My Father's Echo

There is a song that I used to enjoy listening to. It is called "The Living Years" and is sung by Mike & the Mechanics. For those not familiar with the song, it is about living in the shadow of your father and never truly seeing eye to eye or allowing yourself to just give in and tell the old man that you love him, because men just don't do those sorts of things.

I don't listen to it anymore because it makes me cry for reasons that are too complicated to understand, even for me. The truth is that we all feel like our fathers are these larger than life figures. I think that the wish of most men is to make our fathers proud (or at the very least believe that we have lived up to and possibly exceeded his expectations of us).

The song doesn't hold for me because I know I made my father proud because he told me on more than one occasion. I also know that I never held back in letting him know how much I loved and respected him. We just passed the anniversary of his death. He has been gone now for over three years and I am still not able to completely deal with that reality. But I do know that it is not because I have regrets that we never were able to see eye to eye.

I guess my real problem is that I still am not ready to believe that he is no longer a part of my living world. He never got to hold his new twin baby grandsons and they will never get to know what it was like to see his goofy faces and laugh at their Paw Paw.

The part of that Mike & the Mechanics song that always gets me goes like this (sing along if you know the melody):

I wasn't there that morning
When my father passed away
I didn't get to tell him
All the things I had to say

I think I caught his spirit
Later that same year
I'm sure I heard his echo
In my baby's new born tears
I just wish I could have told him in the living years

The first part is not true for me. I was there the morning my Father passed away. I was lying beside his bed in one of those uncomfortable hospital recliners. We had fallen asleep, my Mom and I on either side of him. When we woke up, we found that, true to his nature, Daddy got up before the sun had risen and he went to his new heavenly home (more than likely to see if there were any creeks near the Pearly Gates that had some perch biting).

The second part though, the part about the father's echo in my baby's tears, that part hits me like a freight train to the chest every time. Recently, Mother sent me a picture of my Dad when he was a baby. Here is it is:

In that picture, my dad is the little one being held by my uncles. Does that baby look like anyone else that I have recently posted pictures of on here? I'll give you some help. I cut out just my Dad and placed it next to a picture of Tony in his swing:


I mean, they would never pass for identical twins, but I certainly think you could say there is an echo of my Father in Tony.

I love my Dad and I miss him terribly. I know that he is watching and I hope that he is proud of the man and father that I have become. More than that I hope that he is proud of the little echos of him that are my children.

Home Movies are Fun

It's Time to Make the Donuts

I was talking to my best friend the other day about my schedule recently and he made the observation (which, as usual was both clever and on target) that I had in many ways become the Duncan Donuts guy. Do you remember that old commercial? If not, here it is:



Anyway, the point is that I am doing the same thing every day. Here is a bit of how the schedule breaks out. Don't worry, there are pictures coming up.

4:00 AM: One or more of the babies wakes up and demands to be fed. This is our new alarm clock. It most often has me awaking to laughter because I find the babies' cries funny sometimes. As I often tell Marcy: "It is such an impotent rage, isn't it?"

4:10 AM: After we blindly stumble through a house that has become a veritable minefield of discarded spit rags, chew toys and forgotten binkies, we arrive in the nursery and have to change the morning diaper. What bothers me is how devious their little smiles are as it happens:

4:30 AM: The morning bottle is eaten and, if we are lucky, nothing that has been placed into their volatile little Mount St. Helen's stomachs has been returned during the burping process. Once this is over, I finally get my reward. Xander now loves to sit in my lap and talk to me first thing in the morning. It is often the highlight of my day:

4:45 AM: The babies go back to bed but it is time to go to work, so no more sleep for me.

6:30 AM: On the weekends, we often try and get a bit more sleep until they wake up again or the older kids wake up, then it is time to clean up and get ready for the next bottle.

8:00 AM: After the regular morning bottle, the twins like to veg for a bit in their swings. They don't often wake up lively and want to play. They are slow risers. Here is Tony, stretching as we wakes up. He loves to smile and giggle at passersby:

10:30 AM: After swing time comes tummy time, where we are learning to push up on our hands and wiggle our feet. This wiggling is a subtly effective form of movement. They often creep in circles, covering most of their play mat in the process. Here is Xander, doing the mat dance that is sweeping the Allen area: The Creep.


12:00 PM: Time for another bottle and then it is nap time. Now by nap time, we mean that they have to lay in their cribs. Sleep is negotiable.

2:00 PM: Nap time is officially over when we can no longer stand the screaming. Time for diaper changes and perhaps a little practice sitting up while Mommy holds our hands, like this fine example from "Thing 2", Tony:


Or perhaps they spend some time sitting in their "Bumbo" seats, these really neat plastic seats that they have now to teach the babies to sit up on their own. Here is Xander with his canary yellow version with an assist from big brother, David:


3:30 PM: Another recent afternoon distraction has been bouncer seats. They are now old enough to at least hang lifelessly from them like chubby, fleshy marionettes. Here is an example of the fun. First up is Tony:



Xander is still a little small for the big torture device, so he gets the lower to the ground scooter style. we have to put a pillow under his feet to reach the ground but he loves bouncing around in that thing:


6:30 PM: David and Beth have been so great about helping out in the afternoons and evening when the boys start really getting fussy. Little brothers just love their big brothers....until they get older at least.


7:30 PM: Dinner is now solid as we are learning to enjoy things like peaches and green beans. Once this over, it is bed time.


8:30 PM: The night is time to do fun stuff with the older kids or just hanging out and trying to decompress. The older two have had a lot going on lately. David, for example, recently starred in his school's production of The Wizard of Oz. He played the Cowardly Lion and he was excellent and funny and really stole the show.



10:00 PM: We collapse in bed and try to get a little sleep before the whole thing starts all over again.

4:00 AM: The screaming alarm goes off again....time to make the donuts!


Author's Note: I am having the most fun of my life. I never knew how much we needed these twin boys until God threw them into our lap.

