On Updates

So Dawn and I do the nights in shifts, I take the first shift, from around 10 or 11pm until around 2 or 3 am, at that point. I crash and burn out on the bed and Dawn takes over looking after the little ones. Its exhausting in a way I`ve never been before. And when they start up, their lungs sure work plenty good.

Dawn and I gave the cats up for adoption, we had no choice, Zach was having breathing problems and with the upcoming move... well we have to move the house is too small. Two boys and since I work from home so often now, we need a four bedroom, or I suppose a 3+1, but a guest bedroom might be nice. The car was too small as well, long story there but I am now a hypocrite (at least I don`t actually drive that much, and when I do, the thing is chalk full of stuff, strollers, car seats, people). But lets be honest I said (or implied anyway) that nobody ever should buy an SUV, and in my defence I did try to find a four door hatchback, a station wagon, except as it turns out there almost none in North America, nowadays people buy SUVs, groan. (The few large enough station wagons I did find that weren't total rust buckets were still smaller then what we bought.) Anyway I`m going to make a big exemption in my nobody should buy an SUV, parents of two or more children are summarily allowed large vehicles. Although minivans do make more sense, if you can tolerate the assult on your vanity. (One really cool feature that no minivan or station wagon can do, we can use the trunk as a change table/chair for sitting whilst feeding - yes we've had to do that, twice in under a month. Toronto's "expressways" do a double duty for parking lots, and when the boys need to feed, or get a change, we hardly have time to find a properly legal parking spot, let alone a McDonalds or some other establishment with clean washrooms and change tables.)

Does this justify my driving an SUV? Probably not, but at least I won't make any wild claim about fuel efficiency. It's a 2009 Audi Q7, with a naturally aspirated 3.6L VR-6 (VR is a V engine with the angle between the pistons reduced from the usual 90 to 75 degrees down to about 15 to 10 degrees... Frankly it's silly, the engine bay could easily handle a proper V6, the other engine in that model year was a regular V8, 4.2L. I think VW/Audi couldn't be bothered to design a new block so they took an off the shelf block that they also use in the Golf or something.) Anyway it's not at all efficient with the gasoline (well I don't think VW knows how to make a fuel efficient engine, the 4.2L V8 is also used on the "sporty" S4, it has something like 320bhp -considering the size of the block that's pretty feeble- yet can hardly crank out 500km on a 100L tank of highway driving), oh and since it's German the owners manual says I can use 87 octane gasoline, but they strongly encourage 91 octane or above only. About two weeks after I got the thing I did some number crunching, in the old four door diesel Jetta I paid about $0.05/km for fuel, in this monster I pay $0.18/km. Thank goodness I don't need to drive 40km one way to work each day any longer, I take a train, it's great, 11 minutes from the station (that is a 7 minute walk from my front door) to the station by work. The only driving I do anymore is take the boys out to see family or friends and buy groceries... sometimes I walk to the supermarket, so the fuel use isn't actually all that bad.

I guess it's better if I can go from driving lots in a smaller car, to not driving much but when I do, using a huge thing. Oh and before anyone asks, yes I tried using a mid-sized SUV, my mother-in-law let us use her Mazda CX-7, room for the boys, stroller and wife, but no groceries at all. In fact one Audi dealer tried to get us into a Q5, and once we put the stroller in I was pleased, until the dealer reminded me we needed to get groceries too. Eating really throws a wrench into some plans.

Other than that, I've been living at home almost to the point of being stuck here, I knew this would happen, I just cannot wait until the boys can last a little longer without adult intervention, but I guess that's next year. I've done a total of 3 short rides since they were born.

Oh and there are more pictures, one of Dawn's cousin's is a professional photographer, she'd never done twins before so she was very pleased with our situation and did these shots for free.