THIS LATEST UPDATE BROUGHT TO YOU LIVE FROM THE BIRCHLER BUNKER. KARI BIRCHLER REPORTING:

The cat is still alive (although he’s had some very narrow misses involving his dirty kitty feet, my freshly-cleaned kitchen counters, my short temper, and a meat cleaver, but we’ll leave those stories buried for now). Aaron won’t let me heap deserved retribution upon his little kitty neck, so for now, I just have varicose veins in my throat from yelling at him, and a perpetually empty squirt bottle that is intended to be used as retribution, but is instead used by a certain toddler to dampen the carpets, his socks, his sister, his mouth, and various other usually-not-intended-to-be-moistened items, so that it is never around when needed. Hankie, however, has not fallen under Aaron’s “Don’t Kill the Cat" edict, so he cheerfully works at severing kitty toes whenever the kitty leaps atop his cage in a blaze of bravery. Or stupidity. Whichever.

Abby, in her usual conquer-the-world fashion, has stood up on her own two feet and toddled off. We are not surprised that she has done this before she even turned a year old, but I, personally, was hoping for a chance to fully recover from her older brother’s launch into mobility before she followed in his footsteps (quite literally). But whatever. And for those of you who think that a year and a half is plenty of time to recover from your progeny grasping the finer points of bipedalism, I say, “Go have your own baby."

And, somewhere along the way, while I was still stuck on the fact that my son learned to walk, the kid got taller. Tall enough to reach Forbidden Items that were once safely stashed atop the counter. Forbidden Items being knives and hot pans and mommy’s package of Double Stuf Oreos that she absolutely, without exception, does not share. Ever. World without end, Amen. And, if that were not disaster enough, Christian has also discovered that chairs make wonderful height-extenders, for those times when Mommy thinks she will out-smart her two-year-old and stash her double-cream-filled chocolate sandwiches up, up, up, on top of the microwave. Or the refrigerator. Ah, to have those good ol’ days back, when Mommy could eat her yummy, chocolaty-goodness-cookies while shoveling spoonfuls of pureed peas in her infant son’s mouth hole, and he wouldn’t know the difference. Sigh.

In other news, Christian, my chair-climbing giant, is learning how to go potty in the potty now. Since potty training was Daddy’s idea, Mommy has decided that the only way for the credit to be properly attributed to him is if he sits on the (uncomfortably narrow) edge of the bathtub for forty minutes while his Toddler son sits on the potty seat and pulls imaginary planes, trains, and automobiles (not to mention LionsTigersandBearsOhMy) out of the toilet but cannot, oh no not ever, make water come out of his ding-a-ling. Until five minutes after he has gotten off the potty and is sitting on Mommy’s upholstery, dangerously undiapered. But we have made progress, now, I think, thanks to the BIG TRACTOR STICKERS that we bribed him with. He was so very excited to get a BIG TRACTOR STICKER for going all day pottying in the potty and not on Mommy’s upholstery, that he ran, not walked, to the bathroom and promptly made water come out of his ding-a-ling. Yea, verily, gave us proper advanced notification before doing so. Thank you, BIG TRACTOR STICKERS. (And thank you, God, that stickers did the trick, so I would not have to resort to using my precious Double Stuf Oreos as an incentive.) We have now gone two days without having to clean up Toddler pee. If only we could say the same for the dog. But that’s another story, for another cleaver day.

Kari Birchler, signing off. Quickly. Because Christian is giving me Proper Advanced Notification again.

Things were getting a little dull around here with only 2 kids, a dog, and a bird; so we figured the best solution was to get a cat.

His mommy was killed, and he was going to become a barn-kitty. Now he spends his days lusting after the bird and generally making a nuisance of himself.

He gets along with everyone except the bird (and sometimes mommy and daddy). Well, the kids don’t like it when he chews on them—especially when they were sleeping.

You might notice a couple of places his claws dug into my face in the previous picture. The one on my forehead happened about 3:00a.m. while I was trying to sleep. He tried to use my head as a step-stool so he could play with the cord on the blinds above the bead, and his claw got stuck in my face—I was not happy.

Meanwhile, the kids are getting along very well together. Abby loves her big brother. She also loves food now. She didn’t know what to make of it at first, though.

We just got back from what was not supposed to be a whirlwind trip out west that ended up being a whirlwind trip anyway. (Many thanks to Aaron’s much-loved and so understanding boss who kindly cut our vacation short by five days and made Aaron work The. Entire. Time so that we didn’t get to do just about anything on our list of things to do, even though we only get out that way once every few years, and Aaron had to miss accompanying Christian on his very first bus ride ever that Christian had been talking about the entire week before we left, and yea, verily, is talking about still. Voo-doo doll coming up.)

We learned a few things on this trip which I will forthwith share with you in case you ever need to know these things:

1) A twenty-one-hour trip (so saith Google Maps) is more like thirty hours when traveling with two small children, one of whom must stop to suckle every two to three hours. Or every twenty minutes. Whichever she feels like at any given moment (and I will leave to your imagination the guess as to which of these choices was the most favored).

2) A twenty-one-hour trip (so saith Google Maps) with a sicker-than-he’s-ever-been-it-must-have-been-the-swine-flu toddler in the back seat is similar to having a root canal sans mouth epidural. Or so I imagine. I’ve never actually had a root canal, but I feel that I can speak with authority on this subject since I was trapped in the car for thirty hours with a sick toddler. Trust me; take the root canal.

3) Driving thirty hours straight through is not recommended with two small children.

4) Driving thirty hours straight through is not recommended with two adults who have not had adequate sleep and who are departing at ten o’clock in the evening in the middle of the worst rain storm of the year.

5) Montana is not a good place to remind your boss that you told him you’d be out of town this week, so no, you can’t attend the mandatory meeting that has been rescheduled twice and was never rescheduled before the absolutely latest time that you could depart and still make it to your destination in time to see your wife’s sister whom you have not seen for three years and will not see again for who knows how long.

6) Montana is the State That Never Ends. Ever. And for some reason, residents of the State That Never Ends do not believe in regularly spaced gas stations, so it’s anybody’s guess if you’ll make it out on your own four wheels, or on the back of a tow truck that charges $98.00 a mile.

7) No need to go deer hunting; just drive down any Montana highway in the middle of the night, and you’ll get more venison/possum/skunk/raccoon/cows/tow-truck drivers than you could ever get on a hunting license.

8) If you only get to visit Grandma and Grandpa every three or four years, you can bank on the fact that you will have a sicker-than-he’s-ever-been-it-must-have-been-the-swine-flu toddler for the first six days of your nine days there. That way, you’ll get to spend your entire vacation nursing a whiny, fussy, clingy toddler back to health, while Grandma gets to hold your baby who is screaming because She. Wants. Her. Mommy. !! Plenty of joy to go around.

9) Before you leave, Grandma, Grandpa, Mommy, Daddy, Gas Station Attendants, Auntie, Baby Cousin, and miscellaneous Tow Truck Drivers will all be infected with whatever your sicker-than-he’s-ever-been-it-must-have-been-the-swine-flu toddler had when he sneezed right in their faces. But Hubby’s boss will remain healthy, despite your best wishes.

10) The morning mist rising off the foothills on I-5 south between Bellingham and Mount Vernon is just as beautiful as I remembered. Seeing old friends brought back the fondest of memories, and tweaked a little spot of homesickness that I thought had long been stamped out. Being back in my old house, watching my kids play in my old yard, and showing up at my parents’ church with my two progeny inspired all kinds of warm fuzzies inside me. But I discovered that sometime in the past three years, I must have put down roots in the corn-stubbled black dirt fields of North Dakota, because none of it felt quite the same to me as it did back in my sage age of teenagerness (is too a word!) when I positively declared that if I ever settled down anywhere, it was going to be in the shadow of Mount Baker.

11) Taking a toddler and a baby on the city bus just for fun is…kind of fun. Even when the toddler is still sicker-than-he’s-ever-been-it-must-have-been-the-swine-flu. Which probably makes me a bad mommy for exposing countless bus riders to his sickness, but it was the only chance he was going to get to ride the bus, and I figured, hey, better sicker-than-they’ve-ever-been-it-must-have-been-the-swine-flu bus riders on my hands than a toddler who didn’t get to ride the bus after he’d been talking about it for the entire week before we left. They should have worn a mask if they didn’t want to get sick.

12) It’s okay to be annoyed at your parents’ neighbor who tells you to please shut your bedroom window because your baby’s forty-five minute long “hour-and-a-half" crying spree that you slept through because apparently your blood sugar dropped low in the night kept her from getting more than an hour of sleep because she went to bed at three-thirty in the morning and she doesn’t believe you when you tell her without crossing your fingers behind your back that your baby really doesn’t usually cry at night cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die and don’t you think I’d hear her if she did because, good golly, she’s sleeping in my bed? Go to bed earlier. !!

13) People who lend toys (and strollers and pack’n'plays and gloriously wacky Dr. Suess books) to your kids for a week and a half deserve special crowns in heaven, especially when a fire engine and a dump truck and a great big plastic mountain thingy with railroad tracks and yellow brick roads and a helicopter and little rotund plastic people that fit just perfectly in the baby’s mouth are included. (Yeah, that’s a shout-out to you, Shaver family) You are forgiven for including light-up, music-playing toys that provided my children with hours upon hours of joyful entertainment while Mommy buried her head between the couch cushions (but knew she could safely do this because her children were completely occupied with a light-up, music-playing toy).

