This summer flew by. The combination of pregnancy, birth and caring for two newborns has created a much higher activity level than normal. The latter in particular has caused considerable sleep deprivation, which has seriously distorted our sense of time. The twins generally sleep during the day, while Everett sleeps at night (and he is rarely awakened by them). This combination has been rough for us. Many days we are so tired that we are just trying to remain functional. After an especially noisy night last night, Chris joked this morning that he had to have a cup of coffee to be awake enough to make a trip to Starbucks for coffee. Everett is mostly taking these changes in stride, and we have repeatedly assured him that we are sometimes short-tempered and grouchy because of lack of sleep, but it’s not because of him and we don’t feel any differently about him now that the babies are here.

In terms of weather, this has been the most pleasant summer either of us has ever experienced. Temperatures were consistently in the 70s and in the low 60s or even 50s at night. We did have a few hot spells, but none lasted very long and it was never as hot as last summer. This was a blessing for Melissa while she was pregnant and a blessing for all of us in terms of enjoying the outdoors. The lower temperatures meant fewer fireflies than normal (or flash bugs, as Everett calls them), but it also meant fewer mosquitos. In fact, we hardly saw any mosquitos at all.

To wind up the summer we went to our last day at the pool on Sunday

and had family dinner on the patio for Labor Day.

We are also preparing for Everett’s first day of 5K tomorrow. Chris tuned up the bike today, and we set alarms and made lists of things that must be done before we leave in the morning, especially since it is even less likely than usual that Chris will remember everything. Everett is very excited – he was overheard saying “My heart is beating so fast with joy!” when the subject came up a few days ago. He is excited because:
-He will be one of the senior kids in his mixed 4K-5K class, and he will get teach the children coming in.
-He wants to see his friends again.
-He will now be going to school for full days, and as a result he gets to have lunch and recess and gym.

Melissa is excited to have 8 hours a day when she is only watching two children. She has big plans for establishing a routine with the babies and conquering several large projects that have been languishing at our house.

On July 28th The Landing at Hoyt Park opened in Tosa. This is the 2nd location for this style of beer garden, which is run by the same people who opened the Estabrook Beer Garden a couple years ago. The new beer garden has been a welcome addition to Tosa. It’s in an idyllic environment along the Menomonee River, and is easily accessible by bike (the bike trail actually runs through the middle of it). It is also the perfect complement to the Tosa pool: we now have water on one side of the building and beer on the other. It has already become a favorite meeting location. We have been there with Gabby & Grandaddy,

Grandpa & Grandma Linda,

and most recently Kevin & Jennifer when they visited us one evening last week.

Chris has even gone there to attend an official(ish) meeting for Y-Tribe.

This has given Chris an excuse to use the giant beer stein that was left to us by Mimi (we think she would be happy to know that it’s being used to enjoy a beer with family and friends),

and it’s given Everett a chance to try the world’s largest pretzel.

We decided to go to Colorado for a week to visit Sean, Kathy, Dillon, Connor and baby Aidan. It was kind of a last minute trip that was motivated by the fact that Chris had to travel for work to Salt Lake City, and because we wanted the boys and girl to meet each other and have some time together. This was the first flight for Teddy and Gwen and it was an adventure for us to fly with three children. We left for the airport about 4:30am on Sunday morning. Our secret parking area was full, but we found another spot nearby (sorry, we can’t divulge where this is located). First challenge: wheel all of our stuff and children into the terminal. We hadn’t thought this through ahead of time but managed ok. Second challenge: get through airport checkin and security. We are experienced enough to know that airline and TSA rules for children are about as predictable as the weather. We had birth certificates for the babies and a passport for Everett, and for this leg of the trip we needed all of these documents (but we needed none of them on the way home). All of the children did great on the flight. We arrived early on Sunday morning and Sean met us at the Denver airport to help us pickup the rental car and haul our stuff to their house.

