin seemed to hold court (a very small court containing only his brother, Elliott) by cracking his brother up with his hilarious gags like letting his brother touch him.


Things only got more hilarious when props were introduced into the mix. Check out the comedy stylings of young Martin as he pretends to allow Elliott to grab his spoon then changes his mind.

Hilarious.


Strangely bed time was a snap. I rocked both of them almost instantly to sleep after their bottles and was able to make a proper dinner starting with this Caesar salad with farm share Romaine and Jen's grandpa's Caesar dressing recipe.


I was even able to enjoy a beer with a bad ass falcon on the label, this Falco from Evil Twin Brewing.


For the main course I made a summer ratatouille like my mother used to make using garlic, onion, zucchini, tomato, and fresh basil. I chopped some up for the guys. Elliott reluctantly ate a few bites. Martin did his new trick where he takes a few bites then just lets it all fall out of his mouth.

They hate ratatouille.


After another late night we had dinner around 9:00 PM again last night and actually ordered out getting some chicken parmesan and chicken franchese.

To accompany our meal we shared this Ruin Ten from Stone Brewing Company. This is a hard-to-find beer that I stumbled upon in a local supermarket while picking up garlic. My annoyance at running out of garlic was very justly rewarded by the beer karma gods.

In their second year begins a new era. I'm assuming this will continue to develop until the Wombats are like many children who will not eat anything. Jen's worst fears of having children that only eat chicken nuggets and us having to carry a baggy of grapes with us wherever we go may be realized.

I'm still holding fast that they will not encounter a chicken nugget until they leave for college.