Lyle Lovett had it right, anyway.

The mystery masked man was smart
He got himself a Tonto
'Cause Tonto did the dirty work for free
But Tonto he was smarter
And one day said kemo sabe
Kiss my @$$ I bought a boat
I'm going out to sea

But I digress.

Yesterday was my wife's first day back to work after 7 weeks off for maternity leave. One week ahead of the standard six was for elevated BP. Being a Stay-At-Home Dad, that made it my first day of Full Time wrangling in a long, long time. And the first with an infant and a toddler.

I'll get into details later, but for the first day, there were a lot fewer complications than I expected. I got an Itzbeen timer in one of the DL Live drawings a while back. It came in really handy for predicting whether the fussing was a diaper, bottle or sleepiness. With our first, I was already in tune. Now, 2 years older and with a lot of attention diverted to the toddler (who is currently riding his bulldozer on the edge of our couch....) I wasn't in tune with Tristan's timings or cues. So, I just jumped in.

Everyone seems to ask two questions of us. First is how Duncan has adapted to having a brother. The second is whether we're finished. Duncan seems to know how to work it. When he really wants attention, he gets all lovey with us and his brother. By noon, he's probably kissed his brother 15 times. He does pretty well, but he's starting to grab his brother's chin to turn his head for the full-on frontal kiss. We're working on that. As for future plan, we don't know. Not for a while, I can tell you that, at the very least.

One thing I am not proud of at this point is the amount of time the TV is on. I had set an aim to keep it down to 2 hours or less prior to the birth. It was working until the MiL showed up and figured that it was good enough for her kids.... Now, it's just easy to use it as a buffer. There's a train show called Tracks Ahead that we're recording on the Tivo that the toddler really digs. It's a PBS train show with real trains and real scale model trains, so it's easy to think is has value. Then there's Phineas & Ferb... So we have some work to do.

Right now, the adults are exhausted. We had a double Feature Freak out on Saturday night. Duncan woke up at 2am and it took me over an hour to get him back to sleep. At 3:30, Tristan woke up enough to wake me, quite a feat. The adults were dragging though a very busy Sunday. Monday wasn't a good day to recover and the week's just getting worse. We may be making a last minute trip to Columbus, OH for a surprise party on Saturday. It doesn't look like we'll catch up on sleep for another 20 years. That's life, right? It just seemed like it was much easier with the first. Maybe it's traumatic memory. I think it's more likely that we were so upset with each other that we didn't feel bad letting the other suffer for the sake of our own sanity. This time, it's much more civil. But our united force has two battles every night.

We're getting there. And I'll be stuck at home for at least three more weeks. It's just not easy to get out of the house in this weather. It's not the weather as much as the time it takes to get all packed up with coats involved.

Well, that's a start. We'll see if I can add some more tomorrow.

Any questions?

Sometimes I wonder if we did it the easy way or the tough way by having twins (not we really had a say in it) but as I read about your adventures it is helping me remember the early days of having kids (2 years ago) as we begin to consider moving to a zone defense in our family. IF we do decide to grow our clan it will be 2 three years old when we have a baby. Wowzer. Thanks for the narration.

BTW, huge fan of Lyle Lovett. Love'n the reference.

What a freakin' day. It got better.

last night, we had to punt and take our boys to spend a couple hours with their grandfather while we helped celebrate a friend's 50th birthday party. the waitress was overwhelmed so it took nearly two hours to go from asking for a bill to signing a credit card receipt. Mrs Ben left to get the boys (we drove seperately because I didn't know I was playing hookie from Philharmonic rehearsal) around 8. The boys went to bed rather late. This ALWAYS results in an early and very mean-spirited wake up for our toddler. He was up and screaming at 5:30 this morning. That's my work bell.

So at 5:30 I was up, trying to feed breakfast to a toddler and waiting for the alarm to chime on the newborn. He was up and hungry by 6. He drank an ounce and went back to sleep. From there on, it was a tangled mass of the toddler doing attention things and the baby either sleeping or crying in 10 minute intervals. Every 30 minutes it was either a diaper or a bottle. Never more than an ounce consumed. A lot of formula went down the drain today since he normally drinks 5 ounces every three hours. So, roughly, every two hours I was making a 6oz bottle that would expire before he'd drink 2 ounces.

Then the cable guy showed up to install a CableCard in our Tivo. Not a big deal. Took a while to get the information he needed to activate it, but nothing too bad. He leaves and I try to get the new HD Tivo settled. Duncan, the toddler, gets to watch Sprout in the morning. So I tune into channel 263 and the screen goes gray. About half of the kids channels are missing. They all work on our cable box...

Then lunch and an eventual nap time. I managed to get both boys satisfied by 1 and they give me a solid hour to figure this out. Browsing support sites for both Verizon FIOS and Tivo, it takes about 45 minutes to learn that the package we have for HD doesn't include the same "Basic Channels" in the package for the cable box, even though they're not HD channels. But at least we know now.

So I get all that figured out and settle in for some R&R. The baby wakes up.

Oh well.

But as everything starts to pick back up, the toddler coming out of his post-nap stupor, the baby wants fed, I get the alert that my package to DL arrived. And then they post a video of opening the package. Righteous! Made my day. Granted, not a hard feat today.

Thursday and Friday are a blur.

One of my wife's great loves in life are her fingernails. Being an engineer, she prizes the moments when she can remind herself of being a woman. So every other Thursday, she heads out to get her nails done. This always makes things tough. This week, though there were two complications. She had an appointment with the "lady doctor" in the afternoon. Nothing bad. But then I had my Pipe Club (First Rule of Pipe Club?) about 20 minutes from the house. Pipe Club starts at 5 and her nail appointment starts at 4. Well, add that she was in need of some stuff and needed to stop at Target. I was able to get showered at 6pm. Rush, Rush, Rush.

The real triumph of Thursday was that the boys managed to take their afternoon naps together so I didn't feel guilt taking time to participate in DL Live. Good show guys. Adding alcohol sure loosened things up.

Friday. What can I say? Slow morning. Because Duncan, the older boy, is out of control when we get to the library, we're not doing Toddler Story Time until he's manageable. He is easily 200% more enthusiastic than any other child there. Sometimes it's funny, but it often transitions into being aggressive with timid children. No hitting or anything like that, but aggressive hugging and directing most of the kids there causes a good bit of fear. I wonder if that's the difference between the "normal" SAHD and SAHM child personality. Duncan gets a lot of rough play and encouragement to be independent.

The snow storm hit after Mrs Ben came home. We had some supplies to get and headed out for some shopping. By the time we were done with dinner at the restaurant, the storm had our car covered. We aborted the mission and came home to do our usual night routine.

One week down. It got better as the days went on. It's definitely not just twice the work right now, though. It's made it so apparent just how flexible a toddler's schedule it. With the newborn, the toddler's flexibility has it's moments, good and bad. If I let things slide with him, too much, I end up with two crises instead of handling one minor event at a time.

But life is good. One week down.

Gee, whiz. Week 2 is almost over. Two snow storms kept us home almost all week. We hit a peak of tiredness and the inevitable breakdown in marital communication. We rebuilt and went on to fun and excitement.

The next week is apt to cause some stress. We're packing up to go brew some beer at a friend's house with a bunch of church friends. That means my wife will chill in our friend's basement with some Veggie Tales or Disney movies and the boys and whichever other kids show up. Then next Friday I'm scheduled to help some ministers make beer as part of their workshop. That's about an hour from home and as soon as I get home, I need to head up to Frankenmuth, MI to judge a beer competition. For as much praise as I get for having a productive hobby, every time I do anything with the hobby, I have some sort of undeclared penance to perform. We'll see what two days and a full weekend do to my scoresheet.

Day to Day with the boys has been much better this week. Tristan is starting to progress toward something resembling a schedule. Duncan is getting better about being self-sufficient. Is sure helps that he's walking up and down steps on his own now. He still needs a hand to stabilize n the way down, but he reaches the handrail without stretching now. Not even 2. He's going to be a tall boy.

We're making good progress.

Probably the best reward from being home with my boys occurred this morning. Duncan and I were doing our wrestling thing and I pulled him into a hug and said "I say Duncan and you say..." I filled in "Daddy" for him a few times and then he started saying it really quietly. Then he got the courage to blat it out there. So proud. Then I asked him if he could say "Tristan" and he did, quite clearly. But the next time I tried the "I say..." routine, he filled in with "Truck" and "Train" and "Car". He's gotten a streak of shy lately, so when his mom came home early, he was reluctant to perform. He did do it on accident with me once, though.

A good day.

I feel your pain on the Tivo cablecard thing. That was a real headache when I moved to a smaller town and had to threaten to get the FCC involved. It's still a little glitchy compared to when I had it with Time Warner cable. I want my MTV er Tivo!

I took the boys to the farm to get my brewing equipment. I taught a bunch of clergy how to make beer about three months ago and left my equipment because I had to leave before it was all done. We stopped on the way and got some McD's nearby for a McPicnic under a big arched coldframe they have at the farm. Duncan started wandering while I made up a bottle for the baby. I finally got his attention and he came back to me and followed my direction to stay on our picnic blanket. Then I think the wind whipping over the loose plastic and the various farm noises (the steers were all out in pasture nearby) made him nervous. He wouldn't leave me. Kept crawling up on my leg, sitting on my foot, or just sitting next to me and laying back on me. I drove away from the drive-thru before they handed me his Happy Meal, so we "shared" a Quarter Pounder and fries while I fed Tristan a bottle. It was a moment when I wished someone had been there with a camera. It was precious.

I have to give huge props to a friend reminding me that it is/was the Ides of March today. It explains a lot.

Sent my wife off to Mexico for a couple days this afternoon. After we got home, the baby was inconsolable. Gas, maybe just an upset stomach. Doesn't really matter, does it? It went on and on and on. Every half hour or so, our toddler would join in for a few minutes. There were a few naps in there. But not much and not for long.

Then I also discovered that an award winning cider left my kegs through a faulty valve. That's twice that this has happened in the last few months. 4 gallons down the drain, literally.

And the beer I'm making to replace what I made in December and which disappeard through a faulty valve in a keg is stuck. I've been draining the wort off the mash for nearly 8 hours. It should take less than 2.

It's the Ides of March and it sucks.

At least five times this week, I've wanted to quit. I'm almost two years into this gig and I just felt like it was time to brush off my resume and start walking the streets. It has been that bad. Colic, cold, croupe. The boys illnesses have really run me ragged this week. To get the baby to eat a bit, I'd have to suction his nose and dose him with saline and repeat until the aspirator sucked clean. By then he'd have sucked in so much air crying he needed to be burped and sometimes dosed with mylacon. Even with good things going on, those hours of struggle have shaken the footings.

But I'm going to do better next week. Got on some meds to help me see the bright side of life. Got started on the Claritin D again. Makes a huge difference not to have a sinus headache all day. And we're making it a long weekend in a cabin in a state park near my wife's mother. So we'll have some insulation while seeing family which can be m ore stressful than nearly anything sometimes.

Oh well. Trudging onward.

I'll plug another one in here on an unreasonably sleepless night. Didn't sleep well the last two, so why be cursed when I'm finally home?

This is the travel edition.

We went to Bloomington, IN for the weekend, sort of. Our residence for the weekend was a cabin at a state park about 30 minutes west of town. Between the Dalai Lama's visit to the IU campus last week and a weekend basketball tournament, hotel rooms were scarce. This wouldn't be a problem if the in-Laws' home was inviting to us, even without the kids. Add the kids and it's a nightmare. That they also own a cottage on a lake 15 minutes from town makes the situation that much worse. Anyway, we used a cabin at the same park last month, so were prepared, mostly.

I was in town to judge some beer. Upland Brewing Company is a very good citizen of Bloomington and the brewing community. They host a competition where the winner brews their beer with the head brewer and besides being on tap, it goes to one or several Pro-Ams around the country. The good thing for judges is that they take all of the entry fees and divide them among the judges. So I got $30 for gas money. It's not much, but it counts.

Ok, so we stayed in the cabin Friday and Saturday. We learned the hard way last time that the best option for us, the adults, is to take two of the bunk mattresses and lay them on the floor where the sleeper sofa would otherwise pull out. We push them together and maybe share a blanket. We put the baby's Pack&Play in the bedroom with the bunk beds and the toddler, not yet up to bed-dom, gets to sleep in his PeaPod tent with a blow up mattress, sleeping bag and his collection of animals and blankets.