As soon as we arrived the older three boys were inseparable. They played all day, everyday together.

By Monday they had invented a game called Mingo in which you throw a wet washcloth at someone while saying “Mingo!” On Tuesday morning Chris drove to Salt Lake City for work and returned Thursday night. While he was away he missed the USA Pro Cycling Challenge that went right by Sean and Kathy’s house.

Prior to this trip Chris explained to Everett some of the crazy things that Uncle Sean roped him into during past trips to their house. One was hauling a refrigerator up a nearby hill with 10% grade.


Another was hauling a 300 pound stone coffee table up the stairs to the main floor of their house.

So by the time we arrived on this trip, Everett was asking questions like “Uncle Sean, why are you always getting my Dad involved in these cockamamie schemes?” And it turns out we weren’t going to be disappointed on this trip either. For the last few years Sean and Kathy have held an annual BBQ at their house, building on the 50 year tradition of BBQs at Dad’s house when we were growing up. This year the BBQ was planned for Saturday night, our last night in Colorado. One key feature of Sean’s BBQ is the cornhole tournament with two person teams (see here to learn more about cornhole and related terminology). The couple who wins the tournament gets bragging rights for a year, and to further edify this honor Sean decided to get a trophy engraved with the names of the winners.

Great idea. So on Thursday evening when Chris returned from Salt Lake, Sean asked “Do you want to go for a bike ride?”. Again, great idea. Sean also made a passing comment that we might have to make a “brief stop” on the way. Here’s what happened: Sean and Chris rode over Swan Mountain to Frisco and stopped at a trophy store to pickup The Cornhole Cup. However, when we got to the store we were surprised to find that it was closed (it’s closed daily from 1:30 to 2:30 for lunch).

If we were on the east coast then 2:30 would mean 2:30, but 2:30 mountain time means about 2:45 in actual time (even though the atomic clock is just a few mountains away), so we waited for about a half hour for the store to open. During this time it started to rain. Once we got the cup, we carried it by bicycle to the Building Permit Office for the City of Frisco so that a friend could bring it to the BBQ the next day.

On way home we managed to dodge the rainstorms, though Chris accidentally broke one of the pedals on a loaner bike while he was just riding along (JRA). Sorry Tina! This begs the question: why does Chris keep getting involved in these schemes? The truth is that he secretly enjoys these adventures because they are fun, challenging and unpredictable. And at the same time they provide an opportunity to poke fun at family members for their non-engineer-like approach to solving problems. Conversely, other family members sometimes make fun of engineers for coming up with vastly complex solutions to seemingly non-existent problems. So it all works out.

On the way to the Denver airport on Sunday we stopped to see Mark and Katrien and their two children, Zander and Ayla. We had a very enjoyable lunch with them in their backyard, and we provided photographic evidence to our families that we were in fact able to get together, which is no small achievement considering how busy all of us are and how many children had to cooperate to allow this to happen.

During the flight home from Colorado, we were on a “completely full flight” on Southwest Airlines. Translation: we were on a flight with 4 empty seats within two rows of us. Nonetheless, the flight attendants scolded Chris for bringing carseats on the plane. He was optimistically thinking that even though it was a “completely full flight”, he had flown Southwest often enough to know what that means, and that there might be empty seats where we could put the twins. Instead, the flight attendants asked us to each hold a baby in our arms and that we put the carseats away. Chris tried to put them in the overhead bins as he had seen other parents do in the past, but there was just no way that these carseats were going to fit. So he dashed to the front of the plane to gate check them while one flight attendant held Teddy (she provided photographic evidence that she is a grandma with seven grandchildren), and we each had a baby in our arms for the duration of the flight. They were fussy, but it was mostly ok until it came time for bathroom breaks. Near the end of the flight we changed their diapers, and we asked Everett repeatedly if he had to go to the bathroom. He assured us that he didn’t, which lasted until the plane was about to land and we had made the final trip back to our seats with clean babies, at which point he told us that he had to go right away. Both of us were pretty upset with him and told him he had to hold it until we got to the airport. To this he calmly replied “That means you aren’t taking care of me and you aren’t doing your job as parents.” Goodness. If this is what he says when he is five, what are we in for ten years from now?

