A friend of mine died in high school and I remember looking around and seeing a church filled with 17 year olds that had no business being at a funeral.  I remember lining up with my peers and walking by the casket, looking down at our dead friend and I remember how sick it made me.  I had just given him a ride home two days previous.  At the end of the casket stood his parents, shaking hands, greeting people, standing next to the body of their only son.  I looked down the line and saw the people in front of me were stopping to say a few “encouraging words” to the bereaved and everybody was trying to put on their big boy pants and their strong faces because I guess that some people find that it helps.  What were they saying to those parents?  What could a 17 year old say to them that would not just sound completely meaningless?  ”I’m sorry”, “We’ll miss him”, “He’s in a better place”.  I hate these greeting card phrases so I try my best to never use them.  But what fills in the blanks?  If you don’t go to the tried and true words, what do you say in their place?

I look up and find myself face to face with the parents, both of them staring at me.  Another friend of mine says to me, “Would you like to say anything to them?” and I just stuck out my hand and squeezed the father’s hand and squeezed the mother’s hand and said, “No,” and then I walked away.  I am convinced, even to this day, that saying something cheap and plastic in those moments only makes us feel better and doesn’t help the person who really just needs to scream at the sky.

I heard someone say once that if a child loses his or her parents, they are called an orphan.  But if a parent loses their child?  There is no name for it because it’s just so terrible.  The emotions are so far removed from anything you’ve ever felt that no words can convey the despair and destruction that you feel.  But how do I know…

Certainly I’ve never lost a 17 year old and God, please, this is my prayer, I hope that I never do but Jade and I have recently suffered a loss, which is what makes our third pregnancy such a big win.  As anyone that keeps up with us knows, we wear everything on our sleeves; our victories, our defeats, our victories over defeat, cancer, infertility treatments, our relationship to God and each other, nothing is sacred ground…which is why I’m so disappointed in myself for not speaking about this earlier.

Perhaps it was that thing, that aura, that nameless entity which surrounds losing a child.  There is no proper way to bring it up or to subtly announce it.  There are no greeting card phrases for miscarriages.  Even typing the word makes me angry as it somehow brings it all back to the surface and gives it life and makes me remember that Baby C, our FIRST Baby C, was lost.

Several months ago Jade and I tried for a third baby and, telling almost no one, embarked on the long process that is IVF; hormone therapy, pills, shots, needles, appointments, procedures.  It’s not all bad and it’s not all painful (according to Jade) but it’s ALL, which is to say, there is just a lot to do.  But that’s OKAY!!!  Because it’s all worth it in the end.  In the end, after all the time you’ve invested into preparing for the transfer, into all the hope, the hope, the hope that it’s going to work (which is to say nothing of the finances it costs to prepare for it), you’ll have a baby, right?  RIGHT?!

No.

Even if your body responds to the hormones, even if you have a good blastocyst, even if the transfer goes well, even if it sticks and begins to grow, even if you pay all the bills and walk away…you’re still not out of those woods.  No.  You’re just warming up.  Now you wait.  Now you lie on the couch and you wait for five days.  And then they do a test and they tell you that it’s working.  And then you lie on the couch and you wait for two days and they do another test and they tell you that it’s, well, sort of working but not totally.  Something might be wrong but we need to do another test.

And now this baby who you’ve named, this baby which is growing in you, this baby who you’ve started to make memories with, this baby who’s PICTURE YOU HAVE SITTING ON YOUR DESK….is maybe not going to enter the picture at all.  This baby that you’ve attached to and begun to love is possibly about to die.

And then it does die.

And they give your wife “medicine” to “clean out the baby”, my son, my daughter, getting flushed down some fucking toilet.  I am furious at God and I don’t understand and everything around me, every word spoken is nothing but a hum, a murmur, the noise inside a seashell.  The world shuts off and goes gray and nothing matters.  Not money, not success, nothing.  I want only to drink copious amounts of alcohol and cry and scream.  I don’t want to stand and shake hands with people while they whisper their bullshit phrases to me.

And so we tell nobody except those that already knew.

And then we feel as though we have somehow cheapened the short life and memories of what would have been our third child.

