Shoes Please - I Just Need Shoes

Rosemary has two unique characteristics among the kids: 1) she's a hoarder; and, 2) she's a shoe addict.

If she goes into the playroom to bring out toys, she brings an arm full - all that she can carry. When it's time to get in the bath and I have bath toys lined up on the bathroom floor, Piper and Henry grab a duck or other toy to take in the bath, and Rosemary gets an arm full of ducks and tries not to drop any on the way into the bath. She acts like those are the only ducks on earth and she'll never have the chance to grab ducks again.

As for the shoes, she wants her own shoes on almost all of the time, and she's generally obsessed with shoes. She likes to scratch my dress shoes with her fingernail, especially when they are freshly shined. This disturbs me to no end because I have a bit of a shoe thing myself. Not a freaky break-into-someone's-house-to-steal-shoes thing, but I like shoes more than most men.

The other day, Rosemary was upset about something. Henry probably took something from her; I don't remember. I was sitting at the bar and I picked Rosemary up to comfort her. I hadn't noticed, but there were three pairs of kids' shoes sitting on the bar next to my laptop. Rosemary was pouting. And she started picking up shoes. Each time she picked up a shoe, I could feel little waves of happiness roll over her.


She was able to get five of the six shoes on the bar and then couldn't reach for any more without dropping a shoe, so she just sat content with five of the six shoes that were on the bar. Just sitting in my lap holding shoes. That's all she needs.

I don't know much about kids, but I'm sure this isn't totally normal. If Heather and I didn't both have OCD tendencies, I might be concerned with Rosemary's quirks. But really, how can I even be phased by her behavior when I have a couple of these in my closet.

I won't uncover the real crazy by showing the dress shirt rack above the dress shoe rack with its shirts lined up by color.

Given that I would pull a Rain Man if someone snuck a blue shirt into the white shirt zone or misplaced one of my shoe trees, I'd say that Rosemary's little shoe thing is pretty much in line with the household norm. Who am I to get all judgmental and not indulge Rosemary's odd habits. So I will. And she'll get lots of shoes. And hoard them. And line them up in rows. And then, when she goes off to college and one of her roommates messes with her shoes, she'll pull a Rain Man and freak everybody out. Then she'll be pissed at me for not curbing her crazy when I had the chance. But I don't care. My little Rosemary gets shoes. She needs them.

Nice Weather - Finally!

The weather in Birmingham was beautiful today. It's been cold and/or rainy every weekend that I can recall. Today was sunny and in the mid-60s.

The nice weather came just in time. Heather took a spa trip this weekend, so I was flying solo with the kids. A nice weekend outside with the kids on my own can be a little tricky, bit it's a treat. Not that a weekend cooped up inside with bored angry kids isn't a treat, mind you; it's just better out there.

We took the opportunity to go to the (drum roll please) . . . zoo! We've been to the zoo so many times, I'm certain the kids have seen more giraffes and lions in their life than they have dogs and cats. It's just hard to beat the zoo for a place that accommodates a side-by-side triple stroller and has things for kids and adults to see outside.

We did the usual tour of the world's animals and took a cruise through the "kids zoo," which is a hands-on barn / petting zoo. I think this is a barn llama.


Whatever it is, it needs a toothbrush and some Crest White Strips. That grill is brutal. I saw it try to bite a little girl after her parents picked her up to pet it. The little girl freaked out. I didn't need that ugly Austin Powers looking bastard to lunge at us to know it wasn't our friend. Some people just have to test it.

We got up close with a peacock who was wandering around the sidewalks.


I didn't know this before, but peacocks have large talons. I noticed them right after I took the picture. I think a peacock could so some damage if it wanted to - - say, if you snuck up behind it with a four foot wide, bright red stroller carrying three handsy kids. After we made our way by, it went after a another kid. He looked OK physically. Mentally, not so much.

We had two up-close and personal "When Animals Attack" moments today. I've never really thought about the assumption of the risk you take by being at a zoo around animals. I get the part about assuming the risk of being hit by a foul ball when I go to a baseball game, but I sort of expect the more dangerous animals at a zoo to be somewhere where they won't maul me or the kids. Then again, maybe peacock and llama attacks aren't as dangerous as they look.