As parents we have learned a new vocabulary, starting with the different meanings of the word latch. First was the Lower Anchors and Tethers for Children (LATCH) system, which makes it easier and safer to install carseats. In fact the number of LATCH positions was a deciding factor in choosing the Honda Odyssey over the Toyota Sienna (the former has five, the latter has three). We anticipated that the extra positions would provide us with more flexibility when configuring the car to accommodate friends and family such that the most limber people (i.e. children) could get in the third row of seats. This technology might seem like a mere convenience, but in fact was developed in response to the fact that motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of mortality among children, and continue to be a significant cause of injury.

We also learned of the sacred nursing latch. Before having children Chris had a very pragmatic view of breastfeeding: Mom produces milk; baby is hungry for it; put baby to breast and all is well. In reality it can be much more complex. The most concise explanation we have heard is that breastfeeding is natural, but it doesn’t necessarily come naturally. Mom and baby need to get into a rhythm that works for both of them, and there seems to be little room for anxiety or impatience. Many years ago the dynamic between Mom and baby was explored by Edith Jackson, a child psychiatrist who directed the Yale Rooming-in Research Project at Grace-New Haven Community Hospital from 1946 to 1953. Her research was based on the revolutionary idea (at the time) that Moms and babies should room together after birth. She and her team observed many families during this project, and one result was the identification of different breastfeeding personality types: the barracuda; the excited but ineffective; the procrastinator; the gourmet; and the rester (a.k.a the nip and napper, which was Everett’s type).

The latch has become a subject for children’s clothing, and has also entered politics. You may have heard about the Latch On NYC initiative last year from the beloved but controversial Mayor Bloomberg.

Lastly, we note that after Everett was born we started making onesies with artwork we couldn’t find anywhere else. We might soon make one like the following to serve as a conversation starter between children.

Yesterday afternoon Cress returned from Cincinnati and brought Trinity with him. Everett was super excited for her visit, which coincided with the arrival of the twins and the Wisconsin State Fair. In the evening we ate tacos on the patio and then Gabby and Grandaddy took Trinity and Everett to a hotel room for the night. This was the first night that Chris and Melissa have been alone in the house with the babies. It was strangely quiet, and allowed us to sleep on and off until about 9:30 the next morning before we got ready for their first church service at 10:15. At the start of the service Pastor Chris came by and showed us a secret room off of the main chapel that contained a couch for nursing and a family bathroom. Nice. We spent about half of the service there. On our way out afterward Pastor Margaret made a comment about the babies’ blankets that somehow involved Prince George, but neither of us really understood until we read the news later in the day. It turns out that our friend Lauren recently gave us a set of baby blankets that were also used by the royal family when George came home from the hospital, and there has now been a worldwide run on them.

About midday we took the family to the State Fair along with Gabby, Grandaddy and Trinity. The twins get a LOT of attention. We think this is partly because they are infants and partly because they are twins. Many, many peopled cooed at them, asked their age or asked if they were a boy and a girl. Since their birth we have discovered that there are a lot of twins in the world, based on disclosures from people who either have them or were one of multiples. One woman told Chris it was too soon to have them out of the house.

Everett and Trinity seemed to have a fantastic time. Everett is now of the age that he can find and engage in activities without our intervention, and having Trinity with him certainly helps in this regard. They found an endless supply of things to do and see.

Fair Foods

In the past we have always written about novel, horrifying-yet-delicious fair foods. This year we tried BEER BATTERED BACON WRAPPED CHEDDAR HOT DOG ON-A-STICK and a REUBEN BRAT ON A PRETZEL ROLL with horseradish sauce. Both were as delicious as expected. We also stopped by the Cream Puff Pavilion to pickup the six-pack we had ordered ahead of time. Also delicious.