Another Author's Note: Thanks so much to Maw Maw for all of the pictures above. Our digital camera was dropped...er...broke and so these are the best and most recent pictures we have and may be the last for a little while until we can procure a new camera.

One Last Author's Note: Thanks for dropping by, and sorry we all have been out of touch. It's been a busy six months :-)

Twin Updates

I plan o updating this post later today with some form of witty banter, but for those that are reading it now, here are some pictures I took recently of the boys:

With their brother and sister:

Anthony just a swingin':
Alexander looking around:

Hello World

My video editor dropped a "d" off of the title on the video, but I am willing to try it anyway. For those wanting to see the babies, here they are:

Tony Randall and Jack Klugman Eat your Heart Out

What happens when two men with nothing in common are forced to live together?

I hate to get all Neil Simon on your behind, but that is all I can think of when I see my two boys. The big news is that Alexander has grown out of his Boy in the Plastic Bubble phase and is ready to cohabit with his brother. Thusly:

The babies are still in the NICU. They are still on feeding tubes, but we are able to do more with them now. By that, I mean, they are allowing us to change dirty diapers. You see, it is apparently a privilege to get a diaper full of butt-pudding. They are so proud of this, they often load up the babies with suppository laxatives when they know I am planning on paying a visit.

Marcy has also been able to hold them at the same time, which just seems like an accident waiting to happen. I'll just show you the picture and let you decide on how you'll explain it to the nice pit bull at Child Protective Services.

We have also been able to give them a bath. This is a very nice thing. It is called a swaddle bath because you actually drop them, blanket and all into the warm water so that they are never "loose" and feeling insecure.


We still don't know when they are coming home, but until they do we are helping to ensure that they remain clean and dry and *shudder* poop free.

If This Vans a Rockin'....

Our history with cars is not the greatest. We bought a powder blue 1992 Lincoln Town Car the day after the September 11th 2001 attacks in New York. (The event with the twin towers had nothing to do with buying a new car other than the fact that our only other car died as I was making my way home that day.)

We have driven that car virtually into the pavement over the past seven some-odd years. Lately, it has shown signs that it was ready, like an aging Stallion, to be led into a field and put out of its misery and perhaps ground into a food source for other farm animals.

I have not gone to a car dealership and tried to secure financing for a new minivan (which is what we need to transport our expanded family) for several reasons:

1. I knew that minivans were much more expensive than we could afford.
2. I felt that with a the flagging economy, financing would be harder to secure.
3. I had a sneaking suspicion that when I told the car sales guy that I had no down payment and could only afford a certain low amount per month, he or she would laugh so hard, they might hurt themselves and I could did not want a busted gut injury on my conscience.

Monday, as I attempted to drive to the train station, I noticed that the Town Car was riding a little low. A light came on the dashboard that read Air Susp. I think that every warning light that could go on in that car has gone off at least once in front of my nervous eyes, but this one was new. Before I knew what was happening, I hit a small bump in the road and it felt like the back end of the car was going to bounce off of the road. At the same moment, the trunk locking mechanism broke off and the trunk lid slammed into the back windshield. (This was not entirely shocking as I had the trunk lock broken over a year ago and had it reattached with string and duct tape. This kind of ingenuity has been a part of my family for years. I still hear stories of my forefathers who came west in wagons held together largely with butcher's twine, electrician's tape and dreams.)

I decided on Monday that it was time to seek out options. I had heard of leasing before and according to the radio spots, it could cost half the monthly payments of buying. So, I popped over the website for D&M Auto Leasing and got hooked up with a man named Jay. I emailed a list of my laughably unrealistic requirements and my even more laughable trade-in. After a couple of emails and a couple of phone conversations, Jay found me a minivan to purchase. Even more incredible, he found me financing to fit my needs. Today, he drove over our new van right to our door, we signed all of the paperwork he needed and he drove off in the Town Car, presumable to find a big enough gun to shoot it with.

Here it is, the new van:

It is a 2008 Chevrolet Uplander. It can seat 7. It has a built in DVD player that the kids can watch from the back seat. It even has these nifty wireless headphones that they use to hear the sound without it bothering us in the front seats. Here are the kids doing just that:

I was even able to coax Marcy out into camera range to try it on for size:

Even the cat wants to go for a ride:

Okay, maybe not.

Praise the Lord for helping us find a vehicle that fit our needs. As always, He has provided just as we needed it.

It was the easiest car buying experience of my life.

Baby Steps

Marcy and I have learned a lot about human development in the past couple of weeks since the boys were born. Here are a few things I thought you all might find interesting.

• Babies are single minded developers. Their little bodies are so small and the available energy needed for development is so rare that their bodies will only use the energy to develop a single system at a time. If they are having heart trouble, for example, their bodies will work on that system before moving on to “less essential” systems like stomach and bowels.
• 40 weeks isn’t just a random number. The complex systems put in place by God truly are miraculous and they take time to develop. Babies really do need every second of those 40 weeks to get ready to exist in the outside world. Our babies were born at 32 weeks meaning that there are sill 8 weeks of development that need to occur in their bodies and minds before they are truly ready to begin the process of growth and development as babies.
• Weight doesn’t matter. You might think that the babies small size and weight are a factor but they really aren’t important in and of themselves. An underweight baby can still go home with Mommy and Daddy as long as they reach certain developmental goals.
• Time is the hardest thing to give. As parents, your instincts tell you that babies need human contact and nurturing. This is true of a fully developed baby. Fully developed babies like to be rocked and cuddled and sang to. Preemie babies don’t have those same needs. What they need most is sleep. That means that right now the best thing for us to do is not be with the babies most of the time and that separation can be hard.

In the NICU, there is the critical area where the babies are watched over by a nurse at all times. When the babies become a little more stable, they are moved to another area in the NICU called Baby Steps. In this area, one nurse might look after four or five babies at a time. Thursday, we received word that the boys had been moved to Baby Steps. This is certainly progress.

When Can They Come Home?

