Elijah Cain

Since I began this journey, I have written posts born out of emotions such as frustration, anger, regret, sadness, etc. But the other night I got to experience something I hadn’t before, and it broke me in a way I haven’t been in years. It was at the Christmas party, put on by Social Services, and contributed towards by members and organizations within our community. Admittedly,  I had reservations about attending. I’m embarrassed to say that I believed these kids were probably run through a line where they received a cheap toy and a cookie; A charade of sorts so that people could throw money at a problem and ease their consciences, without ever needing to dirty their hands with the day-to-day grind of actually helping a child in need. I believed this long before the thought of becoming a foster parent ever crossed my mind. I honestly don’t know where I acquired such an ignorant mindset, and what I found there was anything but what I described above.

For starters, one organization alone had donated $10,000 in gifts. Additionally, others had donated hundreds, and the community contributions through the adopt-a-family program were anything but what my imagination had fabricated. They donated wonderful gifts. Children with nothing were given bikes, action figures, dolls, jackets and shoes, just to name a few. My twins were met with warm faces from different people who had in one way or time been involved in their lives, all excited to see them and watch them open and enjoy their gifts. All of which, by the way, were high quality and purchased by people who wanted nothing more than to light up the eyes on a child’s face. The donor’s names, no where to be found on the packaging. Given anonymously, from a place a true kindness.

As I sat there, grateful I hadn’t shared my cynicism with anyone else and could just choke on my ignorance privately as I watched my own children light up with each gift their names had been hand written on by some caring stranger, a little boy sitting across the table from us said something that broke me on a deeply emotional level.

This boy, no older than five or six years of age, anxiously clamored for my attention. I looked up and met his bright blue eyes, beaming with excitement as he held a batman action-figure and matching bat-mobile. What he said to me next changed my life. He said, “Look at what someone got for me. I didn’t get forgotten.” He grinned from ear-to-ear and added, “This is exactly what I hoped for.”

(I didn’t get forgotten.)

I gotta tell you, if you’ve never seen a grown man cry, that little boy would probably tell you it’s not a good look. As I choked back an audible outburst of emotion, the face of that little boy beginning to blur, I rubbed my eyes and showed more interested in that boy’s gift than I had ever shown for anything in my life. And still, I could not match his excitement. Somebody changed that boys life that day. They made a child feel remembered and loved and that experience changed my life forever. If I could have brought that boy home that night and raised him with my twins, I would have leaped at the opportunity. I wish I had been the person who had taken the time to buy and wrap that gift. I really wish the person who did had gotten to experience the joy on that kids face alongside me.

Before we left, I asked a social worker a few questions and learned about the three full days it took to wrap all those gifts, and prepare this event. I have never felt prouder to be a small part of something so big in my life. Both of my boys received a blanket on the way out that had been handmade by someone who had taken the time to hand-make dozens of them, and I looked once more across a sea of faces. Foster children from infants to early teens, social workers and community members, foster parents and biological parents, all in the same room with one, singular goal in mind: To put a smile on the face of a child. A goal they met with each and every child in attendance.

At the beginning of this text, I began by describing the various emotions that have birthed these posts. This post was birthed purely from the joy on the face of a little blue-eyed boy holding a batman figurine amazed that someone had taken the time to remember him and give him the one toy he’d set his heart on. It was birthed from the shame of my own cynicism. It was birthed from a broken sort of humility, grateful to a community who stepped up for children they may never meet, to put a smile on a face they may never see.

May God bless each and every one of you this Holiday Season.

Continue…

While it is widely believed that toddlers are best equipped to survive when in captivity, conventional wisdom suggests that they rarely remain subservient to their captors. When scientists observed a focus group known as parents, over 99.9% reported that at some point in the rearing of toddlers, there had been a drastic shift in the dynamic of power, wherein, the toddler demanded and the parent responded. These responses ranged from preparing meals to the toddler’s liking to wiping fecal matter from the toddler’s behind in an attempt to remove the presence of an offensive odor the toddler neither notices nor minds.