That's the plan. Well, he wasn't happy with the tent on Friday night. He climbed into bed with us. These are two mini-twin mattresses. Twin fitted sheets barely work on them because they are significantly shorter and narrower than what a twin is. Well, take two large adults, two tiny mattresses and a toddler and spell mayhem. Oh, add that he's an absolute bed hog! Kicks in the ribs are tolerable compared to a firm kick in L$, the same L4 that had a cortisone injection last month. That has cost thousands of dollars over the years to retain the ability to walk. Middle of the night shouting of profanities is not good.

Saturday night was similar. I ended up trying to sleep with my bare back on the cold, wood floor of the cabin. Not being able to sleep that way, I tried to find a more acceptable solution, at 3 am. After all, he was actually asleep while doing all of this. I grabbed his tent, wedged it between my mattress and a table and made sure that it had what he needed. It didn't. It was out of air. The mattress was totally flat. "Maybe I didn't seal it well," I thought. So, I blew up a mattress in the dark, on the floor, and only woke up my wife. I zipped the mattress into the PeaPod and laid him inside. Not a murmur, even when his hair caught on the zipper. He did get the last effect. As I got comfortable for the first time that night, he reaches a leg out and kicks me in the butt. Not on purpose, I think.

Anyway, rough sleeping conditions, but a nice trip. Got to eat at Janko's Little Zagreb. Google it. I've been there four times, I think. My only concise description: Full of Irony. Look at their web page's photo of the table. That's the nicest they have. Then look at some of the reviews on any review site. Hilarious. But, oh, so good.

Ok, That was most of our weekend. en route, my wife mentions that she was invited to go see a truck at a dealer on Monday. She leaves the office at 6am, an hour earlier than she normally rolls in. She'll barely be back for her massage appointment. Ok, that works. It'll be along day for me, but she needs out of the office and this will do it. She also mentions that at the end of the month she'll be going to Seattle for a convention of some sort. Tonight I learn that she leaves on Saturday, this one coming up.

I can deal. She'll be gone four or five days, I think and we'll be doing a lot of eating out. I'll have to arrange for some babysitting, I think. But we'll make it work. But she's traveling with her boss, who is who she's trying to avoid tomorrow by driving three hours up into Michigan. So, I expect her to say that it was one of the worst trips of all time and that she needs a break.

So, not much travel for me, but she's putting on the miles.

At least we've got the nap schedule figured out. That's been a huge help for my sanity.

I'm looking at another Epic Week coming up. My wife got scheduled to be at a conference that starts Sunday morning. She can leave on a red-eye from Seattle on Tuesday. I figure that it will take until Friday for her to recover.

At least this time I have play date offers and some plans to take the boys to their grandpas while I get some gardening done.

More to come.

Several Forum regulars know this from FB, but it's about time I post about last Sunday. And last weekend, in general.

On short notice (10 days) my wife was sent to a conference in Seattle that was sort of tertiary to her responsibilities at work. The conference began on Sunday morning, so a Saturday departure was necessary. She had a red-eye scheduled for Tuesday night, landing here Wednesday morning. Well, I went into this with a good attitude. I knew we could do this. The sleep schedule is stable and we're all getting along. No sweat.

As has been my habit, I decided that I could brew some beer while the boys were napping with periodic visits each direction. I called in some help and a friend came by to help. So that went pretty well on Sunday. I got the boys to bed while chilling the wort.

Then things let loose. Duncan started screaming his poor head off. I charged into the boys' room. Duncan's face was covered in semi digested hot dog and other nastiness. The room stank. I tried to calm him down while cleaning him up. Yanked the blanket off the bed to discover that it held the vomit away from the rest of the bedding. But Duncan couldn't calm down and was close to waking his 5 month old brother. So I took him downstairs to the living room. Holding him, he puked on me once but that was quickly followed by projectile vomiting aimed at my face. That's Daddy Love for you.

