How are the announcements supposed to start? “We are excited to announce…”, “Three’s company…”, or “Sarah and I want you to be the first to know…”?

I can’t say that, because I’d be lying to you. I have two beautiful children. A toddler son that is a ball of nuclear energy, and a daughter that is just receiving her first tooth and just taking her first steps. The simple truth is, I’m happy with two kids. Happy is actually an understatement of epic proportions. I can’t imagine how I could possibly be happier with the state of my life.

Two kids are enough. Sarah and I are two humans. We have created two humans to replace us on this rock as it hurtles through space. Two in, two out.

For me, having two kids is exactly perfect.

And Audrey is ruining everything!

Audrey… precious little beautiful little Audrey. My little cupcake. The tiny little darling that crawls around the house and drools. on. EVERYTHING. Her babbles are the most adorable noises. And it’s her babbles that have me terrified.

8 months ago

“Isn’t she the cutest ****ing baby on the planet?” Sarah asked. It was, of course, a statement disguised as a question.

“She really is,” I replied.

What proceeded was a discussion about how happy we were to have both a son and a daughter. There was a time where we both wanted two sons. During Sarah’s pregnancy, she jumped over the fence and began wishing for a daughter. I kept my strength, however, and kept hoping for another boy. Needless to say, when I first saw Audrey’s beautiful face, my heart melted. She held out her tiny little hand, extended her tiny little finger, and I became firmly wrapped around it.

“If she says ‘dada’ first, we are having another baby.”

So, as I said, it’s Audrey’s babbling that has me terrified. I tried, I swear. Over and over again, I’d say to her “Audrey, can you say ‘mama’? ‘Mmmmmmaaammmmmaaaa’. Can you say… ‘mama’? See her? That’s ‘MAMA’ over there. Me? I am not ‘MAMA’. But her, she is your ‘MMMMMAAAAAAMMMMMAAAAAA’.” Then I’d whisper to her, “Don’t you screw this up, little girl.”

Even Tyler tried helping me. “Audwee, don’t say ‘dada’, okay? You haffa say ‘mamma’ first.”

I really don’t understand why she keeps crawling around babbling, “dadadadadadadadadadada” over and over and over again. I find myself wondering if Sarah is running around the house shouting “DA DA DA DA DA” eight hours a day, five days a week. And when I come home from work, she gives me the “remember, ‘dada’ equals baby in my belly” look.

“AUDWEE!! You HAFFA say ‘mama’, not ‘dada’. You’re so silly!”

So Audrey, please, knock it off. Our house cannot fit another full-time child. You can have a bunch of girl friends, and Tyler can have a lot of guy friends. They’re all welcome over here any time. They can even stay the night sometimes, but then they can go back to their own home.

For the love of everything that is still peaceful in this house… MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMama.

I sat down on the couch. It had been a long day at work, and I wanted nothing more than to relax for a bit and enjoy some silence. I have two kids that appear to love me very much, so “relax” and “silence” is virtually unknown in this house. I’m sure that my wife is having trouble reading these very words during her extremely exaggerated eye-roll as she silently shouts “YOU HAVE NO IDEA!!!! Try being home all day, EVERY day with these lovable monsters!”

So, it was absolutely no surprise that Tyler was running laps through the rooms while shouting “Hi daddy… bye daddy.” Sarah came to sit on the couch with me “Hi daddy… bye daddy.” to snuggle and make a little small talk. Audrey was in her room “Hi daddy… bye daddy.” taking a nap. I have no idea how she can sleep “Hi daddy… bye daddy.” through all the noise that her big brother makes during “Hi daddy… bye daddy.” every waking moment of the day.

There we were, enjoying one another’s company while my 9 month old daughter slept, and my three year old son charged through the house like a spider monkey hopped up on speed. I asked Sarah how her day had been, and was listening to her recap a day of fun, drama, crying, laughter and every other emotion that my strong-willed (to put it lightly) family can express. Mid-sentence, Tyler ran up to us and dropped a bomb. A bomb that I swear I’ve never even hinted at before.

“Mommy? Why aren’t you doing your job?”

“What job?” Sarah inquired, genuinely intrigued on where Tyler was heading.

“Cleaning the kitchen.”

I’m not the world’s smartest man, and I’ll never pretend to be, but I KNEW that my safest course of action would be to keep my word-hole shut and simply stare at the floor. So, imagine my surprise at myself when I burst out in laughter.

Not my smartest move.

Also, LOTS of new pictures in the September, October, November, and December photos over on Our SmugMug Site.

We had pipe dreams that our house would have sold before my start-date in Michigan of March 1. Sadly, this didn’t happen, leaving it necessary to spend months with this lifestyle. I spend 5 days a week away from my almost three year old son and my newborn daughter, while Sarah spends 5 days trying to raise these same two children as a married-but-single mother. Oh, and she also had to keep the house SPOTLESS for any house showings.

After numerous heartbreaks, we were all reaching the end of our ropes. Sarah was stressed to the point of nearly breaking, Tyler was beginning to act out, I began falling into a state of depression, and Audrey… well, she’s just happy to exist, so she seemed just fine.

