How Ziggy the Alpaca Became a Household Legend

At first I was horrified by the amount of time the boys spend discussing and laughing about poop. Gross. How could they do this? And why is it always so funny? Brian patiently explained to me that to boys there is something inherently hilarious about poop, even at his age. I don’t get it. Why would I ever want to think about or talk about poop more than was necessary? And having twins has involved a whole lot of poop, none of which has been funny, with the one exception of when Cal’s poop shot across the room off the changing table at Brian when he was a couple months old. That’s it. Every other experience I’ve had, especially the two-in-a-row explosive diarrhea pants at Target about a year ago, has been an experience I’d like to forget.

Not so for the boys. They are constantly talking about poop in all its forms, along with puke and potty. I've written about it in the past, but it seems to have kicked into high gear lately. They also went through the phase of likening their poop to other objects. I’ve sadly grown accustomed to it and accepted that it’s just going to happen, so all I can do is draw strict parameters around when it’s okay, i.e. never at the table or around guests or around other people. Preferably, I’d like it restricted it to bath time with Dad, but that doesn’t really work very well.

Anyway, yesterday we took a trip to the National Zoo with some friends. The first place we visited was the elephant house, where the hit was not the giant elephants, but the huge tube of elephant poop. They wanted pictures in front of it; they wanted to touch it; was it real? Does it smell? Next, on to the pandas. Of course there’s a mold of a piece of panda poop on a string that they can touch and pull— way more interesting than the cute pandas rolling adorably around in their habitats. Later on they had the thrill of their lifetime as not only did we get to see alpaca poop, but Ziggy the Alpaca turned around, squatted, pooped and peed right across the fence from us. Wow! All four boys were entranced. “This is the first time we’ve ever seen an animal poop, Mom!” they all yelled repeatedly as we walked away, after having to pull them away from the fence when the show was over. As we left we even got a glimpse of the pig pen, dotted with pig poop. Oh, the joy.

The boys keep reminding me about Ziggy and that he pooped right in front of us and how cool it was. It's only been twenty four hours, but already Ziggy has become a household legend.

Elephant poop!

Holding panda poop

The fake elephant doesn't poop. Boh-ring.

Ziggy the Alpaca puts on the show...

...which elicits squeals of joy 

Pig poop

Another big hit on the trip was the hand dryers in the women’s bathroom. Shrieks and squeals didn’t stop until their hands were all dried much more than they actually needed to be. So glad we bothered to drive for 45 minutes to see poop and hand dryers. 

I wasn’t upset by the poop. I think I’m used to it. I just have to roll my eyes and try to tune it out. I keep thinking there must be coming a time when it won’t be funny to them, but I’m not sure that will ever come. So for now I need to try to keep the poop talk to fitting contexts and hope that they don’t lose friends over it—I can understand parents not wanting their kids to hang out with two kids who love to talk about poop.

I think only a short while ago I would have been reluctant to publicly admit how much my boy love to talk about poop. Acknowledgement is the first step to healing, right? Or is it the first stage of suffering?

Sea lions- no poop sightings

Being prairie dogs

Three side-by-side hand dryers!

How Baseball is Sucking the Life Out of Me

We didn’t intend to turn our children into sports, particularly baseball, and more particularly Washington Nationals fanatics, but we did. As many of you know, this year the Nats have been on TV at our house and on the radio in our car a lot. As I've mentioned numerous times, Brian and I love baseball, but we’ve never had cable or a good team to cheer for. The Nats have had such an amazing season and have been so fun to watch, that we’ve become hooked. The boys know the names of most of the players, they understand how the game works, they love the Nationals presidents that race in the middle of the fourth innings, and they love to be the presidents and race around the house. Clark can imitate the batting stances of many of the starting players. Calvin randomly brings up the names of some of their obscure pitchers. Most of the time Clark thinks he is Bryce Harper and Cal thinks he is Jayson Werth.