I wiped us up, got him cleaned up as much as I could and called my wife. I knew that I needed to take Duncan to the ER just in case something was very wrong. But I didn't want to take the baby with me. I had her call her dad and ask him to come over to listen for Tristan waking up, which shouldn't happen. He came over just after I got us redressed. Duncan seemed a little better but had fits of screaming that sent us out the door.

I got him into the ER at a hospital in town that has called itself a Women's and Children's Hospital. On the way out the door, I got him a sippy cup of water to hopefully help calm his tummy. Well, on the way, he drank nearly the whole cup and then sprayed it down himself and my SUV's seats. So, I carried a drenched, smelly toddler into the hospital about midnight.

We got the preliminary stuff done and got into a room. The TV had the Cartoon Network as their only children's channel. Apparently no one from the hospital staff has seen Adult Swim. So, the TV didn't serve as a distraction. Duncan was frightened even more than he was sick. the nurses made visits and then the doctor came in. He did the usual analysis and then said that there was no way to get around an IV to fill the little guy back up with fluids. So he sent the two guy nurses in and they went into action.

They first told me that I'd probably want to leave the room, but I stayed. One guy got up on the bed and prepared to restrain my son. The other got the tools out and when all was ready, I handed Duncan over and held onto his leg, hoping to sooth him through the painful procedure. That's something that will take a long time to leech out of my memory. The took some blood samples from the stint. To keep the IV in place, they had to tape a towel around his arm to keep him from bending his elbow. It went quickly, but was very traumatic.

That done, they left for a minute or two and one came back to hook up the fluids and administer an antinausea drug. He suggested that instead of staying in that room, we could go into a lobby that isn't open at night. It has a fish tank, vending machines and couches. So, we spent the next hour in there, Duncan finally falling asleep about 45 minutes in. His blood tests came back and everything was ok. So we were released.

Got home, sent grandpa home and after rolling Duncan into his bed, I collapsed into my own. I had already scheduled to take the boys to their grandpa's for part of the day so I could either do some gardening or housework. Well, I ended up using that time to clean up the couch where I was sitting when he projected himself on me and getting the nasty clothes and bedding through the laundry.

Just a nasty night. I called my wife with updates along the way. She was beside herself, of course. But we got it taken care of and he was perfectly fine for his eval with the doctor on Wednesday. It was probably something he ate. It's hard to tell after the fact.

So, my wife made it home with only one delayed flight. Met us at the doctor's office just after we had gotten out. And all's been fine since.

Oh, and the beer looks good.

Glad to know there was nothing seriously wrong. Sounds like you handled it well.

Holding him, he puked on me once but that was quickly followed by projectile vomiting aimed at my face. That's Daddy Love for you.


IN THA FACE!.... IN THAA FAAAACE!<The Hangover reference> Sorry, It's what popped into my head when I read this. It's all about the story value. Now when he gets older you can say "Remember that time when you blew hot dog chunks in my face? Good times."

Misery loves company, so I enjoyed reading your post. Maybe enjoyed is too strong a word. Appreciated it, let's say.

The IV story sounds really tough, particularly in contrast to the treatment we got at Dell Children's here in Austin.

Cooper had a broken and deformed arm, but he was still deathly afraid of getting shots. Kids are funny that way. At Dell, they smoothed a local anesthetic cream on his arm, then laid a transparent dressing over it. The nurse came back after 10 minutes, and inserted the IV, pain free. He was still anxious, but it didn't hurt. Good thing. He'd had trauma enough.

The IV story sounds really tough, particularly in contrast to the treatment we got at Dell Children's here in Austin.

I don't know that anyone (skilled) would have done differently with a squirming 2 year old. He was much more scared of being restrained than the insertion. Had they done that with the anesthetic cream and bandage, he'd have gotten the cream everywhere, including his mouth, and the sticker would be picked at. Better to do it quick at this stage and get it over with than have to restrain him for ten times as long. That would have led to hysterics.

I can't imagine what we'll run into in the coming years. Just a simple visit to the farm has him out-pacing fleets of adults. Five of us chased him for three hours on Friday. It wasn't until the end that he slowed down enough to be put in his stroller. Most of the places he wants to go are highly dangerous and easy for a child to access. Running with the bulls isn't something for a toddler.