Wave of Calm

As we were sitting in bed last night, as we are apt to do, Abby let me know that the righty was moving and I could feel if I wanted. After I explained that girls had cooties, and that she was technically 3 girls right now; I impressed upon her that she was a walking talking ticking cootie time-bomb. Then, I remembered that I love her and girls have soft skin as well as smell good. End result: I felt the babies moving. They're less like distinct punches anymore, and more like the feeling of a garbage bag filled with Kielbasa lengths and a really hungry Slavic little person. There's things being pressed against the walls. Do you know what it is? No. Are you Curious? Of course. Is it adorable? Debatable, depending on the facial hair of the little person.

Anyhow, we're realizing that the girls react and wake up to certain stimuli.
-Pretty much anything the dogs do.
The dogs will bark, squeal, squeek toys, growl, or pass gas. Whatever it is, the babies start freaking out.

-Abby gets angry at me
Whenever I do something to get her ire up, the little ones start try go all "Berlin Wall" on her cervix. I like to think of her womb as East Berlin.





"Hey, Mommy, leave my dad alone"






Admittedly, there's a very good chance I did something wrong, and I'm sorry. But, I can tell when She's gettign grumpy, because she starts to ripple around the edges.

-She lays on her side
Whoever's on the bottom protests the way you should react at the bottom of a pig pile. You laugh, then you say, "Ok, that's enough." Then you get tired of being crushed and start flailing around like an epileptic baboon.





Or a college student.






-Mommy is hungry
Those kids bang their fists on the table harder and more incessantly than the whiny kids from Newsies. Or Little Orphan Annie. I can't remember, but when they're hungry, they go ballistic. Stomping on bladders, poking lungs, breaking ribs; if you had these kids over for dinner, your fine china would be gone becasue they ate right through it and started in on your fiberboard Ikean dinner table, Ėngo.

As the weeks skim by, Abby inches ever closer to the self-imposed exile of bed-ridden-inity. The days are getting tougher, and her tummy is getting larger. The little ones are growing and stretching at the flesh pouch walls. To the touch it doesn't feel like a soft, supple pillow anymore. It's more like a water balloon, filled to the point just before popping.

You know, like when you have your little sister fill the water balloons to go throw at people, but she's not very good at it. Each balloon looks great and ready to soak an unwitting parent. But then you go to pick it up and find she's filled them with hot water, "Because the cold water was making my fingers hurt." Wuss. Anyhow, the hot water makes all the balloons stick together. So when you try to pick one of the overfilled,piping hot projectiles... they break. All of them, and the hot, balloon-soup sloshes out of the shallow baking dish (who uses a baking dish to carry water balloons? Seriously.) and down the front of your shirt. Wait, maybe that was the plot the whole time.

But I'm off topic. There are two babies in there, and they're running out of space. I have this mental image of the two coming out with flat sides from being pressed together for so long.





"Which one's yours?"
"The girls in Row 2 Column C and D"





All told, things are progressing very well. The pre-baby routine is well in place and ready to be shattered by the unexpected, yet also predicted, foibles of parenthood.

You can see the kicks and punches through her shirt now, and it's really trippy.

Resources

Having twins entails a lot of information gathering and preparation in order to raise a pair of healthy, well adjusted human young.

Fortunately I found this:

Science!

[Title]

I have been drawing a blank on what to put here, so I decided to add a few limericks.

As parents to be we've stayed out of trouble
We've kept the bearer home safe in her bubble
But that means we've been boring
Anchored safe at our Mooring
So with dinner/dessert I pour out a double

Abby frequently woke up to pee
On the hour every hour plus three
she would toss and turn
While the squished bladder churn
Instead, rubber sheets set her free

Through her shirt I now see them move
As they dance and punch to the groove
Mozart, Beethoven and Bach
Jazz flute, piano and rock
Yet it's of Bieber that they disapprove

It may be that I'm her loving spouse
but she looks awfully good in that blouse
She elegant, charming and cute
A tiny smile can leave me mute
Despite that she's about the size of a house

I am the glue.

I left town for the weekend to go to the college homecoming football game. And then hell broke loose at home. It would seem that my very pressence prevents the hell-mouth under our house from opening at any given moment. While it's a bit unsettling to know that an ancient Native American burial ground resides under our hot tub slab, I feel pretty good about being a universe calming force. I'm like Keanu Reeves.

As I left the house Friday, Abby had the pleasure of meeting our reasonably benign poltergeist, Ralph. He explained how he had been a logger/prospector from when Kenmore was a thriving strip-mining/gold rush town, then he sprinkled the cats with fleas. The dogs were riled up by the zombie corpse of the bird that had flown into our living room window, after it was reanimated by the dark nexus swirling beneath the floorboards. It could only fly in circles, so every three minutes the dogs could smell and see it's delightfully decaying body soar past the window.

Saturday morning the flea-hosting cats had decided that they would finally brave the trek upstairs to give their parasitic guests the grand tour. They made stops at the couch, the other couch, all over the floor, in the crib and on the window sill. All told, the kitties spread their hair sufficiently to send the pregnant lady into a justified, yet overexerting, cleaning binge. Meanwhile, the dogs smelled cat everywhere, and found paper towels to eat. I think an evil curse was placed on the paper towels at the paper towel factory to make them irresistible and un-poop-able.

This lead to the overexerted, under slept, back-achey, sore stomached, pregnant lady wrestling a disgusting party favor from a possessed dog's back end. That's when she let me know how bad things were going. Then she went all Exorcist on her water bottle while trying to swallow some vitamins.

Of course, as I walked in the front door, things returned to normal. The gates of Hades creaked shut. The dogs stopped getting along with the cats. The blood stopped oozing from the walls.

So, the new rule of the house is this: I can't leave for extended periods of time. At least without finding her some ancient artifact or talisman.

A Many-Splendored Thing

No one told me how gross pregnant women are.

There's all sorts of fun things that start happening, and not all of them are magical and existential. Abrasions from things rubbing that have never rubbed before. Thicker, fuller, longer hair on her head, legs, and lip. The pre-natal vitamins and strange diet have put keratin production into overdrive. The Selleck 'stache is going to be epic.





"We should Decorate the nursery tonight."
"You're more beautiful than the day I married you."





Her belly is growing and preventing her from trimming her leg hair, but it has moved past the prickly stage into a soft velvety otter's pelt.

There are strange smells that no one expected. The front end, the back end, new orifices that are just as gross and horrifying as you would expect; all producing distinct and nasty smells. the production of new smells is kind of a cruel joke for nature to pull on a lady that already had a heightened sense. She can pick out garlic at 30 paces, yet the belly button saw fit to set up a
kefir factory.

A simple ingrown hair, growing at light-speed though it may be, has transformed from a minor inconvenience into a Indiana Jone worthy expedition. I think it has more of a Temple of Doom feel, as opposed to Lost Ark. A least in the portrayed female leads.

Left Field

I have decided that Mondays will, from here on out, be scheduled and dependable non-sequitur days. Today's topic - putting together the nursery.

On Clothes:
Abby: "I find a skirt made out of a blanket to be more comfortable than pants."

On Food:
Des: "Where should I put these leftovers?"
Abby: "I Don't think so."

On Philosophy:
"Can you make me some toast, with peanut butter, and a napkin, on a plate, and fill my water bottle with ice?"

On Home improvement:
Des: "I'd prefer not to put any nails in right now."
Abby: "Ok, but you can hang a picture first."

On healthy eating:
The difference between a fancy appetizer and a cheese sandwich is the name of the cheese and the staleness of the bread.

On Decor:
What should we put on the shelf?
we can put anything, as long as it's mounted to the wall.