At this point you might be wondering about the scandal suggested by the title of this blog entry. You see, Cream Puffs are huge in this area and they are only available this time of year. We even hold a world record for the largest cream puff (126 lbs). You can acquire them via pre-order, as we did, but there are also several other options. You can buy them from the State Fair and select local restaurants; you can also buy them from a special drive-through off I-94; if you are feeling dairy anxiety then you can call the cream puff hotline (414-266-7111); if you can’t get out of the house then you can even pay for Bell Ambulance to deliver them. To keep up with this level of deliciousness the State Fair requires 1200 gallons of cream each day. Unfortunately, a major dairy producer in Wisconsin who was supplying the fair suddenly went bankrupt earlier this year, so instead the cream will be provided by Prairie Farms, an Illinois dairy! If this were Florida it wouldn’t even be newsworthy. However, we are the dairy state, and in the midwest this qualifies as a major scandal. It’s as if New Zealand ran out of cream and had to import from Australia. Or France decided to import from England to make cheese. Other fairgoers didn’t seem to notice, but we knew they were a bit off.

During our first church service with the twins we sat behind a family with two boys and a girl who appeared to span the ages of about 2 to 7. The girl’s age was about midway between her two brothers, and during the service she could not leave her younger brother alone. She was picking him up, pulling out his pacifier and generally manhandling him, though he was pretty agreeable for most of it. The parents did not intervene until it was getting close to time for communion, at which point the girl pretended to fall asleep across the seats. It was clear to everyone that she wasn’t really sleeping, and the parents tried a variety of techniques to get her moving, ranging from gentle encouragement to stern insistence using a muted but serious voice that is acceptable for church. But eventually they gave up – she stayed behind and immediately “woke up” after communion.

These kinds of experiences are amusing to watch as long as they involve someone else’s children. If it were our children acting this way I think we would have been pretty upset. However, it’s also becoming clear that there are some things we just need to get used to. We have learned from watching Everett and from talking with other parents that younger siblings get manhandled a lot by their older siblings, and as a parent you just need to let it go. Everett loves to get right in the faces of his brother and sister. It feels like too much to us and drives us crazy sometimes, but the babies don’t seem to mind. We also recognize (and have heard from other parents) that one of the worst things we can do is make Everett feel like his siblings are on some elevated status relative to him. We draw the line at times when he wakes the babies up and then informs us that they are crying.

During this church service we made an important discovery: there is a secret room for families and nursing mothers. The door to this room is literally right off the side of the main chapel. And it’s pretty deluxe: audio from the service is provided via a sound system; there are two rooms with couches and chairs; there is a family bathroom with a changing table. We spent about half the service in there. Now that we know about it, Chris would prefer that we attend all services from that room so that he is spared from sitting still for an hour.

When Everett was born we bought two strollers: a BOB Revolution and an UppaBaby Vista. We used both of them extensively. We took them on many trips, some overseas, and over time the BOB became our preferred travel stroller. We used the Vista so much that the treads were worn off the tires and had to be replaced. We saved both of them for the day when we might have more children, but neither of them are well-suited for twins so we started a new search. After an initial market survey for twin-compatible strollers we came up with the following list: Contours Optima Tandem; Bugaboo Donkey Twin; Stroll-Air Duo; BumbleRide Indie Twin; Baby Jogger City Select with extra seats.

Next, Chris made a list of requirements and we formed a decision matrix.
1. Large wheels for low vibration and low rolling resistance (strollers with those tiny plastic wheels that look like they came from office chairs were excluded).
2. Double bassinets (or carrycots as the Brits call them).
3. Seats for when the kids outgrow the bassinets.
4. Good cargo space.
5. Easy to fold and lightweight(ish).
6. Must be well-engineered. This is a category that lacks precise criteria. For example, the UppaBaby qualified as being well-engineered even though the welds were very messy (which bothered Chris). Probably the best summary is that the stroller needs to be durable and non-klunky looking.
7. Fashionable and hiptseresque. Obviously this depends on your point of view. For us this means a stroller that looks like one you would find on a pedestrian plaza in a major European city.