So here I am now, putting it on my sleeve because I don’t like holding things inside and I don’t think that having a miscarriage is anything to be ashamed of.  I’m a Christian man living in a very weird world and I don’t understand many of the things that I see or experience but it doesn’t change my relationship with God.  Relationships hit rocky patches and, after all, I am only made of dirt.  I demanded answers from The Almighty, “I am good!  I do good things!  I love people!  I help strangers!  I do what you ask!  I lived up to my end of the deal!  Now where are You and where’s my kid?!” and there is no answer.

I caught Quinn playing with the electrical outlet the other day.  I took the cable away from her but she screamed and screamed and screamed and cried and thrashed and banged her head on the ground and she so badly wanted to put the prongs in the holes in the wall.  Of course, no matter what amount of screaming she did, I wouldn’t listen.  I knew better.  Even though she was angry at me for taking away something that she wanted, I knew it was for the better.  And I just have to think that God works the same way.  He sees me screaming and crying and demanding what is mine back but, I must believe that He knows best.  I don’t know what that means, in it’s entirety, but it’s all that I have.

Now, coming in October we have our third addition and, somehow, there is an extra sense of wonder and amazement.  Rory and Quinn held their own sort of mystique being our first children and everything going as smoothly as it did.  This new child is surrounded in a thankfulness as we know what could happen, we know what could be and the horrible, unnamable thing that breaks our heart is also the thing that will always pour into number three.

Son or daughter, I’m very excited to see who you are.  Please stay safe.

Yes, the only plant that was able to thrive in my Kevorkian-like grasp was a cactus – a plant which finds peace in the dead and barren wastelands of the desert.

This does not bode well for you, Rory and Quinn. This does not bode well for you at all…

When you first came into my possession, I didn’t know what to do with you. You were mine, that was clear enough, but what did that mean? Mine. Ours. Feed you, water you, change you. Did I mention that all of my fish die prematurely as well?

There was a moment in the very beginning – you weren’t even an hour into this world – when I sat in a chair in the recovery room holding one of you while the nurse cleaned up the other. Then the nurse came over and switched with me, handing me the first and taking the second and you’re both just little armfuls, all pink skin and squinty eyes and blankets. I stared at you and it was just like a waking dream. The moment was, and remains, surreal in my memory. I just kept waiting for someone, some “authority” to walk in and take you away with a polite, “Thank you, sir. I think we’ll take it from here”. The nurse came back with the second clean baby and tried handing it (he / she? Who was it??) to me and I, in turn, tried handing the one I had back to her, sort of a, “Oh, we’re trading again?” and she said to me, “No…you keep them both. They’re both yours”. And it was then, in that moment, that everything clicked into place. My right arm was filled with a baby and my left arm was filled with a baby and they were both mine and this is where they would stay. There would be no one walking through the door to take you away. It was just the four of us and we had become a pack, a unit, a team, a family. You changed me. You turned me into a father, both in title and manner.

But you weren’t done. Over the next two years the two of you would wiggle your sticky fingers into every aspect of my life, changing me and altering me in ways that I never anticipated. You’ve taught me patience, vigilance and have opened my eyes to a new kind of love that brings me closer to understanding God’s view on me. You have taught me how to shut out all noise and meditate; having two organic air horns punching you in the kneecaps and chanting the word, “Waffle” over and over like some aborigine savage with a hankering for Belgium delights will do that to you.

Today you both fight for your place in my lap, crawling over one another to get front and center for our nightly episode of He-Man. It’s during these episodes that Quinn will regularly shout, “I have pow-err!”, which I’m sure translates to Prince Adam’s catch phrase, “I have the power” and she’ll also belt out “HEE-man!” when it comes up in the theme song. Rory, forever the techie, you have figured out how to auto-play He-Man by ejecting the DVD from the computer using the button on the keyboard and then pushing the disc back into the slot. You’ve also figured out how to unlock and operate our iPhone’s, navigate through them, find games and play them.

