It's been interesting to watch how Chase reacts to the babies. He doesn't seem to show a lot of jealousy, but he has shown some tendency to revert back to baby-like behavior. For example, he wants to sleep in his crib instead of the regular bed. He occasionally sneaks the pacifier into his mouth when he thinks no one is paying attention. The bigger challenge has been keeping him from mauling the babies. He isn't malicious toward them at all, but he can be over-affectionate. He constantly wants to hug, hold, kiss and touch the babies. His favorite things are squeezing their hands and rubbing his face against their hair. He becomes so aggressively affectionate that we often have to push him away from the babies to protect them, which really makes him mad. I guess this is a much better problem than him trying to hurt them out of jealousy.

Jaxon and Mason are basically down to one feeding per night, which has made things considerably easier (but not easy). Mason has also mellowed-out substantially. The funny thing is that Jaxon has become more fussy, which is okay since he was pretty mellow before. Their temperaments are a little more alike now, although Mason still definitely has the temper. Lately they've become much more responsive to interaction. It's fairly easy to make them smile, which is always fun to watch. Mason is particularly smiley. Jaxon's cheeks are so fat that when he smiles his eyes close. I haven't captured a full smile from him yet, but you can still see what I mean in the picture below:

Lots of interesting stuff lately. For me - not you. First of all - and most importantly - a message to Brach's: malted milk balls are not "nuts, fruits or cremes". Quit messing with nature.

I've also been wondering about the Veramyst ad that has been on TV lately. In particular, I'm not sure I'm likely to use a product that advertises that "The way VERAMYST works is not fully understood."

Also interesting is that I recently ran into several people that I haven't seen in quite a long time. First, I saw Alinda Elder while picking up baby supplies at Wal-Mart. Then, a day or two later I saw John Harker at Costco. Then, a day or two after that I saw Sarah Crane at Krispy Kreme. Don't judge me. I don't have to explain what I was doing at Krispy Kreme. But if I did have to explain it I would probably tell you about the seasonal Pumpkin Spice doughnut. I'm sure Sarah has a new name, but I'm not sure what it is. Anyway, Chase absolutely loved watching the doughnuts being made.

In related news, I was dining at BJ's with a co-worker a day or two after that and saw Gov. Gibbons. He walked past our table on the way out as we were waiting for our food. For some reason I decided to nod and say "how are you?" He politely smiled and responded.

I'm making an executive decision right now! I have some baby pictures to add, but rather than tag them on at the end of this inane rambling, I'll finish off the meaningless stories and then make a separate posting with baby stuff for those who come here for that sort of stuff.

I stopped by Buffalo Wild Wings a week ago from last Saturday to get some of their delicious wings for dinner. Unfortunately, the experience was anything but delicious. I walked in the door about five minutes before 6:00p and ordered 18 honey BBQ wings and some fries. They told me it would take about 15 minutes, so Chase and I walked around the complex in front of the theaters and successfully killed 15 minutes. We made our way back to check on the order, but I was told that it was not ready. Chase started to become very agitated because he was tired and hungry and it was taking way too long. I was so busy trying to keep Chase entertained that by the time I decided to go check again I realized it was almost 7:00p. The girl that took the order indicated that she had no idea where my food was - a fact that she failed to share with me even though I was standing right in front of her with a very irritated child for more than 45 minutes. Another girl tried to be more helpful and asked what I ordered. After repeating my order she realized that my order had been sitting on the counter. The bag that apparently contained my order had been there for more than 30 minutes, but when I had enquired earlier if it was my order I was told that it was for Justin, not Brad. The helpful girl apologized and had them make some new food fairly quickly, but I asked to speak to a manager. After all was said and done they gave us the food for free and gave me a credit for $25 toward our next purchase there. You can imagine how hard I laughed when I got home and found they only gave us 12 wings! Ha.

As promised, here's an update. First, Chase enjoying some delicious ice cream and then the twins:

Last Sunday we blessed the babies at church. Later that evening moms, dads, Mike, David and Elise came over for dinner. We enjoyed a delicious Costco lasagna that Emilie cooked to perfection, as well as brownies and pumpkin bars provided by moms.

Some random meaningless minutia since the last time I posted (not including the lame entry from earlier today):

• I ate my first oyster while in Vegas attending LANDesk Interchange
• I raced at Fast Lap
• We acquired Guitar Hero 3 for the Wii and have been rocking out. It's been good stress relief after dealing with the trials our children hurl at us

That's enough nonsense for now. I know you only came for the pictures. Well, don't say I never gave you anything.

I upgraded the blog to Movable Type 4 immediately following the official release. I had been planning on reformatting the whole web page, but figured that I would wait for MT4 to be released before putting any amount of effort into it. I quickly discovered that the templates and styles from the previous versions were baked into the blog and could not easily be removed.

The process is going to be a bigger pain than I expected, so to start I went ahead and deleted the old blog and imported the posts into this new blog. All the old posts should be here, but I effectively killed the old styles and settings. I'm hoping that nothing is too badly broken.

Anyway, I have several new pictures of the babies. They'll be posted before the end of the day or my name's not John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt.