The Gemini Diaries

There are no two ways about it, LeeAnn and I had a busy week last week. From her trip to Charlotte, to painting and decorating two rooms, to getting the house ready to have a baby shower on Saturday, to having the baby shower . . . what else . . . oh yea, feeding, clothing and entertaining two nine month olds. By the time we hit the bed at the incredibly early hour of 10:15 on Saturday night, we were completely exhausted. But time marches on, recklessly barreling through one day after another. Before we knew it, it was Sunday morning and the kids were raring to go.

Add to the fact that we both woke up feeling like we had gotten approximately 2 hours and 17 minutes of sleep, we were also greeted by the pleasant surprise that we were, thanks to William Willett, running an hour behind schedule. Hooray! If you add in Mr. Pibb and Red Vines (Crazy Delicious!), you've got a perfect recipe for what, in days of yore, we would have called a Lazy Sunday. Not so today. Now, it's more of a recipe for negligent parenting if you're not careful.

The problem is, this "lazy" concept is totally foreign to babies. I tried to explain it to Perritt, but he just gave me that glazed over look and then spit up a little - perhaps as an indication of his displeasure for the little he grasped of the notion. Mary Poole was equally unresponsive and decided instead to pull my glasses off my face during my demonstration of how to lounge about on the sofa with a big bag of Ruffles and a Coke. They simply don't get it.

Lucky for our children, we were able to rally just enough to maintain a semblance of a schedule and keep them fed and changed. We had a couple of moments of weakness: we declared the 11-12 hour "Hang out with Mommy and Daddy in Bed" hour, Perritt got to crawl around in a diaper - only a diaper - for about an hour (which he loved), and then when 2 rolled around, hopeful chants of "Two hour nap! Two hour nap! Two hour nap!" were clearly heard uttered by both parents as we put them down for their afternoon nap.

Unfortunately it appears that the 2 hour nap will remain as mythical as Nessie since Perritt's now rousing from his much less exciting, but much more typical, 45 minute nap. When Mary Poole gets up the battle plan is to mount a final, courageous assault on the ramparts of sloth and attempt to have a family run followed by a quick excursion to Toys R' Us to get some new goodies for the children.

6 o'clock bedtime! 6 o'clock bedtime! 6 o'clock bedtime!