This is the number one question that I get asked and the one I simply do not have an answer to. What I can tell you is the plan for the boys. As soon as they meet these goals we will have a better understanding of when they will be coming home.

Body Temperature: Alexander still does not have enough body fat and muscle to keep him warm. His body temperature is still too low. He is currently sleeping in what they call an “isolet” which is this plastic aquarium like structure that is heated to keep his body temperature up. Until he can maintain his own body temperature, he cannot come home.

Food: This is the biggest struggle right now. Before they teach the babies how to drink milk from a bottle, they have to make sure that the babies’ stomachs can digest the milk and that their renal and digestive systems are all in working order. To do this, they are administering food through a tube that runs directly into the stomach. Once some food is given, they reverse the process and find out how much of the milk they put in is still sitting there. This tells them how well the babies are handling the feeds.

Neither one of the boys seems to be progressing well down this path. They are both on what is called "continuous feeds", which is where the milk is delivered in a constant drip into the stomach over a continuous period of time (like four hours at a time). This is not ideal, but it provides the food necessary to the body while allowing the system to digest a little at a time as it finishes developing.

Anthony had a setback this past weekend. His stomach slowed down on digesting his milk and it starting coming back up his esophagus (they call it “reflux”). This caused his throat to instinctively close off to keep him from aspirating the milk and he would just quit breathing for stretches of time. This causes his oxygen levels and heart rate to drop off suddenly (to the alarm of his Mother). For this reason, he is back on oxygen until they can get the feed levels right.

The goal, obviously, is for the babies to be able to take a large amount of milk at one time and be able to process it completely before the next feeding. Once the babies can do this, they will start “nippling” which means they will feed them through a tube while giving them a nipple to suck on. This will teach them the connection between a nipple and a full belly. Once they are nippling well, then comes the time when they will be drinking from a bottle only. Once they are able to drink at least eight ounces of milk a day from a bottle and keep it down, they will be just about ready to come home.

Wait and Pray

So, that is where we are. We go and see the babies every day. There are a few hours a day that the babies have “touch time”. This is the time, in between stretches of well needed sleep, that the babies can be picked up, held, have their diapers changed, etc. We visit during these touch times and do as much as we can to feel like part of the process.

The truth is that there is nothing we can do at this point but pray and wait patiently as their little bodies develop one little baby step at time.

They're Heeeere....

Time Flies

You know how on movies, they make big jumps in time simply by fading out and then fading in with some kind of text hoving over the screen that says something like: Four Years Later...

Same thing happened here. You see, Marcy was hospitalized before Thanksgiving and has been languishing in the hospital room ever since. It was the most boring two months ever and therefore not worth our valuable blogging time. So, last time we spoke, it was Halloween, right? Okay, go ahead and fade out the camera.

Two Months Later...

Marcy was told when the babies were a mere 27 weeks in "the oven" that she was in danger of going into labor if she was not careful. So she was careful and held onto those little suckers for another five weeks.

The major problem rested with the baby that the doctor's had dubbed "Baby A". We later named him Alexander Wayne. Alexander had a problem with his umbilical cord. Apparently an umbilical cord has two veins and an artery. One of his two veins was blocked and therefore restricting the blood flow from Mommy. This caused several problems: One was that his placenta was wearing out much faster than his brother's. Another problem was that his growth was slowing down considerably. By the time he was born, he weighed only 2 lbs, 11 oz compared with his bigger brother "Baby B" which we named Anthony Shane.

At 32 and a half weeks gestation, Marcy went into active labor and the decision was made to let the babies be born. A Cesarean was scheduled for that night and on the evening of December 23rd, two new Bryant boys entered the world.

NICU

The babies are, as of this writing, still residents of Medical Center of Plano in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (or just NICU for the hip and funky). Anthony was on a ventilator for the first couple of days but is off now and breathing on his own.


Alexander, although smaller, seems to be in better shape at birth. He came out with his dukes raised and his lungs filled and screaming. He never had to go on the ventilator at all and is breathing just fine on his own.

They are also both now off of their IVs. The only tubes they have now are the ones that are placing the milk into their bellies. Once their little stomachs can handle the milk, we will begin trying to help them learn how to suck on a bottle while still breathing (which is a pretty tough trick for a little baby to learn and is one of the last instincts to develop). But in recent days we have been able to hold them a few times. They are so tiny and perfect. Enjoy the images:

Me holding Alexander

Maw Maw holding Anthony

Marcy holding Alexander

Granddad holding Alexander

By the way, I am sorry for not updating the Blog sooner, but I will try and do better in the future. No promises though. I think I am going to be pretty busy...

Halloween '08 - Gouls, Goblins, Evil Jedi and Pop Stars

Well, Halloween has come and gone. This year, only one of the children did what was expected of them. For Elizabeth, the choice of going as Hannah Montana was not even really a choice. When we asked last month, the name spurted from her lips so fast it sounded more like "Hnamntna!".

The most important part of the above costume, according to the Squirrel, were the black boots (thanks Nana!) Beth has fallen in love with these boots. She wears them as often as she can now. On more than one occasion, she has even attempted to wear them to bed.

The surprising choice in costume came from David, the pacifist. He loves playing the hero and really loved the Iron Man movie this summer. His first choice was, of course, Iron Man. Well, that was before he got his hands on the costume catalog (thanks Nana!) After perusing the catalog, I am sad to report that my son was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force. The following picture says it all.

Pray for us.

To Bed!

“I have to go for one of those stupid, three hour blood tests!” Marcy says. She is angry and I, as the faithful and doting husband, patiently wait until it is safe to leave the room. (Like facing an angry mother bear, you must back out slowly and make no threatening gestures. If she senses weakness and makes a move at you just fall to the floor, cover your head with your hands and play dead.) During her first pregnancy she had a blood test that came back with high blood sugar and she had to go through this ordeal. She calls it “that three hour blood test” with the same venom in her voice as she might use to describe water boarding.

