Day 273 - Nine Months Old

Today the kids turned nine months old. Or as our friend so aptly stated: The kids have been out as long as they were in.

I'd have to say so far the last month has been the most fun. Both of the kids are starting to show more personality and most importantly laughing at my pathetic attempts at baby humor. It's also great to come home from work and see my three most important things in my life smiling at me: Emma, Andrew, and my Wii; I pasted a yellow happy face on Randolph (that's what I call my Wii).

But with the personality, I see hints of future difficulties. Mainly how do you treat two children born at the same time fairly without creating them into some Stepford kids. I'll pick up Emma to play with her, then I'll see Andrew with his scrunched up face crawling towards me wanting to be picked up too. At least this problem has an easy solution: don't pick up either of them and go watch Good Eats. But what happens with dating, borrowing the car, and evenly allocating bong time? Hopefully by that time they will either realize they are two distinct individuals or one will be a winner and the other a loser (you've always got to put all your eggs in the winner's basket, right?).

And as an aside, my parents are definitely going to leave for Sacramento next Tuesday. So tomorrow morning we're going to take them out to breakfast, and tonight my mom made us dinner. Par for the course, after spending several hours with my mom tonight I have another fun Grandma Ichikawa story.

Today's Grandma Ichikawa story must be prefaced with the definition of a few Japanese words. The first one is chin-chin (cheen-cheen). That's a baby word for penis. The second one is oshiri. That's your ass. I bet with those two words you just know today's Grandma Ichikawa story is going to be fun. On with the show...

Since my mom is leaving for Sacramento, she has been on my case about a bunch of things with the kids. It's as if everything she has been telling me over the past three months is being regurgitated in one gigantic nagging upchuck in these last few days. One thing she is concerned about is Emma's & Andrew's frequent bowel movements.

The kids poop around three times a day. Nice solid ones. Sometimes solid like a rock, occasionally pasty like putty. But never diarrhea which is a sign that something might be wrong with your kid. I think with the heat and the poop, the surrounding poop chute has been just a tad bit tender. Nothing really bad at all (Hear that Auntie Susan? Nothing to worry about!), so we just tenderly clean around there and if necessary put a little diaper cream around the hole.

After we finished dinner tonight, I was holding Emma on my lap. I told my mom that I was going to give Emma a bath tonight. My mom started to talk about Emma's poop, her tender butthole, and proper butthole hygiene. And then Grandma Ichikawa tells me...

"Make sure you wash her oshiri and chin-chin nice and squeaky clean."

I was puzzled and responded, "Wash her chin-chin?"

Without hesitation, Grandma Ichikawa retorts, "YES! You need to wash good or else it get itchy. You should know!"

"Mom...seriously. Listen to me. Wash...Emma's...penis?"

After a slight pause, my mom cracks herself up. "HAHAHAHA! HOO-HOO! What am I saying? SNICKER CHORTLE!"

Then to top it off, she ends this talk about transgender confusion with a surreal, "I guess you better wash your wife's chin-chin too!"

I really don't know what else to say about that so...have a great weekend!