Looky, Daddy!

One-Liner Wisdom

If I come back in the next life as something repugnant, it will be because I do not interfere as my two-year-olds chase our cats around the house, wielding Windex bottles and paper towels, saying, "Cats! Cats! Clean you!"

One of the more surprising letdowns I've encountered as a father of twins is the look of disappointment on the face of my second twin after the first got such an impressive response when she pulled my finger.

The single greatest argument against homeschooling is that you lose the ability to look at your six-year-old daughter across the dining room table and ask, "Where on Earth did you learn that?"

If I could make a toddler potty that looked like the area behind my couch, I'd be a millionaire.

Panelaky

It had never occurred to me. I had walked past the building every day on my way to work and yet it had never occurred to me.

It was an old apartment building, probably ten or twelve stories tall. It sat in the midst of a dozen identical communist-era apartment buildings, panelaky the Czechs call them, in a neighborhood on the northern terrace of Usti nad Labem, a town once called the "ashtray of the Czech Republic" by a remarkably accurate guidebook series.

The neighborhood was going through a clean-up, workers on scaffolds scrubbing the sides of the panelaky, ridding them of decades of coal soot and industrial pollutants, restoring the dingy black buildings back to their original dingy gray.

David, a close friend who has become almost like a brother in the fact that I never call him or write him anymore (and whose name I have Anglicized from its original Czech, David), had also walked past the building daily. It had never occurred to him, either.

Yet there we both were, in the middle of the night, racing each other up the exterior scaffolding of that building all the way to the top.

My point is this: In a matter of seconds, two people together can come up with ideas that neither of them would have ever considered separately.

When I stayed home with Kathryn, I suspect I went to the bathroom everyday, maybe even multiple times a day. I have no proof of this, but I'm just a going-to-the-bathroom kind of guy, so I'm pretty confident. Never once did I emerge from the bathroom, drying my hands on a towel, to find Kathryn standing on top of the dining room table, hopping up and down on her little chubby toddler legs.

Guess how many times I've found the twins doing just that. Together, of course.

The Right Tool for the Job

Thank you for your emails, comments, advice, and even phone calls. You will be happy to know that the bird currently eating my liver is a good three sizes smaller that the one munching on it but a few days ago. It is now roughly the size of that muppet on Sesame Street. Just not as cheerful.

Truth be told, the whole situation has been about a tenth of the ordeal that I have been making it out to be. For one thing, The Mom has been here. She took the week off work for Kathryn's winter break and she has had us running hither and yon on so many fun-filled adventures that the babies have been all but begging to be put in their beds by the end of the day.

Also, we have found the right tool. As a guy, I'm a big believer in tools and I firmly believe that the proper device can make almost any situation manageable. For a while, I could not figure out which apparatus rusting away on my neglected basement workbench would help keep these girls in bed. I went through the usual suspects, duct tape, toggle bolts, bungee cords, hook and eye clasps, but all of them either left marks or created what I was told was a "non-nurturing environment." Whatever.

But stay-at-home dads have other tools, too. Tools that aren't made of steel, iron, or shiny silvery tape. Tools that are plush, cute, and snuggle-able. Tools that look like this:

These tools are very sensitive. They get lonely. They need company. They must be held and kept in bed. They can't handle loud noises or jumping. If anything happens that disturbs these highly-specialized tools, then they ask to come sleep with Mom and Dad.

You wouldn't want that, would you? Of course not. Now go to bed, little ones. Go to bed.

One Giant Leap...

Author's note: I'm done. I'm tapped. If exhaustion were a tangible object, something you could point to and say, "Look, there's my tiredness," mine would have it's own orbit. It would glow red in the night sky and be feared by villagers and prophets alike. Virgins, no doubt, would be sacrified to it. Still, in my sleepless hours, I happened across this post I wrote a week or so ago, cleaned it up a bit, and I'll offer it to you now. Be nice.

The Three-Martini Playdate went on the road. We hit the city. New York City. All three of us, Jennifer, Camilo's dad, and I, driving the seemingly insurmountable 13 miles to the center of the universe. It was not pretty.

Our town is only 13 miles from New York City, but that's not where we live. We live in isolation. We live on the moon. Three adults, five children two-and-under, we have about as much chance of seeing the skyscrapers of New York as we do the Sydney Opera House.

But not this time. This time we made it. The Three-Martini Playdate went partying.

There were hollers and hoots. There was table standing. We annoyed, we were beligerent, we were not cool. Everyone knew we had kids, everyone knew we stayed home with them. We were pitied and feared. Everyone knew that crossing us was to take their life into their hands.

There were offers. The ladies knew I was the go-to guy if they wanted twins. They knew Camilo's dad had mystical powers. They knew Jennifer was thirsty and dangerously on edge.

The concert was horrible. The sound man was a monkey. We didn't care. We were out. We left early. We prowled the streets. We were immune to the cold.

We would not go home. There was fun to be had, noise to be made, hoots to be hollered. Drinks to be drunk.