We’ve gotten rid of your cribs and purchased you one enormous bed that you are tentatively sharing. The latest struggle has been curbing Rory’s thievery of the blankets. Once we leave the room, he snatches all of Quinn’s blankets and bundles them around himself, burying his body in a cocoon of fabric. Quinn, understandably, goes buggie (did you like that? How I used the word “cocoon” and “buggie” in quick succession? Try to keep up). Last night, after saying our prayers, your mom left and I decided to just lie in bed with the both of you for a while.

Silence…

…and then shifting…down by my feet…

…Rory starts to sit up and Quinn, completely driven by instinct, suddenly clutches her sheets in her fists and, her voice laced in panic, shouts, “No! No! My blankie!” before anything had even happened. The poor girl is like Pavlov’s dog. I have to wonder if there are nights where she just gives up and falls asleep in a little ball like some cold, orphan puppy. I know for a fact that there are mornings that I find her sleeping on the floor on her blanket, apparently opting for the hardwood safety of escaping Rory’s clutches versus napping in the lion’s den.

Being a parent hasn’t just been about teaching you to share or teaching you to be nice or polite. It’s also been about trying to instill a sense of spirituality in you, a lesson that comes full circle. At night your mom and I say the Now I Lay Me prayer and then we have you repeat after us by saying, “Say, Dear Jesus” and you say, “Dee-yoh, Jezoo”. “Say, thank you for Mommy,” “Tank you fuh Mohmmie,” “Thank you for Daddy,” “Tank you fuh Daddy” but sometimes you just start running your own course and we say, “Say thank you for puppies,” “Tank yu foh…….Mama June,” “Okay…say, ‘Thank you for Grandma Kathy,” “Tank yoo…..puppies”, “Okay, that works too. Say, “Love you, Jesus”, “AMEN!”

Once we had people over for dinner and opted not to pray… but you both quickly put us in our places. You both reached out and took the hands of the unsuspecting individuals sitting next to you, who were, reasonably enough, unsure of what to make of these children suddenly grasping at their fingers. “Well,” I said, “looks like we’re going to pray”. And that’s what I love. I love that I change as much as you do. You are not the small infant that I held in my arms at the hospital two years ago – far from it – and I am not the person (Man? Boy?) that I was holding you two years ago – far from it! Every decision I make every day has you in it. From the big stuff down to the minutia.

I ask myself, “What would my children say if they could see me now?” and my brain replies, “But they can’t see you now,” and my heart replies, “But if I act one way in front of my children and another way in front of the world, I would be an impostor and I would be a fake and there are few things worse.”

You, my children, my blanket thieves and screamers. My laugh-out-louds and stumblers. My book readers and ball throwers. I will change every time you do and we will grow together. You, my little children, are not a simple plant to enter my life and leave me unchanged and uncaring.

You are my pride and my joy and I pour all that I have into you. Life will be good and easy and life will be difficult but we will do it together because you, Rory and Quinn, are not simple plants. You are my cactus and you are here to stay.

Here’s the final deal.  Our sweet and crazy little babies as they grew.

I’m staring at myself in a mirror. The thing attached to my face – the thing I call a beard – has been dyed black. I lost a bet. I look like Abraham Lincoln. I make a note to find a top hat and take a picture of myself. Honestly, the Black Beard looks pretty ridiculous. It looks like I’m “trying”. Trying to be… what? Young? Hip? Presidential? Doesn’t matter. You make your bets, you win some, you lose some, you pay your dues. The dye washes out, the hair grows back, etc. etc. Things will return to how they were.

I walk into the living room and sit down in a chair. Quinn holds a tiny camera up to her eye and says, “Smile!” and I do because I’ve never seen her do this before. She clicks the button at just the right time and I ask her if she got a good one? “Smile!” A few moments later I sneeze and she says, “Bless you!” and I truly am. Blessed. It’s the first time she’s said this as well.

Who are these children living in my house? Sleeping in my baby’s cribs? Eating my cereal with my spoons? Where are your sippie cups? I get ready to leave for work and Quinn says, with yogurt dripping down her stomach, “Bye bye, Papa”. “Bye bye, little Quinnie! See you tonight!”

