Swimming Lessons

When I was about five years old, mom drove my sister and me to the middle of nowhere every week for swimming lessons.  I remember driving for hours in who-knows-what direction, turning just past the second green house on the right, and then a long gravel road to the swimming center.  If I had been paying more attention, I'd have realized this was just the back way to the middle of town, and that the car ride there took no more than fifteen minutes. I remember our teacher being a scary old Japanese lady.  Of course, she may have descended from China, Korea, or any number of other East-Asian nations, but with a last name of Nelson, there was no way for me, especially a five-year-old me, to know for sure.  Maybe she was Swedish and just had dark hair and  a small skeletal structure for her family.  But this isn't the reason I'm writing.


My sister and I later took classes at the local YMCA, graduating to all the different aquatic animal titles like Minnow and Dolphin, all the way to Shark. We burned through classes until the only one left was lifeguard certification, which we were too young for.   My sister and I are very comfortable in the water.  I've always hoped my children would be as well, and was delighted when my wife decided she and my mom could manage taking the twinks to swimming lessons for a kind of "Mommy and Me" class when they were but the ripe old age of two.  While I was working, I of course could not attend classes myself, but was weekly updated with highlights on progress, setbacks, and anecdotes of shower shenanigans.  It's different for me now as I get to enjoy the entire experience for myself.

The weekly ritual of meeting mommy at swimming lessons with Grandma and Grandpa have become a much anticipated event for our family.  While mommy meets us in the pool after changing in the locker room, the responsibility of ushering the girls to the pool in proper attire has fallen to Grandpa and me.  This is in no way a terrible responsibility, but often a humorous one.

Let me start with the marvel of modern engineering that is the swim diaper.  After years of research and development, and further years of innovation and refinement, the industry has at long last come up with a design that looks and feels exactly like a diaper in every way, but performs none of its functions.  I owe this knowledge largely to the poor souls who have gone before me (mommy and grandma).  Apparently, swim diapers have no absorbency, which in all honesty makes sense (who wants to carry around half the weight of the pool in their pants), but which also means that tinkle (I say that word in the manliest way possible) comes right out through the legs.  So we dress the girls in their swimsuits over normal diapers, and change them at the last possible second so we can ensure we are in the pool when any normal business needs arise.  I have yet to witness a poop in one of these things, but there are only two possible scenarios in my head.  Either a soft gooey mess squishing out of the sides is my first indication there is poop, or there is a firm bulge to act as a warning, before it too softens in the water and squishes out the sides.  The first scenario of course immediately becomes an issue of containment, with me looking for the nearest ladder and making decisions about whose towel is most expendable.  The second scenario is a simple race against the clock, knowing every second in the water gets you closer to the first scenario.  With the second scenario, at least there are options, like getting out and running to the bathroom, cleaning out the pants, showering with the offender, installing a new swim "diaper," all the while struggling with the etiquette of returning to the pool with a kid who has just pooped her pants.  Or hand her to mommy before "noticing" the bulge in her pants.

Who am I kidding.  Our contract states that daddy takes care of the heavy stuff and the gross stuff, and this could quite possibly fall under both categories.

All the drama of poops aside, these weekly swims with the twinks have been a lot of fun.  On average.  On the surface, we are teaching our kids to swim at a young age.  More practically, the whole family has set aside a firm half hour each week to get together and play in the pool at the YMCA.  Sometimes, we follow along with the instructor and do our kicks and floats and jumping in, and sometimes we cling to daddy or mommy or grandpa, screaming bloody murder about having to kick a ball around with the group.  But it's mostly fun play time in the pool and we all cherish it.

Then we get out and head to the shower.  There has been some order to the process of getting the girls showered off and changed into dry clothes, and I don't feel that needs elaboration.  This past week however found me and one of the girls in a situation some may appreciate.  Lil A and I had showered off, me holding her on an arm, and were ready to walk around the corner to towel off and head to our locker.  As I'm standing trying to pull a towel off the towel bar, both of us dripping water from our wet suits and hair, the drips from A felt a little warm.  I asked her if she tinkled (again in the manliest way possible), and I carried a giggling A back in to the shower.  All rinsed off, we walked back to our towel.  I'd gotten it off and started wrapping it around us when I felt more warm drips.  Without a word, she starts giggling as we head back to the shower.  As soon as we left the shower area, before we got to our towel, A apparently decided she was done dragging this out and a gush of warm ran down between us.  I looked her in the eyes and asked her if she was all done, and she just giggled and hugged me.  Back we went to shower off again, then to get dressed, and the rest of the evening went smoothly.

It really has been a good thing for a our family and I'm glad we are once again taking swimming lessons.