“First of all, you can’t eat or have coffee or anything that morning,” she explains. “Then they stick you like three times and take a ton of blood and then you have to drink this horrible orange sugar drink and then wait for like three hours with nothing to do but sit on their uncomfortable chairs.”

“You can take a book,” I offer helpfully and a moment later I am in a fetal position on our kitchen linoleum and trying not to breathe.

“I know you aren’t dead,” she says, “and I am not mad at you anyway. This is just stupid. After three hours of sitting then they drain another few quarts of blood.”

I wisely decide not to correct her over-exaggeration of the amount of blood they will take. Besides, I am getting lightheaded from holding my breath.

******************

“Well, I’ve got it,” she says. Her voice is shaking slightly and I know that she is about to cry. Marcy is not normally an easy weeper, but pregnancy has changed the weather patterns of her emotions and unwanted storms sweep from out of a clear blue sky sometimes.

“Got what?” I say stupidly. I knew that she had just survived the blood test and I should know better.

“They showed me the results at the doctor’s office today. I definitely have gestational diabetes. I can’t believe that! I have done everything right…”

“Whoa!” I say, “this is not your fault!”

“…I have been eating right and drinking plenty of water…”

“You didn’t do this, Marcy,” I try again. “If you want to blame anyone, blame me. I was the one who got you pregnant.”

“Believe me, I know,” she says darkly. Did I just hear thunder?

******************

“How did it go at the endocrinologist?” I ask. It has been a long day and my feet are hurting, and then she wraps her arms around me and puts her face in my chest and I feel painless and complete. Since the forming of the baby bump, the hugs have been more awkward but no less wonderful.

“She was really nice,” Marcy says tentatively.

The truth is that Marcy is mad that she even had to go see a specialist. In her view, seeing an endocrinologist for gestational diabetes is like hiring a plumber to flush the toilet: it is ridiculous to hire someone to do something that you can do yourself. Of course, since I have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, she has ridden me constantly about taking care of myself. It is different when you are the one getting prodded and judged by the person in the white frock.

“You know,” she continues, “you still need to find an endocrinologist yourself. You should go to her. I think you would like her.”

“Is she hot?” I ask.

Marcy ignores the line. As is often the case in the comedy routine of our life, she plays it straight.

“They were very thorough,” Marcy says in a tone that indicates that perhaps they were a little too thorough. “They did one test and said that they found protein in my urine, which is a little strange. They wanted me to call my doctor in the morning and tell him about that.”

******************

“I am on the way to see my doctor,” she says and I suddenly feel like maybe a goose has just danced a jig across my future final resting place. I can hear the sound of traffic as she drives herself the half an hour to her doctor’s office. I can also hear the panic in her voice. She is scared.

“Today?” I say. She has been out and about for more than a week, seeing doctors and specialists and dentists and everything else. Today was the day that she was supposed to finally get some rest.

“I called his office and told them about the protein in my urine and about how my ankles have been swelling so much and they want me to come in right away. I’ll call you when I know more…”

“Are you going to be OK?” I ask.

“Don’t worry,” she says.

Yeah, no problem.

******************

"So?" I say anxiously.

"Well," she says calmly, "My blood pressure is way too high. It's so high he wanted to put me in the hospital for monitoring."

I can't reply. All I heard was hospital.

"...but he said that I cold go home if I promised him that I would really rest and not do anything else."

"Can you do that?" I ask.

"Yeah," she says, "but I didn't get a chance to finish the house and..."

"And nothing!" I almost yell through the phone, "We can have someone pick up the kids from school and I'll be home as soon as I can."

"Yes...okay." She sounds defeated.

******************

Once when David was much younger, his sister had talked him into cutting her hair. They had sneaked a pair of scissors into their room. David had sat Beth down in a kid sized chair; wrapped a towel around her shoulders and proceeded to mangle her pretty locks.

When Marcy found them she told them the lie that has been passed down by parents for generations: “When your father gets home, he is going to kill you!”

Later Marcy confessed that she put off punishment because she could not stop laughing long enough to be serious about it.

That night, when I got home, I walked into their room and found two very sad and frightened children. David was sitting in the very center of his mattress. He had taken his comforter and wrapped it around his body and over his head like Biblical sackcloth. His head was bowed and when I opened the door, he looked up at me with a unnique mix of fear, sadness, embarrassment and maybe a sliver of hope that I wouldn’t want to punish him after all.

The night after Marcy’s trip to the doctor, I come home and find her in much the same state. She is in bed, the covers pulled tight around her. Her eyes are deep wells and sometimes, like tonight, I can only see what floats on the surface, but what I see is fear and not a little embarrassment.

“I am sorry,” she says and her eyes mist over.

“For what?” I say, coming over to the bed to hold her.

“The house is a mess,” she says.

“Don’t worry about the mess,” I say. “My mother is on the way. She is ready to stay with us until the babies are born to help with the kids and the housework and whatever else we need.”

“I can do some stuff,” she starts and then stops.

“So, how long will you be on bed rest?” I ask

She shrugs. “For another three months. I guess.”

“I guess the kids and I better get to work then.”

The Hunt For the Perfect Names....May Be Over

I was once told that it is a woman's prerogative to change her mind. If that is the case, then I submit to you that it is doubly true for pregnant women. For example, just this weekend, Marcy decided not to kill every one of us (a decision, by the way, that everyone in the house except the cat supported).

The biggest things to change are our choices for the babies' names. After long consideration, we have decided that Broderick and Marshall are not right. After a brief, cordial discussion we have decided on these possible names:

• Alexander Wayne
• Anthony Shane

Okay, I am not going to lie. The discussion was not cordial. The truth is that the discussion was infuriating. When deciding on the name of a child, there are a number of things that each person brings into it that have nothing to do with rationality. Like a great number of things that happen in our marriage, there was no set list of rules out there. She never said, “Okay, honey, here are the things that I am looking for in a name,” and neither did I.

So, our search was a process of elimination. I would suggest a name and she would slap it out of the air like our cat slapping at a fly. Sometimes the reason was obvious, sometimes it was more obscure. Eventually, I began mentally keeping track of the reasons we rejected certain, perfectly good names.

Our Naming Criteria

1. Can’t use the name of any other child born in the near family. This would be copycatting and would create too much confusion at family events and gossip circles.
2. Can’t use the name of any of her former boyfriends.
3. Can’t use the name of any of her friends’ former boyfriends.
4. Can’t use the name of any of her family’s former boyfriends.
5. Can’t use the name of anyone who was ever mean to us in school or in life. More than once during our discussions, something like this was said: “Oh, I knew this kid named Franklin in third grade and he used to put boogers in my hair. No Franklins.”
6. Can’t use any boy’s name that could also be a girl’s name. This one was mine. I think I took that Johnny Cash song, Boy Named Sue too seriously. I wouldn’t want to be tracked down later in life and beaten by my son Tracy.
7. Can’t use the name of any former pets.
8. Name must be able to be abbreviated in a cute, yet masculine way. Marcy is a sucker for an abbreviation. If it were up to her, the entire English language would be monosyllabic. She calls me just “J”. I am sure she will do the same to Alex and Tony.
9. Names must sound good together. Of course what “good together” means is very subjective. Often we would find a good single name but when combined with the other name it would sound preposterous. “Samuel and Wallace? Wallace and Samuel? Does that sound like a law firm?”
10. Names can not get them beat up. This is similar to 6. Everyone knew that kid in school with the very bad name. It either sounded like something embarrassing or could be crafted into a rhyme and perhaps set to a tune in which it compares the child to what his name sounds like. I, for example, knew a guy in college named Harry Peters. We all called him “Steve”.
11. Name cannot resemble the name of any fictional character with which either of us has ever had a negative reaction in either print or other media. “You want to name our son Marvolo?”

As you can see, it is frank miracle that we were able to reach an agreement on these names. Wait a minute….hmmmm…Frank is a good name….like Frankenstein? Frank Stank? No. Never mind.

Drumroll Please....

Well, we made another trip to the doctor today. This one was a perinatal specialist. This means, among other things, that our co-pay was higher. It also means that they are supposed to know what is going on while the babies are still in the oven.

We had yet another sonogram. We thought that it would be one of those cool, 3-Dimensional jobs that would allow us to see the babies up close and personal. We didn't get one of those. What we got instead was the basic grainy black and white thing. For example, this picture of one of the babies looks less like a real baby and more like a scene from a horror movie about small, skeletal aliens who peer at us from our static filled televisions:

ooooh...scary....

We did learn several important things today. Here they are in no particular order:

(1) My mother, when given the opportunity, will plop down $12.00 for a DVD of grainy sonogram footage.

(2) We now know what the gender of each baby is. First of all, they are both the same sex. For those that don't already know, the babies are both naughty, stinky, snake-chasing, frog-handling, spit-ball shooting boys. For those who demand physical evidence, we give you this (and may my future son forgive me):


I am not going to explain the above picture or cheapen it with words. If you can't see it, ask a friend to show you what you are missing. (Here is a hint: what is that white arrow painfully pointing to?)

Now, we must decide on names for two boys. That battle is just beginning but will be settled soon. Right now we are leaning toward the following:

• Marshall Wayne Bryant
  
• Broderick Shane Bryant

So, what do you think? Let us hear from you...

Night Time is the Right Time…

It looks like after two previous pregnancies, one would encounter just about every possible side effect. Here is a new one. This started a week before we were even aware that Marcy was pregnant. About 2:00 AM one Monday morning, Marcy flings back the covers of the bed we share and leaps up. I begin struggling up from the deep sea that is my sleep. I slowly come to realize that Marcy is standing in the middle of the room, knees bent and her fingers clutched to her head like she is in pain.

Before I can even register alarm, she charges forward, shoulder slamming against the door frame of the bedroom door.

“HELLO?” she bellows to the house. Now, when I saw bellows, I mean she shouted louder than I may have ever heard her before. The sound alone was a wet slap to the face and it was my turn to spring up from the bed.

“HELLO?!” she screams again. She is already in the middle of the living room which means she must be at a near run. “HELLO?...HELLO?”

In my mind I can see the intruders who have bashed in the front door. We have heard about such things on the news. In the rough economy, home invasions are on the rise. Marcy must have heard them and is charging in and screaming so loudly because she is trying to spook them away. All of this goes through my mind in a nanosecond and turns my blood into ice water.

I hear her repeat that same word again, “HELLO?” and as I turn the corner, I see that the front door is in tact and we are alone in the house. Marcy is standing near the front entryway and turning in a circle, confused.

“Marcy, what’s wrong?,” I say and she looks at me without seeing me at all.

“I can’t find them,” she says near tears and then turns toward the kids hallway, as if about to rush down that hall. Then the reality of what is happening hits me: Marcy is sound asleep.

“Marcy,” I say in the most commanding voice I can assume. This is the voice I use when trying to get the kids to understand I am through playing and I am serious. They call it the ‘Daddy Voice’. “You are having a dream.”

She nearly cries then and confusedly explains she was dreaming that someone had come and taken the kids away and she could not find them. It was such a frightening experience that it was the next day before either one of us found any amusement from it at all.

The truth of the matter is that these night wanderings have a bizarre dual nature. Being woken up from deep sleep by any event can be jarring to the psyche. I remember when we were kids, someone claimed that, even in sleep, one can be aware that they are being stared at. We tried out our little scientific hypothesis – and I encourage anyone else who wants to duplicate this with a loved one to try this out for yourselves – by waiting until my father was taking a nap on the couch and then staring intently at him until he woke up. Even this little thing, waking up and finding a strange child staring at you, is psychologically grating, as evidenced by the way my father’s eyes bulged out and his mouth worked furiously as he chased us from the house.

Even as upsetting as being woken up abruptly in the middle of presumed danger can be, there is a funny side as well. There is comedy to imagining the large man leaping up, boxers askew, and falling from the bed. There is something very Dick Van Dyke about the idea of a possible night time pratfall.

