She's a Good Picture Taker

Heather does a great job of capturing the kids' personalities with her photography. I'm pretty proud of all that she's learned in the last year and a half. Of course, I'm proud of our kids in the pictures, but she turns the cute up to 11 with her picture taking skills.

Last year I was nominated for funniest blog on the Multiples and More Blog Network. Since then I've taken to wearing tweed sport coats with patches on the arms, smoking a pipe, and giving lectures on Russian literature at coffee houses. Accordingly, I am ineligible for the nomination this year.

Fear not though, Heather has picked up the slack in blog award nominations. Her blog has been nominated for best photography this year.


I don't want to be a shameless begging whore. I am. I just don't want to be. Please go vote for her blog HERE. Scroll down to "Best Photography" and hit "Three Lees in a Pod." There's no registration - just click the box and hit vote.

If you've already decided to click the link and vote, just do that. If you choose to get all self-righteous and be an informed voter, please look here, here, and especially here, to make your decision - unless that decision is to vote against her, then don't do that.

You can, and should, vote every day until December 5th. If she wins, I will be giving away an iPad to everyone who votes and posts a comment stating that they voted for her. That was a lie. I will not do that at all. I'm a dirty dirty whore. You will however receive my undying gratitude, which is more valuable than an iPad and less likely to be stolen.

Sea Monster!

If it wasn't for their big meaty fists, the sailors and their craft may have fallen victim to the beast.

A Post

When I was a kid I spent a lot of time on the beach. I liked to build sandcastles. More often, I think I just made sand animals. But it's the same idea. I made things out of sand. Sometimes the tide would come in and wash away my dolphin or my octopus. If it was time to leave the beach and my sandcastle was still there, I would stomp all over it before I left. I didn't want to have to think about my sandcastle after I left the beach. What if someone put a ninth arm on my octopus? Or build another dolphin next to my dolphin and made them do dirty things to each other? I can't have that. That's part of the beauty of sandcastles, anyway. They're temporary. No one intends for them to last forever.

If this blog was a sandcastle, the tide would have already come in and washed it away. It's been sitting here without update for two months. There's no tide for blogs though. I imagine the blogosphere is full of abandoned sandcastles. I may stomp on it. I haven’t ruled that out. I’m not one to prematurely stomp on a sandcastle, mind you. I'm still on the beach. I'm just doing other things.

Penelope - Days 1, 2 and 3

Day 1:

Last Tuesday we welcomed baby Penelope into our family.


The whole event was sort of surreal in that it was so "normal."



Heather just had a baby. I helped the nurse wash her. Then Heather fed her in recovery.



And then they took Heather and Penelope to the mother-baby room, and left us alone.

Although it beats the alternative, it was a bit unsettling to have a baby, just hours old, not hooked up to a monitor. It was hard to tell if she was breathing. And if she stopped breathing, there would be no alarm to let us know. I laid on the couch that night telling myself that if babies dropped dead in mother-baby units on a routine basis, I would have heard about it at least once. I haven't, so I figured we were safe. But I poked Penelope at least 100 times just to make sure.

Day 2:

I have no pictures of Day 2 and I have almost no recollection of it other than I lost track of day and night and forgot to drink my usual four cups of coffee or energy drinks until my head exploded from withdrawal at about 5:00 p.m. I drank a big Starbucks coffee, then threw up three times and passed out, which I'm sure Heather appreciated. I presume everything turned out well during my loss of consciousness as Heather hasn't really mentioned it.

Day 3:

After two days away from the "big" kids, Heather and I were dying to see them. We received a visit on the morning of Day 3.

Heather's friends Cathy and Amanda gave Piper, Henry, Rosemary and Penelope big/little - brother/sister shirts that they wore for their big meet and greet:

















On the evening of Day 3 Heather and I had our "Celebration Dinner" courtesy of UAB Hospital. The Celebration Dinner is a special three course meal for mom and a guest prepared by only the most discerning of cooks in the UAB patient kitchen. It's served on a black tray as opposed to the standard white.

When we had the kids, Heather delivered, and the kids stayed at the old UAB facility. Everyone who delivered there was given a baby gift - either a Medala Pump-in-Style or a stroller. Since then, UAB has moved moms and babies into an incredible Women and Infants Center. Three hundred dollar breast pumps don't grow on trees, you know. And if you spend a bazillion dollars on a new facility, something has to give. Hence, as I understand it, the replacement of the $300 Pump in Style with the "Celebration Dinner."

I can say, without a doubt, that our Celebration Dinner was the best nearly warm meal I've consumed from a hospital patient kitchen. The wine pairing was an excellent choice as well: Welch's Sparkling Grape Juice - chilled in a chicken bucket. Vintage June.


