Ye Olde Yarnoz Regalty

Well, in honor of the spectacle that was the Royal Wedding, we here at Baby Yarnoz Universe got a hankerin for some good olde fashioned royal titles.  (This has also been buoyed by our recent discovery of 'The Tudors')

Anyway, we (or, actually I, The Editor) have decided to give each of us royal titles!  So without further ado...

King Michael John I.  Emperor of the Yarnoz Universe, with its vast internet domains and legions of subjects.  He is actually 1,072,205th in line of succession for the Spanish Throne.  Which actually means that everyone in Spain has to die for him to become King.  Well, a man can dream.  The High Royal Editor of all things BabyYarnoz, both cute, sappy and humourous alike.  The Supreme Commander of the Yarnoz Armada.  


Queen Charmaine Anne.  The Queen Mother. High Dairy Queen to all BabyYarnoz.  The vast supplier of all sustenance to the royal family.  The Supreme Organizer of the BabyYarnoz house, lands, treasury, and 10 calendars.   The Healer of the Sick and Giver to the Poor.  The Green Queen.  The Lover of all Things Earthy and Green.




Princess Kemper Pilar.  The Princess of Cuteness.  The Pizz.  The Round Mound of Royal Cuteness.  Princess of Carbs.  The First Daughter of Cuteness.  Possibly betrothed to Little Ceasar...  (ie Lover of Pizza).






Prince Michael Harcourt.  The Prince of Peace (and Quiet).  The Calm Prince.  He who can soothe the world with a cute stare and quiet demeanor.  Prince Court "the Dude".  He of mild voice and stinky butt.





Princess Camila Anne.  Princess Fusserella.  The one with big eyes and even larger lungs!  She who can cry at the drop of sauce.  The one who will eat the Queen out of house and boob!  Eventually, the one who will rule the Family!  (Maybe she can change my diapers in the end!)  Sorry, she does not have a crest.  Alas...  she'll probably fuss over that one in the future too...


Lady Merle of Geyer.  Our lady of waiting from the Olde World.  (er... ???)   The Royal Teacher.  The Restorer of Our Sanity.



Constable Hamilton.  The Protector of the Realm (from UPS trucks and mailmen).  Destroyer of Cats!  The Cleanser of the Table Scraps.









So, now with 2 daughters and 1 son, the BabyYarnoz Universe is open to form some serious Dynasties!!!  Any takers?

Those Yarnoz Genes!

For the past 2 months, we here at BY Universe have been touting the creepy similarity of those Yarnoz genes!  Put is simply, we make some cute chickies!

So, for you all to test your wits... we've give the KP and Twizzles First Annual Quizzle!!!

Got it?

Stumped??  Ok, here's an easy one.

But what about the Dude?  Who does he look like?

What are we going to do with all this cuteness!!!?

Uh OH!

Happy Easter 2011

Here in Crazyland we want to point out that we are good Catholics.

I mean, we manage to reproduce little future Catholics at a Vatican-approved rate, don't we?

So maybe this year the Pope will forgive us for:

• Skipping the whole "mass" thing.  Not only did we spare the congregation from screaming twizzles, we also gave them a break from Kemper's toddler germs!
• Eating pizza for Easter dinner.  I'm sure in some culture it was on the menu in Jesus's day.

What would be unforgivable is if we didn't take any Easter photos!  After all, the cutest of the Cuteness came from Easter 2010!

Remember this?  The Total Cuteness Package at work last Easter...

This Easter the TCP is mobile!  In her Lala-provided Radio Flyer

The twizzles are happy to just nap the day away, and we like it this way!

Happy Easter!

Update!

New to the BabyYarnoz Universe....


YOUTUBE!!!!!!

The inaugural video is now up and ready to watch.

If it doesn't work, follow this link:  http://www.youtube.com/user/babyyarnoz


Just one more way we're going to take down the Hoff!!!

What We've Learned - Two Month Update


 Well, we've survived to two months!!!  We are sooooo much older and wiser now.  Where should we start!