Then we finally got the offer we were waiting for.

We spent the next six weeks dealing with more hurdles and heartbreaks. The prospective buyers had to have their hands held during every step of the process, and required numerous phone calls before they’d take care of the next step. Meanwhile, we’d put an offer on a house in Michigan, and were steamrolling towards closing… contingent on the sale of our house, which was not going well at all.

“I’m not built to be a single dad, Sarah,” I told her during a phone call. “I just don’t think I can continue this lifestyle much longer.”

And then things would start moving again. And then they’d stall again. Move and stall, move and stall. It was like a teenager learning to drive a stick shift. With lots of crying.

Finally, we had a scheduled closing date for both houses. We quickly put together the logistics. We’d pack everything, load it into the moving truck, sign the papers to sell our current house, drive all of our worldly belongings to Michigan, sign to purchase a house, and move in. We were nervous during every second leading to the sell of our house. We didn’t dare speak too excitedly of the fact that things were finally happening. We just cautiously moved ahead. We packed, we organized, we cleaned, and we kept our fingers crossed. We loaded up the moving truck until the only things remaining in the house was a blow-up mattress for us, a mattress for my step-dad, and a couple random items needed to eat breakfast the next morning.

Closing day arrived! We got things around, packed up some last minute stuff and drove to the closing. Anxious and slightly excited, we parked and walked into the office… and the buyers didn’t show up.

THE BUYERS DID NOT SHOW UP!

“Listen,” I said to the closing officer, “we must have a very specific piece of paper signed today, or we can’t buy a house this evening.”

The agent went on to explain that the wife got “called in to work.” There’s a lot of things I don’t know, but I’m fairly certain an employer would understand that you couldn’t come in right away if YOU. ARE. BUYING. A. HOUSE! Where are your priorities at when you make the decision to email the office mere moments before closing and say “oh, by the way, I won’t be there TO. BUY. A. HOUSE! this morning because my boss called and asked me to come in. I said yes even though I’m supposed to be BUYING. A. HOUSE!”

“Is the husband coming? Is their Realtor coming?”

The answer was no. There aren’t words in my vocabulary to explain the feelings I was having at the time. “Devastated” comes to mind. I explained again the fact that we quite literally had all of our belongings on a truck and were scheduled to buy a house in just a matter of hours in Michigan. The closing officer, bless her soul, was determined to help. She explained that we would sign all our papers and that she would then drive to the buyer’s employer to get her to sign the papers. With no other option, we signed the papers and went back to the house, deflated. At a time we should have been celebrating, we were in yet another state of limbo. We contemplated all the nasty things we wanted to do to the house, to punish the buyers for being such royal pains in the butt. The best idea was to leave an upper decker for them. There were two problems with this plan however. One, we weren’t even sure they were going to sign the papers, which would have meant that we just did something very nasty to a house we were stuck with. Two, deep down, below the cynicism and sarcasm, we’re both good people. But that didn’t mean that we all didn’t laugh maniacally when Audrey spit-up all over the living room floor!

My phone rang about twenty minutes later. “Hi Joe, this is Jen.” Jen was the closing officer.

“Please tell me good news, Jen.”

“The papers are signed. I’m faxing over the information now. You’re homeless.”

I mouthed the word to Sarah “signed” as Jen continued singing sweet, sweet music into my ear about us no longer owning a house in Indiana. And finally, we could hug each other for overcoming such a huge mountain of an obstacle.

The closing in Michigan went smooth as silk. We were homeless (and 100% debt free and off the grid) for approximately seven hours. Then, this:

And I now get to come home to my family after work every single day. Life is good.

The scene: We have somebody coming to look at our house soon. The realtor told us that the person really liked our garage. In preparation of the showing, I want to go to the garage and spend some time cleaning it up and really show how much room there is in there. Tyler and I have gotten dressed and are getting ready to come down the stairs. At the last moment, I realize that we forgot to grab socks.

“Wait, Tyler. We need to get some socks first.”

“Okay daddy.”

We walk back into Tyler’s room. I grab a pair of socks for him and then go to my room to get a pair of socks for myself. As we start to go down the stairs, I ask Tyler if he can carry his socks.

“Uhm, sure. Then we put them on, and we go outside and play play play.”

We continued down the stairs. Unbeknownst to me, Tyler was busy pondering something. I turned to look at him and saw that he had a bit of a smirk on his face. I wondered whether I should ask what he was thinking about or let him finish his thought process. As I watched, he raised his socks above his head and started to swing them at me.

“Daddy, I’m gonna sock you with my socks!”

And then he did.

When people asked if we were going to find out the sex of our second child, I would answer with “Sarah decided she wants it to be a surprise, which means I have to let it be a surprise too,” or some other blame-it-on-the-wife variation. I acted spiteful, as if the future of civilization depended on her foolish decision to not utilize everything that modern sci-medicine has to offer. I would have loved to have little sound-waves bouncing off the life form within Sarah’s belly, then to be represented in a digital image on the monitor. I wanted to know if the baby would have an inny or an outie, and it should have been my right to find out.

The complete truth, however, was that I was content with the decision. At the end of the day, the mantra was “healthy baby, healthy baby, healthy baby.