Surprisingly, the zoo wasn't as crowded as it usually is on a sweltering summer day. The big bonus of the zoo not being hot or crowded is that the kids got to play in the fountain / play area without any 140 pound 8 year olds giving them a flying forearm shiver while charging through the water.



I had always thought the floor of the fountain area was concrete, but it's actually little bits of rubber.



If I was MC Hammer, I would put one of these in our back yard.



Now that I know it's rubber, I might let the kids play in the fountain when it's 100 degrees - depending on the size and speed of the kids competing for the water, of course.


Henry was the only one who found the play area behind the non-functional fountain. I was thinking it looked more interesting than a thing that might be a fountain if it was turned on, but I still know very little about the decision making process of a toddler.


It was a good day. Hopefully we'll get some more nice weather next weekend and we can do it all over again with Heather - sans llama and peacock attacks.

King Cake!

It's Mardi Gras. In Birmingham, you have to look pretty hard to find any indication that Lent is around the corner and it's time to cram in all your food and beverage related debauchery. Fortunately, I have a coworker from New Orleans whose mom Fed-Exed her a king cake this week. I had one piece at the office and got dizzy from the sugar rush. It was sooooo good though.


She sent a giant hunk of apple filled goodness home with me under strict orders that it was for the kids. I've fallen a long way from the days when I was all about limiting the kids to baked items that were no sugar added, whole wheat and organic. It started with their first birthday smash cakes and went down hill from there. The kids are good eaters and they always eat their fruits and veggies. I guess if they don't replace good food with deserts, they need the extra calories anyway. Can you tell I'm trying to convince myself too?

I figured if we we going to do it, we should do it right. I cut each of them an obese adult sized portion.

Piper took to the cake in her typically reserved manner that makes us wonder how she is the chunkiest kid. She clearly liked it, but exercised some restraint.


Henry went at it like an angry land shark.


And Rosemary worked her way through it methodically.


The girls ate until they were full and called it quits. Rosemary ate about twice as much as Piper, which is usually the case. Henry put all of his cake away at least as fast as I could and looked like he could do it all over again.

When we put the kids to bed, Henry howled like a wolf (not crying, but actually howling - like a baby wolf) for an hour. Then he tipped over and slept all night. Dreaming of king cake, I would imagine.

Heather’s Pregnant

I think the appropriate term would be knocked up. Heather doesn’t want me to call it “unplanned” or “accidental” so we’re saying it’s a “surprise.” She thinks the other terms make the baby seem unwanted, which is certainly not the case. In her defense, it’s hard to call something like this an accident if you have a working knowledge of biology, yet take no precautions to prevent the typical results of your actions. I still think “surprise” understates the situation a little. We have three kids. I love my kids in a way that I never thought I could love anyone. But still - that’s a lot of kids. It’s precisely two more kids than I agreed to when Heather talked me into the idea after getting me liquored up on margaritas at a Mexican restaurant.

We then spent almost three years and the cost of a Porsche 911 on fertility treatments trying to have said kid, which turned out to be three kids. In a perfect world, I guess a surprise like this would have happened shortly after my consenting to impregnate Heather - before all the doctors, all the drugs, and all the treatments. But trying to get pregnant for three years made us both stronger. That ordeal helped prepare us for Heather’s difficult high-order-multiple pregnancy, which in turn was preparation for having three infants in the NICU. In the end, having three babies at home was, and still is, no big deal given what we went through to conceive them and to get them home safely. And if everything didn’t happen the way it did, we wouldn’t have Piper, Henry and Rosemary. Moreover, I might perform my parenting with the enthusiasm of a guy who agreed to have a kid because it was a slightly better option than getting a poodle.

I guess all of that is to say that everything happens for a reason. So there’s a reason for this. I just hope that we didn’t use our lifetime’s supply of good luck on the kids we have now, and that this fall I will have the pleasure of sitting in our living room with our new little baby, being thankful for life’s surprises with a bag of frozen vegetables on my boy parts - recovering from my vasectomy.

