If They Love Me, Why Are They Trying to Kill Me?

I have long suspected that my children hate me.  How else can I explain some of their actions?  I now have proof it is worse than I thought. They are trying to kill me.

I have been sleep deprived since the day we brought our daughter home from the hospital.  She was not a good sleeper as a baby. Even now, she struggles to sleep through the night.  When she wakes up in the middle of the night, she typically calls for mommy.  I only get the call if there was a monster or some other nightmare involved but that still doesn't stop her from waking me up as well.  Lately, she has been waking about 4am, calling for mommy and ending up in our bed.

Our son is not much better.  Until recently, he was consistently waking up at 5-5:30am.  Now. he is normally up by 6:30 which means that I am up by 6:30.  Neither child as any concept of sleeping in on a weekend either.

I would often grumble, when getting up at hours that I used to go to bed at, about why it is that my children hate me. Now, though, I have proof that they are really trying to kill me.

The other morning Caelyn woke up at 4am and called for mommy.  She ended up in our bed and as I was finally starting to fall asleep at about 5am, Caleb woke and wouldn't quiet.  So, I got up with him as Kerry had Caelyn.  I brought him downstairs and turned on the TV.  The channel was on a 24 hour news network and the story was about a study showing that lack of sleep increases your chance of early death.  (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100505/hl_afp/healthsciencesleepbritainitaly)

The Rise of the Cheerios Monster

I decided long ago that Cheerios were nature's perfect food.

For years Cheerios have been a staple on long car trips or simply the quick trip to the store.  I take a gallon size Ziploc freezer bag, fill it half way with regular Cheerios, add fruity Cheerios and shake well.  Presto, nature's perfect food.  I throw the Ziploc bag in the car and leave it in there so I never have to worry about forgetting snacks.

Caelyn has been eating this Cheerios mix for a long time and it is still a favorite of hers.  Recently, when we are in the MINI, she has started sharing with her brother.  The two car seats are close enough that passing the Cheerios back and forth is no problem.  The van, however, is a different story as the two are separated.

I decided to get Caleb his own somewhat spill proof cup (the kind that he can put his hand in but everything doesn't spill out if he tips it over).  He was thrilled and cackled the first time I gave it to him.  He also made a large mess, pulling out more Cheerios that his little hands could manipulate, spilling them all over his car seat.  Being the ever attentive father that I am, when I got him out of the car seat, the spilled Cheerios stayed behind.

So now, getting Caleb in the car has become a little more difficult as the Cheerios monster has been born.  When putting him in his car seat, he fights desperately to grab as many of the fallen Cheerios as he can before I can strap him in.  He also starts demanding the cup of Cheerios as soon as I have finished strapping him in.  In his mind now, it is not a car trip without Cheerios.

On the plus side, at least he is quiet when he eats.

The Origin of a Punk Rock Girl

OK, so maybe I have already told you about the origin of our little punk rock girl.  This is actually about how we came to find out about her taste in music. Plus it gives me an excuse to post what I think are some pretty funny pictures of Caelyn.

I have loved music for as long as I can remember.  It is one thing that has always been a part of my life.  Our house is filled with it.  Kerry, though, would argue that much of it isn't very good.  She likes calmer, quiet music while I like it loud and noisy.  This being the case, I find it amusing that Kerry is the one who noticed our daughter's affinity for loud music.

When she was just a baby, I don't remember how young, Kerry noticed Caelyn would calm at the sound of a guitar.  If I remember correctly, the three of us were on the couch (I don't know what we were doing or what was playing) but Kerry noticed our daughter would start to yell when guitars were not prevalent in the music we were listening to.  When the guitars kicked back in, she would quiet.

After Kerry pointed this out to me, I started digging out Cd's of various types of music. We played them for Caelyn and watched her reaction.  Each time, she was calm at loud guitar sounds especially simple "3 chord" punk rock. She would complain about quieter music.

I was thrilled.  Absolutely beside myself.  I thought it was hilarious and great for me. It meant I had an excuse to listen to whatever I wanted to and would not be stuck listening to Barney's greatest hits or some other such stuff.

Once we knew this about her, I started using the music at every opportunity.  I don't know how it started exactly but The Who live in concert became part of the bedtime routine and still is to this day.  We would use White Stripes to calm her after night terrors. She would wake up screaming and not know where she was. Even with us holding her and talking to her, she would not calm but put on Seven Nation Army and she stopped mid-cry.

