Yesterday Bill Gates, the world’s richest anybody, announced he was leaving Microsoft to focus on working for his family foundation. Go, Bill, go! I’m proud of you, man, and hope more of those in your cohort will follow your example.

Just remember that whatever new projects you undertake, Microsoft products are still awfully buggy. The world might be your oyster, but that doesn’t necessarily give you 6 billion beta testers to play with, okay?

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I love my Subaru. You probably know this, but I will tell you anyway. It is zippy, with a manual transmission that likes to go, go, go. Just room enough for me, two babes, a diaper bag, a stroller, various baby-related flotsam (stuffed animals, several shaker eggs, and some loose O’s), and more groceries than I planned on buying (of course). Plain enough that I didn’t panic when I found myself at an Exxon on FM 972 this afternoon with each babe sitting (for an eternity, in the heat) on a Potette in each of the bucket seats (they didn’t have shoes on and the asphalt was hot . . . and better my car than a gas-station bathroom). Tall enough to hop a curb, bounce along a rough county road, or cut across a median in traffic (Matt, you didn’t just read that). Squat enough to get great mileage so I don’t mush my granola crunch. I love my car.

I love my Whole Foods, too. Today the babies scored three ripe red bananas from the produce guy, and two kinds of juice from the juice lady. The juice gave the babes bright carrot-colored mustaches. Their shirts were already soaked from an enthusiastic dinner eaten thirty minutes before, and banana still stuck between their fingers. They looked perfectly, happily, messy. “What have you been EATING?” the cashier asked. Just the merchandise, man. Whole Foods had organic grapes again this week, toddler-sized and sweet. C&D like grapes so much that David tries to eat five at a time (but when he opens his mouth, and they all roll out).

I love my babies, too. They way they smile and giggle when they nurse, the way they stamp their foot and say “hss, hss” when they watch a ball to bounce, the way Carmen tries to share things she likes with David, and the way David tries to help around the house. The way they drink bottled water from the store and sign “cold!” And I love the way they can’t figure out this whole Mommy thing.

“David, where’s David?”
Pointing at head, “day.”
“Where’s Carmen?”
Pointing at Carmen, “dair.”
“Where’s Mommy?”
Mommy.

“Carmen, where’s Carmen?”
Laughs.
“Where’s David?”
Pointing up, “doughbutdoughbutdoughbut.”
“Where’s Mommy?”
Mommy. “Dah!”

So, there you have it.

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This evening, after grabbing some provisions, we came home to a clogged sink. While Matt worked under the sink, David watched and tried to help, grabbing the wrench and hiding the steel wool (somewhere . . . haven’t found it yet). I tried to sit down to eat while Carmen stood in the Learning Tower and decided she wanted to eat a second dinner–mine. She played peek-a-boo inside it and giggled with a mouth full of chicken. When she realized she had stuffed her mouth full and couldn’t chew (my babes are well-practiced at eating like they are playing Chubby Bunny), she unceremoniously took the half-masticated chicken back out of her mouth and dropped it on the floor. Thanks, kid.

This weekend, my mother taught David to hide around corners and pop out saying, “boo!” It’s hard for me to play that game for very long. It’s difficult to resist, when he comes from around the corner and says, “bew! bew!” picking him up and giving him tickles and kisses all over. More more more! he signs, and he gets kisses and tickles all over again.

Until I can take the babes backpacking, they are never going to see more the handful of stars that you can see only on Houston’s clearest nights. Until then, how about this planetarium for a night light?

In other news, when I ask C&D “Where’s Mommy?” they both sign Mommy. “Yes,” I say, “but where?” I give up.

Sweet dreams of clear and starry skies.

Early this morning, as Carmen held onto my pant leg, standing with one foot inside Matt’s brown shoe and wondering what to do with the other, David picked up one of my sandals, put it over my foot, and said, “Mahmee!”

Who, ME?

As Matt drove away this morning, Carmen signed car and mommy . . . but I think she meant Daddy. As in, Daddy is going in the car [to work].

Buoyed by their apparent progress in identifying Matt and I, after breakfast I asked the babes, “Where’s Mommy?”

Carmen stared at the wall. David patted the floor. Oh.

But later, after a trip to hell (really, it was just Wal-Mart, but I remembered why I never shop there), when we pulled up to the driveway David said, “Home!” He doesn’t know who is parents are, but at least he knows where he lives.

We’ll see if we remember our new vocabulary tomorrow. Sometimes words are said and never return.

David, by the way, was not particularly impressed with Wal-Mart and all the noise, televisions, music, and wild children. In fact, he fell asleep somewhere after the arts and crafts department, his mouth still full of the pretzels I’d been feeding the babes to keep them from poking each others’ eyes out. Carmen signed sleep and patted his head, then tried to lean on him and cuddle.

