Life in the House of Chaos

Here is a glimpse into what our lives are like:

5:00am (on a good day, although if it were up to Cole, this whole mess would start at 3:30): Wander sleepy-eyed into babies room where they are typically both hollering to be picked up, and fed RIGHT NOW DEAR GOD, FEED ME NOW!!!!

We then change the babies, heat up bottles in microwave (GASP – you are going to BURN the baby!) and commence feeding, burping, and cleaning up spit-up. Yes, they still spit up. Yes, they are 9 months old. No, I have NO idea how long this is going to last.

5:30am: Change babies AGAIN because they love a good poop after their morning coffee bottle, and then lovingly stuff them in the nearest bouncer, jumper, exersaucer to entertain themselves for as long as possible. This is the point where I usually go back to bed, as I am typically the one up with them the most at night. And I am lazy. And love to sleep. So I go back to bed and my husband reads them the news, eats his breakfast and does morning kinds of things until a little after 7:00 when his mom takes over. At least this is how it is during the week. On the weekends we handle all of this...and since I am a slacker at my job, I do much of this during the week as well.

7:30: Sometimes the boys will take a nap here, sometimes not so much. I think it has to do with the distance of Mars from the Sun or something more random…

9:00am: Change and feed boys breakfast (oatmeal, fruit, and cheerios), followed by dressing them for the day and playtime. Or, if there was not any morning napping they may fall asleep during breakfast and get put to bed mid-eating.

12:00pm: Change and feed boys lunch. Lunch consists of many things such as grilled cheese, mac and cheese, Canadian bacon, chicken & dumplings, ravioli or spaghetti, rice, vegetables (mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, carrots, peas, black beans, etc), goldfish, apple sauce, graham crackers, jello, fig newtons, butter cookies, or simply leftovers from the night before if they are baby-friendly. For Roark baby-friendly means pretty much anything he can stuff in his mouth. He loves our food – hates baby food. For Cole, he is the less adventurous eater, sticking to tried and true items he is familiar with.

12:30ish: Clean up boys and lunch disaster that they have created by dropping food EVERYWHERE. Get dogs’ stomachs pumped because they have been fed crazy amounts of goldfish. And let boys play either in a toy or on their play mat. Although this may change now that... (wait for it…)

Roark is CRAWLING!!!!

It is true – the monkey has arms and legs that work together to propel his body toward danger at an alarming rate. We are doomed. Doomed I tell you. Thankfully Cole is lazy and in no hurry to even try to crawl. I cannot imagine the exercise we will get when he is mobile.

3:00pm: Change diapers followed by snack time. The boys will eat fruit and crackers of some sort and drink water, followed (hopefully) by a nap. This is typically their 2nd, 3rd, or 4th nap depending on….hell, we don’t know what it depends on. So random.

5:30pm: Dinner consisting of the same kinds of things they eat at lunch. How boring, but they don’t seem to care, so why get too creative?

6:30pm: Bath time (every other night), followed by mostly failed attempts to entertain boys until they can have a bottle. We always push for 7:30, but we never succeed. NEVER.

7:00pm: Give in to whimpers and cries and break out the bottles. They will usually fall asleep mid-bottle and give us a false sense of accomplishment. I say this because Roark will, at this point, engage in a never-ending stream of waking up, eating, and falling asleep – intermixed with yelling and screaming, and some cuteness to keep us from killing him. I think this is where he makes up for his shitty eating all day long – packing in the calories at night.

9:00pm – 10:30pm: Somewhere in here both boys are settled, in bed, and actually asleep. But not for the night – oh no. That would be EASY. Instead we can expect to be up at 1:00, 2:00, 2:30, 3:00, 3:30 and sometimes even 4:00. We are trying the CIO approach, and it was working before they got sick, however since they are starting to recover it does not appear to be working so well. And then I always think to myself ½ hour into the screaming in the middle of the night that it would be easier to just give them a damn paci than listen to this god-forsaken screaming for one more minute!!!! So, I am an enabler.

And every morning we start over. Sigh.

Things are so much better than they were in the early months. No more feedings EVERY GODDAMNED THREE HOURS. No more endless bouts of Roark screaming until my ears bleed. And no more crazy-ass continual spitting up by Cole - he is much, much better with this now. Now they are funny, and silly, and turning into real people. There are the smiles, and the laughing, oh - and Roarks Chicken-head. He will do this little chicken-head thing when you give him food he likes - and heh - it is so damn funny! And then there are the Satan eyes...where he will drop his head and look up at you with demon-looking eyes - and what he wants is for you to touch your nose to his. And then he will giggle. And then there is Cole's foot-eating. He is obsessed with his feet and will try to constantly eat them...cute, cute, cute. I just hope he doesn't get a good bite out of them, because - HIS TEETH ARE FREAKING SHARP. I know this because he keeps biting me. Little bastard.