None of that happened. It did rain, so the kids were unable to torch the forest. We did see an armadillo but it was only partially crazed, and NL were rather fond of the experience. They did sleep, at a right angle to their sleeping bags and to me. When the rain ended, we hiked and climbed up a wooden tower and over a suspension bridge through the tops of enormous live oaks. The climb down the stairs must’ve exhausted their last fuel as they politely asked to be carried back to the car.

*   *   *

NL have been participating in twice weekly gymnastics classes. These consist of 45-minute sessions of basic skills, like trampoline, rings, and tumbling. Each day concludes with unrestrained tomfoolery in a giant “marshmallow pit.” This is like a pool, filled to the brim with beige and blue foam cubes and a child from the previous week’s class lacking the skills to climb out. Noelle takes our financial outlay seriously, obeying most instructions and showing a good degree of enthusiasm for the sport. Lucas thinks he’s at a Chuckie Cheese and prefers to dash away from the class towards whatever equipment in whatever corner of the building he fancies at the moment. I will say that he excels in the marshmallows and occasionally agrees to stop jumping in when the class ends.

*   *   *

In May we jetted to Nassau, allowing us to show off the kids’ round-faced passport photos. For the first time, NL were strapped into their own seats. This only slightly deterred their movements about the cabin;  gratefully the flight was only one hour. At the resort, we rented a sea bike, a contraption with three huge plastic yellow wheels which two riders pedal through the waves. NL clung to our laps and withheld even a small sign of enjoyment. We also swung in a hammock, toured a pitiful botanical garden, and had Noelle’s hair braided with pink and white beads. The kids befriended a pigeon and dubbed him or her Bert. Each morning Bert waited outside the balcony, and then Noelle and Lucas threw him bits of Poptarts and graham crackers. Bert power-walked up to each sugary treat and pecked away. When there were no more, he flew away, likely to retch and then look for worms.

*   *   *

A touching moment at a cancer fundraiser event staged in the parking lot of the community rec center: a group of costumed superheroes posed for photos with any wide-eyed kid who walked up to them. Lucas, lately having been exposed to a few of the masked fantasy villains, whispered in my ear that he wished to hug Spiderman. Marlene walked the boy over to his hero and repeated Lucas’s request. Spiderman bent down and embraced Lucas, to an “awww” from Wonder Woman.

Reflections since the last entry:

• I’m gradually becoming aware that “Buddy” appears nowhere on Lucas’s birth certificate. Like many other dads, I’ve been calling my son the B word since he was a baby buddy. Perhaps unlike many others, I consider it unoriginal and a habit worth breaking. Still, creativity is in short supply; so far I thought only of “young man” and “my friend” as suitable alternatives. I suppose I could just dispense with nicknames and consider calling him Lucas.
• Buddy Lucas has passed the first round of qualification for the 2024 summer Olympics, successfully demonstrating his ability to escape from his crib with a smooth leg-over-and-fling-down maneuver. He alone sees this feat as hilarious, particularly when he repeats it right after being warned not to repeat it.
• At the end of the kids’ bath a month ago, Noelle, in her sweet toddler voice, announced “Oh, sh*t!” I froze in the midst of squeezing out their wash poof. I nicely asked her to repeat herself, and only after the third or fourth transgression realized she was saying “All set!” I take full blame for the near-miss, as I do use that phrase to signal the end of many trivial tasks.
• Playing catch with Lucas is one part sheer joy and one part anxiety. When it’s his turn to throw, his big heart wants to ensure you get the object back. So, apparently not trusting his aim and strength, he walks up to you, rearing back with his arm as he approaches. Then, only inches away, he braces, studies his target, considers the best technique, and delivers. From this distance, his aim is much better than my ability to catch or to duck.
• Noelle is most certainly interested in exploring the bounds of her abilities. She insists on opening doors, velcro-ing her shoes, and assembling groceries on the conveyor belt on their ride to the scanner. Lucas hasn’t quite the same independent spirit; he’s content letting me apply sock 1 and sock 2 and push a frog’s butt with a stick to make the hopper hop.

• NL dabbled with horticulture on one of our nightly walks which took us past a solitary grapefruit tree. As a few weeks ago “twas the season” for harvesting, it was laden with yellow globes of citrus. Some were turning slightly patchy brown, a sure indicator of a ripe fruit. However, some mischievous goblin had beaten us to the treasure, picking all the droopers. The only remaining grapefruit hung a good two feet beyond my stretched fingertips. So, resorting to desperate and irresponsible tactics, I held “my” first born above my head and implored her to stretch her tiny fingers to the heavens. Keeping her 32-lbs. steadily elevated for 25 seconds pushed the limits of my endurance, but it was a success: she reached the prize, snatching it with a satisfied smile.
• MarMa has tried to ingrain the kids with an observance of the principles of safety. Before crossing the street, Noelle says “left, right, left,” but not once have I seen her actually follow her own instructions: as she announces them, she looks straight ahead and proceeds to cross. Lucas throws the little caution he does have into the wind and canters heedlessly from one curb to the other.
• ‘Tis the season not only for citrus, but also for song. NL’s school marms Turner and Oxendine have done a spectacular job of teaching the kids Jingle Bells and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Noelle especially has taken a liking to the Christmas tune, and to the phrase “No, Daddy!”; she rejects all my efforts to join in. Lucas saves the bedtime song for bath time, and, bless his heart, welcomes a duet.
• Last week, Lucas bemoaned his empty container of diluted apple juice with “Uh oh, my juice is all gone!” I add this purely to benefit posterity, not in solicitation of sympathy (the boy had enough juice already). This was, to my ears, his longest sentence yet (and scores higher than parroting a lullaby).
• I took NL to a carnival, set up in an overflow parking lot behind the nearby movie theater. A couple of firsts for all of us: we slowly spun around on a ferris wheel, as high as 125 ft. from the safety of the hard pavement, and smeared our fingers and faces with a gooey chocolatey funnel cake.

Day Four and Five saw NL back in their backpacks as they returned to school. I imagined NL recounting tales of their exploits to a circle of their awed classmates, Lucas mimicking the grunt of an emu and Noelle arranging her playdough into a picnic blanket.

I’ve since returned to our standard work-week routine. One highlight of my evenings with the kids is our Tour of Oviedo bike-trailer ride, with leashed Hana trotting on my left. Just as Hana finishes responding to nature’s call, Noelle reaches behind her into the trailer’s trunk and says “bag!” as she hands me the desired article. If only Hana would eat less fiber.

A few quick-hitters I’ve been slacking on:

• Lucas’s pacifiers seem to be laden with tobacco. The boy is addicted. He chain-sucks for three-quarters of his waking hours and presumably twelve-twelfths of sleepy-time. With “binks” in mouth, the boy adores life: blocks stack straighter, the ball bounces higher, and his toy zebra, cleanly swiped off the coffee table, skips with precision across the livingroom rug. But dare you remove sucker from pucker, and the boy shakes, stomps, jerks tears and curses as best he can the day his dad’s parents met. Editor’s Note: since writing the above, I gladly report that Lucas has been showing progress in kicking the habit. If you ask him sweetly, and use “please”, he hands over the binks for temporary sake-keeping in your pocket.
• I spotted NL playing catch with a mini basketball. I referreed from a good enough distance to avoid distracting them but close enough to dive in and call a foul on any cheap hits below the diaper strap. Noelle bounced the ball in the general direction of Lucas. He ran after it, turned around, and bounced it back, though more in the direction of his former position than Noelle’s current. She repeated, but one-hopped the ball into L’s shoulder. He responded with a gleeful volley at her feet. It was truly a precious moment, both in its innocent playfulness and in its resemblance to the basketball pick-up game in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
• Deserving eternal licks from the hottest flames of Hades, I taught the kids Pacino’s “Hoo-ah!” from Scent of a Woman. And I keep saying it. And they keep saying it.
• I also introduced them to the SlimJim guy’s shout “Oh yeah!” For that, I’ll accept purgatory at worst.

On Day 1, KNL sent up a gaseous trail of carbons along a 38-mile route to Cape Canaveral’s Playalinda Beach. Admission $3;  the ticket booth was the last opportunity to spend money. This place is WILD. As in, nature from the left corner of your left eye to the far right end. No flip-flop shops, no hotels, no neon lights. Heck, no lights at all, and barely a road. Between the end of the bridge over the intracoastal stretch two paved lanes for a good 10 miles, forced through palm brush, lagoons, and short scorched trees from which an occasional egret takes flight. I turned off the Thomas the Train DVD so the kids could peer out the windows and take note of the world around them. I kept promising that we’re almost there, even though they weren’t directly asking the question.

I parked in the first available turn-off (out of the ten or so that you eventually pass once the road turns parallel to the shore). Between us and the waves crashing in the distance were 30-foot dunes covered with sharp grasses,  splotched here and there with yellow flowers. Before we maneuvered the steps and boardwalk over the dunes, I massaged 70 SPF sunscreen on all bodies. Though, I stopped short of asking NL to get that spot between my shoulder blades that our maker never intended us to reach.

NL’s first glimpse of the ocean on the horizon, as we came to the top of the stairs on the far side of the dunes, was one to have gotten on film. I kept telling them all the previous day and that morning that we’re going to the beach to see the ocean. “Ocean,” “ocean,” “ocean”. I must’ve said it forty-five times. They were probably starting to dismiss me as looney. Rightly so, possibly. But then they finally saw what I had been yammering about. They paused and stared for a few seconds, wider-eyed than normal. “I told you!” I thought. “Yeeehp, you sure did,” they probably thought.

So to arrive at a concluding paragraph…. The waves were rather rough, especially if you’re two feet tall. Lucas, though, ever the stuntman, rushed right in while Noelle clung to me like a barnacle. Mostly we just sat at the edge of the shore and let the dissipating waves cool us off and send sand right up our shorts. Noelle and her one-piece were spared. We saw no fish, no pelicans, no sailboats, and only one shell and two sandpipers. That’s not a necessarily a complaint, but it would’ve been nice to be able to point things out to NL other than “look, here’s a shell!” and five minutes later “here’s that shell again!”

Today was Day 2. In a nutshell (no, we didn’t go foraging for nuts; that might be tomorrow, if we can’t get into the zoo), we had a picnic on the grounds of the art museum near downtown Orlando. Along came the big blanket that may have still harbored a few grains of yesterday’s sand, and assorted snacks. We saw a snake this time, and you can bet NL got a zoology lesson.

We enrolled them in a “Twos” program at the nearby Baptist church. They report Thursdays and Fridays, 9AM to 1PM. School rules require each student to tote a tote with a change of clothes, lunch, and diapers. Including the Wielecki Twins, their class has six girls and two boys, and two teachers who appeared genuinely happy to be there, at least during Thursday’s orientation. At this warm-up, we met the six other moms (I was the only dad who, apparently, had accrued sufficient time off for a half-day). I am rather pleased and impressed with the facility and staff. My initial stress that NL would be locked in a dark closet with a mousetrap for a toy and be asked to change each other’s diapers were more than adequately allayed. (Or, at least, they hid the mousetraps for Orientation Day).

Back to the first day: I reported dutifully to work while Kel, Marma, and Uncle Jeff—who appeared in previous episodes of this blog—delivered the kids to their assigned quarters, room Parrot 5. Four hours later, they delightedly rescued both children, who themselves appeared equally delighted about their mini adventure and its conclusion. I remain convinced the teachers took them on a donkey ride, a tour of a string-cheese factory, and hot-air ballooning.

I’m punchy-pleased they made it through this trial without trauma. Kel went through a few layers of worry during those few hours Friday. I admit I too persistently thought about their activities and spirits, and whether Lucas got into any fist fights over his pacifier, or if Nolle was able to pull other girls’ hair harder than they pulled hers. We all were relieved Friday afternoon. No one suffered an eye poke, nary a hair was out of place. I checked as soon as I got home.

To shift the boy’s focus from the animals (or, as he calls them, “animals!”), and to bring Noelle into the action, the three of us went through a pack of mini balloons one afternoon. By “went through” I don’t mean we inflated and popped each in turn, transferring the limp remains into the trash. I mean we—I—strenuously inflated each in turn; during each puff my eyeballs protruded slightly and my face gained a degree of color. I pinched the nozzly part (of the balloon) and handed it to an eager child, allowing them to pinch between one tiny thumb and tinier index finger. They then waved their arm and let the balloon fly. All faces were full of glee as the balloon farted and squiggled through the room in a hundred random directions. I highly value this kind of cheap fun: it blows away boredom, no batteries were required, and no one left with a black eye (the dogs just left the room early in the first quarter).

* * *

A year ago I had endeavored to expand my twins scribblings into a book. I ardently shoved all ten typing fingers deep into this enterprise, which I tentatively titled “A Tale of Twin Kiddies” (get it?). I had amassed sixteen thousands words, a third of my target. Alas, I’ve exhausted all the coal for that furnace and will instead engage those fingers into this blog and dogchewedopals.wordpress.com, my other word adventure. Perhaps one day distant the book train will again depart the station. For now, it reposes.