Hiding Behind

Davey, these things are great. You have got to try them. They are incredible. I feel like a different person when I have them on. I feel invisible, or at least unrecognizable in them. Can you see me? Do I look like me? They are Mommy’s, and she calls them “Sun Glasses” but everything gets darker when you wear them. Not like night dark, but like shady dark. In fact, I can relax from squinting with these on, see? Can you see my eyes? If you can’t see my eyes, then I can turn my head one way and look another without you knowing. Maybe they should be called “Spy Glasses”. Oh, we’re going to have fun with these until Mommy finds out.

His Dirty Little Secret

We designed our backyard for maximum baby safety. The fenced area is rectangular, eliminating blind corners and allowing optimum visibility for caretakers. With the exception of one large tree, all the landscaping is planted on the outside of the fence. The four gates all have safety locks. There is plenty of room to run and play and few hiding places, or so we thought. We were in the backyard playing recently with a couple of neighbor kids. I was visiting with one of the parents when I realized I couldn’t see Trey Davey. Glancing around the yard he wasn’t visible. I quickly checked behind the tree, and he wasn’t there. As panic grew I called for him and from under the slide I heard “Yes Daddy”. Even though he was digging in dirt wearing nice clothes, I was too relieved to care.

The Tears of a Clown

Several weeks ago, we visited our first playground of the year. The boys greeted the slide like a long lost friend and played properly for a while, but as it often happens, silliness soon overtook Benji. First he started sitting on the top of the slide, which made Trey Davey wait. Then, after sliding, he attempted to climb back up the slide rather than going around and using the ladder, again tying up the slide for Davey. After being encouraged to reverse his backward progress, climb the ladder properly and then slide without delay, Benji thought it would be funny to go head first down the slide. Down he flew like Superman, but unfortunately, he forgot to extend his arms to soften his landing. Snot, slobber and tears from the cold temperatures mixed with the dirt pad at the end of the slide to create quite a sad face.

Driveway Demolition Derby

We have a shared driveway two lanes wide that runs almost the entire length of our lot. We can park 14 large cars on this vast blacktop expanse. One would think two little boys on two small riding toys could play easily without colliding into one another, but as I remind Sandy daily, we have BOYS. Rather than trying to avoid an impact, they seek them. After each loud plastic on plastic crash both boys would shriek with satisfied laughter. They would also compete by pushing each other wheel to wheel in a reverse tug of war. After observing this, Zack Roberts and I steered them away from their demolition competition and towards drag racing. I sense that we’ll regret that too.

GeoTrax Trainee

We held Grandpa Edds birthday party in a conference room with the tables arranged in a big U shape. His Grandsons were given the center carpeted area to play. Sandy packed a large bag of toys and books to keep the boys occupied for the three hour party. This furniture configuration provided the boys with a very long elevated road for their trains and fire trucks to travel. It also allowed the boys an opportunity to show off their toys to each of the relatives as they moved along the room. After Great Uncle Richard showed particular interest in this activity, Davey explained in great detail just how everything worked together all the live, long day.

Birthday Denial

Many people go into denial when they approach a milestone birthday. They have problems accepting the passage of time and the realization of mortality. Some go so far as to ignore the event totally in a foolish attempt to stop time’s advancement. Few, however, become too upset about another person’s landmark birthday, but Benji did. He thought it should have been his birthday. We have celebrated so many birthdays since Benji’s (four months ago) that he believed surely it must be time for his next birthday again. When asked to sing “Happy Birthday” to Pa, Benji would say “not Pa’s birthday; BeBe birthday”. Davey calls Benji “BeBe”. When asked if it was Trey Davey’s birthday too he said, “no, not Pa’s birthday, not Davey’s birthday, BeBe’s birthday.” I think he convinced Uncle Stephen.

Happy Birthday Pa

Members of the Edds clan gathered today to celebrate Grandpa David’s 70th birthday. Great Aunts Linda and Gay Nell decorated the room, purchased a birthday cake and catered a tasty dinner of Kentucky barbeque. Daddy Dave prepared a funny video with several interviews of people including Great Uncles Richard and Gene Ray telling old stories about our Pa. Traveling Troubadour Troy Miller wasn’t able to appear in person, but recorded a special concert for the event performing one of Pa’s favorite classic country music songs after another. Grandpa David couldn’t have been prouder of his three grandsons who behaved perfectly during the three hour event playing happily in the center of the room while everyone watched.

Where am I supposed to sleep?

While young Benjamin James Edds has always been a slow to sleep, slow to wake boy, twin brother Trey Davey Edds has been an early to bed early to rise man. Typically, when we put Davey down for a nap or for bed, he falls right off to sleep. You can also count on him to be awake and ready for the day at 6:00 a.m. sharp. So last night when I went in to cover the boys at 10:00 p.m., it was unusual to see Davey wide awake and standing in the crib. I carried him into our room where he quickly made himself comfortable under the covers snuggled next to mommy. When asked where I was supposed to sleep, he suggested the nursery with Benji.

Boys and Boxes

Toys are big business in this country. Parents spent over 21 billion dollars in 2008 on toys for their children, but they need not have bothered. Everybody knows boys like boxes better. What was true at Christmas remains true in summer. We purchased this large storage tub to store our patio furniture cushions. This summer, since the cushions are on the chairs and the box was available, we decided to store the boys’ backyard toys in the box. The twins promptly dumped the toys into the yard and proceeded to play with the box. Maybe I can tap into that lucrative toy market by selling boxes to other parents.

How Long is this Train? Blog #900

Recently I went back to our blog’s beginning and found myself rereading the first few dozen entries. Sandy wrote most of them then as an efficient way to share news about her pregnancy with our family and friends. Once the boys arrived, I began publishing batches of photos and stories, sharing our excitement. This is typical of many new parents and usually continues for several months. It is common for baby blog postings to slow down to a stop before the child’s first birthday, which is understandable. Blogging can be time consuming and free time diminishes as the baby advances to crawling and walking. I’m sure many parents lose interest or inspiration, but for some reason we haven’t. We love photographing and writing about the boys, and while we have gotten behind on our postings, it is not for lack of material. This train will end at some point, but I can’t see the caboose from here.

Let’s Build Something Together

Lowe’s Home Improvement Center’s advertising slogan is “Let’s Build Something Together”. That slick advertising sounds good, but where was Lowe’s when I was remodeling the house last year? Did they hammer one nail? Did they dig a single hole? Did they once bother to pick up a paint brush? No, all they did was deliver more materials for more projects. Their slogan should be “Let’s inspire your wife’s imagination with an endless supply of honey-do projects”. Thankfully, I did receive help from Sandy and some good friends. Benji and Trey Davey would have helped too if they were big enough. When they get a little older, we’ll attack that home improvement list with boundless energy and may have a fair chance of catching up on all the projects.

Fun For The Whole Family

The toddlers aren’t the only ones train crazy anymore. Sandy and I have been watching the boys play with the GeoTrax trains sets since Christmas. They received one set from Dawn Beckgerd and another from Aunt Susan. Like most Fisher-Price products, these toys are well designed and packaged with a catalog promoting dozens more GeoTrax accessories. At the garage sales this spring, we have been on the lookout for more gently used additions. Friday, I found the Big City Light Center for a dollar. Saturday, we attended a fund raiser rummage sale where several GeoTrax pieces were offered. Sandy purchased a train station, bridge, several train cars and track pieces. Our intention was to save them for the boy’s half-birthday, but we succumbed to the temptation to play. Sandy, particularly, had great fun designing a layout where both boys could play without bumping into one another.

A Cozy Reading Space

Every time something new is introduced into the boys’ environment, they investigate it. Now the boys have seen diaper boxes before; we go through one 70 diaper box like this every week, but seldom do we allow the container to be played with. However, Sandy did leave this one unattended for a time recently, and when she returned she found that Benji had built a nest in it. Small spaces provide something comforting for small children, and they love wedging themselves into some odd places. Having found a good box and a good book, Benjamin James read happily until lunchtime.

Alphabet Soup

These boys are never bored at bath time. Over time we have amassed quite a collection of tub toys. There are all types of animals: ducks, frogs, alligators, fish and octopi. We have little motor boats, yachts, cruisers, and canoes of all sizes. There are two different sets of measuring cups, a set of funnels, and a brand new set of letters and numbers. Everything is brightly colored for maximum stimulation. On Saturday and Sunday mornings, the boys bathe right after a big breakfast of pancakes, waffles or French toast. Fueled by all that maple syrup, the water they churn keeps the bubble bath foaming. They sing, count, recite the alphabet, make motorboat noises, and practice colors until the water turns cold. Then they tell the water and bubbles “bye bye” when they leave.

Team Sliding

AnnaKaye Roberts lives next door, and her cousin Lacey visits often. When we go outside following our afternoon nap, they often join us in our backyard. Usually they parallel play, engaging in one activity nearby while we engage in another, but sometimes they play with us. Today we all were sharing the same slide and had a pretty nice daisy chain going. For about a five minute interval, a child was in the act of sliding about every three seconds. This was a new experience for us, and we found it very clever. Maybe girls are ok after all.