Based on this analysis and several trips to local baby stores Chris chose the Bugaboo.

Yes, it’s a bit pretentious. However, it best meets our requirements and therefore Chris can sleep well at night knowing that he followed the system-engineer’s mantra of a rational, traceable, defensible process for this decision. We note that since the birth of Prince George this stroller was #3 on the list of the 17 best gifts to give the royal baby.

Epilogue
Here is a stroller that might have been considered but was not available at the time of our analysis. Note the generous size of these wheels compared to other strollers.

http://www.today.com/moms/car-maker-unveils-vision-manly-baby-buggy-6C10795202
http://elitedaily.com/envision/would-you-ever-put-your-kid-in-this-stroller-that-has-20-inch-wheels/

Lastly, this one is an honorable mention but wasn’t considered because it doesn’t come in a twin version.

The view from our room on the 7th floor of Children’s Hospital looked directly east across Wauwatosa, over Miller Valley and to downtown Milwaukee.

We could easily see the brick chimney on Wilson Elementary, and if the leaves weren’t on the trees we would have been able to see our house. It was a curious experience to spend four days out of the house yet so close to home, and it provided both literal and metaphorical changes in perspective. Here are a few thoughts and observations about our recent family events.

Things we are thankful for
-We have a boy and a girl! Theodore (aka Kitty) was born first and they told us he is a boy. Between then and the time Gwendolen (aka Piggy) came out Chris was hoping and praying for a girl, and the happiest moment for both of us was when that came true a few minutes later.
-No bedrest was required for Melissa during pregnancy.
-No NICU time for the babies.
-Mom did great during delivery, came home on schedule without complications and is healing steadily.
-The nursing staff in the Mother Baby unit was fantastic. It’s difficult to imagine better postpartum care.

New Children
In the months before the babies arrived, Chris and Melissa wondered if we could love them as much as we love Everett. Would we become attached to them, or would we view them as the auxiliary children? About a week after they were born we talked about this again and laughed at the absurdity of the question. We recall what Mimi said several years ago: you can’t imagine that you could love the second child as much as the first, but then you do. At the same time, we have made a consistent effort to give Everett the message that we love him the same way we did beforehand, and that he is doing a great job in his new role as big brother.

Bonding
After birth the children exchanged gifts: Everett gave the babies toys, and they gave him an Agent P hat and a special drinking cup. Everett has been very affectionate with his new siblings and is diligent about washing his hands before touching them. A few days after we got home he sang Gwen a song that he spontaneously made up to the tune of Puff the Magic Dragon.

Sleep
By the time Everett was born Melissa had been in labor for almost 50 hours and we were already exhausted. In contrast, we were well-rested the night before the twins were born, so it took a few days for sleep deprivation to take its toll, but it did eventually. In the depths of exhaustion one night after the babies were born Chris attempted to put a diaper backwards on Teddy before being gently corrected by the nurse. A few nights after we got home he brewed a pot of coffee on the kitchen counter by failing to put the carafe into the coffemaker.

Happiness
According to recent research our happiness coefficient should increase about 50% based on an increase from 1 child to 3 children for parents in our age group (Margolis & Myrskylä, 2011). This was based on analysis of World Values Surveys data gathered between 1981 and 2005 from 201,988 respondents in 86 countries. This graph pretty much says it all.

Presumably they did not interview parents while they were sleep deprived and trying to calm a fussy baby or two in the middle of the night. Interestingly, for people in our age group there were similar increases for both men and women, and income was a very weak predictor of happiness.