14) When traveling back through the State That Never Ends at night on a curvy mountain road with your fake Christmas tree disassembled and stored in two plastic totes strapped to the roof of your car that is packed to the gills with stuff you did not come with, it doth behoove you, when you suddenly spot the carcass of a deer immediately in the meager glare of your headlights that is too close to swerve around, to not attempt to straddle it. And make sure to carry bungee cords with you for when this happens to you and you forget and straddle it anyway and knock something presumably important but unidentifiable off the bottom of your vehicle and need to refasten it quickly because there’s nothing around for miles and it’s the middle of the night and frostbite is imminent if you remain outdoors any longer and you certainly can’t camp out by the side of the freeway all night, and it’s Montana, so it’s not like any more people will be driving by in the day time than at night, anyway.

15) There is a reason why we only make the twenty-one hour drive (so saith Google Maps who does not, apparently, adjust its equations for those traveling with small children, a canine, and an avian) out west once every three or four or twenty years. I’ll let you guess on that one.

16) Spending time with family is, pardon the cliche, totally worth doing it all again. After my skull fractures have healed.

I’ve been working on a big ol’ mammoth post about our birthing experiences (kinda wanted to talk about our horrible hospital experience with Christian’s birth, which led to our wonderful homebirth experience with Abby). Unfortunately, it’s been a much, much bigger project to undertake than I ever could have possibly expected it to be. So until I get it all finished (assuming, at some point, that I actually DO finish it) I present to you:

Pictures of Our Children

Christian is learning lots of things—his ABCs, shapes, where his elbow is, and, most importantly, how to talk to the insurance company without throwing someone through the window. Obviously, he’s still on hold, because, were he actually talking to an agent, he would NOT be smiling!

Abby is learning lots of things, too—like, how to make her mommy lose her mind. She’s definitely a spunky little kid, taking on the world on her hands and knees like that. The bad thing is, is that I don’t vacuum often enough, so every time she crawls off the edge of her blanket, she gets dog hair (and other unmentionable, nasty floor-type gunk) stuck between her fingers and balled up in her fists. Yummy.

Christian loves being a big brother; he leaves his tiny, swallowable cars all over the floor for Abby to pick up, he brings her diapers to me when I forget to grab one before I’ve exposed her dangerous end to the upholstery, he gives her her rattles and picks up her blankies, and most of all, he loves holding his sissy. As long as she sits still. Which is pretty much never.

And here we have it folks! Never-before-seen photos of my kids doing what I never thought they were capable of: sleeping! Together! At the same time! See mommy smile! She is happy! Be happy with her! This is probably the only time anyone will ever see this happen!

Well, you can tell we have kids now, because as we’ve progressed from being single, to being married, to being pregnant, to having a baby, to being pregnant, to having two babies, the time between our updates has grown progressively longer. Now you know why.

We always disliked apartment living because of the lack of privacy; unfortunately, we’re discovering that lack of privacy depends more upon your neighbors than the thickness of your walls.

Case in point:

Our next door neighbor has decided that he hates us. More specifically, he hates Aaron. Aaron doesn’t mow the lawn with a power mower. Aaron doesn’t mow the side yard (which the neighbor can’t see from where he sits all day under his carport when he’s not gossiping about the neighbors to everyone that walks by) frequently enough. Aaron turned down his offer to use the neighbor’s power mower. Aaron’s the spawn of the devil and every word he speaks is evil incarnate.

He apparently doesn’t loathe me quite as much because he still deigns to speak to me over our chain link fence, mostly about how wicked my husband is. The other day, for instance, he was asking me why my husband won’t just buy a power mower, instead of using the [expletive] piece of [expletive] mower that we have (we use a reel mower because it’s safer around the kids and dog, who are usually out with us when we mow). I tried to explain, but of course, he knew better, so I let him claim that point.

We’d gotten a note on our door from the management, asking us to please mow our side yard. Of course, Mr. Nosy took note of the note and noted to me over the chain link fence that afternoon (loosely quoted), “Nah, nah, nah, nah, NAH, nah—I told you so!" (And no, our yard doesn’t look THAT bad; besides, even if it did—we live in a trailer park for pete’s sake—it’s not like we’re bringing down the property values or anything.)

The next afternoon, I saw him limp across the sidewalk in front of our house to look around the side of our house to see if we had performed our civic duty. Then he limped back to his usual spot under his carport.

Two days ago, Mr. Nosy again caught me unawares as I was unloading the kids after a trip to the air conditioner. Er, I mean, the mall.

“The whole neighborhood hates him," he said, gesturing vaguely in a direction somewhere behind me.

“Who? My husband?”

“Yeah. They hate him.”

“Whatever for?!”

“Because you got two kids, and he had you out there mowing the other day.”

“My husband has been busy lately.”

“There’s a hundertnsixtysome hours in a week, and he can’t take a hour to mow the [expletive] lawn?”

I rolled my inside eyes and let him claim that point, too. Anyone so cantankerous and bored of his own life that he has to meddle in ours, obviously needs all the points he can get.