When I return, Rory is standing at the desk playing with the mouse, scooting it this way and that across the screen. He’s on his tip toes and is wearing Superman underwear. UNDERWEAR. These aren’t diapers. These aren’t pull-ups. These are full on cotton undies. I ask him where Monster is and he turns to me, looks around the room and then holds both hands out and says, “I don’t know,” so I say, “Where is Monster? Is he in your room?” and with that he goes and checks. A few moments later he comes waddling out with My Pet Monster, an enormous blue stuffed animal that is bigger than he is and probably weighs nearly as much. He sets Monster down and gives him a kiss on his long, green nose. He says, “Nooooze.” He says, “Eyyyyyyez”. He says, “Hooooooornz”. And I say, “Yes! That’s right!” He counts all the way to seven. Quinn says her ABC’s INCLUDING the entire “Next time won’t you sing with me” epilogue. Sure, it’s choppy, but it’s there. The three of us have a secret handshake that I can’t really talk about but it goes something like this…

SLAP IT!
BUMP IT!
POKE IT!
SHAKE IT!
WEASEL!

Jade and I put them to bed and when we close the door, we hear Quinn begin to scream. Rory has taken to sharing her bed and she has taken to screaming about it. We let it ride. They both sleep curled up together, sharing blankets. Soon, they’ll each have their own room. Soon, they won’t want to sleep in our bed with us. Soon, they won’t run to us when we come home, they won’t want to sit on our laps and fetch simple toys to show us.

They won’t want to play kitchen for much longer or cuddle on the couch while we watch He-Man. They will be too old to potty train and it will all be gone. Parenting is so bittersweet it hurts, horribly and viciously. Every night that I put them down to sleep is another night that slips away… and I know I’ve said as much before but it never gets easier. They’re so big and I love them but they will never return to how they were. By the time my beard turns back to how it was, they will be new creatures, broken free from the cocoons of the children I love.

We’ve taken the kids to Disneyland before but… it was different last time. Rory was dropped on his head for starters… That’s how the day started. He sort of leapt from the stroller and landed on the top of his head on Main Street. People everywhere were sort of like, “AH!” but we pretended it was no big deal, “Brush it off!” we chuckled, trying to muffle his screams. “Little rascal!” we mumble under our breath, trying to play it down.

Once the crowd had moved on and we were certain that no one in the vicinity knew we were the people who dropped our child on his noggin, we pulled over and examined his head for hair line fractures or brain leakage. He was all good; totally clean. But this was a while ago. This was our FIRST trip to Disneyland with the kids. In fact, I don’t even think they remember it. But this time, today, things will be different…
Jade’s family is in town – the entire herd. Uncle Hotrod is living in Santa Monica and June, Jordan and Katie have all decided to take a simultaneous vacation to LA. Jordan and Katie have never been to Disneyland… so we find some tickets… and we show up with the kids in tow… and it’s phenomenal.

They want to see, touch, explore everything. We’re on Tom Sawyer’s island and every cave must be investigated, every nook, knicked, every crevice, cornered. Splash Mountain, Space Mountain, the California Screamin’ Rollercoaster. Yes, Jordan and Katie really loved it… and the kids had a good time as well.

You could tell they were registering things; this place was different than where we were from. This place was strange and magical and marvelous and “Is that lady wearing a coat made out of dog fur? That’s certainly disturbing”. We take them into The Haunted Mansion and Rory marvels at the floating head in the crystal ball. We take them on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and Quinn sits with Uncle Jarod up front. They both reach out to touch the mist and eyeball the skeletons and animatronic figures as we pass them. They are unphased by the two gut wrenching drops in the ride, which surprises me. Maybe it’s because I’m clutching Rory tight and prepping him by saying, “Hang on, hang on, hang on! Here–We–GOOOO! WEEEEE!” and then I blurt out really over abundant laughter to show him that it’s okay. Previous to the drop I lean forward and say, “Hey, uh… Jarod?” and he says, “What’s up?” and I say, “Not that this would, y’know… happen… but would you mind sort of hanging on really tightly to Quinn just in case she… y’know… flies out of your lap like a paper airplane?” and he says, “No problem, dude”. I have visions of emerging from the darkness at the end of the ride, Jarod having been rocked to sleep on the gentle currents, Quinn forever lost to the Pirates. In my mind she slowly hobbles through the fiery town, asking Jack Sparrow if she’s seen her Papa. She survives on abandoned food and bathes in the water. I suppose there are worse ways to spend your life.

