Day 167 - Picture Friday

No matter how young or old you are, it still hurts to get kicked in the balls.

After hours of searching, Lisa and Scott find Emma stashing candy and ribs in a duffel bag.

NOTE FROM LISA: I forbade Scott to publish the caption he wanted to write.

Unbeknownst to Emma, she is about to be attacked by an angry mob of enchanted shoes.

No matter how young or old you are, it still hurts sliding your balls into the leg of a chair.

Have a great weekend!

Day 166 - Fabric of Your Imagination

When Andrew was diagnosed with eczema, the doctor gave us a few instructions: turn down the heater, apply ointment to his skin twice a day, and to dress him in 100% cotton clothing. So when I got home from that appointment, I immediately did two things: bought some ointment at the drugstore and packed up all of Andrew's spandex clothing.

Of course my mom called to see what the verdict was at the doctor's. She said she figured as much since she too has eczema on her hands. It's actually a pretty severe case of eczema because she really has to be careful of what types of soaps and detergents she uses. For example, when she was staying with us she accidentally mistook a bottle of cocoa butter lotion for the soap dispenser. What happened? Her hands got all red and cracky like Andrew's previous case of anal warts (see entry - Day 115).

A few days later, my mom called me to say she went shopping for the kids. Armed with the knowledge that Andrew should wear 100% cotton clothing, Grandma Ichikawa went searching for the best cotton out there. And find it she did. My mom said she bought a bunch of clothing that was...

...one hundred percent orgasmic cotton.

Excuse me? Is that the way they picked the cotton or is that what happens when you wear it? If it's the latter, I'd have to say that I'd rather wear 100% orgasmic vinyl just for the clean up.

Obviously, my mom meant to say organic cotton. It's just one of those tongue twisty words for a person raised in Japan. I mean just the other day my mom told me she read an article about Al Gore talking about how man-made pollution has been responsible for the climax change.

Day 165 - Cartoon Wednesday

Day 164 - Home Alone

I've been left home alone with the kids before and it has been no big deal. But yesterday was a little different because it inaugurated my life as a stay-at-home parent. Sure, I start my next gig in two weeks, but for two whole weeks...14 days...336 hours...20,160 minutes...Seasons of LOOOOVVEEEE. Doh, sorry. Didn't mean to have my musical theater side of me reveal itself. But for the next two weeks, I will be responsible for the lives of our two kids. No longer can I use my alibi that it was all Lisa's fault for infant negligence as I slather alcohol and cocaine all over Lisa's sleeping body.

I must say that yesterday was a pretty difficult day. The thing that compounded the difficulty is that the kids had my parents around for the past two weeks. And as all grandparents do, my parents loved to pay attention to the kids. Any slight whimper, my mom rushed to them. Any slight moisture, my mom changed their diaper. Any slight sprinkling of household dust, my mom Swifted them. So when they left, I believe I was left with two very well attended to babies.

So what made yesterday so difficult? Here's a brief rundown of my day:

I woke up around 7:30am. I decided I would quickly eat my usual breakfast of oatmeal with blueberries and honey, a cup of coffee, and brisket. Andrew woke up first so I spent a little time with him in the living room. Then around 8:15a Emma woke up. I changed their diapers and clothes. Lisa usually spends a long time figuring out how to coordinate their outfits; I just pulled off whatever was on top of the drawer. Seriously, all of Emma's clothes is pink and Andrew's is blue -- how difficult is it to coordinate (you hear that Lisa?)?

I figured I would feed the kids around 9am. I even thought ahead and premade two bottles of formula and put it in the fridge for quick access. Pretty smart, huh! Around 8:45a, the kids started to get fussy, so I put them in their cages and went to warm up their bottles.

The bottle warmer we have is pretty fancy with a lot of different settings. The warmer has always been on the "room temperature/formula" setting, but I had to change it to the "refrigerated/formula" setting. I put the bottle in the warmer, turned it on, and tried to change the setting. But no matter what I did I couldn't reset it. I unplugged the warmer, hit different combinations of buttons, but nothing. Pretty dumb, huh? By now both kids were crying bloody murder for their bottles. I picked up one of them to calm them down as I continued to fumble with the warmer. I decided just to warm it up on the room temperature setting and hoped for the best.

Guess what? The kids refused the bottles because it was still too cold. So I popped the bottles back into the warmer on a lower setting. Teasing the kids with the bottle made them angrier. Andrew crinkled his nose with such anger that his nostrils eventually became parallel with his eyebrows.

With both bottles at a proper temperature, I placed both kids into their little baby seats. I raised their bottles into their mouths and sighed relief. Except Emma would not stop crying. Now she was gurgling as she was screaming because formula was spilling out from her mouth. To appease her, I took her out of the her seat and fed her in my arms. But that meant I had to stop feeding Andrew. So Emma was now happily being fed, but Andrew now had his nostrils on his forehead.

I eventually got both of them fed and burped. Glancing at the clock, it was getting close to 10am which was about the time for their nap. I placed Andrew in his crib, and he fell asleep. I placed Emma in her crib, and she cried. During this time, I went to wash up and get dressed. Ten minutes later, she was still crying. I checked on her, patted her tummy, and left the bedroom. During this time, I went to take a dump. Eight hours later, she was still crying (I was constipated...so sue me).

When I finally got Emma to nap, Andrew woke up 10 minutes after. So I ended up playing with him for about fifteen minutes and decided that I would have to get Emma up too. Although she ended up sleeping for a little over 30 minutes, I needed to have them on a similar schedule still. This time I fed them right away to avert any feeding disasters. The second feeding went much smoother. Except for the fact that they both spit up on me.

The rest of the day consisted of the kids crying to be picked up. I would pick Andrew up, and Emma would cry. I would pick Emma up, and Andrew would whine. Yet there were certain points in the day that I was able to entertainment them at the same time. The kids seemed to enjoy listening to me play the piano and read books to them. The kids seemed to not enjoy me cavorting with vagrants and burning Styrofoam in the kitchen.

But I would have to say the highlight of the day happened to me right before Lisa came home. I was lying down on the baby blanket with Emma and Andrew on either side of me. The kids were listening to me read a book to them. Andrew had his arm on my shoulder, and Emma had her hand around my neck. Despite all of the exhaustion and frustration I had all day, it's moments like these that you remember.

At around 4pm, Lisa opened the front door and returned from work. I had Emma flying like an airplane above my head, and she was laughing. Lisa asked me, "How was your first day home?" And just as I opened my mouth to answer, Emma opened her mouth to spit up on my face. Ah yes. It's moments like these that you remember.

Day 163 - Poll Results & New Poll

Last week's poll was a tie between eczema and your basic everyday rash. Well, I took Andrew to the doctor last week and the diagnosis was...eczema! The doctor gave us a prescription for some cream, and we're suppose to put this Aquaphor ointment on his body twice a day. The cream must've worked because his little red spot on his head vanished. Unfortunately, the red spot was replaced by a gaping hole, but we'll just cover that up with some duct tape.

For this week's poll, I found myself in a bind today. Today was the first day in some time that I have been left alone with the kids all day long. My parents returned to Sacramento this past weekend, so it's just me with the twins. I'll go into my awful first day as Mr. Mom tomorrow, but I found myself with a possible problem: I think the kids are now used to constant attention. When my parents were here for two weeks, they were able to hold the kids and take care of their fussing whenever it was necessary. Well, I am on my own so it's not entirely possible for me to cater to the kids the same way my parents were able to do. So for this week's poll, WHAT THE HELL DO I DO? HELP ME! GOOD LORD MY EARS ARE BLEEDING FROM ALL THE CRYING!

Day 162- Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

This past weekend, we decided it was time to build the second crib. Although the kids never physically assaulted each other while sharing a crib, Lisa did catch Andrew putting shaving cream in Emma's hand while tickling her nose with a feather.

Since my dad was still around, I had him help me out with the crib building. My dad is very handy and has a garage full of saws, hammers, and dead bodies. When I was in college, my dad made me this gigantic bed/loft for my apartment. The bed was on top, a large desk was in the center, and on opposite sides were these gigantic shelving units with sliding cabinets. In one of Al Gore's speeches, he mentioned that my dad destroyed 1% of the world's rainforests in order to build the bed/loft.

Ripping open the crib box revealed a multiple of slats, screws, and sideboards. I organized all of the pieces into neat little piles and we were ready to go! Most of the instructions were pretty straight-forward, but the pictures were on the small side. But no worries! How hard could putting together a crib be? The more pertinent question is how frustrating could putting together a crib be? The answer: VERY.

Screwing and pounding the pieces together was pretty easy, but the most difficult part was figuring out how to insert the side of the crib that goes up and down. I swear the instructions for this portion of the construction was an entire page. I read it over and over again, but just gave up and figured it must just be a matter of sliding a couple of pieces together. After several tries and mental curses (My mom was around. She likes her language as clean as everything else surrounding her.), my dad and I were able to put the perimeter of the crib together.

