We'll be back...

On temporary hiatus due to:

1. Lost digital camera (can't have funny blog posts without funny photos)
2. Work is crazy
3. Home is crazy

Gimmie a week or two....

WANTED

NAME: Daniel "Muscles" Hsiung & Nathan "The Brain" Hsiung

HEIGHT: About "knee-high"

WEIGHT: Heavy enough to strain your back

CRIME: Food throwing, hair pulling, and milk pouring

M.O.: Both like to use distraction techniques. Daniel prefers to use the straight forward "muscle" method; crashing through baby gates, flipping over chairs, etc. Nathan prefers more subtle mind games, gaining your trust with a big flashy smile before throwing a handful of noodles across the room. Both were last seen running away from their parents...in opposite directions of course...

Picture People

As previously discussed in this post, it's pretty much impossible to get all three kids to strike that picture perfect pose for the camera. After a few HIGHLY stressful visits to Picture People, Yvonne and I have reset our expectations to...well, nothing. We flat out tell the photographers to just click away and not to wait for that perfect shot where all three kids are smiling. Our rationale is that photos with one kid crying, one kid trying to run away, and one kid sporting a forced-grit-my-teeth-because-they're-making-me smile "look" is way more realistic and a more accurate portrayal of life.

For some reason most of the photographers don't believe us and end up prolonging the torture anyway.

Here's a few photos from our last trip to the mall.

Wish I Had A Video Camera Right Now

So I'm sitting in the boys' room right now waiting for them to take a nap (or at least spend a little "quiet time" resting in their cribs). The morning went relatively well. We went to church and the boys had a good time playing in the church nursery. However, when we got home the meltdown began. Their normal nap was cut short when Daniel woke up screaming about 30 minutes into it. He woke Nathan up and the two have been cranky since. The boys grew out of a second nap awhile back but because of their crankiness (and our exhaustion), we're trying the nap thing one more time.

In the span of the last 15 minutes the following has happened:

• Both boys sitting in their cribs quietly looking at books
• Both lay down and give every indication they are about to sleep
• All is good and I'm about to grab a few minutes of shut-eye myself
• For no apparent reason, Nathan stands up, walks to the end of his crib, and decides now is the best time to demonstrate his belly-flop technique on his mattress (followed by giggles)
  
• Daniel's head darts up, he giggles back, and so begins the belly-flop contest
• It gets quiet for a few minutes as each boy lays down again
  
• Nathan then tries jumping up and down while holding on to the side of the crib. His feet both get stuck when they slide through the vertical crib rails.
• Nathan starts screaming and Daniel joins in (though he doesn't really know why)
• I put my laptop down and pull Nathan out. Seeing that both limbs are still attached, I put him back on the mattress
• It gets quiet again
  
• Nathan now hangs on the crib rail and PURPOSELY sticks his two feet through the rails again and then starts screaming again. I shoot him a look like, "Not this time mister...you're on your own"
  
• Daniel decides to join in and he sticks his feet through the rails and starts screaming
• They do this for three rounds
• It's important to note that they don't cry when they are sitting down in order to get in position to stick their feet out
  
• It's like they sit, scoot forward, stick their feet out, try to make eye contact with me, and then flip the scream switch
  
• The tandem stereo screaming would put a Bose audio system to shame. I should record it and use it to coerce barricaded subjects out of a house...no human would be able to endure this for long. Better yet, I should save the recording for ten years and use it to wake these guys up when they're trying to sleep past 6am every day.
  
• Both lay down again
• Mix in a few rounds of giggles and blowing raspberries...
• ...and now it's quiet

It Was So Easy Back Then...

This is a photo of Rachel when she was 20 months old. The boys are a couple weeks shy of turning 20 months old. Unless they take some miraculous turn in behavior in that time, we can safely draw the conclusion that Rachel was SO MUCH BETTER BEHAVED THAN HER BROTHERS ARE.

There's quite a lot to learn from this photo:

• Rachel is smiling
• The boys may smile for the first minute or two after sitting down to eat but the colony of ants in their pants makes them go nuts after about 5 minutes
• There is a well balanced variety of food on her plate
• Nathan only likes carbs. It can be bread, noodles, rice, oatmeal...just carbs
• Daniel only likes meat...no veggies
• The cup
  
• The straw is intact (and has not been yanked out in order to make the milk flow easier when turned upside down)
  
• The lid wouldn't survive a fall to the ground (but hey, this is the year 2004 and Rachel's parents have absolutely no experience with their only child doing anything remotely rebellious...LIKE THROWING FULL CUPS OF MILK ACROSS THE ROOM!)
• Her shirt is perfectly clean. No milk dribbles...no milk in her hair...no experimenting to see if milk does indeed fall prey to the laws of gravity when the cup is turned upside down (see a pattern?)
• Clean eating area
• The tomatoes have not been used as finger paint
  
• The cheese hasn't been crushed between tiny fingers and tossed overboard
• For some reason the boys feel compelled to "rescue" their food from the confines of their plates and bowls. As soon as the food hits the table in front of them, the spoon or fork comes out and they start scooping/flicking the food out..."Go peas...go carrots....save yourselves!"
  

All I can say is we didn't know how good we had it. I'm sure if you were to ask us back then, we'd say that raising our first child at 20 months was a challenge, how much work it was chasing this SOLO kid around, etc. We'd probably even have the audacity to say we were tired. HA!

Pull!!!

Haven't had a post in awhile...it's been crazy at work. I can't ever think of a time when we've had so many callouts within a two week period. It's getting so bad that Rachel keeps asking me if I have to go back to work every night...

Anyway, shortly after my 24 hour work day we had a chance to take the kids to the park. Here's Nathan practicing for his SWAT physical agility test...