Tricks

The kids like to make Heather and I do tricks. Rosemary still requests that we paddy cake by clapping her little hands. Henry demands that we chase him by running and then looking disappointed if he turns back to find no one there. And Piper just makes us laugh. Not just by doing something generally funny, but by using a fake laugh to induce our real laughter. We feel compelled to do tricks for the others because we want to make them happy, but Piper's requirement for trickery is different in that her trick is involuntary on our part. The first time I saw it, Heather was sitting in the living room with Piper laughing until she couldn't breath. The more we laugh, the more Piper imitates us with her fake laugh. It's a vicious cycle.



I can't tell if she enjoys it because everyone is happy or if she likes human puppetry. I had a pretty bad stomach cramp during that video. Piper just watches. Then when we come up for air and she hits us again. It's rather maniacal.

Cat Watch - Day 27

How much could there possibly be about a cat, right. But add another cat and a mouse and you have yourself a blog post.

The other cat:

I thought the bristley cat belonged to one of our neighbors because it had a collar. It actually didn't have a collar though; it just had a line under its mane that made it look like it did. This, according to my rules, means that if we feed it and it spends all its time at our house, we get to name it.

I present to you Thurston Bristlesworth, III:



Going on the premise that Thurston was previously homeless, I figured he needed a fancy name. Homelessness can lead to low self esteem, you know. If he's not homeless, we don't get to name him anyway so it doesn't matter.

The mouse:

When we made Francesca an indoor-outdoor cat by propping open the door to the screen porch, creating a direct path from the back yard into our kitchen nook via the car door, I was concerned that we would be invaded by chipmunks. There's nothing keeping any animal out of our house if it can figure out how to walk through a cat door. My money was on a raccoon, chipmunk or possibly a possum. Turns out it was a mouse.

Monday, Ann (one of the babies' NICU nurses and now friend of the family) was helping Nana for a day fill in for nanny while Brooke is out after having a baby. We we were making breakfast and Ann yelled "I just saw a mouse." I went into cross examination mode and tried to pin her down on exactly what she saw. I couldn't believe it was a mouse. I think I had Ann on the ropes and could have got her to admit that she wasn't sure she saw a mouse, but that wouldn't have been very productive. She settled on being 85% sure she saw a small mouse that was moving very quickly. Ann was a little freaked out and asked if we normally had mice - I think just to make sure that she wasn't about to spend 11 hours fending off mice. I assured her this was a one time deal.

I didn't know what to do. Ann told me where she saw it run, but I didn't know if I was supposed to shoot it or go at the cabinet and the mouse with a hammer. Heather had already left for work and I was pretty sure if I discharged a firearm or destroyed part of the house, Heather would have a hard time getting past those details to be satisfied that I neutralized the mouse threat.

I decided to pull out the yellow pages and put the responsibility and risk of failure and damage on someone else. The first place I called was one I had seen in the neighborhood setting up some sort of maze on our neighbor's yard to catch an armadillo. I said, "I think I have a mouse in my house." I suspect they heard a cash register sound on the other end of the line. They said the service call would be $245.00 to inspect and set up traps. Then they would come back and check the traps, charging $40.00 per mouse they removed. Now, I'm all for hiring the best people for the job, but I wasn't entirely confident that we didn't have "mice" as opposed to a "mouse." I didn't know we had one mouse, so how could I be sure we didn't have $400.00 family of ten in the garage, for a total of $645.00.

The second place I called was $350.00 for all the mice they can catch - coming back to check traps every other day for two weeks. Much better, but still pretty steep for a mouse. There are counties in Alabama where you can make a person disappear for about that. I ended up calling the people who do our termite control and got them to inspect and set traps and bait boxes for $70.00. I am in charge of mouse removal.

