Plaid Pants Friday

The dos and don'ts of plaid pants:

This is John Daly with his girlfriend getting ready for the first round of the British Open yesterday:


They match. Isn't that cute? I don't even know if these are plaid. They are plaid-ish. They have sort of a court jester vibe to them. John Daly has made a lot of mistakes in his life and his fashion choices of late are in the upper third of the mistake list (it's long). If this is the worst thing Daly is doing right now, we can't give him too much grief. They are still a plaid pants "don't."

This is Ian Poulter playing a tee shot yesterday:


Poulter's pants are a "do." Standard plaid. Good fit. If you saw him turn around, you might question the sweater vest, but the pants are great.

Ian Poulter got so much notoriety for his trouser choices on tour, that he scored his own line of Poulter Pants. You can get some Poulter Pants for only $289.95. AAKKKK!

John Daly's pants are by Loudmouth Golf and you can get a pair, full price, for $89.95 from the manufacturer's site, or for $14.95 on clearance at the place the used to be the Goody's.

Poulter is married, a father of three, and lives stateside in Orlando. My sources tell me that Poulter's wife, Katie, does not have any skirts that match his pants.

Nice pants, Poulter. They aren't $289.95 nice, but still, nice pants.

Do They Share?

At the kids’ final Early Intervention Session (yeah - knock on wood), one of the questions Beth, the kids' therapist, asked was if they “shared.” They don’t. At all.

Henry will sort of "share" when he rolls a ball to me, but only with the expectation that I will roll the ball back to him. I don’t think Henry would roll me a ball if he thought I was just going to take the ball and leave. Nor should he.

I wasn't aware that sharing was a developmental milestone or something that we should be encouraging. I read the baby books, but I just missed that part. I think we may have even been discouraging sharing buy buying three of everything, like these soccer balls.


If it is a milestone, I really haven’t hit it myself. I don’t share my stuff. As a non-sharer, I don't know how I can encourage this behavior in my children. I have my stuff, other people have theirs, and never the twain shall meet.

I question whether sharing is even a good thing. If a child shares, the child has less of whatever resource is being shared. I can see the purpose of sharing in a hunter gatherer society where one person kills a bird and someone else has some berries, so they make a meal out of it. But we have Publix. We don't need to share now. We can just get our own stuff.

I know that while it is odd but semi-tolerated for me to blurt out "I'm not sharing" after a waiter at PF Chang's tells the table about how the restaurant encourages trying each other's plates, that same behavior may not go over well in a kindergarten class. I also know that am not in a position to be overly critical when I get a note from a teacher that says Henry doesn't share well with others.

Baby Fight Club

If Michael Vick would've had three babies and a telephone, he wouldn't have gone to jail.



I checked the legality of baby fighting in Alabama and it appears to be legal. Dog fighting is illegal, of course. See Ala. Code Section 3-1-29. As is bear wrestling. See Ala. Code Section 13A-12-5(a) ("A person commits the offense of unlawful bear exploitation if he or she knowingly . . . [p]romotes, engages in, or is employed at a bear wrestling match.") Surprisingly - nothing specifically about babies.

So, this Saturday, bring a baby and a stack of twenties to my place. BYOB. Regular UFC regulations apply, but with a scaled down six sided ring.


I will warn you that the 18 to 20 pound weight class is stacked. And, don't forget the two rules of Baby Fight Club.

Plaid Pants Friday (Belated)

Yesterday was Friday, which I declared to be Plaid Pants Friday two weeks ago. But finding interesting people in plaid pants to feature every week was harder than I thought. Maybe interesting people don't wear plaid pants; I'm at a loss.

Being without a subject for Plaid Pants Friday yesterday, I took a picture of my own plaid pants with my Blackberry when I got to my office. I tried to send it to myself, but it didn't go through. Then I got busy and had no Plaid Pants Friday post.

I was alerted to my failure by a fellow parent of multiples. So here is an autobiographical Plaid Pants Friday post . . . on Saturday.

My plaid pants from Friday:



This is the part of the post where I would write about the wearer of the plaid pants. In this case, you know that the subject sports a pair of fancy plaid pants to work at a law firm. What else is there to know?

Happy Belated Plaid Pants Friday. Nice pants, Self.

Our Little Peanut

The kids had their one year checkup on Tuesday. Rosemary weighed in at 16 pounds, 3.5 ounces. She is still not on the growth chart for her actual age (not adjusted for prematurity) despite our efforts to fatten her up. She is getting closer, but the bottom line on the chart in the pediatrician's file still eludes her.

She is proportionally small, in that she is a short as she is light. She is just small all over. She only grew out of her size 0 newborn sandals last month.