As a result, various books have been produced over the decades written by experts ranging from clergy, wherein shaming said toddlers became the mainstay for parents to guilt their child back into submission, to philosophers. A rare breed of narcissistic navel-gazers who express their feelings in terms of colors. Engaging in full-fledged negotiations with the toddler at his eye level, later to discover they’d been robbed of their inner peace and dignity, left only with the fresh scent of patchouli oil.

While both views have merit in some parallel dimensions, where panda-tear latte’s are served with every meal, there are really no 100% effective methods of re-calibrating the balance of power. Instead, there are a list of truisms that seem to reverberate across the board in this particular focus group. Understanding the facts surrounding toddlers is the first step to gaining insight into their tactics. They are as follows:

1. Your toddler likely has a close connection with his more primitive animal kingdom counter-part, the monkey. Never is this more evident than at nap time, when placed inside his enclosure, which resembles a prison in every aspect minus a secure ceiling. That singular omission will cost you much of your sleep. The walls of this enclosure are generally polished to a slick sheen; this will slow your toddler, not one bit. The power to weight ratio of a toddler is 6:1. This finite math suggests that, even at full extension, a toddler can lift himself, using his heel as a lever-point, up and over a wall, taller than he, in just under seven seconds. Times vary based upon the weight of the diaper he is wearing at the time of escape. For this reason, it is not advised that you change your toddlers diaper upon request, as it is likely a tactic to lighten his load for a faster escape time and would, otherwise, remain perfectly content to sit in its contents.
2. If your toddler throws his food, this means he has had enough of your sub-par cooking for one meal. This does not mean he is full, nor does it excuse you from your kitchen duties, as you will now be expected to clean up after him in preparation for his next meal. In addition, never should you think for one second that whatever you were planning on eating that day is suddenly yours. Even if the amount proportioned for your toddler, which was the exact same thing, was just swept from the floor, indistinguishable from what used to be a remote control (or clicker for anyone with a grandtoddler at home). On the contrary, any bite you consume will likely cost you dearly during the negotiation tactic known as The Tantrum. You may choose to ignore this tactic, but this will likely only prolong this tactic indefinitely and annoy you without recourse. More often than not, you will cave like the Minnesota Viking’s stadium lid, sacrificing the majority of your own meal into topping-off your little bottomless pit. For this reason, toddlers are often referred to as America’s #1 diet and exercise program, turning P90X into T24/7X, now available at beachbody.com.
3. If there is a single dirty spot or item in the house, it will be found and spread across all surfaces, starting with his cleanest shirt and freshly washed hair. From there it will be distributed in the following manner: Dry-clean only fabrics, electronics priced highest to lowest; finally, anything with sentimental value will get what remains. If they can’t find a dirty substance, they will manufacture one. For this reason, many parents have found that keeping a basin of rancid water in a small room at toddler level for easy access is the safest way to control the distribution of toxic waste. In this scenario, the above items will merely be collected and thrown haphazardly inside, making them easy to find and fun to retrieve for the whole family.
4. Nothing shows off your personal class and sophistication like foam bumpers on the corners of your handmade cherry furniture. Where carefully placed items of value were once displayed, remote controls, cell phones, keys, wallets, open-top beverages, tissue boxes, and various electronic devices now lay. This not only keeps everything of meaning to you in one convenient space, it also motivates your toddler to monkey-climb your shelving to obtain these items. In fact, the simple act of placing an innocuous item, such as a half-drunk, cold cup of coffee on a high shelf, will immediately invalidate whatever distraction you previously gained with the $500 in colored plastic noisemakers, currently strewn across your living room floor. Those are garbage now, and your coffee is suddenly your toddlers sole purpose in life. Put it in a tippie-cup, you say? Go ahead. He won’t want it anymore, and will, instead, occupy his every waking minute focusing on removing the lid.
5. Disposable income with toddlers will, most definitely, be converted into disposable diapers and wipes. An investment without a return, despite the fact that deposits are made routinely, usually upon the fastening of the final snap of a onesie or the securing of the final strap on a car seat.