Mark Twain’s boat cruises past us and Rory says, “Boat! Boat!” We walk past a restaurant and drop well over a hundred dollars on sub-standard burgers. I guess it’s easy to be the happiest place on Earth when you bathe in money. In fact, I’m sure there’s some joke here about how money can’t buy happiness but it CAN buy you a TICKET to the happiest place… I don’t know. I’m sure there’s a more eloquent and witty way to put this. It doesn’t matter. It was fun. Rory ate pizza. Quinn ate a burger.

After lunch the four of us waited in line to ride on Dumbo for 45 minutes. The ride lasted 4 and a half. As young as he was, Rory seemed to understand the inherent inequality of wait time versus ride time. He wasn’t ready to dismount from the elephant so I had to drag him back out into the masses kicking and screaming, where we find Jordan huddled over a map of the park. He’s slowly sliding his finger from ride to ride, his eyes squinting against the sun. At one point he sticks his finger in his mouth and lifts it into the air, testing the wind direction or perhaps its resistance. I ask him what he’s doing and he says, “I think if we hit Space Mountain at 2:15, we’ll have time to double back through the park and hit our fast passes at Splash Mountain just in time. After that, I’d suggest jumping on the Jungle Cruise and bailing out halfway through. If we time it right, we can overtake one of those little canoes and row ourselves towards Adventure Land and slide into the Indiana Jones line while we send a scout out to bring back reports on the Pirates.” I laugh and he says, “Is something funny?” and I say, “You’re really intense,” and he says, “Plan your battles, B. Don’t battle your plans”.

For the rest of the day we ride on more rides than I have ever successfully done in one day. He is the King of Theme Park Strategy.

We changed the kid’s diapers in crowded public bathrooms and led them hand in hand through the crowds. We showed them giant fish and princesses and rabbits and boxes filled with dynamite and dinosaurs and ghosts and they were amazed and I was amazed watching them. They say that having children is like seeing the world again through their eyes and their is truth in it… there is, perhaps, nothing but truth in it. Never have I had such fun at Disneyland as I did when I was experiencing it with my children. I suppose there is also something to be said regarding the magic of children. Perhaps it’s so fun to watch life through their eyes because it is all new and all encompassing and all enveloping.

I can recall walking into Disneyland for the first time as a child myself and I was set back and blown away.
I can recall sitting in an operating room with my wife as my children were brought around the blanket and introduced to me for the first time and I was set back and blown away.

Certainly those two things aren’t the same but at a respective level, children are the magic in an adult’s world. They are the things that make us sit down and laugh and wonder. Our children are the happiest place on Earth.

The last thirty days with my children have, as always, been both bizarre and beautiful.  The exercise of writing about them every single day, no matter what, come weekends or weddings, has been truly eye opening for me.  It has forced me to examine my children more closely.  It has forced me to engage in a more aggressive fashion.  That isn’t to say that I was detached before, but simply to say that there is always room to grow.

My wife and I saw a billboard today that said, “You don’t have to be a perfect person to be a perfect parent”.  My wife takes a bite of her burrito and says, “There is no such thing as a perfect parent”.  And she’s right.  You just try your best, everyday, every hour, every passing moment… because they are always getting older and those moments are forever slipping away, getting trapped in photographs and videos that you will cling to dearly.  They become the things you run to if your house ever catches on fire; your memories of The Best Times.

There have been many firsts that we’ve seen this month for both of the kids, some written about, some not.  Quinn’s two word sentence structure, “Where Mommy?”, Rory getting stuck on the sink, their very first Flaming Hot Cheeto.  But it has also made me realize that with every first, there is a last, many of which have already befallen us.  Their last bottle, their last sink bath.  For my wife, the last time she breast fed them.

These things slip in and out of our lives, monumental moments that we tend to treat with a passing fancy while devoting all of our time and energy to That Big Email or That Big Phone Call or That Big Meeting.  Finding a proper balance between being The Dad and The Husband and The Worker can be an all consuming job but it is the job that I (we) have all taken up willingly and now must (MUST) do our very best at.  There are no do-overs.  There are no try-agains.  There are no I’ll-Do-Better-Next-Times.  There is only now.  Today.  This Moment.

When your child hugs your knees, bend down and hug him back, furiously and without abandon.  Squeeze the very breath from his lungs and breathe in the scent of his hair and the softness of his skin.  When your daughter wants to sit next to you on the tub and brush her teeth with you but you’re late for work, take the grand God-given opportunity that has been presented before you and revel in it.

Rory and Quinn, now I speak directly to you.  Know that if anything ever happens to me, I tried my best.  I loved you with everything I had, I gave it all to you and I held nothing back.  I taught you how to walk and how to talk.  I put you in my lap when I backed the car down the driveway; sometimes one of you, sometimes both of you.  I bathed with you and I changed your diapers.  I ate peas for you… I hate peas… but I ate mounds and mounds of them to show you that vegetables are healthy.

I do this because I love you.

With all of my heart.  With all of my soul.  And with all of my strength.

And the only thing I ask in return… is that you pass that enthusiasm on to your own children.

As always, with love,

Daddy

EVENT 1 - GIRL

I lie on the couch and my daughter lies on top of me, her ear against my chest.  Presumably she’s listening to my heart beat while attempting to fall asleep.  It’s well past her bedtime and her arm is still all messed up from who-knows-what-happened to it.  My wife took her to Urgent Care earlier today and the doctor “popped” her elbow back in but it’s still just dangling at her side like an al dente noodle.

She’s spent most the day sitting on the ground, staring at her feet and weeping.  The doctor says her arm is fine and she’s just “afraid” to use it but the way she wails suggests otherwise.  I pick her up and lay her on my chest and she stares up at me.  I say, “I love you” and she says, “Wuff Foo”.

Jade enters the room and says, “You wanna put them to bed?” and I know that it’s thirty minutes, forty-five minutes, sixty minutes past their bedtime but I don’t care.  It’s Saturday night and Quinn is hurt and she’s laying on my chest and I don’t want to ruin this moment.

I say, “Just a couple more minutes,” sounding like a kid who doesn’t want to go to bed rather than a husband who wants to keep his kids up.

I kiss Quinn’s forehead and will time to stop.

EVENT 2 - BOY

As I’m lying on the couch with my daughter, my son comes over.  He’s gotten hold of my iPhone and has disabled it for 8 minutes.  I use the locking feature because he knows how to slide the bar and then begins to “accidentally” (Uh-oh) delete apps.  The phone gives you ten attempts to get the 4 digit passcode correct.  If you fail, it locks you out for 1 minute.  If you fail again, 2 minutes.  If you fail again, 4 minutes… 8 minutes… 15 minutes…

Rory hops up in my lap, wedging himself between Quinn and the cushions, helping himself to the right side of my chest, and I can see the red “DISABLED” banner across my phone.  Oh, well.  At least I know that my apps are safe.  At least I know that he won’t delete Words with Friends and Flashlight and Sky View Free, which allows me to locate constellations.

He lays down on his back and snuggles in close, the disable timer going higher and higher.  He bumps Quinn’s arm and she squeals.  He sits up and stares at her with a face that looks like he’s just recognized her existence; like the face you’d have if you unexpectedly stepped on a toad.

I run my fingers through Quinn’s hair and whisper, “It’s okay.  It’s okay,” trying to work my voodoo-parent-magic on her busted elbow.  She stifles a few tears back and I kiss the back of her head, continuing, for lack of a better word, to “pet” her, although it truly feels more sentimental than that.

I look at Rory, who has dropped the phone to his side and has taken a great interest in his suddenly-present sister.  He says, “See-see,” and points at Quinn and I say, “That’s right!” and I say, “Can you rub her head?” and he reaches out and gently rubs his fingers through her hair and I say, “Can you say, ‘It’s okay’,” and he says, “O’tay… o’tay,” and sounds so much like Buckwheat that an image of Eddie Murphy from SNL is drawn to mind.

I kiss the back of Quinn’s head again and grab some of her curls in my mouth and playfully tug on them.  Rory slowly leans forward, unhinges his jaws and grabs a mouthful.

He sits up, laughs and disables my phone for a full 60 minutes.

EVENT 1 - BOY

I kneel down next to Rory and point at his nose.  I place my finger right against the tip of it and I say, “What is this?  What is this?”

He quickly responds, “Rory!”

I suppose, technically, he isn’t entirely wrong.

EVENT 2 - GIRL

Quinn has hurt her arm; it dangles lifelessly at her side.  She strolls over to me, clutching “Baby” in her good arm, and weeping openly.  I ask, “What’s the matter?” and she sobs, “Blankie!”.

Sure enough, her little blanket rests at her feet but her useless arm makes it so she can’t pick it up.  I grab the little rag and hold it out to her but she doesn’t accept it… can’t accept it.  Can’t even lift her arm up.  We have no idea what happened to it.  She just woke up from her nap not able to move it.

I brush the corner of the blanket against her bottom lip and she bites it.  I release the blanket and she wanders off, carrying her baby in one hand and dragging her blanket in her jaws.

A BILATERAL EVENING WITH CHILDREN

EVENT 1 - GIRL

I pull up in my driveway, home later than usual because I had to stop at the pharmacy to pick up a refill of prescription drugs.  As I approach the front door, it swings open and my wife barrels out.  She tells me she’s going to her dance / workout class.  She’s in a rush because I’m late because of the prescription.  She points to the kids and says, “Kids are already eating.  Dinner is on the counter.  I love you.  Back later,” and with that… she’s gone.

I sit down at the table with my dinner – a salad consisting of chicken, turkey bacon, apple slices and some sort of chipotle-ranch dressing – as well as a bag of Flaming Hot Cheetos, a treat I’d picked up for myself at the pharmacy.

At the end of the table is my daughter, eating silently.  She’s not a big fan of chicken or turkey bacon so she’s just sort of casually dipping them both in her milk and then drinking the milk until there is just soggy meat at the bottom of a tiny plastic cup.  She sees my bag of Flaming Hot Cheetos and holds her hand out for one.  I’m all about teaching through practice so I just say, “Hot.  Hot,” and hand it over.  She says, “Hot,” before shoving the bright red stalagmite-looking junk food into her mouth.

She eats it, seemingly without cause, before asking for another.  I again warn her with, “Hot.  Hot,” and she repeats the behavior.  No hesitation, just shoves it in her mouth.  After a moment, a shred of recognition seems to wash over her face and she spits the (now) sand colored crusty onto her plate and scrubs her tongue.

After dinner I bathe her.  My daughter positions herself in the “corner” of the tub and slouches down as low as she can go until the water is resting just under her chin.  It’s a funny sight and I laugh.  She laughs.  She sits up and bends over and blows bubbles in the water and I laugh.  She laughs.  She grabs a bottle of my wife’s conditioner and pretends to spray some into her hand.  She then pretends to rub it in her hair, having seen her mother do this a hundred times.

I’m as bald as an eagle and haven’t used conditioner in seven years.

After the bath we sit on the couch watching the end of the Vice Presidential Debate, something I have never done in my entire life.  Quinn sits on my lap and I feed her animal crackers one at a time.  She asks for one and I say, “Say, AH!” and she opens her mouth and says “AHHHH!” and I say, “You’re still eating one.”  A few moments later she says, “AH!” again and her mouth is empty so I say, “Say, ‘please’” and she does so I give her another.

She eats three quarters of the cracker before rubbing the final soggy nub up and down my arm, getting a substance tangled in my arm hair that can only be described as “wet play dough”.

I tell her it’s bedtime and I put on her diaper and I put on her pajamas and she immediately poops in her diaper so I change her again.  I go to throw away the diaper only to find that my cocker spaniel has also pooped… on my kitchen floor… for the second time today… and the third time this week.

Back in the nursery my daughter is hiding in the closet.  I open the door, gently take her by the wrist and say, “Okay, time for bed.”  I put her in her crib, turn on the music box that plays It’s a Small World, say her prayers and kiss her goodnight.

