Day 380 - Weather or Not

Although it is October, we're going through a little heat wave here in Los Angeles. Today in Sherman Oaks it was 101 degrees. Since the kids woke up earlier than usual this morning, I had the time to change their diapers and get them into their clothes. The morning is the easiest time of the day to do their diapers and clothes because they're so groggy. I like to call it the baby hang-over: they're tired, incoherent, and they have piss in their pants.

Due to the weather, I thought I would put the kids in summer clothing. I put Andrew into a green striped t-shirt and some shorts; Emma wore a flowery cotton dress. When it comes to dressing the kids, there's a big difference between the method Lisa and I use. Lisa takes her time and looks carefully through the dresser drawer. Lisa looks outside and determines what the weather is. If we're having guests, she makes sure the kids are wearing something that they received as a gift. She also figures out a cute color coordination with the outfits. Maybe Andrew's top is blue and his pants are red, and then Emma's top is red and her pants are blue! Or maybe the flowers on Emma's dress matches the sailboat on Andrew's t-shirt. How delightfully cute!

On the other hand, my clothing selection is much more simple: whatever is on top. Funny enough that was also how I selected girlfriends in college.

My parents arrived around 7:30am to babysit. The first thing I heard is my mom in a falsetto voice singing, "Hellooooooooo. Wheeeeere Annnnnnndreeeeeew? Helloooooooo Emmmmmmaaaaaa! Guesssss who heeeeeeere? Grandmaaaaa and Daddddddy!" Yes, my mom often gets her proper nouns confused. She'll call herself Mommy and call me Grandpa. Sadly I can't even blame this confusion on her Japanese accent. It's just plain wacky.

My mom saw that I got the kids dressed, and of course she had to criticize my choice of clothes.

"It hot today! Hot hot hot! Emma wear dress? Hmm. Hard for her to crawl. Andrew has t-shirt on? Maybe he should wear tank top?"

I just shake my head and tell my mom what they're wearing is fine. She then told me how cold it is at night and whether or not the kids are wearing enough clothing. I told her it's going to be over a hundred degrees today and the kids are just fine going to sleep wearing a thong. If it's good enough for me, it's good enough for them. And the clothing conversation ended.

BUT...

...when I got home from work today guess what I noticed? Both kids were wearing totally new outfits! Emma was out of her dress and was wearing a yellow tank top. And Andrew's green t-shirt was replaced with a red tank top. I got hoodwinked! When I left for work, my mom redressed the kids! I was bamboozled! My mom ignored my wishes and did what she wanted to do! She did not respect my au-tho-ri-tay! Shazbot!

I suppose this is a part of the whole I've-raised-two-kids-and-I-know-what's-right-and-you-don't-so-listen-to-Grandma shpeel. Sometimes I forget that even though I'm a parent, I'm still a kid to my parents. Thankfully, I can laugh at this incident of my mom not listening to me. Hell, I'm used to it. Lisa hasn't listened to me for the past ten years.

Day 379 -Poll Results and New Poll

Last week I was wondering whether or not I should change the banner of this blog. Since the header is a year old, I thought I should update it with newer pictures. But 55% of you think I should keep it just the way it is, and 22% suggested I mix it up with the old and the new. What disappointed me the most is that only 2% (yes only 2%) of you think I should rename the blog to "Jessica Alba & Megan Fox in a Pod." I was SO upset with this small percentage of votes that I just had to do something about it. As you can see, I fiddled around with Photoshop and came up with this brand-new banner. What do you think?


I'll probably keep the original "Edamames in a Pod" up for a while longer, but I really do think I will need to redo it one day. In the meantime, I think I'll leave my temporary banner up for a few days. Or at the very least as long until Lisa finds out. Shhhh.

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One night, Lisa and I were nibbling at our dinner. Nothing very exciting. And as we were feeding Emma and Andrew their food, we came to a realization: their dinner was a lot more varied and exciting than ours. Here's what I mean:

Lisa & Scott's Dinner
Spaghetti
Marinara sauce
Two bottles of vodka

Emma & Andrew's Dinner
Whole grain pasta
Tofu
Sweet potatoes
Chicken
Broccoli
Bananas
Grapes
Two small bottles of vodka

Quite a difference, right? Granted we're not giving them huge servings of each item, but we're probably giving them around 10 small pieces. This got me to thinking whether or not we're serving their meals correctly. Are we doing something wrong? Less variety, larger portions? More variety, smaller portions? More "BAM", less "bon appetite"?

Day 378 - Sweating With the Oldie

When my parents babysit the kids, they try to keep them entertained. They play music, read books, and play games. But when all else fails, Crazy Grandma Ichikawa has quite a few tricks up her sleeve.

When I was a younger, I remember my mom being pretty quiet. She would take me outside occasionally, but what I recall is that I enjoyed entertaining myself. I would play with my Lincoln Logs, Tinker Toys, and testicles for hours on end. Even when I left for college, I don't remember my mom being too odd. Yet somewhere between college and now, my mom became quite wacky. That is why we now call her Crazy Grandma Ichikawa.