They’ve always had this obsessive bent in their characters. When it was ceiling fans it was obnoxious, but not painful. Suddenly, with the Nats poor performance in the playoffs so far, the boys and their incessant talk about the Nationals and the presidents just makes me mad. I don’t want them to be constantly talking about Bryce Harper hitting home runs when he has gotten something like one hit in his last twenty-five at bats. For the love.

Don’t pretend to be Stephen Strasburg pitching! He was shut down by the general manager and can’t even pitch in the postseason. They are so into pretending that it is impossible to go for an hour without one of them asking me to watch him be Jayson Werth hitting an imaginary home run and running around the “bases” in our living room. You’re killing me here! Werth has had so many chances to hit with runners in scoring position but does he even have a single RBI in the postseason? I actually don’t know or want to look it up, but it doesn’t feel like it.

I love these guys and this team but the last few games have been humiliating blowouts. I’ve been in a constant cringe while watching the games. I haven’t even been able to watch the last innings of the past two games. And I hate that it has been affecting me so much. I didn’t know it would. I haven’t been so attached to a baseball team since I was fifteen and had my heart broken by the Seattle Mariners. Or maybe since I helped my dad coach tee-ball. Those kids had talent.

I know the Nats can play so much better than they are—and even against the same team that they’re getting pounded by. I really need perspective on this whole postseason but having mini Nationals running around makes it even harder. I hope that today isn’t their last game—that they can beat the Cardinals and take the series to a game five. Not only because I want them to win, but because we have tickets to game five if it happens, and I’d love to be at a playoff game for the first time.

I rigged the laundry today so that the boys’ Zimmerman and Harper shirts are all four dirty. I don’t need to see the curly W all day. I slept in my Jayson Werth shirt so that I won’t be tempted to wear it today. I’m going to pretend to not watch the clock and think about game time. Who am I? Why do I care so much?

It’s such a weird feeling and hard to shake. And impossible to shake with my pretenders who make every surface a baseball field and make themselves the Nationals players hitting amazing home runs in slow motion. Why must you stab my heart?

My advice to parents of sports fans? Exercise caution when teaching your kids about a team. IT WILL SUCK THE LIFE OUT OF YOU to have them talking about the team when they lose.

The dumbest thing of all of this is that if the Nats play a good game today and win and play a good fifth game of the series, I will love the boys running around talking about the Nats. What is wrong with me!? Go Nats? 

Crazy person out.

I just needed to see them in uniforms that aren't Nationals' uniforms.

Potty Mouths

Happy Thursday! I hope you've all eaten before you read what I wrote about my twin potty mouths for DC Metro Mom this morning. Here's the link.

Booger Bummer

I was sad that we didn't make it to the Air and Space Super Science Saturday this past weekend. I wrote about it today on DC Metro Mom. Get your Purell on and go read it. 

How Boogers Made Me Angry

Thursday Thesicle

It's good to have a brother when you're sick.

Thesicle (n) a little or subordinate thesis; a proposition

A Word on Vomit

I don’t want to elaborate on the graphics of the horrible night I spent with my very sick boys the other night, but I made a few important observations. I’ve had a number of horrible nights in my life but there was something newly horrible about this night. It wasn’t me in pain but it was worse because I couldn’t do anything but hug them while they puked and cried. They didn’t understand what was happening or why.

I would have much rather puked so they didn’t have to. My suspicion is that this is just a part of being a parent—hurting for them when something is completely beyond my control. Though it was awful and seemed unending, there was something heartwarming about it that I want to share.

After Cal had gotten sick several times, Clark started. Clark was sitting on my right leg and Cal on my left. I was catching Clark’s vomit in a bucket while Brian cleaned the carpet from the previous explosion. (Sidenote: We all call Clark “Shark” sometimes) Calvin leaned over toward Clark, put his hand on his shoulder and started crying, “Sharky, Sharky!” then looking at me and saying “Mommy, Sharky.”

He was more upset about Clark throwing up than he had been when he was throwing up himself. On and on all night they both showed so much concern when the other one threw up, making sure that I saw the other one’s distress, and even though we were in such disgusting circumstances, I was proud of the love they showed for each other. What a cool thing, to have a twin.