She had colic in the afternoon for a while.  I tried everything I could think of to calm her and nothing worked. One afternoon, in frustration I sat down in front of the computer with her in my lap and cranked up The Distillers to drown out the constant screams.  She quieted immediately and soon went to sleep.  This became an afternoon ritual until the colic past.

The Ramones have been by far the greatest find for her.  They are on at her request even as I write this.  She has Ramones t-shirts, wears Chucks and even has a Ramones kiddie cup.  And this past Saturday, she got upset when she was told she couldn't wear her Ramones shirt to a friend's birthday party.

For almost two years she would not allow us to listen to anything but them in the car.  If she started to act up in the car, all I had to do was threaten to turn off The Ramones and she would behave.  We took a 9 + hour car trip to West Virginia with her and she never complained as long as they were on. 

Her musical taste has branched out a bit now though she still wants songs that are loud, even complaining one day that Rage Against the Machine was not loud enough. 

The result of all this, other than a smiling father and a mother with a headache, is she has a strong grasp of song structure.  She is always making up songs and they get more and more complex as time passes.  She will even include a chorus that she goes back to throughout the song.  In the last day or two she has started putting together her own beats and rhythms.

We have encouraged this experimentation with her own guitar, (pictured above), various smaller instruments and my mom got her a drum set.  I am not sure if the drum set was more for Caelyn or for my mom to see if Caelyn could drive us nuts but it is quite popular with both kids now.

Of course, I don't know how long this will last.  She may have developed a love of music that will last her for life or she may move on to something else at any time but I plan to ride this wave as long as possible.

The Cast Part Three - The Wife and the Narrator

Now we come to the most dangerous post I may ever write.  The one where I describe my wife.  Actually, it is just the description of a couple of aspects of my wife that may make future posts more interesting.  In the previous two posts I could pretty much say whatever I wanted as the kids can't read.  If I say the wrong thing in this one, I could get in trouble.  It's a good thing she is a patient and forgiving woman.  =-)

My wife and I met at the orientation of her first job after graduating from Rice University.  I can only surmise that after graduation she decided to take a break from the smart thing necessary to make it through Rice.  It is that or Rice is not nearly as discriminating as people think. 

Either way, she started dating me. This was a surprise to just about everyone who knew her including, I think, herself.  If she could go back in time to tell high school Kerry about the person she was eventually going to marry, high school Kerry would never have believed her. 

We are opposites on almost every level. We think in completely different ways.  I truly believe that our brains are wired very differently.  We can both look at the same situation and see completely different things. 

I don't know how to explain it but somehow it works.  We will be married 10 years in September and have been together much longer than that.  We were engaged so long that friends started threatening to plan the wedding for us if we didn't finally do it ourselves.

She has a fairly quiet nature. This quiet nature is most people's impression of her until they really get to know her. And while she is much calmer than the rest of us in this household, she is not a pushover. Underneath that quiet nature there is a toughness that many do not give her credit for.  It is this underlying toughness that, in my opinion, make her the person she is.

She was under the World Trade Center when the planes hit.  While she did not know what had happened until she was safely on the Jersey side, I watched her pull herself together in the aftermath of that disaster knowing that if a few circumstances had been different she would have been in Tower 1. 

We went out to dinner for our first anniversary, September 23, 12 days after the attack.  We could smell the fires that were still burning as we walked to the restaurant.  That night at dinner we spoke a lot about what had happened and what could happen.  At another time, I will explain to those that don't know what life was like in NYC then but suffice it to say, people were on edge and not a day went by without multiple disruptions due to bomb threats and even attempts.

I asked her, if after everything she went through she wanted to move.  She told me no. It wasn't how she said it though, it was the look in her eyes when she said it.  There was steel there.

When Lehman Bros collapsed, she was an employee there.  Eight months pregnant and looking at facing child birth with the possibility of her job and insurance suddenly taken away, she never faltered. There is something inside her that bends but never seems to break.

I won't go into what kind of mom she is or what kind of person she is, not because I don't think she is a great one of each but because it should become evident as more posts are written.

How she puts up with me I don't know, but I thank God she does.  I don't know what I did to be blessed with this spectacular woman, but it must have been pretty good.  Or maybe, she did something really bad.