Happy 10!!!!

Today is a very special day indeed and it would be bad if I did not take the opportunity to let the world know of the incredible feat that has been achieved.

No, I am not talking about Seth Wescott coming from behind to win the Snowboard Cross in the Olympics or whoever that American is that beat the heavy favorite Russian to win the gold in men’s figure skating.

I am talking about the fact that Mega-Babe has managed to last 10 years being married to me without strangling me in my sleep. She has put up with my complete nonsense and insufferable stubbornness for 10 whole years to the day.

I cannot honestly say that Mega-Babe and I have had the perfect fairy-tale marriage. We have our moments where we don’t always get along and our parenting styles are about as different as they come. But through it all, we have loved each other and I can’t think of anyone else in this world that I would want to spend the rest of my life with.

The time really has flown by and I can’t believe that we are at the 10 year mark and have 4 kids.

But she really is my best friend and I love her with all my heart.

I have told this story before, but I will never forget our wedding day. It started off being one of the most miserable days of my life. I can remember how absolutely stressed I was. I was stressed that there were a million people at the temple that day when we got married. I was stressed when we had to park a mile away and then I realized that I forgot my tuxedo in the car and I had to run back to the car to get it and my backless shoes kept flying off my feet while I was trying to run. I was mad when I had to fight my way back through the enormous amount of people at the temple to get back to the front desk. Then they lead me to this little waiting room where I had to wait for Mega-Babe to get ready and I was mad that it was taking her forever to get ready. But then she walked through the door and she was the most beautiful sight (Spelling corrected thanks to Bette) I had ever seen, and all the stress and anger of the day just melted away and it ended up being one of the best days of my life. I just felt like I was on cloud 9 for a week.

I love you Babe, and wanted to say thanks for putting up with me for all these years and being such a great wife and fantastic mother to our kids. I don’t know what I would do without you.

Happy anniversary!

All of Us- An Update

Me: I am doing great. I really have the easy part in all of this new baby stuff. Its Mega-Babe who carries the load. I am not going to make any friends here by saying this, but I am not the kind of husband that gets up at night with the kids when they wake up and need something. I sleep too hard, I get too grumpy, and I don’t realize that I am being grumpy. Heck, I probably won’t remember the whole incident. I can’t tell you the number of times that I have been asked the question, “Do you remember being a complete jerk last night?”

And the honest answer is no, I don’t. Apparently Mega-Babe has tried to wake me up on many occasions for one emergency or another only to have me say or do something completely jerky to her. I don’t remember ever doing it and I am not entirely positive she isn’t just making it up. I think she has been making a list of things from the day that we got married of stuff like this that she can show to the judge if we ever get a divorce that will completely discredit me as a competent father. She is just holding it as insurance. So, I just don’t get out of line too bad so she never has to use it.

Anyway, plus I don’t handle being tired well AT ALL. My body will shut down and I will get sick and end up missing a lot of work, so Mega-Babe carries the not sleeping load with the stipulation that I let her nap whenever she wants. Works for me!

I LOVE my little Mini-Babe. She is great.

Mega-Babe: She really is super woman. I guess I never realized exactly how much a woman goes through to have a kid until I saw the pain Mega-Babe was in giving birth without an epidural. I mean, I knew it was bad and I knew it was more than I could ever handle in my life, but to see it, with my own eyes was…..wow! Mega-Babe and I are still in unbelief that it all went down that way. I know, this apparently happens to a lot of people. I can’t tell you how many people have said something like, “Oh yeah, that’s exactly what happened with our second kid.”

or

“My sister gave birth in the hallway of the hospital.”

or

“By the time my wife got to the hospital, she was sitting on our daughter’s head.”

or

“My aunt gave birth in the car in the middle of rush hour traffic.”

or

“A girl I work with had her baby while she was in the middle of a trapeze act at the circus. She shot the baby out 75 feet in the air and the baby was caught and slapped on the bottom by Guido the Monkey Boy while he swung from a trapeze.”

Yeah, I know, ME ME ME ME ME ME ME! Everybody has a better story. Brian Regan talks about this phenomenon but uses the wisdom tooth example. Its like telling someone you had 2 wisdom teeth pulled and before you can even get the words out, someone will say, “That’s nothing, I had 4 removed and they all had to be cut out and they were impacted and blah blah blah.”

“Don’t ever try telling a 2 wisdom tooth story because you’re not going anywhere with that. The 4 wisdom tooth guys are going to parachute in and cut you off at the pass.”

Look, this may be common place for the rest of the world, but when it is your 4^th kid and nothing exciting has EVER happened during the birth of any of your children so far and you are expecting the same thing to happen again and to just have another nice mild-mannered, epidural controlled delivery, this all came as a bit of a punch to the gut. I have a whole new appreciation for what it means to give birth to a child (obviously nowhere near the appreciation that Mega-Babe now has). To see my wife, who hardly ever complains about anything other than the fact that I don’t take out the trash often enough, in that much obvious pain…I am so glad that I am a guy. I can’t stress that enough.