The twizzle version of abdominal activity

Court drunk on the sauce

• The Pizz is rocking and rolling.  She is all over the place, and has consolidated her naps into one (much to our chagrin!)  We are totally running out of entertaining options for her.  Thank goodness she can entertain herself!
• The Dude is totally chill.  If it wasn't for the roller coaster ride that has been her GERD, you would have forgotten that he was there.
• The Princess is a total fussbucket.  She has developed a multitude to crazy sounds.  She also cries ad infinatum (I can't spell Latin...) and almost immediately until you put a bottle of sauce in her mouth.
• We totally totally hate infant heart/apnea monitors.  Unbelievable!  The countless times, in the midde of the night, that that freaking thing would give a "loose connection" was unbearable.  I almost threw it out of our new window.  Poor Court might have a permanent mark of the chest band...  (No, not really)
• New Nicknames: The Dude, the Prince, Mr Chill.  But basically the Dude wins.
• New Nicknames: Princess Fusserella, Fusselstiltskin, Fussmaster Flash, the Mouse, KP2 or K2, miniKemper.
• New Nicknames: the Pizz.  (I mean can you really mess with perfection!)
• Dietary Habits:
• Pizz: basically a See-Food diet.  Sometimes you cannot tell where she puts it... until you lift her out of the highchair.   Dislikes: broccoli, fish, tuna salad.
• Fusserella: "Eats to live".  This baby wants sauce and she wants it yesterday.  She wants it so bad, that she cannot contain it all in her mouth.  When she takes a breather (maybe once or twice per 4 oz), there is a ring of sauce around her mouth and running down her chin.  Once she started to reek of old curdled milk that had settled into her neck crevices and shirt.
• Dude: "Lives to eat".  He could pretty much take it or leave it.  No rush.  Just sips away.  Also has to be burped like every 5 minutes to ensure that he doesn't get bored.
• DQ2.0: A well-oiled solid machine!  Unbelievable
• Industrial strength sauce producer:  Running almost nonstop these days.  At one point, I think the machine sputtered out "Help me" during a rare pause.  It's not called industrial strength for nothing.
• The Editor's sleep habits....  pretty poor.  Only now slightly improving.
• Ghosts in the bedroom.  I am absolutely sure of it.  We have only in the last couple of days begun sleeping back in our bedroom.  To which, we have the baby monitor up as well as my alarm clock to wake at 5am.  The last two nights, both machines have been inexplicably powered off at the most inopportune times (mainly 4-5 in the morning, when the DQ is in the Nursery 2.0 and needs help from the Editor).  I don't know how it occurs, and could only be explained as the ghost of Mr Schwartz.  He must not want me awake during those hours.  I cannot understand why.  The DQ points the blame squarely on my shoulders.  Alas.
• Au-pairs are awesome!  I don't know why we didn't get on earlier!  Everyone should get one.  I think I saw Ham on the Internet yesterday looking for one... Although he has taken a serious shine to her too.  He loves his new afternoon walking partner, as well as the return of his suede couch!
• Paci fever!  Catch it
• The Pizz still has it, but we're working on it.
• The Dude usually will take it and go to sleep.
• Princess Fusserella will only take it on her terms, when she gosh-darn-feels like.  Most times she takes a couple of chugs, and then innocently spits it out.  Occasionally, if you try to push the issue, she will raise the ante... She'll gag herself before taking it!  Yup!  Almost once a week, I get caught with this trap.  Sort of scary
• Poop poop and more poop
• Pizz: regular.  I think there was a whole undigested banana in there once, she ate it so fast!
• Fussmaster Flash: fairly regular.  Whew!  Multiple wiper
• The Dude:  Maybe once every 3 days or so.  Yup.... his GI tract is on Dude-time as well!  wow!!
• Photos...  Well, we're taking a smattering here and there.  The posts are coming... It's not like this is not fun and exciting for us... just the days/hours/minutes are filled with other stuff...  Eventually this stuff will get out there...

Ok.  Enough for now.  Time to go to bed!



Family nap time

Today was a Good Day

Yes it was.

For starters, The Editor got to work on time and ready to see some patients. Somehow that plan of waking up at 5am to get ahead of the Pizz just doesn't work. Nope. Nada. Zero. Somehow 6am usually comes around with me still in bed and the Pizz a-stirring... Today, for some reason the planets were aligned.

The Pizz was super cute in another Cam-me-down... She is totally winning the best dressed award in daycare.

