Easter Potty

As we are within a month or so of Uncle Dee Dee's arrival there are several large projects that need to be accomplished. One was potty training, another was buying a new car that can fit all three children, and the last was general preparations of the Uncle Dee Dee lair.

Perhaps you could add a fourth task of coming up with a slightly more appropriate name for Uncle Dee Dee.


Instead of working on any of that we built a kickass house for the boys that ended up looking a lot more like a TARDIS than a house.


We celebrated Grandma and Grandad's birthday with a normally chaotic family dinner and a nice visit from Auntie Lisa.


We also took some time to play in our bear cave and practice our roaring.


Then the day was upon us. Jen spent days setting the stage. We woke up that morning, two Fridays ago, and Jen demonstrated how Muffin Bear uses the potty and how happy we all are about it.


She reviewed the rules and the treats they could expect to get upon peeing in the potty.


The bathroom was set. For your benefit I will not post a picture of what it looks like eleven days later.


Then they were put into their underwear. Elliott expressed his joy through one of his favorite activities: jumping.


Martin made a pose which took in all the power he undoubtedly felt from wearing his Thomas the Tank Engine underwear. Shortly after this picture he went Super Saiya-jin.


After a great morning and a nice nap we invited Grandma over for a tea party.


After a great weekend we celebrated with a trip to Dairy Queen which the boys found very exciting. We were served by a flustered 15-year-old who was left running the place by himself with lines out the door since it was unexpectedly 70 degrees for the first time in six months. We also watched a hockey game and Martin commented on how much they loved to play hockey.


We also left the boys later with Jen's mum as we went to look at minivans. We returned after a horrible, terrible experience with slow, annoying dealerships who only like to waste your time. Luckily we returned to a fantastic welcome home song performed by the boys. It was much better than having our valuable time wasted by slow-ass dealerships and unnecessarily meeting stupid managers.


After nap we climbed the tree in the back yard. Martin was terrified for about thirty seconds then immediately turned around and wanted to spend the rest of the afternoon in the tree.


When we picked them up from daycare on Friday, one of their teachers told us that Elliott now refers to himself as "Elliott Libertine." This is a word I'm pretty sure that neither Jen or I have ever said out loud as long as they've been alive. However, we are steadily learning that somehow the boys can learn words even if they've never heard them.

I'm thankful that at least he probably doesn't know what the word means. Though he is kind of a libertine.





The following night we had Passover dinner together. I made smoked salmon crepes, lemon poppy potatoes, horseradish panko crusted cod and asparagus, and matzoh crunch.


On Saturday we had a week off from swim class and the boys celebrated their new favorite album, Paul Simon's "Graceland." This continued the trend of them loving 1980s soft rock.


While I was at work on Saturday the whole family got together and dyed eggs in my absence. This would mean that they'd want to crack these eggs open and eat them after their Easter egg hunt the following day. No amount of convincing could change their minds.



Easter morning was pretty exciting as they discovered candy right outside their doors and followed the trail downstairs to find presents, bikes, and more candy!


Martin declared that he loved the rabbit and that "he's my best rabbit."



There was a lot of fun had in the Easter egg hunt despite being peppered with insults by family members who felt that our eggs being empty were a crime against all humanity.

If there were more dentists in our family they could have jumped to our defense.







Much delicious food was had for dinner.


And we also enjoyed a wine that we purchased on our last trip to France. We had it shipped home, aged if four years, then had Jen's mother declare that it was "nasty." (She later relented.)



We rounded out the dinner with Jen's pavlova. They boys screamed "cake!" when they saw it. We informed them that it was pavlova and Elliott repeated "pav-lov-a" again and again like Beavis learning a new word.

So here we go, entering into our last month as the parents of only two children. Soon there will be an additional infant to be named later. We will lose every bit of free time, sleep, and quiet that we have accumulated over the past years.

Thank God. This was getting way too easy.

Marching Toward Three Children

As the severe winter cold begins to recede we are left facing a spring where we will welcome our new daughter, currently going by the name Uncle Dee Dee, and also give the boys free reign of our backyard to destroy it in a way to match the inside of our house.