Our bottle displayed notes of grape with subtle grape as well as hints of grape.

OK. I'm just being picky. It was a nice touch. And, if that's the trade-off for a great new facility, I'll happily drink my chicken bucket wine in our big new room.

A Blueberry Trick Gone Awry

Henry and the girls love blueberries. The other day I gave them all a handful with their snack. Then a second handful. And then a third.

I'm all for the kids getting plenty of food - and blueberries are as good as anything. But there's a point where I fear that their bodies just can't tolerate the quantity. So I started doling out blueberries one by one.

Instead just handing them out, I decided to do the old "coin trick" where I palm a blueberry and then find it behind the kids' ear. The girls tolerated my tomfoolery for the purpose of getting more blueberries. Henry, on the other hand, was thrilled to learn that his head was full of blueberries and that they can be plucked endlessly from his ear.


Thrilled, that is, until they stopped coming.


He tried to get them.


And tried.


And tried.



It's sad. More funny than sad, of course. But I still feel sorry for him. Tonight I saw him pulling at his ear after we put him to bed. In a way, I feel like I violated his trust. But he is two. It's probably time he learns that his head isn't full of blueberries.

Cleanup on Aisle Five!

When I got the kids out of bed this morning and was changing diapers, I was alarmed to find that Henry's boy parts were red and puffy. Heather called the doctor and got Henry the first available appointment.

Henry and I went to the doctor and it turns out it was just a yeast infection. I was afraid it was a flesh eating bacteria, which in this case would be a penis eating bacteria. Which would be a bit of a downer.

We got a prescription for some yeast cream and headed for the Walgreen's. I wanted to get Henry's cream as soon as possible, so we waited for the pharmacist to put the label on the box of cream. These things take time.

First we walked all of the aisles. Then we watched a redneck yell at his wife. And then we started getting bored.

Henry spotted a box of clearance mop handles, sans sponge heads, and took to mopping the store.


He mopped.




And mopped.




And mopped.


Watched the angry redneck some more.


. . . continued mopping.







And then they called us back to get the ointment, with the label meticulously affixed to the box.


If anyone in that store thought I would not let my son fake-mop all the floors in the Walgreen's while I followed him around taking pictures with my Blackberry, they were mistaken.

Rodents, Pea Pods, New Room, Etc.

It's been a while since my last post, so I have a lot to cover.

1. No new wild animals have been spotted in the yard in addition to the raccoon and the possum. We've had a total of two dead critters (hunted and killed by cats I presume) on our doorsteps: one bird on the front door mat and one mouse on the back door mat. Other than nearly stepping on the rotting corpse of a mouse, I couldn't be happier about the death of the rodent. Francesca and Thurston are pulling their weight. Cat(s) 1, Mice 1. They did let that one mouse in the house, of course.

2. During the remodel, we were down a few days on the upstairs AC. The kids got to spend some quality time in their pea pod tents - napping in our bedroom during the day and sleeping in the living room at night. Shockingly, the AC man was unable to replace an entire AC system and install new duct work to the new room, and make it functional, in one day. I sort of saw that one coming.

Henry "banged" his little head against the wall of the tent one night and scooted himself clear out of the living room. This is how we found him in the morning:


3. The room is done. If my camera had the ability to reproduce colors with any degree of accuracy, you would see that the room is pale green and the bathroom is slightly less pale green.





The picture of the closet is a semi-accurate representation of the room color:


The bathroom:






From the entrance to the room:



Well, it's mostly done. We have one detail left to fix. There was a little confusion about what I meant when I said that I didn't want shiny chrome bathroom fixtures. My statement was interpreted to mean that I yearned to have someone search the four corners of the earth to find the largest and shiniest bathroom fixtures available and have those installed in the room.

The plumber replaced the bumper-chrome sink faucets that were initially installed with these snazzy little brushed stainless numbers.


We are waiting for the brushed stainless versions of the the shower fixtures to come in.


(there's a bigger difference in person - I swear)

I'm moving the kids into the new room this weekend. My plan is to begin disassembling cribs first thing on Saturday morning and having them put back together in the new room by nap time after lunch. The rest of the new room should take shape by the end of the weekend.

4. Heather is still gestating little Penelope and is 28 weeks today. Her pregnancy hasn't been the walk in the park I had hoped for. She's had to take a few visits to the hospital and stayed overnight on Monday, but she is not having pre-term labor - which is good. During her pregnancy with the kids, we had cake with candles in her hospital room where she had already been for five weeks when she made it to 28 weeks. So, even though this pregnancy isn't completely uneventful, I can only be thankful to be where we are.