The above is not an exhaustive list, by any means. Nor does it offer you a single solution to these problems. If I had the answers to these problems, I would not be writing this blog to you. I would be in robes on a mountain in Tibet. But, solutions aside, the toddler, with his messes and constant need for every ounce of your time and energy, is still, far and away, the most wonderful thing you could ever have your life turned up-side-down for. I have been blessed with two. A CTRL-C, CTRL-V of one another; yet, somehow, completely unique to themselves. Two identical individuals with two sets of needs, wants, and desires.

It makes life fun and sleep scarce. If I were to leave you with one piece of advice it would be this: Your stuff is unimportant and replaceable. The time you spend (jokingly) in servitude to your toddler(s) will quickly be your favorite thing in the world to return from work for. Otherwise, you would just point the nose of your vehicle North and drive until the engine consumes the final drops of fuel in the tank. From there, you would walk further in the same direction until you collapsed in exhaustion.

Then you would crawl.

Continue…

I am titling this post, ‘The Joys Of Parenting’, because, ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’, has apparently already been taken. I guess this Timothy Burton fella has twin boys also.

Crazy coincidence.

It all began shortly after breakfast, when I cooked the boys pancakes and a childhood favorite of mine, eggs in the hole, or, eggs on the graph, as we called it growing up. The idea being that you cut a hole in a piece of bread and drop an egg into the void. When you’re finished, you are left with a fried egg fused to a piece of toast.

The boys had had a long day the day before, playing with other kids at the homes of some good friends of mine, and, as a result, were too exhausted for bath time that night. So, they slept with dirty feet and I settled for a baby-wipe wipe-down. Now, as any parent knows, the best way to do things is by grouping as many tasks together as possible, hereinafter to be known as multitasking. A compound word I just made up. A fact of which I am convinced because no sane person would ever come up with such a ridiculous notion. The theory of which makes perfect sense, and the application of which has about as much place in a parents vocabulary as would the phrase, that was easy. Nonetheless, the concept of washing off the previous day (and brownie a la mode) with the following morning’s egg yoke and syrup had Genius written all over it. 

(I know Sugar Nazi’s, I know. It’s the Holidays…Let this one slide, please.)

As fate would have it, however, the phrase, Best laid plans, came bubbling to the surface in much the same way as what happened next did.

The enthusiasm of my multitasking (trademark pending) was matched by enthusiastic twins, who joined in my efforts by grouping bowel movements into bath time. The first of which felt like a punishment for thinking I had gotten away with something after both boys woke up this morning with only wetness banked in their Huggies. But it began to feel personal, after taking the boys out of the water and sitting them on the tile while I dredged the murky depths below, sanitized the basin, and refilled the tub with clean water (which, for dramatic effect, I’m going to say I fetched, bucket-by-bucket, from a nearby stream…in the snow…barefoot). A process that clearly took longer than the bladder of an 18 month old could tolerate, and I suddenly realized that it hadn’t been the warm bath water I had been kneeling in for the past ten minutes.

So, the moral takeaway here is this: Do one task at a time. Multitasking (Great word for a fantasy novel) is for suckers and Windows-based operating systems, which require Adobe and system updates every time you power them on.

But bath time aside, this week has been pretty great. With the boys sleeping soundly through most nights now, we are able to get through the day with fewer naps. That gave us the time to explore the Christmas Tree farm with another buddies family, where we picked out and later decorated our first tree together. And, by, decorate, I mean the Webster’s definition: “verb; to make upright and strangle with colored lights.”

(Why are water-proofed diapers not a thing?)

And , that, my friends, is the news from Lake Wobegon (for all you Garrison Keillor fans out there).

‘Till next time…

Continue…

I wouldn’t necessarily say that this has been ‘about what I’d expected.’ I can say emphatically that it has been a steep learning curve. For starters, they are twins…identical in virtually every visual way. That alone creates a few unique challenges, and after changing the same child’s diaper twice in a row, I put a little pen mark on (we’ll call him, Chip, for the purposes of this blog) Chip’s hand to avoid this mistake for future diaper changes. In truth, the error was, in part, due to the matching pajamas only an inexperienced parent would put identical twins in, but the genetics, here, are at least partly to blame.  I’ll take that small visual trickery though, because those genetics also produced two of the cutest, happiest, and healthiest toddlers I could ever have hoped to care for.