And now this brings us to the intersection of babysitting and craziness. Even though both my parents are retired and getting up there, they're pretty dang peppy for their age. My mom tries to be especially energetic by making sure she exercises and eats well. Sometimes when she is babysitting, she'll do some of her exercises in front of the kids. And guess what? Emma started copying my mom with some leg exercises.

My dad caught it all on camera so I share this bond between Crazy Grandma Ichikawa and Crazy Emma Ichikawa with you:

Day 377 - One Year Doctor Appointment

Yesterday, Emma & Andrew had their one year doctor's appointment. According to the doctor, the kids are "perfectly" healthy and seem to be developing just fine.

Every time we have a doctor's appointment, my mom has a question we must ask the doctor. This time Crazy Grandma Ichikawa wanted us to ask the doctor if the pieces of meat we were feeding the kids were too big. Common sense tells me that if the pieces were too big for the kids, they would've choked by now. BUT we still asked the doctor, and she responded what we were doing with the shredded chicken was fine and we could actually introduce all types of meats to them now. Goodbye chicken, hello big ass theme park turkey leg.

What I always like to find out is how large the kids are getting. Andrew is now 30 inches tall and 20 pounds. This puts him in the 55th percentile for height and the 15th percentile for weight. The doctor told us that he just seems to be one of those scrawny, lanky kids. This amazes me because everyone tells us that Andrew looks like me, yet I am such a mammoth of muscle so how could Andrew look like me? As for Emma, she is 31 inches tall and 23 pounds. This puts her in the 96th percentile for height and the 80th percentile for weight. The doctor told us that she just seems to be one of those....and then she bit her tongue and turned away from us.

Below, I made a progress chart showing how Emma and Andrew have been tracking over the past year. The blue and yellow lines on the top represents their height in inches. For the most part they have been tracking pretty evenly although Emma is just a little taller than Andrew. The green and red lines on the bottom represents their weight in pounds. I think it goes without saying that the green line is Emma and the red line is Andrew. For the first few months the kids were pretty similar, but then Emma just took off and never looked back.

And when I say she never looked back, I mean it literally. She can't turn her head anymore because her chin gets in the way.

Regardless of height and weight, the most important fact is that the kids are healthy. Lisa and I have had a very fortunate first year with the kids void of illness and troubles. And despite all of this good news, I still can't get this image of the kids growing up into something that looks a little like this:

Day 376 - Picture Friday

"I don't know if I'm eating or throwing up..."

"Good golly! Mommy really is tone deaf!"

"I think my pink car is great!"

"I think my pink car is FAAAAAA-BU-LOUSSSSSS!!!"

Andrew's impression of being breast-fed by the Invisible Woman.

Have a great weekend!

Day 375 - No Cause For Alarm

Lisa and I have pretty reliable internal alarm clocks. Lisa can get by with four to five hours of sleep each night; she'll usually wake up around 5am every day. On the other hand, I need a little bit more sleep in order to maintain my please-don't-beat-me-up-this-is-my-first-year-at-high-school youthful looks; I enjoy seven to eight hours of sleep, and I'm usually up around 7am.

I'm not too sure what happened one night, but something went awry during our bedtime routine. Right before we turn off the television and the lights, I turn on our sound machine and I place the baby monitor on a bench at the foot of our bed. And then Lisa turns off the lights, and we do the "Ichikawa Nasty" for as long as we can last. Oh, and by "Ichikawa Nasty" I mean farting underneath the sheets.

The next morning we were in for a surprise. Since we both wear corrective lenses, it's always a struggle to wake up because we have to rummage for our glasses. Waking up is even more of a hassle for Lisa because she also has to rummage for her prosthetic legs and ass. When Lisa placed her glasses on, she freaked out: it was 8:30am.

You see, the kids always wake up between 7 and 7:30am. I don't know the last time they got out of their cribs past 7:30am. So I freaked out too because I didn't know why we didn't hear them on the monitor. After mistakenly placing Lisa's prosthetic ass on my face, I quickly corrected myself and found my glasses. I went to the baby monitor and the power light was on. BUT the volume was all the way down to zero.

With each step we took towards the kids' bedroom, the silence of the house slowly morphed into hyperventilating crying. As we opened the door, poor Emma and Andrew were in their cribs crying away wondering why we didn't get them earlier. Not only were they stuck in their cribs for an extra hour, but they were also hungry because they should have been fed 45 minutes ago.

Thankfully, after carrying them and giving them their bottles the kids were just fine. But of course Lisa and I felt pretty guilty about neglecting them. And I also think we felt a little guilty because it was actually a little nice to have slept in so late. The last time we slept in past 8am was September 20, 2007...not that I've been counting.

This was also one of those situations where Lisa and I could have argued and pointed fingers at each other. But because we were concerned about the kids, we didn't have time to do that. When the kids took their nap, I thought about talking to Lisa about what happened. A certain someone should have checked the volume on the baby monitor before going to sleep. And that certain someone was Lisa. I mean she totally should have reminded me to double check the volume control, but she didn't. What kind of idiotic person wouldn't remind someone about a volume control? But I took the high road and kept my mouth shut. I guess that's just the type of husband I am.

Day 374 - Cartoon Wednesday