The List

Before my wife and I became parents, we bought groceries once a month.  We would plan out our meals weeks in advance and limit impulse purchases by limiting our exposure to temptation.  This budget-friendly strategy worked well for us until we became parents.  Somewhere between the second and third trimester, this system collapsed entirely.  Stubbornly, we held on to our belief that we could get back into this routine, even months after the twinks were born.  Peace eventually was made with the evolution of our grocery-buying to weekly expeditions.  I say expeditions because I believe the shear volume of stuff necessary for those outings early on demands a grander connotation than 'trip' can afford.  In more recent history, grocery trips with the whole family meant two carts (a girl in each) following mommy as she deftly maneuvered through aisles with a purpose and The List.  The List is the magical thing my wife produces every week when we get to the store that tells us exactly what we need to get through the following week.  No one knows where the list comes from but it mysteriously knows what is missing in the pantry and the fridge, what holiday or birthday is coming up, as well as any vague suggestions I may have thrown out on a whim throughout the week (someone was actually listening when I said that?).  The list gets us through the nonfood section, and methodically steers us through the canned, boxed, frozen and fresh produce to end right back at the checkouts.  This experience typically lasts less than two hours and gets us home in time for lunch and naps.  If my wife goes alone (sans noisy wiggly entourage of children and husband) she can do it in an hour and a half and still apologizes for taking so long.  I recently had the opportunity to go all my my big self-sort of like a grown up.  Took me over two hours.  I was even handed a list.  It's not like I was pokey about it, I just had no idea where to find some of the things on the list.  Not wanting to come home with a partially crossed-off list, I spent half an hour looking for one thing (never found it), and another half hour looking for another thing (never found it, don't think it exists.  Maybe my wife thought she was being funny putting it on the list).  In all honesty, if my wife didn't hand me a list, I would come home with milk, cereal and trash bags.
That should last us the week.  It is getting better with me being home with the girls full time.  I get a much better feel of what we have used and what we will need as I prepare most of the meals.  A big category that gives me little trouble at the store: snacks.  And by that I mean anything the girls will eat for any of three or four non-meal meals a day.  I've read that it's healthy for toddlers and anyone worried about their metabolism to eat five times a day, but I think my kids are each about to sprout a third foot as much as they are eating and sleeping.  I'm confident I'll get better with groceries the more I am left to be responsible for them.  I'm sure my kids will continue to burn through teddy grahams and apples and mandarin oranges, and someday they will start soccer and I'll have to go for groceries twice a week.  Until then, I am grateful for many things, not least among them my wife, and of course, the list.

Poop

Might as well get this one over with.  Everyone has read the articles about how much a part of your life poop becomes when you are a parent of small children, or has a friend who tells you all the good details about parenthood, but however well-meaning and even informative those articles and friends are, you cannot truly comprehend until you have kids of your own.  Poop may be the third or fourth most-uttered word in our house:  Are your pants poopy?  Do you need to poop?  Where did that poop come from?  Honey there's poop on the (any word in the dictionary can go here).  Does it smell like poop in here to you?  And my personal favorite: Honey, somebody threw poop everywhere again.

Don't get me wrong;I totally understand the throwing poop thing from a certain perspective.  If I had poop in my pants, I wouldn't want it to stay there any longer than it had to either.

Things may be trending upward at our house though.  The girls are getting better at being able to tell us when they have poopy pants, and we may soon be transitioning into full-out potty-training.  I expect an "interesting" ride in the months ahead, but like I said, "trending upward."

Crayons
As week two of providing the primary care for our daughters is barreling into the weekend, I feel I already have a lot to talk about.  While crayons are not the most important things to the girls right now, they do hold their attention for at least half an hour every morning, and today I feel especially inclined to elaborate our "crayon routine" if you can call it that.  The twinks, aka A and A (my 2yr old twin girls) generally start out coloring in separate books or pieces of paper, and they can work happily at it on their own for a good bit.  They invariably make the jump from coloring in the books to coloring on their table and nearby furniture.  This is usually when I start using a lot of 'no's and asking if they need something else to color.  Then crayons start flying to the floor, which secretly cracks me up, because they almost always acquiesce to my requests to help pick them all up.  And I'm never too upset when they color on the furniture near their table; everything has a glossy surface and the crayons we have for them are very easy to wash off.  The problem:  we have received or bought all kinds of crayons, some that wash easily and some that...do...not.  So as I'm walking around the house picking up clothes and stuffed animals and creepy talking toys, I notice some beautiful orange and green squiggles dancing about down the hall (they seem to be afraid of heights as they never seem to rise more than three feet from the floor).  Clorox wipe in hand, the crayon effortlessly lifts off the wall, and I proceed with a new-found arrogance hunting for more squiggles.  I find some on the wall over the steps to the laundry room. Orange darts and green swirls, purple lines underlining the work, as if to suggest this is an especially important work.  Washes right off.  A few steps up, billowing clouds of a vivid magenta hang with defiance in their yellow wall sky.  Clorox wipes...had no effect.  Crap.  So I grab one of those green scrubby pads we use on dishes, deciding all I needed was something more abrasive than a soggy wipe.  No effect. None.  Jumping to the big guns, I grab the all purpose cleaner and begin hosing down the pink thunderhead, and get to work scrubbing.  Crap.  Do we still have any yellow paint to cover this before Mommy gets home?  So I gave up and went back to the crayons looking for that one magenta crayon that's impossible to wash that somehow found its way into the cup of "safe" crayons.  Not there.  Then I hear giggling in the girls' room.  Crap.  Before I get there, I already know.  There on one bed, delighted with their latest creation, and jumping proudly in unison, are A and A.  Above them, on their peach colored wall, is a raging thunderstorm of fuchsia! Crap.

The month of June has brought with it many changes for our family.  My wife  was recently promoted to an exciting new job.  I went from working 50+ hours a week to being a stay-at-home daddy for two-year-old twins, or "domestic engineer" as my wife put it (in case I didn't think my "title" sounded important enough).  Schedules have changed for everyone, responsibilities have changed, and a wide new horizon of possibilities has opened for our family.  Barely two weeks in and we are still fleshing out our new roles and developing new versions of old routines, but I have to say that whatever trepidation my wife and I felt going into this, I can comfortably say that for me the change is for the better, and believe this will provide a healthy atmosphere for our family to grow, in all the ways a family can grow.