She is Thing 3 on the left:



And the flying Thing 3, who looks like she is crying, but is really laughing (I think):


She is a perfect little package, but I still get frustrated when her dot doesn't make it on that stupid curve. After every weigh in, we do our own chart at medcalc, and every time I obsess about it - looking at the prior charts and seeing if she has moved up or down a fraction of a notch around the fifth percentile for her adjusted age.

Then, after the appropriate amount of obsessing and stressing about why she is not yet huge, I remember to look at my wedding band on my finger and think of this:


I took this picture of Rosemary when she was 21 days old - as soon as her little arms looked big and sturdy enough for me to slip my well scrubbed wedding band over her hand. If I wasn't scared I would snap her arm, I think I could have gotten it all the way up to her shoulder.

When I put the location of her dot on the chart in perspective with the ring on my finger, I stop obsessing and I'm just appreciative that we have a healthy, happy, beautiful (according to me) one year old girl, who has come a long long way.

Baby Names

I am fascinated with baby names.

First, the name a parent chooses for a baby tells you so much about the parent on many different levels.

Second, the idea that a parent gets to assign a name to another human is just baffling. When our kids' Social Security cards came in the mail (with sequential numbers, by the way), I still couldn't believe we got to name other humans, even if they were our kids. We just picked names, declared the kids to have the names, and the government and everyone else recognized our choice.

So, how did we pick our kids names?

Before we knew the allotment of boys and/or girls in our trio, Heather and I decided a system for name picking. I wanted to give a boy a family name if we had one, so I asked for first boy pick. Since I had first boy pick, Heather had first girl pick. I got second girl and Heather got second boy, etc. Each of us had complete veto power on any pick.

First Boy, George Henry ("Henry"): My grandfather and great grandfather were both George Henry. They were not George Henry and George Henry, Jr., they were just George Henry and George Henry - again. Heather wanted to call George Henry, "Henry," and I reluctantly agreed. Now I can't believe that I ever wanted to call our little Henry, "George."

After first boy pick, my version and Heather's version of events may differ. This is my version:

First Girl, Piper Grace: In the December 2007 issue of Vogue, there was a piece on the Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin. Keep in mind, this was before Sarah Palin was picked to be on the Republican ticket and became a Tina Fey impression. She was just the Governor of Alaska and the former mayor of Whoknowswhere. Evidently, she was also well dressed enough to make the pages of the magazine that sits in our bathroom. Heather apparently saw the name "Piper" in the article (one of Palin's kids), liked it, and filed it away. When we were discussing names in early 2008, Heather tossed out "Piper" as her pick. I wanted something a little different and "Piper" certainly qualified. Heather didn't remember where she had seen the name until Palin was tapped as McCain's running mate after the kids were born. If she did, Piper may have not been a Piper.

The name Piper became less "different" in 2008, jumping from the 240th most popular girl name in 2007 to the 172nd in 2008, per the SSA database, which I attribute to the Palin effect.

Second Girl, Rosemary Faith: Heather doesn't like it when I tell people this because it makes me sound like a redneck. But, it is what it is. On Lenny Kravitz's CD, Let Love Rule, Track 9 is "Rosemary." The CD has been in and out of my CD player (and now my iPod) since high school. I won't say that I named a child after this song (because that would make me a redneck), but the name of the girl in the song gave rise to the inspiration for the name for our child (got that?). I have just always thought it was a pretty name. I threw it out and it stuck.

Although Rosemary seems less "different" to me than Piper, it was actually the 754th most popular girl name in 2008 - much less popular than Piper even before the Palin effect.

I think our children's names are a good reflection of us and they seem to fit the kids. I don't know what the manner by which we chose the names says about us. But, it is what it is - at least according to me.

The Other Time I Called Poison Control

The incident re: the butt paste Wednesday night was the second time I have called Poison Control. The first time was in college.

I was asleep in bed and felt something in my boxer shorts. As I was coming to, I felt a stabbing pain. I frantically swatted about my shorts area and got a second slightly less painful shot. I jumped out of bed and pulled off my boxers.

A scorpion crawled out of my boxer shorts.

At the time, the only thing I knew about scorpions was what I had seen in movies. Scorpions in movies are usually in the desert and are really bad, hence the inclusion in the movie. I had no idea there was a possibility of being stung by a scorpion in Florida, much less in my apartment - in my bed. From my existing knowledge base, the possibility of being attacked by a shark in my bed was just as likely as my scorpion encounter.

Not knowing if death was imminent and living in the dark age before Google, I called 911. They asked if I had an emergency. I said I didn't know, but I would appreciate a little information in that respect. After a some banter about how the 911 operator could either send, or not send, an ambulance if I thought I needed one or not, we decided I should call P.C.

I called P.C. and the operator asked me about the scorpion, which was now on my wall. We determined that it was one of the several species of non-lethal Florida scorpions. Who knew?


