Terrible Twos and other lies:

The babies just had their 18-month check-ups. Everybody is doing fine. Sara had a slight and brief bout with Pneumonia a week ago which has fortunately passed.

This will probably come as a great surprise to the regular readers of this page, but I have some observations about our children's development.

Along with the myriad old wives' tales, bad advice, and other useless child-rearing information which exists in the great "out there," we're beginning to learn yet another one of the universal lies about parenthood--The Terrible Twos.

The conventional wisdom/lie is that this period of unreasonable behavior begins at age two and lasts about a year. However, judging by our children's behavior of late, and my ultra-keen observational powers, I'm inclined to believe that the Terrible Twos begin at about 17 months and last until approximately 10 years beyond the onset of puberty. I'm judging this last part from observing my wife because, I, of course was a rational and reasonable person from a very young age and skipped over most of this balderdash. Really, just ask my mom....on second thought, just take my word for it.

I suppose the conventional wisdom/lie is that during this period, babies begin to learn the crushing realities of life and revolt against this knowledge like a starving Frenchman in the Bastille until they begin to accept said crushing realities and become much more reasonable and well behaved little people.

Some of the crushing realities that begin to make themselves evident to babies at this age include:

• The universe does not revolve around the baby. Corollary #1: The universe does not revolve around the baby unless grandparents are present and all other siblings are not.
• Babies can't always get what they want when they want it. (See Corollary #1).
• The slow baby gets the most broken cookie.
• Life, in general, is full of struggle, heartbreak, unfairness, and more stuff that you don't want to do than stuff that you want to do.

Naturally, babies react to these realizations with great distaste, dissatisfaction, and general disrespect.

Our recent power struggles with the babies include:

• Getting them to not stand in rocking chairs (we've already had one trip to the emergency room because of this).
• Teaching them to not slap, hit, push down, eye gouge, or otherwise batter other children in order to gain possession of the other child's possessions.
• Making them understand that Mommy and Daddy are all-knowing, all-seeing, god-like beings that should be obeyed without question, without hesitation, and without holding one's breath until one turns blue.

Their response to these lessons include:

• Fake crying
• Real crying
• Tantrum throwing
• Elmo throwing
• Numerous other acts of civil disobedience which are exceedingly transparent and not likely to get sympathy, attention, or more cookies.

While these are important lessons for the babies to learn, they are increasingly difficult to teach. Believe it or not, locking a child in a soundproof closet for a few hours does very little to teach any lasting lessons. I read this in a magazine or something. We haven't really tried it--yet....

Here's the latest stats:

I've got some really great pictures coming up soon so stay tuned. In the meantime, if you haven't oooh-ed and ahhh-ed over those I posted last time, click here.