Without a Peddle

Trey Davey and Benji have not yet discovered peddling. All of their riding toys up to this point have been propelled with their feet in contact with the ground, and that’s the method they want to use for driving these larger outside toys too. I see this process as being very similar to teaching them to walk. The challenge is mental, not physical. Just as they had the strength to walk but choose to crawl because it was familiar, the boys have more than enough strength to peddle but don’t yet see the advantage. We ask the neighbor kids to peddle some toys around hoping it would inspire the twins. In a way, this period is kind of nice for us because the boys’ mobility is limited. Once they learn to peddle these toys, we’ll have to run fast to catch them.

Smelling the Roses

This time of year, we should cover the windows in Sandy’s office or move her desk down to the basement. It’s torturous enough for her to see the beauty of spring blooming just outside her window while she is chained to her desk inside, but when her little cherubs go tumbling into the backyard to play joyously, it is too much for her to bear. Concentration is lost, replaced by a preoccupation to play outside with the boys. Sometimes, the best course of action is to set aside the work and seize the moment. On this day, Sandy filled the wagon with twins and ventured out on a late afternoon walk among the dogwoods and azaleas.

First Jokes

The Edds men are storytellers. Blessed with excellent memories for nonsense, these gentlemen enjoy spinning yarns for group entertainment, and with each successive telling, these stories become just a little bit bigger and better. Most are humorous accounts, based on true stories. Joke telling is an art and like any art, not everyone has a talent for it. Like any skill, it is enhanced through regular use and practice. Some say the art of joke telling will soon be lost. Rather than tell jokes, people today don’t repeat stories, they forward them through email. In this way, it is enjoyed once and forgotten. If anyone can preserve this art, then maybe the next generation of Edds men can. With a limited vocabulary and no sentences longer than five words, humor is already emerging. For instance, when practicing our alphabet Benji will sometimes recite ABCDEFZ! Then he will pause before erupting in self-congratulatory laughter at his clever achievement.

Blowing a head gasket

We own two Cozy Coupes for the boys to play with outside. They are difficult to self-propel on a smooth paved surface and nearly impossible on our backyard’s thick grass. Commonly, one brother will push the other across the yard serving as the car’s power plant. Trey Davey had been pushing Benji the other day with great effort and realized he had greater leverage the lower his contact was with the car. Once he moved so low that he lost his balance, he chose to position himself on all fours and push the car with his head. This worked well until Benji drove his coupe into the fence post.

Take it

Hall of Fame professional baseball player Yogi Berra had a unique way with the English language. When giving directions to his home, he would say, “When you get to the fork in the road, take it.” His street looped, and his house could be reach from either direction. Our boys are developing their individual personalities and beginning to make their own choices. Trey Davey and Benji are not identical twins. Each has his own unique gifts and preferences. Like Yogi’s street, we believe there is more than one way to reach a desired destination, and we want to encourage each boy to plan his own best path. After all, like Yogi says, “If you don't know where you're going, you might not get there.”

Taking on the Big Slide

Our favorite park is Owensboro’s Legion Park located about 2 miles from our house. We first enjoyed the baby swings there before we could even walk. As we grew, we discovered the baby slides and teeter-totter. Last summer we first took pleasure in the spray park, although we sometimes toddled under the bigger kids’ feet. Now that we are little older, we aren’t scared of the larger slides and playground activities, but we still sometimes get trampled by the big kids. Fortunately, Mommy and Daddy are there to help. On this day Mommy watched us from the ground while Daddy climbed up into the climbing tower to help us safely make it to the BIG slide.

Happy Birthday Mommy

This is the third time the boys have celebrated Mommy’s birthday, and they made by far their most active contribution. Two years ago, they just sort of watched and drooled. Last year, they observed the event and could say Mommy, but that was about it. We had a little pre-birthday party Monday night before Grandma and Granddaddy Roe left, and the boys were active participants. They sat up like big boys in adult chairs, joined in the singing of happy birthday, assisted with the blowing out of the candles and helped Sandy open her gift. They may not yet understand the concept of birthdays, but they know what a party is.

Beginner’s Swing

The boys received a plastic T-Ball set for Christmas. T-Ball is a sport based on baseball and is intended as an introduction for children to develop baseball skills and have fun. The Owensboro Parks and Recreation Department offers a 3-4 year old and 5-6 year old T-Ball League each summer. This league teaches the basic fundamentals in a non-competetive atmosphere. All children play in the field and bat each inning. The boys will be old enough to play next year, and so we have about 12 months to help them prepare. So far, they shown little natural talent for throwing, catching and hitting, but we’ve only just begun. By watching others we hope to inspire their desire to learn and try. Our neighbor, Wes Roberts, is a former college baseball standout. He has offered to help teach them the basics, and we’ll see where it goes from there.