In the cold months there has been a lot of play on the running piano.


And there have been many demands to draw Spider-Man, their current obsession. Above is an example of the Spider-Man I drew while having both of them hanging on my arms and shouting demands. Normally Martin shouts directions at me which result in a giant ball with a Spider-Man head and stick arms and legs. He then demands that I draw Firestar and Iceman to occupy the exact same space and gets mad if I don't fulfill that impossible request.


There have been a lot of clothes hanger fights while yelling quotes from "The Princess Bride."


Also, I took to remodeling their horrendous closet to make it a little more user friendly.


The resulting shelving from Ikea has made the closet much more useful.


The downside is that it has become a jungle gym for the boys, making the already arduous task of dressing them in the morning into even more of a hellish nightmare.


On Mardi Gras we had our traditional breakfast for dinner as well as some paczki, a local Polish pastry that may be the most delicious thing I've ever had in my life. Surprisingly they were only lukewarm about them. That was fine though because I was happy to eat all of their disgusting, drooled-on leftovers.


We've taken to going out for lunch after swim class every Saturday. One Saturday we went to the Taco place and Elliott ended up in soaked pants as a result of PPP (Poor Penile Placement) in his diaper. This meant that I had to change him into a fresh diaper and we had to leave the restaurant with temperatures in the single digits with him wrapped in Auntie Lauren's shirt. Elliott was extremely annoyed because, as far as he was concerned, we had simply removed perfectly good pants from him and refused to let him wear them for no reason.


Jen made sugar cookies with them on a day off and this resulted in a similar situation to the gingerbread house incident where it simply devolved into them just eating icing.


With the temperatures still extremely cold we were also able to enjoy some dinner by the fire, a Bubs favorite.


Jen got them some markers to draw on the windows which, of course, ended up with them drawing all over the walls. While they are washable it's not a trivial task to remove the marker from the walls. However, we were thankful that this new drawing area is far away enough from our couch that it did not get involved.


Grandma has begun teaching them how to make forts which usually means I come home to all the chairs, blankets, sheets, and toys right in the center of the kitchen floor at least a few times a week.


Nana and Grandpa came up for an extended two week trip which meant plenty of Storybots for everyone.


It also meant we were able to spend a toe-tingly cold day at the Naperville Winter Alefest. We got tickets a while back thinking it would be much less crowded than the summer alefest.

That ended up being a grave miscalculation.


Elliott took the opportunity to expound on how Grandpa has no hair on his head, something Grandpa undoubtedly appreciated.


With the changing weather Elliott also got a chance to dress up like a Maine redneck.


Grandpa was also able to draw on the window, following their distinct commands of drawing whales, mermaids, and skeletons.


Uncle Doug came home from work last Friday with a giant map, ready to try the best-selling beers from each country. This is a fun game but sadly it means we're going to have to drink a lot of very crummy, mostly skunked European lagers in green bottles.

But projects like this aren't about having fun, they're about winning. Once we have everything on the list, we win!

Not sure how much luck we'll have getting our hands on some of the non alcoholic beers from the Middle East or the beer from North Korea, but it will be fun trying!


We had our St. Patrick's Day feast the following day and it was so warm we enjoyed our soda bread, cheese, and butter outside on the deck! This sure beatthe year we lost power in the bitter cold.


The dinner came out great with the traditional bangers boiled together with the corned beer despite Jen's mother's extreme hatred of corned beef.


We went to a friend's birthday party on Sunday where the cake was a huge hit. The only problem is that cakes with extreme-colored frosting on them should come with a warning about what your child's poop is going to look like the following morning. So as not to alarm forgetful parents.


Martin's new thing is freaking out in the morning and demanding specifically shaped pancakes. Sometimes he wants polar bears. Sometimes he wants random letters. Here's a picture of me giving in and just cutting his round pancakes into S-shaped pancakes.

This is a phase I wouldn't mind seeing end immediately.


All the while Uncle Dee Dee is doing great. It's much different than Jen's previous pregnancy where everyone was worried about everything and she was being tested all the time. Now, while tired of the persistent acid reflux, there's been very little testing or cause for concern. In fact, we're so busy with the boys that even she forgets she's pregnant most of the time. This is a huge difference from last time where it was all we thought about or talked about.

Last night Dee Dee seemed to be performing some sort of acrobatic routine in the womb. This was fun for me, less fun for Jen, and probably a blast for Dee Dee.

Despite her acrobatics she looks so calm in this picture. It's like she's unaware of the frenetic madhouse she's about to born into. Soon enough she will be napping in the corner as Martin screams at me because his pancakes are not the right shape.

I apologize in advance, Dee Dee.

Snow, Spa, and Sis Boom Bah

At the end of last month Jen left again for a work trip. This meant, of course, that I would have late night events to attend downtown which wouldn't bring me home until late at night. It's a strange phenomenon that has developed where I only ever have to go downtown on days when it is impossible for Jen to pick the boys up from day care even though with her new job she is available to do it nearly 100 percent of the time.


This also meant I got a full daddy day with the boys and that Martin would exercise some newfound independence by taking off all his clothes and his diaper and eating dinner in the buff.


An exciting development is Jen's mum letting me borrow her electric griddle so I could mass produce some pancakes for the boys who now eat them at an alarming rate. I don't know how this piece of kitchen gagetry has evaded me for so long. This has made a task I hate into a task that is actually quite enjoyable. The griddle offers a lot more control and even cooking than our terrible, horrible, no good, very bad electric stove.


After making a sextuple batch of batter I was able to easily make and freeze several bags for quick defrosting in the morning.


As a special treat for the boys I made placemats for them thinking that this would make after dinner cleanup a little easier. I was wrong, but elliott enjoyed his Jake and the Never Land Pirates placemat.


Martin enjoyed his Mark Knopfler from the Dire Straits 1983 Alchemy tour placemat even more. The only downside was that since they had some of their favorite things in front of them they didn't want you placing any sort of food or drink on top of them.

Additionally this didn't seem to make the perpetual disgusting state of our table and dining area any better.


We got some good snow at the end of January which meant lots of time for the guys to explore the frozen wonderland with a lot more flexibility. Last year they could basically only take a few steps and fall over.


There was so much snow leading up to the Super Bowl that we were snowed in and couldn't have guests over for our annual Super Bowl party. I'd prepared my usual dishes to celebrate the opposing teams' cities but instead we simply watched the Puppy Bowl with the boys. I had never watched this before which means that maybe I had some faint glimmer of hope for America.

After watching the Puppy Bowl I now know that all is lost.


Instead of celebrating Seattle and New England we celebrated Chili's with a big plate of nachos.


Soon after we rushed away for a pre-baby spa "weekend." The last time we did this was three years ago when Jen was also pregnant and unable to enjoy alcohol. Someday we'll have to do it when Jen's not pregnant.


From the window of our beautiful hotel room we had a view of the moonlight annd the river littered with geese.


Each night they brought us warm cookies and chilled milk from a local dairy. The idea was so romantic to me that I even tried sipping on some of the milk but was reminded that I still think milk is disgusting.


The bathroom in our room was fantastic. It was actually about the same size as our master bathroom at home except laid out in a manner that would lead me to believe it was designed by a human being that has used a bathroom before instead of a blind toddler just randomly dropping blocks using Minecraft.


Before returning home we had one last breakfast by the fire, in peace. We were missing the boys quite a bit by then but I must admit the luxury of having breakfast by a fire paled in comparison to just being able to have breakfast sitting down.


When we returned home Uncle Doug gave me a hand in finally installing the QRD diffusers I'd begun making in November. Step by step the basement studio is coming together.


I'm sure when Uncle Dee Dee is born I'll have plenty of time to spend in my home studio.


Upon returning home we were able to go out into the backyard and play around with the boys in the paths I'd shoveled before leaving. They had fun building a snowman and Martin got to do his second favorite activity in the world: throwing snowballs at me and his mother.

His favorite activity: pretending to throw snowballs at us.