Benji's Modern Life: November 2014

I hadn't been back home since my baby sister got married in October 2012. Since I only seem to go home when she has a big life event it was time for me to head back home because she got knocked up – twice!

Well, knocked up once but two babies came out. Isn't the human body grand? And I guess it's no longer considered 'knocked up' when you're married. Whatevs.

Audrey and Bianca were born 29 June 2014, and I got my grubby little hands on them exactly 7 weeks later. When twins are in the womb they call them Baby A and Baby B...do you get the joke with their names? I was rooting for Baby A to be Bianca and Baby B to be Audrey, but alas nobody listens to the childless, spinster aunt. As soon as I found out there were 2 fetuses instead of just one (at 20 weeks! Doesn't that sound late to you?) I took to calling them Dos Baby Girls, which I still call them today. I suspect I will be calling them that for the rest of their lives (or more accurately, my life).

I spent just shy of 3 weeks in my homeland North Dakota, with very little on my itinerary except to snuggle with infants. We did a select few other activities besides the usual buy a whole new wardrobe and eat ourselves into obesity.

We had a baby shower for my sister and Dos Baby Girls:

This was held at the church and, as such, painfully devoid of booze. But the babies were in attendance for everybody to paw, so that made up for it. They held the shower after the babies were born, instead of before like normal, because there was a slight chance that Dos Baby Girls would actually be Uno Baby Girl and Uno Baby Boy. But it was not to be, and in keeping with our 30+ year family tradition no boys showed up.

We went to Minnesota:

I know that sounds anti-climactic, but to me Minnesota is synonymous with “the lake”. Which lake, you ask? I forget which one, exactly, but it's not far from Bemidji. There are 10,000 of them to choose from.

Our friends Aly and Shawn, who we met when Aly and I were studying abroad in Norway, bought a lake cabin on a little lake. You aren't Minnesotan if you don't have a lake cabin!

We also went to Itasca State Park and the Mississippi headwaters, which is where the Mississippi River starts:

They had this super funny fake plastic bear poop, to show people what it looks like.

We played Bingo:

I LOVE playing Bingo! I'm like an elderly chain smoker with my own dobber and a row of lucky troll dolls; I take my Bingo playing seriously.

One of the several bars in my hometown (population: 1,000) has Bingo every Tuesday night, with a cash prize if you can get a blackout in 56 numbers or less. The pot was over $4,000 but sadly nobody won the big prize. Had I won we could have come home again next year...to play more Bingo!

We ate Chinese food:

Admittedly we ate a lot of different kinds of food, but this stuff is special. It's the best Chinese buffet on the planet according to me. It's in Winkler, Manitoba, Canada, so this buffet requires a passport to access! I love, love, love this Chinese and would gladly get type 2 diabetes, lose my feet and die if I could eat it more often. It's so delish!

Martin loves the pick-up trucks of America so there were multiple photo ops.

The gun I'm holding is a BB gun or something, it's not dangerous. Martin just thought it added to the American-ness of the picture, and I tend to agree! Nothing says 'merica quite like firearms and gigantic gas guzzling vehicles.

My favorite thing about the trip home, besides spending every possible second holding Dos Baby Girls, was watching Martin interact with Dos Baby Girls.

That's my favorite picture of him, it's like he's petting a dog.

It was so precious watching him hold them. He's had almost no interaction with a baby since my 9 year old niece was born. The babies, while adorable and innocent, can be quite vicious:

When he'd hold them like this they would grab onto this chest hair and pull, which he claims is super painful. Teeny, tiny babies hurting a grown-ass man! The cuteness kills me.

After all these years living abroad (I'm up to 7 now!) the only thing I legitimately miss about living in the USA is my friends and family (and their dogs!) especially my nieces, the headcount of which went from 1 to 3 overnight. I'm sad I don't get to see them very often, or be a bigger part of their lives, but this is the choice I've made. Therefore it is my duty, whenever possible, to mess with them as much as humanely possible!