1. Margolis R, Myrskylä M (2011) A global perspective on happiness and fertility. Population and Development Review 37:29–56.

The arrival of our new family members coincided with several meaningful events. First was the return of Twinkies, which was also one of our in utero nicknames for the twins. We haven’t eaten a Twinkie in years, but like many people we were distressed to hear that Hostess had gone bankrupt and that these snack cakes would no longer be available. Cress found a box of them and they were just as delicious and disturbing as we remember. I think we are ready to go another 10 years before having one again.
http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/24/news/companies/twinkies-return/index.html?hpt=hp_t3
http://hostesscakes.com/?gclid=CK3k1qKTrLgCFUqk4AodYEUAoQ

It seems that we have timed the arrival of our children with the release of books by David Sedaris. When You Are Engulfed in Flames was released 4 days prior to Everett’s birth and we read much of it while Melissa was in labor. Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls was released on April 23rd of this year. Perfect timing. We started reading one chapter at a time together in the days before delivery, and we continued when we were in the hospital.

The twins’ arrival also closely coincided with Bastille Day, which we celebrated in the hospital room with wine and several kinds of stinky cheese.


Melissa felt mildly self-conscious about having an empty wine bottle in the trash the next day, and made it a point to explain to the cleaning people that she did not drink it.

In the race for celebrity babies Melissa came in after Kim Kardashian (June 15) but before Princess Kate (July 22nd). In the spirit of the latter, don’t be surprised if our birth announcements are from Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Kavanaugh.

Lastly, our close friends Amanda & Chad gave birth to Katherine on July 17th. Congratulations Amanda and Chad!!!

Everett has been asking for siblings since he had the ability to communicate the idea. When none arrived within an acceptable timeframe he started asking questions like “Are you sure you are doing everything you can to get me a brother or sister?” We assured him that we were. Several months ago, after he learned that siblings were on their way, he named them Kitty and Piggy.

Several weeks ago he announced that we were having a boy and girl – he said that he put his hand on Momma’s belly and the babies told him so. He was unequivocal about this as he told friends, neighbors and family members. As a result, people naturally assume that we found out their genders. In reality we didn’t know until the moment they were born.

Melissa and Chris had been working on a list of baby names for months. Two important criteria are: 1) Their full names should sound pleasing at graduation when spoken slowly over a loudspeaker; 2) At the advice of our friend Aaron, full names should roll off the tongue when spoken sternly before an admonishment such as “Everett Maxwell Barber Butson, get in the house this instant!”. Because we didn’t know the genders, we had to have names ready for two boys and two girls. Coming up with girl’s names was relatively easy, and we had many top contenders. Boys names did not come as easily. We still had a list of contenders, but there were no clear winners and quite honestly Chris agreed to some names based on the logic that he had to say yes to something in order to avoid appearing uncooperative. Ultimately we couldn’t decide on boy’s names and instead agreed that we had to meet them before deciding.

In the finals days of pregnancy and continuing after the birth we started writing our name choices on index cards and exchanging them at the same time. During this process we discovered that we agreed on our girl’s name. And anyone who is married will tell you that once you agree on something, it’s probably a good time to stop talking about it. The boy’s name was much easier to figure out once he was born. Despite a fair amount of anxiety that we wouldn’t be able to think of a good one, he was clearly a Theodore. Some negotiations ensued about the spelling of Gwendolen and about Theodore’s middle name, and we were done.

After we announced the names to our family Everett said “I don’t even like those names!” Shortly afterward he became upset and stormed out of the room. Chris followed from a distance while Everett tried to stay ahead and out of sight. Finally he said “I’m mad at you and Momma and Gabby and Grandaddy and the babies.” Everett seemed to be upset because he thought we were laughing at him. Chris assured him that if we were it was because he said something funny, as he often does, and we were not laughing at him. He seems fascinated and joyful about the arrival of Gwen and Teddy. Nonetheless, it’s been a tumultuous transition for him.