I feel I owe it to other parents of twins to dispel the myth that twins are easier because, ‘they entertain each other.’ This is common to hear from people, presumably twin-less people, who make this seemingly reasonable statement. While it is true, at times, it is just as true that, while one is being pulled from a cabinet the other is elbows deep in a porcelain basin full of toddler-high cool water; While one is happy, the other, full tantrum; While one diaper is clean, the other is in full blow-out. Even as I write this, I’m watching one twin on the baby monitor attempting to nap, while his brother uses his body as a stepping stool to get his leg over the crib wall…Oh yeah, did I mention they can climb right out of the crib, at will? That was a fun surprise on night three, when I finally got them to bed and myself into the shower. Caught completely off-guard by (We’ll call the other one…you guessed it…Dale) Dale’s bleach blonde head, now wet to his ears, peering in around the shower curtain. The pitter-patter of Chip’s little feet stomping on the tile floor behind him.

Bath time is a whole different challenge. Fortunately, the boys love creating claims on my flood insurance policy, so there’s that, but, at the same time, they hate having the shampoo rinsed out of their hair and they fly out of the water on full tip-toe, hands clawing at my shirt like they’re being waterboarded, every rinse, which is protested, just prior, by throwing their heads in exactly the wrong way to avoid actually waterboarding my children. Somehow, I’ve managed to avoid the inhalation of soapy bath water, thus far, but it feels like a huge win for the three of us, each and every time. Their favorite part of bath-time, however, is the few minutes they get to splash around as the water slowly drains, followed by the naked run through the house as I attempt to re-diaper them both before one of them pees on the carpet (A race I have already lost twice in the first week, btw).

This experience has created a lot of personal growth as well. Not, as well…More, it has created a lot of personal growth…period. I went into this with zero parenting experience, while the two of them had a combined three years of experience being babies then toddlers together. I went from never having grocery shopped…not really, ‘shopped’, anyway, to making multiple trips to the grocery store in my first week. I’ve also turned my brand new three-year-old stove, into a thoroughly used appliance during the same time-span. A week ago I was a bachelor. My diet consisted of take-out and pizza. I didn’t cook. I bought the stove because it came in the set and there was a hole in the cabinets I needed to fill. Now, I have two boys who will eat almost everything I put in front of them, and continue eating until I stop.  They’ll eat a whole PB&J each, a whole corn dog, right off the stick, and a pound of tatter-tots between the two of them. Sadly for them, they only get those foods once in a while. Thankfully, they also eat half of a large chicken breast each and love peas. To get nutrients in them, we’ve gone to making smoothies. If I knew how to make money blogging, believe me, I would have an advertisement for the Vitamix 780 inserted right here, because that thing makes spinach and kale invisible in a frozen fruit and yogurt smoothie. Once we figured out they couldn’t get the fluid through the small holes in the tippie-cups and they weren’t reject the concoction, it’s become a favorite for the boys who have learned that the purple drink comes with the straw.

So, what’s changed in the past seven days? I now know that I love these boys like they were my own flesh and blood, both as twins and as individuals. I can now tell them apart by their facial expressions and personalities, their laughs and cries, and by which area of the house they return to for mischief. Dale calls me Dada and chip calls me Mamma, and technically, at least for now, they’re both right. I get to wrestle around and sword fight with paper towel rolls, but I also have to kiss the booboos and sing to them at 3 AM when they wake up scared. They deserve a mom and dad. They got me, and I will do my best to fill both of those roles as best I can.

This first week has been challenging in ways I never imagined and, at the same time, has been the most rewarding experience of my life. I look forward to the little breaks during naps, but can’t imagine going back to a quiet house all to myself.

I’m looking forward to seeing how this next week goes as I begin to reincorporate my work schedule into the mix. It’s been hard while I was with them 24 hours a day. It’s going to be much more difficult moving forward, but these boys are not my only responsibility. I still owe it to my employer and to my devoted crew to give them 100% of my attention during the hours I’m there. My employer, boss, and crew have been wonderful in allowing me the time to focus solely on these boys. Now, I owe it to them to move back into working full time, devoted to their success and our success as a team as well.

Continue…