Thomas Shoes Crossing

Like everything else, the boys’ feet have grown recently. At Wal-mart last week we found one pair of size 7 Thomas the Train tennis shoes. While Trey Davey was asleep, Mommy tried the shoes on Benji and found them tight. She removed them to much protest from train enthusiast Benjamin James Edds. On Saturday afternoon, Sandy and the Roe Grands visited the other local Wal-Mart to return the shoes and look for more. After much searching, they were able to find two pairs of size 8 Thomas the Train shoes. They fit perfectly, and the train-crazy boys loved them. One extraordinary feature of these shoes is the motion-activated railroad-crossing like lights built in Velcro laces. That’s pretty exciting stuff for two-year olds.

Stop Train Stop

For some reason Trey Davey woke up yesterday at 4:00 am wide awake and ready to start his day. Benji joined us around 6:30 am. Both ran hard until about 10:30 am when Davey fell fast asleep. Benji motored right through lunch until his normal nap time. To keep Benji from waking Davey, we sit up a playpen in our bedroom for him to nap, but he wasn’t sleepy. We read to him, turned on the TV, turned off the TV, lay down with him, left him alone, threatened and scolded him, but he wouldn’t go to sleep. We finally gave up and allowed him to play exuberantly downstairs. About 4:30 pm, as I was going upstairs to wake Davey, Benji brought Grandma Roe a book to read. By the end of the story, “Stop Train Stop”, Benji had.

Birthday Benchmark Photo – 2 years, 4 months

Just as the spring flowers are blooming so beautifully right now, so are the twins. After several winter months where their growth and development seemed rather dormant, both boys appear to be maturing dramatically right now. The recent warmer, drier weather has allowed the boys to play more and longer outside, and this activity is transforming them physically. Both appear leaner and more muscular. Also, according to our height measuring stand, both toddlers have grown about an inch since Christmas with Benji topping 35 inches tall and Trey Davey edged over 36 inches high. While Benji is still a prolific talker, Davey’s vocabulary and confidence has exploded.

Happy Easter

It is wonderful when a plan comes together. We welcomed Grandma and Granddaddy Roe to our house Friday for the Easter weekend. Rains came Saturday morning to water the spring flowers and the sun’s afternoon appearance dried the yard for playing. We rose early Sunday morning to allow the grown ups to worship at the 9:00 am church service while the boys enjoyed a full nursery of two-year olds. After a delicious brunch prepared by Mommy, we napped in anticipation of the Easter bunny. We arose to find baskets filled with cars, coloring books, train books and t-shirts. When Granny and Pa Edds arrived, we took our baskets to the backyard where we searched competitively for the many colorful eggs. The hard boiled eggs we colored were prettier, but we found the plastic eggs had animal crackers inside. Afterwards, the boys played under the grands’ admiration while Mommy grilled pork steaks. The eight of us then enjoyed a perfect Easter dinner. It all ran like clockwork.

Easter Egg Surprise

Sandy bought Easter Egg Coloring kits last year on mark down after the holiday. While the twins were too young last year to care, Sandy thought they were big enough now to appreciate the tradition of coloring Easter eggs. I thought she intended to simply allow them to watch her color the eggs from a safe distance, given her neat and orderly nature. So you can imagine my surprise when she and Grandma Roe each handed a toddler a cup of dye and a spoon. Sure, she covered the floor, table and high-chair trays with plastic, but these are active toddlers. We routinely find food deposits hidden throughout the area. I was flabbergasted. I couldn’t believe she freely handed over to hostile forces articles of mess construction. Why not paint guns next? But, my anxiety was misplaced and everyone had fun coloring eggs without incident.

Three Train Enthusiasts

Sometime during the late 1930s or early 1940s, Granddaddy Roe traveled with his mother from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City by train, and it was love at first sight. From that point forward, he was a train enthusiast. Soon he received a Lionel model train and began dreaming of becoming a professional train engineer. Rather than a locomotive, the passenger transport he eventually piloted was a jet airliner, but the love of trains remained. So it is with great pleasure that he now reads about trains to his grandsons. They have discovered trains through the cartoons Thomas the Train and Chuggington. Their favorite toys are small beginner trains, their favorite books and clothes all are train related. Maybe this summer we can find a train to ride, and take Granddad too.

Because we love them

We did it. Sandy and I stepped outside our comfort zone to do something important for our boys. We are not fans of tattoos, but friends convinced us that responsible parents today use this tool to validate identity in the devastating event of child abduction cases. Advisers suggested we pick a memorable symbol just as we would a computer password. It needed to be something that we could remember, but others couldn’t guess. Thinking about their personalities, the little devil and the angel cupid were the obvious symbolic choices for our boys. If you are wondering which boy received which symbol, consider which one is right-handed and which one is left-handed. If you are still confused, consider the date for a clue.