Since the “HELLO?” incident, there have been a number of other events. And here, for your edification and amusement are just a few of the recent highlights:

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One night I found her putting on her shorts. When I asked her where she was going, she said that Nana was coming for the babies. I told her it was midnight and she shrugged and came back to bed. I never found out why her mother was coming to take the babies away.

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One night, I rolled over to get out of bed and visit the facilities when her arm shot out of the darkness and grabbed my wrist. “Shhhhhhh” she whispered, “can’t you see the spaceship?”

“No,” I whispered. Sometimes I find it fun to play along and see where it goes.

She raised her hand and pointed into the air, roughly in the direction of our ceiling fan. “It’s the red one,” she whispered ominously, “shoot it!” and then she promptly fell back to sleep.

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One morning, my alarm went off at 3:30. I had to get a flight to Houston so I had to make sure I was awake on time. Before I could get up to turn off the alarm – really before the thing had had a chance to beep more than once or twice – she rolled over violently and slapped me right in the middle of the chest and said in a glorious deadpan: “Alarm!” As near as I can tell, my sternum must have been the snooze button.

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Late one night, I hear an awful ruckus on Marcy’s side of the bed. We have two tall windows on either side of the bed. They are covered with standard, rental house vertical blinds. The cat likes to sit in the windows and peer through them at night. Sometime, if she sees a bug and attempts to skit it, this can cause the blinds to jostle and rattle. On this night, I hear the blinds rattling and I sit up, preparing to yell at the cat (a futile gesture if ever there was one) but it is not the cat, it’s Marcy.

She is bent over almost in half. Her hand is stuck in the blinds and is holding open a large hole to look through. Marcy’s face is hovering over the hole as she scans the neighbor’s house suspiciously. The blinds are a mess. It looks like she may have done this several times already.

“Sweetie,” I say carefully, “what’s going on?”

She steps back from the window and glares down at me. She looks to be near tears. “There are noises everywhere,” she said.

I laid there, my sleep-drunk mind wrestling briefly with the simple philosophical truth in the statement. “I think you are dreaming again,” I said.

“I swear I heard noises everywhere,” she said and she suddenly pulled open the blinds again and glared outside, daring the unseen but noisy ninja to present himself.

“Do you want me to go check it out,” I said.

“No,” she said, shoulders slumped as she got back in bed. I could tell by her tone of voice that she was fully awake again and a little embarrassed and frustrated. “I already looked out of every window and checked all of the doors…and the back yard…and the garage.”

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In this one, I did not wake up because I was exhausted from not sleeping through the other nights, but according to Marcy, she had a nightmare one night that she had had a baby and brought it home and that it was sleeping in the bed with us.

She woke up in a panic because she suddenly could not find the baby. She was stripping the bedding off of her bed when she woke up and sheepishly covered me back up and went back to sleep.

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Early yesterday, I woke up and was slipping out of bed, when Marcy rolled over and patted me gently on the back.

“Watch out for the animals out there,” she said happily, “there on a mission to exterminate everything.”
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Like the other side effects that we have encountered, I hope that this one will fade away soon enough. I think that the both of us will need a few nights with full rest if we are to have the energy to run after our little dream babies.

The Story of Us: Part Two - The Slap

If you have not read the first part of this story, you can do so by clicking this link.

When I told Marcy that I was going to write out the story of how we met and got engaged, the only thing that she asked was that I change some of the names to protect the innocent (or in this case, the not-so-innocent). I have done that. For example, Marcy shall now be known as “Sweet Pants” and I shall refer to myself as “Captain Excalibur”.

I am sorry; Sweet Pants just informed me that is not what she was talking about. She was talking about Monica. Monica (made up name) was a girl that came to Howard Payne the same year that Marcy did and in many respects it was Monica that brought us together. But I am getting there…

Shortly after my first encounter with Marcy, I was walking toward the cafeteria which was on the bottom floor of the only girls’ dormitory on campus. (It is a small school.) I saw a friend and fellow theater nerd named Julie standing outside the back of the dorm and I waved a greeting. Then I saw Marcy. Although in truth, I saw the smoke from her cigarette first. There she stood, puffing on the business end of Marlboro Light and glaring defiantly at all of the other girls who were passing by and giving her double-takes.

Marcy was the only person I had ever known who smoked openly on campus. All of the rest of us smokers had the decency to at least sneak off to the park. I had to admit that I admired her tenacity, but her attitude was still so rotten, I couldn’t imagine spending any time with her.

My junior year was the first year that I was allowed to move off campus and I was rooming with a theater tech named Steve. For that reason, I had very little time to be on campus. Marcy became friends with Julie and since Julie and I ran in similar circles, I incidentally encountered Marcy from time to time. The best that I can say is that Marcy and I were aware of each other.

The first show that we were to perform that year was a fall musical production of “The Music Man”. Just being a Theatre major did not guarantee anyone a role. Everyone had to audition. The auditions were held in the evening. Everyone was asked to gather in the audience and after some words from the director, we would go downstairs and come back up to the stage when called to sing our song and read our lines.

When I got to the theatre that night I gathered to talk and laugh with the theatre friends of mine. Sitting all alone in the audience was Marcy. She was sitting in the front row with her arms crossed, looking sour and sullen. I recognized her expression immediately for what it was: nerves.

Some people react to nerves by fighting them. They pace nervously, break out in sweats, cross their arms, frown in concentration. That is the way Marcy deals with nervousness. I deal with nervousness by ignoring the symptoms and pretending that everything is cool. For some reason that I cannot explain, I felt a real connection to Marcy at that moment. I knew that she would never admit to being nervous, but I thought a bit of levity might be in order.

In true braggadocio form, I leapt down the steps on the front of the stage toward her. She looked up at me with suspicion arching her brow.

“So,” I said dramatically, “have you had a tour of the theatre?”