Had a cardiology appointment today for the Dude. Damn that heart monitor!!! Essentially his "Brady" episodes are more than likely physiologic and nothing to worry about. Only to treat his monster GERD. That goodness for common sense. The DQ2.0 essentially skipped out of the office screaming, we're taking that thing off right now!!!!

Seems the DQ2.0 has a found a younger version of herself in our new aupair, Merle. Supposedly these two looove to organize. They went to Staples and bought like 10 calendars, a monster dry erase board, and a large gaggle of post-it notes. This is also on top of our current situation of one dry erase calendar and my stellar work on the online calendar. Who are they organizing here??!? The armada?? Seriously, they have more calendars then we have kids. This operation should be the most efficiently run outfit this side of the US government. Ha ha. I'm just jealous that I didn't get a chance to go!!!

(Editors note: I'm trying to type this blog while on my shift. The Dude's ok, but the little bitchy one is just screaming her head off every 5 seconds. I think if she wasn't so freaking cute, I'd return her for a refund. Oh, anyway, this post is like taking 8 hours)

Then, Merle and I went for a drive on errands... Mainly to Target!!! Too bad I couldn't find something to buy for myself, but that wasn't for a lack of looking!!! Then we drove around town, getting her acclimated to the area. Pretty easy stuff, except for the fact that we drive on the right (or wrong!!!) side of the road.

Then it was off to get the Pizzle!!! She was in a glorius mood, and this carried over all the way home. We then spent the evening outside, enjoying the new yard.

We all sat down for a free lovely dinner, and then the Pizz had a bath. Then Goodnight Kemper was heard throughout the house.

Shhh what a day.

(Wonder if we should put that on a calendar again!!!)

Mo-pairs, no-pairs, and au-pairs

We here at the BY universe know a universal truth: three babies to two adults is not a ratio that we enjoy.

As many people have told us, we've just transitioned our defense from man-to-man to zone coverage.  And we know we often lose the game with this strategy.

So, we started off by trying to get Morgan (aka Mo) to move into our large gameroom and live gratis while helping out and working her regular job.  Needless to say, this went over like a ton of bricks.

The next step was to figure out what kind of childcare we really thought we needed.  The Pizz already goes to an awesome daycare that we (and she) love, but we weren't sure if we could continue living in fear that one of our children would be sent home sick (something that is remarkably common).  These situations never happen on one of the DQ's days off -- it is almost always the double whammy of me being on call and the DQ working a long day.

Not to mention the night calls and evening shifts, the weekends and random vacation days at day care that make that situation less than ideal for three kids.  And how in the world would one adult get two infants and a pre-verbal toddler to school at the same time?  It boggles the mind.

So, we decided -- no nanny for us -- we need a live-in.

Luckily, the DQ's boss and his wife had 6 years of experiences with au pairs and convinced us that it was what we needed.  We agreed.  I mean, after getting over the idea that a girl half our age was going to raise our infants (something we didn't even have confidence in ourselves to do).  What could be so hard about it?

Thus begun the painful process of screening foreign applicants for this position.  During the first round, we looked at over 50 applications, only to think that 4 were appropriate.  And then it turned out that most of the girls themselves didn't really relish the idea of taking on two small infants (after all, they get paid the same for one).  The DQ tried to pull out all the stops, enticing them with the proximity to the beach and their own studio-like apartment downstairs.

We did eventually have a taker, a lovely girl from Brazil who was born in Japan.  Ironically, although this household already speaks 4 languages, Japanese and Portuguese were not any of them, so we were gearing up for a culturally diverse a situation as possible.

Unfortunately, when our candidate went to apply for her visa, she was denied!  We discovered this after getting the twizzles home, and it immediately sent us into a tizzy.  Oh sh&$!  What are we going to do?  It took 4 months and 50+ applications to find this one!

So, the DQ went into find-an-au-pair overdrive.  After all, it was her sanity at stake.  And so, after a harrowing weekend of application review and middle-of-the-night interviews with girls in China, Australia, and South Africa, we found one  -- and honestly with much less fuss than the first time around.

So, at this moment we have been informed that she is arriving next Monday... Hooray!  We are super-excited to have some help around the house, and even better that she has 19-year-old energy.  We could use a little bit of that right now....