The thing is, both times I have called, the P.C. person has been totally nonchalant. Every time those people pick up the phone, they know they are about to hear a mildly crazy story. That would be a pretty cool job.

For future reference, the number for Poison Control is 1-800-222-1222. The number for Delta Airlines is 1-800-221-1212. They are sort of similar.

Plaid Pants Friday

This is Harry and his famous plaid pants:

Harry is the one on the left. I don't know Harry. I don't know who Harry is, but I googled some variant to of "plaid pants" for the second Friday space filler tribute to plaid pants and found this picture captioned "Harry and his Famous Plaid Pants."

This is what I know about Harry. There are 13 people in this picture. Harry is only half in the picture. Yet, Harry made a big enough impression on the person who scanned this 30+ year old picture that he/she named it after him. Way to make an impression, Harry. Nice pants.

Because I regressed so quickly from professional golfer Ricky Barnes to an old picture of a guy named Harry, I am having serious doubts that I can find anything timely regarding plaid pants once a week for Plaid Pants Friday. I couldn't have possibly have overestimated the popularity of plaid pants. Everyone loves plaid pants, right?

Friday will still be Plaid Pants Friday going forward, but some weeks I will just give it a moment of silence.

Are They Twins?

So, I was on the phone with Poison Control last night after the girls played in / ate about an eight of a tub of Boudreaux’s Butt Paste. Henry, because he has a big brain inside that big melon of his, did not partake in the snack.

I told P.C. about the incident and what happened, and we had this exchange:

P.C.: How old are the girls?
Me: One.
P.C.: Are they twins?
Me: Yes . . . well, sort of. They are two of a set of three, but the third one didn't eat any butt paste. So, I guess they are twins with respect to each other, but they aren't the only two.
P.C.: So they are triplets?
Me.: Yes. But only two ate the butt paste.

Normally, I would just let the twin question go with a "yes" if I don't know the person, but this was health care related and I thought it might be relevant that the girls are high order multiples.

The "twin" question usually comes up when I am walking with a double stroller containing the two girls and I don't want to flag down Heather with Henry in the single stroller after the person asks to see the other baby. The only other time I said they were twins was when I was in Gymboree on an emergency swimsuit/cover-up/floppy hat run and the salesperson who asked me was a mother of twins. I just didn't feel like one-upping the nice lady who had helped me pick the swimwear ensembles by saying that there was really one more baby, but the other baby already had a full compliment of swimwear and swimwear related accessories. I was also in a hurry to get out of Gymboree because girls' clothes stress me out. In hindsight, my not wanting to one-up the nice lady wasn't reasonable, but I was all out of sorts from the exposure to the girls' clothes.

Anyway, after I got off the phone with P.C., Heather and I were talking about the "twins" thing. She thinks the girls are never twins because they are two of a set of three. I can't argue with that logic, but I also can't get around the confusion and complexity I add to a conversation when I am speaking of just two kids, in isolation of the third kid, and I say they are triplets. As the kids get older and do more girls things and boy things apart from each other, I am going to have to come up with a concise statement in response to this question. As of yet, I don't have one.

The "House Divided" is Getting out of Hand

I've seen an increasing number of "The House Divided" license plates on cars recently. I saw this one on an SUV parked in front of my office.

Because we are in the South, it's safe to assume this person's house is allegedly divided over football and not gymnastics or lacrosse. College football is king in the South; nevertheless, I doubt the severity of the strife in the SUV owner's home. Could this strife possibly warrant a license plate display?

From an unreliable google search, I show that Alabama and Florida only played 29 regular season games in the 102 years from 1904 to 2006. (I know my search results are unreliable because Florida didn't field a football team until 1906.)

Further adding to the curiosity of this plate choice is the glaring fact that Alabama was really good for about a hundred years while Florida was busy inventing Gatorade and jean shorts. Before 1990, Florida won only six of its meetings with Alabama and got shut out eight times. In Florida's defense, one of the shutouts came in the 1904 "game." When no Florida players showed up, it would have been nice if the Alabama guys just went and grabbed some beers rather than running up and down the field by themselves scoring points. But I digress.

For a house to be "divided" enough to justify a license plate, I say the teams have to play a semi-competitive game almost yearly. I can see if one spouse is an Alabama fan and one is Auburn, you are "the house divided." Same goes for Ohio State-Michigan, Texas-Oklahoma, Notre Dame-USC, etc. Games that are scheduled about a frequently as presidential elections just don't make the cut.

I am not one to call out a fellow Gator, so I have to assume the Gator's spouse procured the license plate in question. I still must ask you, fellow Gator, can't we just get along? Think about the kids. Please don't let a football game every 1283 days divide your otherwise happy home.