She glared at me but said nothing. Obviously, she did not understand the reference, or she thought I might actually be serious. I was now standing directly in front of her and the tension stood between us like an invisible wall. I was regretting approaching her and was looking for some small talk to help play me off stage.

“You don’t look like you are having any fun,” I said.

“Oh, I am just having tons,” she retorted.

“You look like it,” I smiled. “I mean, snap out of it before you have too much fun.” It was stupid and generic, but there it was.

She frowned and with the best sarcastic wilt she could muster, she said, “I am so excited I can’t stand it. I wish somebody would slap me.”

So I did.

Let me be clear. The year before, I had taken a class in stage combat and pantomime. A good friend of mine named Jeff and I used to practice stage combat moves on one another. We would often throw each other across the stage. We would take dramatic falls down stairs and tumbles into walls, all in the name of fake drama. And yes, we also practiced stage punches and stage slaps. When Marcy said to slap her, the impulse for a funny moment was so strong, my hand was up and descending before I really understood the decision that I had made.

Now a good stage slap takes both the slapper and the slappee working in unison. In a stage slap, the one being slapped stars moving before the blow lands. It looks real enough but contact is never made. Marcy would have known this had she hung around us theater geeks long enough, but she didn’t know the game. My open palm flew slowly toward her face, which never moved. The blow landed with no force whatsoever. The sound was dull and lifeless.

The two of us just stared at each other for a second and then Marcy’s face broke open into a smile so warm and genuine it transformed her face from something scared and maybe a little angry to something truly and remarkably pretty. It was a smile that deserved to be answered and so I did answer it. We both started laughing and, in that moment, the ice between us was broken.

“You slapped me,” she said with mock incredulity.

“You said to!” I retorted and then I sat down next to her and we began to chat about how much she hated auditioning and several other subjects that I don’t remember. What I do remember is thinking just how pretty she was and wondering stupidly why I had not noticed it before…

Okay, it looks like I have run out of space. I am trying to keep these little stories short and sweet, so we will call that the end of this chapter. I know that I did not get to Monica yet, but she is the star of my next chapter, I assure you.

New, Grainy Images of the Unborn Wonder Twins

Marcy had a regular check-up at her OB-Gyn (by the way, that sounds like a character name from a Star Wars rip-off, if you pronounce it right). He listened to the babies' heartbeats but could only find one. This is not unusual with twins. I have a good friend here at work that told me she carried twins all the way to labor without ever knowing they were twins. This is because my friend is very old and when she was pregnant, the doctors, or as they called them then, "barbers", were still treating pregnancy with a good exorcism and leech treatment. Okay, I kid, she is not that old (*waves at Joyce*), but it was in the time before sonograms were readily available and her doctor never heard more than one heartbeat (maybe it was just hard to use the stethoscope around all the leeches). Anyway, since Marcy's barber...er...doctor did not hear both heartbeats he asked her to go in for a sonogram yesterday and she did. Here are the results:


Long story short, the babies look fine. Still cant tell the sex of either, and I suppose you should not draw too many conclusions from the picture. What we do know is that one is slightly larger than the other but both are still growing and healthy. One thing the doctor did tell her was that she is only 9 weeks along but already has the belly of someone 14 weeks. If you do some rough projective math, that means that by the time she is ready to deliver, her stomach will be roughly the size of a Hummer. On the upside, she has gained in baby but not in weight. She is still the same weight, even with a few pounds of baby on board. (This is due largely to the fact that her diet has consisted of little else other than Caesar Salad lately. Everything else makes her sick.)

Now, I am no doctor, but I do like to speculate. So, I took the pictures of the babies as they have developed so far and I aged them a few months to see what they make look like. Here are my guesses:

Baby A: the baby on the right of the sonogram is featureless and oddly shaped. It should look something like a large lima bean:
Sure, she will have to wear festive hats so that her teachers and fellow children will know what end to speak to, but she will be loved for her acerbic wit and long litany of self-effacing bean humor.

Baby B: Right now, this baby looks like something I once made with Play-Doh and tried to pass off to my father as a father's day gift. "What is that?" he said. "A puppy?" I replied. If this child continues it's current state of development, I expect a strapping young lad that bears a striking resemblance to Klatu, the tumor turned Martian rebellion leader from the Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger sci-fi classic Total Recall:


So, I have to say that Marcy and I are both just thrilled.

Kids and Chores

One of the questions I get asked frequently when people find out that we are having twins is: "How are the other kids handling it?" The truth is that they are very excited.

Of course it means that they are having to make some changes in their lives. Some are big changes. For example, they are losing their private rooms. They are now going to be moving in together. Not a big deal for them, honestly. Since the summer break started, they have asked to camp out in each others' rooms most nights anyway. I think that level of enthusiasm may diminish once they are forced to really live in the same space, but we will see about that.

Another big change that is happening is with housework. Marcy is finding some tasks already harder to do just because of the fatigue that comes with two alien spore sacks growing in her womb. (It really is a miracle, isn't it?) So, we are doing what loving parents throughout the centuries have done: we are putting the kids to work.

The hardest part about asking for kids as young as David and Beth to do real housework is getting past the idea that housework is supposed to be fun. When you are a kid, anything that the grown-ups do looks like grand fun: driving the car, painting the house, cleaning the kitchen. When you are finally given the opportunity to do the work, you try and imitate what you have seen the grown-ups do. Once the fun of the imitation is over, it is time to throw down the cleaning rag and find something else to play with. It is a sad day in the lives of children when you realize that work is not always fun.

To help with this reality, we have tried to break down their chores into smaller bites. Simply telling an 8 year old to clean her room is not specific enough, we have found. Often the job is left incomplete. Of course, the child is disappointed when you fold your arms, look around the room, frown and say, "This isn't clean!" Because, honestly, in her 8 years of experience, trying really hard to get the room clean should count for something. So, I have spent a good deal of time going over all of the things that they need to do to get a particular room clean. We then wrote these down like a checklist so that they can focus on one thing (like making the bed) before moving on to another task.