After the baby was born, and Mega-Babe is still sitting on the bed in tears, the doctor said to her, “Now you’re a real pioneer woman. You can get your pioneer woman badge.” I just shot him a look that clearly said, “What is the matter with you? Do you really think that is helping???”

She has been doing great since then. She is tired, but rightfully so, as I mentioned above, she is carrying the late night load. She could have done so much better than me….but she is stuck now.

Donut: To be honest, I haven’t seen a lot of Donut since Mini-Babe was born. He has been staying at my in-laws house, which he prefers to our house. He would just live over there if he could. Mama apparently spends more time with him working on things like reading than Mega-Babe and I do. Since he is in first grade, he is supposed to read for 20 minutes every day and we struggle at times to make that happen. But since staying at the in-laws, he has been reading 45 minutes to 2 ½ hours every day and he has passed off several of his sight words/phrases lists. We are apparently bad parents. He loves reading now. Mega-Babe said the other day that Donut’s teacher is going to think that we should have a new baby more often so our kids actually learn to read. Shame.

As far as Mini-Babe, the jury is still out. Donut likes her. He loves to hold her, but he told me the other night that he hates her….right after he got done holding her for 20 minutes. I think that now he just thinks that he is supposed to hate her since he already said it, so he is trying to play the part so Mom and Dad aren’t right.

The Bug: He has been reaching a whole new level of difficult lately. When Donut gets mad, he is likely to just punch someone. He takes out his aggression on whoever is closest. The Bug on the other hand is different. As much of a trouble maker as he is, he is probably the most compassionate kid I have ever met. He is always thinking of others. The other night, he was being very difficult during dinner because he did not want to eat his potatoes so he started to spit, so I sent him to his room to sit on his bed. For 15 minutes, we sat down at the table laughing at him up in his room yelling at the top of his lungs:

“UGH!! UGH! UGH! UGH! UGH! UGH! UGH! UGH! UGH! UGH! UGH!”

“I HATE SITTING ON MY BED!”

“NOW LITTLE WOO GETS MORE PEACHES FOR DINNER AND I DON’T!! ITS NO FAIR!!

“UGH!!” (Yes, my kids actually say “UGH” all the time. You know, if we tell them that we have to go to Kohls, their least favorite store, they will say, “UGH! I don’t want to go to Kohls.”)

“I HATE THIS!”

“ITS NO FAIR!!!”

“UGH!! UGH! UGH! UGH! UGH! UGH!”

I know, we shouldn’t have been laughing, but it was amusing….for a while anyway. It got old fast, but Mega-Babe figures this is a better way for him to get his aggression out since he is not hurting anyone. I finally went up stairs and calmed him down and he was very apologetic. He really is a sweet kid. He just has a warped view of right and wrong…..just like me.

He really loves Mini-Babe though and loves to give her smooches. He told me the other day that he thinks she is great and he told Mega-Babe the other night that we should keep her.

Little Woo: Woo has a new favorite toy, a new favorite person in the house, a new best friend, a new something to whine about. First thing he says in the morning is where’s the baby? Randomly throughout the day, he asks where’s the baby? When we put him to bed at night, he spends 20 minutes crying for Mini-Babe. The other night, he woke up right as I was laying down to go to bed, so I went in to check on him. He just kept whimpering the baby’s name until I found his binky for him. Its pretty cute, but I can see it getting old. We finally printed off a picture of Mini-Babe that he can take to bed with him. Mega-Babe found him asleep with the picture right by his hand like he had fallen asleep hugging the picture.

Mini-Babe: So, you might be asking yourself, how long does it take a new baby living in a house with 3 older brothers to get hit in the head by a toy? The answer is 5 days, which is actually longer than Little Woo lasted when he was born. He had already been hit in the head by a toy and almost suffocated with a balloon by The Bug. I guess the boys really do like having a little sister. I guess they held out as long as they could. Little Woo was the tosser. I guess he was just giving it back.

Mini-Babe is just stupendous. She is still trying to get the hang of eating. I think she would do a lot better if she could manage to stay awake long enough to finish eating. This kid sleeps more than any of our other kids combined. We actually got worried about her last weekend when she was awake maybe 5 minutes the whole day, so we called our doctor. Mega-Babe felt a little silly doing that, I mean, It’s not like we are rookies at this baby thing, but a lethargic baby is one of the things they tell you to be mindful of, so we wanted to be sure. Better safe than sorry when it comes to my little Mini-Babe. Turns out she is fine, just a sleeper.

At church, one of our neighbors asked me which finger Mini-Babe had me wrapped around. “All of them.”