Back in the living room I begin writing a blog entitled, “A Bilateral Evening with Children”.

EVENT 2 - BOY

I pull up in my driveway, home later than usual because I had to stop at the pharmacy to pick up a refill of prescription drugs.  As I approach the front door, it swings open and my wife barrels out.  She tells me she’s going to her dance / workout class.  She’s in a rush because I’m late because of the prescription.  She points to the kids and says, “Kids are already eating.  Dinner is on the counter.  I love you.  Back later,” and with that… she’s gone.

I sit down at the table with my dinner – a salad consisting of chicken, turkey bacon, apple slices and some sort of chipotle-ranch dressing – as well as a bag of Flaming Hot Cheetos, a treat I’d picked up for myself at the pharmacy.

Sitting right next to me is my son.  He’s feverishly gobbled up all the chicken in his little bowl before I’ve even had a chance to sit down.  His cheeks stuffed like a hamster, he begins pointing at my plate and making some noise that means something.  I pick up the bacon and he says, “No”.  I pick up an apple and he says, “No”.  I pick up a chicken piece and he pulls it off my fork, drops it in his own bowl and stares at it, seeming to wait for it to “become his”.  After a few seconds he reaches in and eats the chicken.  This process continues until all of my chicken is gone.

After that he points at my Flaming Hot Cheetos and I’m all about teaching through practice so I just say, “Hot.  Hot,” and hand it over.  He says, “Hot,” before shoving the bright red stalagmite-looking junk food into his mouth.  He eats it, seemingly without cause, before asking for another.  I again warn him with, “Hot.  Hot,” and he repeats the behavior.  No hesitation, just shoves it in his mouth.  After a moment, a shred of recognition seems to wash over his face and he spits the (now) sand colored crusty onto my plate and slowly pushes it back towards me, as if to say, “Here… you may now have this back”.

After dinner I bathe him.  I place one hand behind his head and another hand on his chest and I pretend to baptize him counting down before The Big Dip.  I say, “One.  Two.  Three!” and then I lean him back until both ears are submerged.  He pulls his head into his shoulders like he’s just gotten the chills and giggles uncontrollably.  He sits back up and I say, “One” and he suddenly shouts, “TWO!” and I say, “THREE!” and I dip him back again and he laughs and I laugh.

Later, I cover my face with my hands and all I see is blackness but I know he’s staring at me.  I rip my hands away, pulling the skin of my flesh back in what I imagine is a hideous mask, shouting in a guttural moan.  He laughs and I laugh.

After the bath we sit on the couch watching the end of the Vice Presidential Debate, something I have never done in my entire life.  Rory sits on my lap and I feed him animal crackers one at a time.  He asks for one and I say, “Say, AH!” and he opens his mouth and says “AHHHH!” and I say, “You’re still eating one.”  A few moments later he says, “AH!” again and his mouth is empty so I say, “Say, ‘please’” and he does so I give him another.

He looks up at me and does the strangest, cutest thing… He places both hands, wrist to wrist, under his chin and wraps his fingers up around his cheeks… like the way you’d imagine every baby Cherub sitting in every baby Cherub painting ever.  I kiss him with one hundred little pecks all over his cheeks and he laughs and I laugh and he does the hand gesture again and he laughs and I laugh.

I tell him it’s bedtime and I put on his diaper and he kicks out of my grasp before I can get the second latch done.  After vast amounts of cardio I finally have him dressed and ready to go but he’s escaped my clutches and has run into the closet, which is pretty standard bedtime fare.  We used to wrestle him out and put him back into his bed but we’ve since come to realize that he goes to bed moments after we leave all by himself.

While he’s out of my sight, I turn on the music box that plays It’s a Small World, and say his prayers out loud.  After I say, “Amen”, I say, “Okay buddy… goodnight” and I open the closet and he’s crouched down behind a shelf in the furthest corner, peeking out at me through a pair of slats in the wood.  He giggles and I slide the door closed, feeling like I’m the father of Eddie Munster.

Back in the living room I begin writing a blog entitled, “A Bilateral Evening with Children”.