Our mouse expert couldn't find the mouse, but inspected the evidence. He said it was one small mouse that had been in the house for no more than a day or so. Apparently the cold weather will make them come inside, especially if you have a big hole in your back door to accommodate a cat. I suggested shutting off the cat door, but our mouse guy said we should leave it open so the mouse could get back out after he eats the mouse bait. Apparently the mouse bait makes the mouse thirsty and he has to get a drink afterward, which activates the poison, thus killing the mouse. Pretty nifty. I didn't think to ask about the door being a two way street for more animals to get in while we are waiting for this one to leave, but I suppose he knows what he's doing.

The mouse man also set about five sticky traps and said if we didn't get the mouse in a sticky trap in a few days, we could be assured he was deceased. It's been five days and I haven't caught a mouse in any of the sticky traps. I can only hope that the mouse ate some of the bait and then went outside to take a dirt nap.

Today, I sealed off the cat door, so if the mouse isn't out by now his final resting place will be in the house. I will then earn my $40.00 for mouse removal.

Back to the Cat(s):

The mouse raises the question of just what in the heck these cats are doing. Francesca and Thurston Bristlesworth are all over this place. Cats eat mice. At least they do in cartoons. I think that's why humans have cats around in the first place. Yet, we now have two cats (I think) and I have my first mouse. These cats are clearly not pulling their weight around here.

I have to admit, though, I slept a little better this past week with Francesca at the foot of our bed. Even though she has proven to be an ineffective mouse hunter, I'm sure she would make some effort to chase it (or run from it) and cause a racket to alert me to the imminent threat of attack. That's better than nothing, I suppose.

Red Wagons Ho!

Our family had a great Christmas. We spent Christmas Eve at Heather's parents' house, Christmas day at our house with just our crew, and the day after Christmas with my parents at our house.

My Mom had asked my what I wanted for Christmas. I told her I wanted a wagon. I told her Heather wanted a wagon too. My Mom said that wasn't really for us; it was for the kids. I stuck to my guns. I wanted a wagon. She spared me the part where I sit around in a nice new sweater woven by Scottish virgins from the wool of grass-fed sheep while wishing I had two kick ass wagons for the kids.


Yee damn haw. Wagons! We loaded up the wagons and went to Aldridge Gardens Sunday morning.





It was just over 40 degrees, so we gave the kids lots of layers and put fur boots on the girls. They had a hard time standing up.


My dad spent most of his time picking up fallen turtle kids.


He spends a good bit of his waking hours devising ways to limit his physical exertion with things like electric fishing reels, so he's probably at home right now working on the preliminary drawings for life size Weeble Wobble outfits.



I guess I could have helped, but I was having fun watching.

Cat Watch - Day 16

Francesca is still here. No news is good news. She spends her days outside, and on nights that are either cold or rainy she comes inside after the kids go to bed. Almost every night of the last two weeks has been cold and/or rainy. She is sort of an indoor/outdoor cat for now. When it gets warmer, I think she can handle being outside almost every night. Maybe the lure of being able to come inside during harsh weather will keep her close to home.


That looks like a mugshot, but it's not. She just happened to sitting against the wall tonight. She would not turn to the right. Cat's are stubborn animals.

Francesca has a friend now. Heather calls it an alley cat. Brooke calls it a bristley cat. I don't know what it is other than a really furry tan cat whose tail looks like a bottle brush. It's always around our house now and has slipped into our garage a few times. It has a collar, so I assume it has a home or once did. The hobo cat now enjoys the cat buffet on our screen porch. I'm glad Francesca is making friends with the other neighborhood kitties though.

I'll try to get a mugshot of the hobo cat for future updates of Cat Watch 2010.

Cat Watch - Day 2

The cat came home. She was gone for 40 hours; it seemed like longer than that. She left Sunday afternoon. This morning Heather saw her on the back porch and started yelling. Gary! Oh my God! Gary! Gary!

I came running into the kitchen not knowing what in the hale was going on. I half way expected to find three kids sleeping at the bottom of the stairs. I was relieved to find that the screaming was a good scream and that our kitty came home.


Francesca spent all day today hanging around the house. When I drove up in the driveway tonight, she was sitting in front of the house in perfect yard cat form.