After crossing the store twice and finding a dirty disposable diaper in the laundry department (ew!), I didn’t even find what I wanted at Wal-Mart. I was looking for Tide HE Free and a spill-proof bubble container. So in the afternoon, when the babes woke from their nap too early (Carmen’s fault), I drove to Target. Target didn’t have Tide HE Free, either. (Don’t get me started on flower-stink-scented HE laundry detergents and my wimpy washing machine’s laundry problems. And don’t tell me that you like All Free and Clear, because I find it as effective no detergent at all. Just feel sorry for me. And maybe feel sorry for my washing machine. It does how many loads per day? Four? Five? Probably more than it was designed for. I can’t wait for it to break.) Target did have a spill-proof bubble bucket, which David held outside of the stroller and dragged throughout the entire store. The plastic scraaaaaaped on the tile floor and then the bucket bump, bump, bumped over the carpet. He laughed and I of course laughed and laughed and probably looked half-wild and delusional, but that in particular is really not an uncommon event.

This is from Friday. Matt scanned it yesterday, I think, when he was setting up all the little whatnots on the computer, like the scanner and the DVD burner. You can see there was a hair on the glass. I need to redo the image but thought I could use this image to hold a place in the blog.

Matt took Carmen out on an expedition this morning to Fry’s, Target, and the Arandas bakery (I had a hankering for pan dulce). While he was listening to Car Talk he heard the Mini-Van Mom song by The Kegels. If you have a child, plan to have children, have had children, or have the dubious fortune of living in the suburbs (where there are lots of minivans . . . and children), you have to hear the song.

Unfortunately, the clip only plays the first two minutes of the song; if you want to hear the rest of it you have to buy the album (Fully Effaced) from CD Baby or directly from The Kegels themselves. I’ve got to have it.

What sign takes babies just one demonstration to learn?

Ice cream.

Do the sign while you feed babies a mango sorbetto. Watch them raise their eyebrows and say with their eyes, “Hey, hey, hey, what’s this?”

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A busy couple of weeks. I’ve been increasingly under the weather (allergies? Tired Twin Mama Syndrome?), and last Monday David got sick.

Then Matt got sick.

Then this past Monday, Carmen got sick.

We believe in sharing things in this house, can you tell?

We’re all on the mend and the babes are busier than ever, but between that and some other projects, there’s little time for digging in the mess of wires behind the computer for the card reader and then posting pictures.

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This weekend we are going to do something like Extreme Makeover on our computer. The breakdown:

• We’re getting a new monitor. Ours is starting to make noises . . . I was going to just wait until it caught fire like Matt’s dad, but we figured that with our luck it would probably burn up at a really inconvenient time (e.g., naptime). And, also, my fire extinguisher needs charging. So we just decided to get a new one.
• We’re getting a new case. This one is about as loud as my refrigerator (that means it’s very loud). I am ready to throw it out the window.
• We’re getting a new printer. Every time I print, the babes–and the cat–stop and stare at it in horror. It is dying a slow death, and I think I should euthanize it.
• Matt is going to reformat the hard drive (or, are you, Matt?) and start over. Fresh. After so many updates to the motherboard BIOS and every other piece of hardware in the case-that-sounds-like-a-fridge, this machine is full of weird errors. Seeing an error is like hearing fingernails on a chalkboard. Matt doesn’t mind it as much as I do, but there are lots of things that Matt doesn’t mind as much as I do. Fortunately he pretends to understand and is going to try to fix it. Unlike the grafted, botoxed, lipo’ed, and lifted plastic surgeons on Extreme Makeover, however, he works for free. And the occassional pint of sorbet.

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This week the babes discovered the buttons on the television. Specifically, they discovered how to turn the television on and off, and know that randomly pressing the buttons to the left of the power button yields interesting results. So this morning while I was cleaning up after breakfast, the living room sounded something like this:
“Let’s turn to Romans Chapter 12 . . .”
“. . . are women’s voices getting [somebody finds the volume button] DEEPER?”
[Scuffling. The television turns off and two babes are trying to climb each other to turn it back on.]

Later David turned the television back on again, and changed the channel but not the volume. Pastor John Hagee was even louder than usual. David looked up at the television, then walked away.

Later, I heard:
“Today on Dr. Phil-”
[off]
“Clorox disinfecting wipes!”

The biggest problem about the discovery of the buttons is that there is, unfortunately, only one power button. As you may have noticed from previous entries, there are two, yes, two, babies. So when one is reaching for the button, standing on his or her tippy, tippy toes to reach, the second baby is hanging on the first’s shoulder, trying to reach over and press the button first. In basketball, this is called a foul. In babies, it is simply “foul.” So the babes get frustrated and angry, and Carmen may decide to vent her frustrations on David by sticking her finger in his mouth.

You might remember that she did this several months ago, and then stopped. But she must have forgotten why she stopped, because she’s doing it again. The unfortunate result of sticking an angry finger in David’s mouth is that David’s first instinct is to simply bite it. You can imagine that Carmen isn’t exactly enthusiastic about this.

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The babes went to the dentist on Friday for their first check-up. Then earlier this week we went to the library to sign up for the summer reading program. We are trying very hard to be good little babies.

The library volunteer was tickled to sign up two toddlers for the program. But hey, I told her, we might as well get a prize for reading to Carmen over and over and over (did I say over and over?) all the books that she already has memorized. David prefers a little more variety . . . but just a little.

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After looking at David’s eyes for the past couple of weeks, it seems that we might not have to do the surgery, after all. The day before we were scheduled to go in, the eye cleared up, and has been fine ever since. Whew. Close call.