While doing all of this, my mom was providing delight color commentary like the following:

"Good thing Daddy here to help! Scotty wouldn't be able to do himself!"

"Scotty messed up again!"

"You doing it all wrong, Scotty!"

"Why you approaching me with a machete, Scotty?"

Eventually, all we had left to do was slide the bottom drawer into the crib. After several attempts, I looked at the tiny diagrams in the instructions. I realized I screwed in the drawer rails upside down on the side of the crib.

"Scotty messed up!"

So I pushed myself under the crib, unscrewed, flip-flopped, and rescrewed. There! We tried once again to insert the bottom drawer. Still didn't work. I looked at the diagram again with fear. I realized the rails on the side of the drawer were on the wrong side.

"Scotty messed up again!"

This fix was more involved because we had to take apart the entire drawer in order to switch the sides of the drawer. I don't think I've screwed so much since Lisa and I were trying to have kids. And you know what that got us: screwed.

After this last correction, the drawer slid in perfectly and we were all done. The next job was for my mom which was to dust and wipe and clean every nook and cranny of the crib. Finally we rolled the crib into our bedroom and just waited for night to fall.

We were all intrigued to see how this would all pan out. Andrew and Emma have been sharing the same space since they were conceived. It's a pretty surreal thought to think the first time they had to share the same room was inside Lisa's vagina. Thankfully, Lisa's vagina is really large and they were able to accessorize the place nicely with a couple of throw rugs and lava lamps.

The sun went down, the kids got their baths, and it was time to test the separation. How would the kids react? Would they be confused? Would they be disoriented (meaning confused, not un-Asian)? Guess what? They didn't give a damn about it. We plopped them in the crib, kissed them, and they went to sleep.

That just reinforces to us that as parents we often project our own feelings and thoughts on our young ones. But sometimes the answer is a lot simpler: they're just babies. It's not that they're stupid (although sometimes they are) or not learning (although sometimes it seems like they're not learning a dang thing). It's just that babies are still trying to figure out this crazy world we're living in. And as adults, we're still sorting things out. I know I'm far from figuring out the world because my mom reminds me every time that I screw up.

Day 161 - Movie Night

Since my parents aren't going to return for another three weeks, we decided we would take advantage of our current situation and go see a movie. Before the kids, Lisa and I would see a movie practically every weekend. It was very rare when we would see two movies in the same day, but when we did it was usually because we just saw a sucky movie. I remember one day we went to see Sliver at the Mann National in Westwood. It was such an awful movie, we decided we needed something to clean the cinematic palate. So we drove to Century City to see the next showing of Hot Shots Part Deux (hey...at least those laughs were intentional).

So what movie were we to see? We narrowed it down to two choices: There Will Be Blood and Semi-Pro. One critically acclaimed, the other critically panned. As usual, we went down our list of criteria to decide which movie to see:

1) Our mood: We wanted something light and frothy, unlike Andrew's diapers which are heavy and farty.
2) Theater or DVD worthy: Will we lose anything not watching it in the theater besides $30 at the concession stand?
3) Reliability: Are the people who made the movie reliable (i.e. director, writer, actor, gaffer, key grip, etc)? That is do they usually make movies that we enjoy?
4) Critical consensus: What is the general critical consensus on the movie? Do the critics love it or do they want want to gouge their eyes out?

After going through our list, we decided upon Semi-Pro. We wanted something light, comedies are funnier with a theater audience, we both find Will Farrell funny, and the critics hated it. Oh wait...hmm...maybe we should've paid more attention to criteria number four.

I bought the tickets online for the Arclight Theater just down the street from us. The Arclight is a pretty fancy theater. Ticket prices are a little higher, but the movie-watching experience is of a higher quality. What do you get for a few dollars more than your usual $10.50 movie ticket? You get reserved seating. You get no commercials. You get leather seats. You get a maximum of three trailers. You get a lobby with exhibits, a store, a coffee bar, and a liquor bar. And most importantly, you get a personal wet nurse to sate your daily protein needs.

"Semi-Pro" wasn't that great. It was just so-so. It had a few chuckles, but I don't really remember what I laughed at. Not a ringing endorsement, and I'm sure "There Will Be Blood" is a better movie. But I'm also pretty sure without having seen "There Will Be Blood" that it does not open with the entertaining ditty "Love Me Sexy" nor does it have scenes of an escaped bear attacking random cast members. So take that Mr. Daniel-Day-I-Won-Another-Oscar-Lewis.