Tonight, the low is 35 degrees though, which may not be super cold for all cats, but I think it's too cold for a cat with no winter fur who is used to a steady 68 degrees. Tonight, after the kids went to bed, I unlocked the cat door that goes from the the kitchen nook to the screen porch and let Francesca in. That cat is beside herself to have house privileges.


She will be an indoor-outdoor cat tonight with access through the cat door to the porch and access to the great wide open through the open screen porch door. I just hope a herd of chipmunks don't storm the house through the series of open doors we left for the cat.

I'm happy to know that I didn't send the cat off to her death. I still wonder where she was. Maybe she was lost. Maybe she really was giving me the cold shoulder like commenters to "Day 1" said. I think it's a Christmas miracle.


God bless us, every one.

Cat Watch - Day 1

We have a cat. I don't mention the cat much because we have three kids who occupy most of our time. And she's a cat. Cat's don't do much. Actually, it isn't even my cat. It's Heather's cat. It came into our marriage with her. It's almost a cat-in-law to me.


I'm allergic to cats, by the way. The cat was so important to Heather that she had me take weekly allergy shots for two and a half years so I could live in the same apartment as that cat. Then I made friends with the cat and sort of took over the cat care responsibilities. By cat care, I mean cleaning up cat puke and changing litter boxes. It may as well be my cat now - or at least our cat.

We have a problem with the cat, though. She is violent. This wasn't a big deal until we had kids. It was pretty humorous actually. It's funny to have a new person in the house and warn them that the cat is violent, only to see the person be mauled while yelling "animals love me," "cats love me," "help me," etc. etc. This one does not like you. She doesn't like anyone.


You wouldn't know she was a brutal beast from the Christmas card pictures above. We have dressed the cat as a child for our Christmas card pictures every year. It's the kind of joke that's funnier when people don't know you're kidding.

We were skeptical that Francesca would be able to handle the kids and continue to be a house cat. We were pleasantly surprised to see that she would let the kids pull on her fur and ears and not try to kill them. She even made the first family Christmas card picture, sans Mom and Dad, last year.


The whole family: Piper, Henry, Rosemary and Francesca.

I guess there was a point in the kids' development where they got big and fast enough to really do some damage to the cat. Least week the cat stuck back, putting a couple scratches on Piper's arm. It was in self defense, for sure, but that still doesn't fly. Kids are going to pull on an animal. The animal can either take it or it can't be around the kids. That's pretty simple.

We thought the cat fighting back might be a fluke, so we gave her a second chance. Then, this past Saturday, Francesca got so mad at the kids I was sure injury was imminent. Francesca was hissing and swatting and her hair was falling out. It was bad for everyone involved.

I decided, with Heather's consent, that it was time for Francesca to experience the great outdoors. The few times she's made a break for the yard, she's really liked it. I figured it would be a slow transition, where she would spend most of her time on our screen porch and then venture off little by little though the open screen door into the yard.

I went to the pet store yesterday and bought Francesca a nice outdoor bed for the porch and a red break-away collar in case she got stuck on something. I put on her collar, with our name and phone number on the tag and set her free.

She was on the back porch for about an hour and then she disappeared.

Ten freaking years that cat was with us and she just took off. I hope she took off anyway. Heather and I were talking last night about how we hoped she was OK. Heather was glad she had a new collar and it had our contact information on it. I just kept on asking, where the hell is that cat. Seriously, where is the cat? We live in a neighborhood. It's just houses in every direction and they're all the same. It isn't like she found a better house. This one has food, water, and a cat bed on the porch. She's lived here for almost seven years. I don't get it.

This morning I went looking for her around the house and found her collar hanging on a hydrangea. Sooooo . . . she is collarless and missing.

I can't very well make a sign to get the cat back just so I can put her in the yard again. She can't come back in the house and attach herself to one of the kids' faces. Maybe she'll come back. I hope she's OK.

On top of feeling like jerk for causing my little buddy to suffer from his procedure, I may be a cat executioner. I really want her to come back and be a yard cat. Maybe she didn't understand my intentions.

Here kitty. Come home. Sorry about that thing where I put you in the yard after ten years of being a house cat.

If you see a gray cat in a J.Crew sweater, drop me a line.