Three months ago, Sarah and I went to the hospital to have a baby, via scheduled c-section. It was a surreal experience when compared to the mood of Tyler’s birth. We were relaxed and ready. We filled out paperwork, we joked, we spoke with the nurses. They told us what to expect, when to expect it, and the general plan for the morning. Tyler was asleep at home in the care of his Aunt, while we calmly prepared for the next major chapter of our lives.

Now, this is the part where a person would say that they were freaking the f*** out inside. That they were acting strong for their spouse. That they were in a near panic at the impending financial strains, the journey into the unknown, and everything else in life that comes with having another poop-machine.

But your friendly neighborhood Irrational Dad was content with it all. I’ll admit that my fingernails were all chewed to a mutilated mess, but that could have been for any number of reasons.

Soon, they took my wife away to be prepped for surgery. I took the time to update my Facebook status.

After I put the mask, gloves, and gown on, they let me in the room. I sat next to Sarah as she lie on the table, and grasped her hand. I asked her if she was ready to have a baby, and she started crying.

“Are you okay?”

“This just isn’t how I wanted to do this. On a surgery table. I just wish I could have tried to have this baby naturally.”

We talked for a few minutes about the circumstances while the doctors finished their prep. I told her to that we will control what we can control, and deal with everything else. I reminded her that we were finally going to meet our new little one in just a few more minutes. We smiled and kissed each other.

The anesthesiologist tapped my shoulder and asked if I wanted to see what the doctors were doing. With Tyler’s birth, I was so petrified at the thought of my wife being bifurcated that I didn’t dare look. Curiosity cured my fear on this day. I looked to see them placing rubber rings, or gaskets, or something in the incision to hold her open. She explained what they were doing, and was a conduit of information for this strange world my brain was processing. Somewhere, I heard someone say something. I’m fairly certain it was our mid-wife.

“Remember, they do not know the sex of the baby.”

A few voices quietly spoke at once.

“They don’t know the sex?”

“It’s a surprise?”

“They didn’t find out?”

Suddenly, I felt proud of Sarah’s decision to not find out. Although I protested, I was a part of the unique few that laugh in the face of modern sci-medicine. I flipped the bird to the ultrasound machine. I stuck it to the medicine man!

The anesthesiologist asked, “Are you ready? They put the last ring (maybe she said gasket) in; just a couple more seconds.”

Just a moment later, I saw my baby’s head. It was time. Right in front of my face was a new life. A beautiful precious little life. An instant later, the body was free and the doctor held my baby up.

The doctor proudly, loudly, and confidently said “Call it, dad.”

My eyes exploded in a flood of tears. I looked to Sarah and told her, “It’s a girl. She’s beautiful.”

“A girl?? We have a girl?”

Sarah cried… a lot.

So did I.

I cut the cord, more as a symbolic gesture than of an actual life saving measure, and held my baby girl. As we waited for mom to recover, I told her about all the people that will love her. I told her about her amazing big brother, and I warned her against “making eyes” at any of her big brother’s friends. We talked for an hour or so, just dad and daughter, about anything I could think of. She didn’t understand a damned thing, of course, and was likely wondering where the nearest boob was for her to suck on. Nonetheless, it was during this time that I discovered that my love didn’t divide between her and Tyler, it multiplied.

So here I am, preparing to raise a girl in the most perfect way possible. I have to find a balance between naive and someone that boys say “has daddy issues”. And I wonder… will I be that dad? The one who is conveniently cleaning his guns when his daughter brings a boy home? The dad that gives the uncomfortably strong handshake to her prom date and talks about respect? Will I be the “you are out of your MIND if you think you’re going out dressed up like that, now get your hind end upstairs and put some clothes on” dad?

Check, check, and check.

Yes, I am alive. Yes, I do indeed have a newborn daughter. Yes, I do remember that there are people that – for some strange reason – love enjoy reading my posts here. But, you may be wondering exactly why my posts have been nearly nonexistent over the last few months.

The most obvious reason, which I’m sure I could note as the ONLY reason and be perfectly justified in doing so, is that I now have two children. Someone, actually many someones, told me that having a second child is four times the work. Many someones would be very correct in saying so. I simply run out of time each day. But that’s not the only reason…

I’ve started a new job. One may think this isn’t a valid reason. Forty hours is forty hours, right? Well, yes. But I now work in a different state than the one in which I live. For the last month, I’ve been commuting to Michigan on Monday, home on Wednesday, back to Michigan on Thursday, then home again on Friday. Starting today, I’m going to be home even less. Michigan on Monday, home on Friday.

Why?

Because the housing market blows. It’s a very lovely home, I swear. We’re even taking a loss with our current asking price. However, until it sells, which will allow us to buy a place up here, I will be commuting. I’m extremely fortunate to have friends up here that can tolerate me living with them nearly full-time during this transitional time.

This has all really thrown off my schedule, and essentially erased the time that I usually set aside to gather my thoughts and write a witty post here.

Thankfully, I work with a great team that has done their best to make me feel like I need to get the hell out of here welcome. They even found a picture of me and made it into a motivational poster.