I am hoping this will help to teach them not only how to clean up their rooms and really help out around the house but also how to organize large jobs into smaller jobs to make them easier to swallow. Who knows? Right now, house work is still fun and exciting. Man, I wish I could still think of it like that.

Fishing Trip with Grandad

David and I went on a trip to Lake Texoma with Marcy's dad, Mike. We went boating, fishing and rode around the water on Mike's new toys, a couple of neat jet-skis.

We left Friday night and set out trot lines right on the boat dock. We caught about half a dozen of the biggest catfish I had ever had the pleasure of being a part of catching. (There is a rumored curse over Bryant men and fishing, but that did not seem to damper our good fortune on this trip.) We eventually let most of the fish go, except for a couple of real silver beauties which we filleted and I cooked for the kids for dinner last night. Here is a look at a few of the monsters:

We slept in the forward cabin of Mike's boat and woke to a rather windy day on the lake. We took the boat out to a sheltered cove and swam in the lake. David, having recently gotten over his fear of diving, made some spectacular leaps from the back of the boat.

All-in-all, it was fabulous fun and some great male bonding time (yes, there was spitting involved, although it was less than copious).

Thanks again, Granddad for all the fun!

Mothers of Multiples

Who knew that being pregnant with more than one baby was so different than just being pregnant with one. I mean, is the math really that simple?

1 Baby = Morning sickness, fatigue, weight gain, mood swings

1 Baby + 1 Baby = Morning sickness, afternoon sickness, evening sickness, severe fatigue ("shhh, mommy passed out again"), rapid weight gain ("these shorts fit this morning"), and multiple personality disorder ("honey, are you crying or laughing because I am afraid to open the door again")

Such is the plight of the multiple pregnancy. So much so that there are support groups out there just for this eventuality. Marcy went to one this week in Plano called the Plano Area Mothers of Multiples. (Click on that handy link to check them out.) Marcy will also be attending a meeting of another group here for the Allen/McKinney Area Mothers of Multiples.

The meeting seemed to help calm her a bit and helped to show her that she was not alone in what she was going through. Now all I need to find is a support group for the husbands of mothers with multiples. We could have classes on avoiding punches from pregnant women; how to talk her off of the roof; what to do when you find her in the kitchen floor and crying into an open fudge frosting container...

The Story of Us - Part One - The Meeting

I know that many of you do not know much about how Marcy and I met or the story of our courtship. Some of the details of that time have been lost or never told before. It is a strange story, a story filled with real drama, tree branches used for illicit purposes, cows, fake drama, a park bench and a boy named Pumpkin.

Let's start at the beginning...

I was born in November of 1972... Okay, not that far back...

I left for college in September of 1991. I went to Howard Payne University, a wonderful, conservative, Southern Baptist school with many wonderful assets, including girls. Keep in mind that I had recently graduated 2nd in a class of 11 from Rochelle High School, a place where there were 3 girls in the entire high school who were not pregnant or married and I was related to all of them. So, I enjoyed meeting and blending with a new diverse crowd of kids from all over the world and, if the requisite gender, hitting on them.

Something else you should know about me at the time was this: I was a closet smoker. I began smoking in high school and it was something that I enjoyed greatly. At Howard Payne, smoking anything at all was frowned upon. There was not a single person in the entire theatre arts department who smoked. Can you believe that? I was working with a bunch of actors and stage techs and not a single one of them snuck out back to kill some lung tissue? Unheard of! So, when I needed a smoke, I would take a drive through the lonely streets of Brownwood and have a smoke. Eventually more joined in the closet smokers society, but that is a longer story of which few of you would be interested or approve of.

For two years, I built a life at Howard Payne. I made some friends. I even began developing a reputation as a very fine actor. I worked most of the time, mostly in part time jobs and work-study programs at the theatre. I had good grades and I had managed to date a wide variety of very sweet, Christian girls, most of whom had come to college with one, very important goal: to find and marry a preacher. At the start of my Junior year, I had Howard Payne by the collar. Most people on campus knew me from our productions and from my other activities on campus. I was a leader in the Theatre Arts department and I felt more comfortable in that place than I ever did in High School.

I am a member of Alpha Psi Omega. We are a national honor society for those who study Theatre. As far as I knew, every person who came through the Theatre at Howard Payne had pledged Alpha Psi. I did my freshman year and I was, and am, very proud of that. One of my duties during that year was to lead all of the new Freshman through a tour of our facilities and then give them the low-down on the coolest, and only Theatre fraternity on campus.

I met the small group on the lower level of the theatre and introduced myself and gave a brief introduction. All of the group responded with positivity except for one. She sat in the corner of our fraternity room with her arms crossed and she rolled her eyes at me. I was flabbergasted. For most incoming Freshman, me included, the first tour I had of the theatre was something I looked forward to and something that I remembered for a long time. Her reaction was so astonishing that I actually smiled at her. The effect was instantaneous. She smiled back, and realizing that I caught her reaction, she had the good sense to look embarrassed.

I began leading people through the theatre and everyone stayed with me and "ooohed" and "ahhhed" at appropriate times. She didn't. She stayed back several paces from the rest of the group and tried to make it obvious that she was not enjoying herself at all. At one point in the tour, I hung back until she came closer and I tried another winning smile.

"Having fun?" I asked.

"No," she said.

"I'm sorry," I said. "What's wrong?"

"This is like the fifth time I have been taken on a tour of this theatre," she sighed. "I got a tour when I came for the preview weekend last year, that Neil St. Clair guy took a bunch of us through the first day we were here. I think I have seen everything."

I nodded in what I hoped looked like commiseration. "I understand," I lied. "You don't have to go through this if you don't want to."

"No, I have to," she said and I turned away. I silently just checked this new girl off of the list of those that I would be hanging out with. I hated people with bad attitudes, and she obviously had a chip on her shoulder a mile wide. Fine. She didn't like me, well I didn't much like her either.

In Our Next Episode: Movie Night and the Chronicles of Monica.