We were uneasy. We had forgotten something. We looked around, then we remembered. We relaxed. We laughed.

We went out. The Three-Martini Playdate went out.

Just in time, I think.

Prometheus Bound

If I had known it would be this easy, I would have done it a long time ago. Right after driving over my own skull with a mini-van.

The cribs are gone. The twins are in beds now.

Four years ago, we transitioned Kathryn from a crib to a bed. We did it on her second birthday. It was the kind of smooth, easy change that made The Mom and I think that we were the greatest parents ever and that we should write a book called How to Be Great Like Us (First chapter title: You Can't!). Truth be told, though, it was all Kathryn. To Kathryn, a bed was the same as a crib, just with a better selection of sheets. Kathryn believed she was no more able to get out of her new bed by herself than she could attempt a climb up Mt. Everest's south face. Unless, of course, she had a team of Sherpas and a sheet of Hello Kitty stickers. Hello Kitty makes the impossible fun!

The twins are under no such delusions.

Ever since I chose to stay home with my girls, I've felt more-or-less like Prometheus, who, after performing one incredibly selfless deed for all humanity, has been chained to a rock and had his liver eaten by birds every day since. For me, the only difference each new day brings is the size of the bird. Most days it's a small bird, a hummingbird. It almost tickles. I've even been known to laugh.

This no-crib thing is a big-assed bird.

So, I'm writing this as a kind of preemptive apology. I write when the twins nap. If they don't nap, I don't write. And they're not napping. Oh no. Not when there's paint to peel off the door frame and extension cords to fish out from behind the changing table. So forgive me if, for a while, the occasional few days or more slip by without a post. I'm doing my best. And keep your eyes to the sky for a big-assed bird holding a little bitty, vodka-soaked liver. It's mine.

Snow Day

We live in a small house. Actually, we live in a medium house, but our family only gets half of it. The small half. And yesterday it was the smallest it had ever been. Yesterday was a snow day.

In our small house, the door to Kathryn's room doesn't hang correctly. If you are over four feet tall, you can lift the door by the handle and operate it almost soundlessly. If you are under four feet, you must put your shoulder into it and push, opening the door with a sound reminiscent of the cry a soul must make as it is dragged down to hell. Yesterday, at least five pairs of souls were eternally damned before 6 AM as Kathryn kept peeking out to see if any of us were awake and making the hot chocolate yet. With marshmallows on the side, if you please.

The day was an ugly day. There was hardly enough snow on the ground to make a decent snowball, and the hail, sleet, and freezing rain kept us from going out and trying anyway. And so Kathryn was a tornado, an indoor catastrophe of kinetic energy and frantic boredom. She approached the whole day of doing nothing with the intensity of a Wall Street floor trader on methamphetamine.

The twins spent the day occupied with their favorite hobby: crying for mommy. This time, however, it was different. This time MOMMY WAS IN THE HOUSE. She was here, upstairs, working. Meeting deadlines and making conference calls. And she never once, not once, came downstairs to mingle with her fans and graciously receive their gifts of snot and tears. No. Instead, her only interaction with the family was through a shower of tersely written notes that she threw down the stairs at odd intervals. "Coffee!" "Bagel!" "Nooner?"

The problem, as any well-bred Southern family with an idiot-child could tell you, was that it's completely impossible to hide an entire person in a house this small. There was always some noise, a cough, a laugh, a rattling chain, that drifted down to the twins' ears, spurring them on to new rounds of sobbing while I wove ever more complicated webs of deception. It was the wind, I said, or a radio, or the phone, and once I even said it was a TV which only shows how stupid I am because they love TV even more than their mother. But eventually the girls always calmed down and ended their vigil at the baby-gated stairs, going back to their normal daytime position of standing at the front door, waiting for their mother to come home, but this time with one eye on the downstairs TV just in case it happened to laugh like the one upstairs just did.

And let me just say here, in conclusion, that hearing The Mom laugh on the phone with her colleagues makes me even more secure in my knowledge that her job is one giant mai-tai holding, joke-cracking, conga-dancing luau, while the closest thing to highbrow humor that I see each day are the expressions on Lila's face as she systematically tastes each of the furry objects she finds under the couch.

Which is pretty funny.

Two-Ness

The two-ness is rampant, it is out of control.

The babies are running and grabbing, all hands and feet. And if hands and feet are forbidden, they are all forehead. Like Victoria and the radiator. She knew that hands weren't okay, but what about her head? She had never tried that before. Maybe that would be fine. So she leaned in, keeping her hands safely behind her back, and before I had time to react, she pressed her forehead against the steaming radiator. Her thrill at her uncommon brilliance and "out-of-the-box" thinking was dwarfed immediately by the size of the burn mark. Tomorrow she'll think of something new. Elbows?

Lila has mastered the apology and now creates her own opportunities to use it. At playdates, she saunters up to friends, looking friendly, eyes to the sky, all but doing a little shuffle step and whistling, then pounce! she steals their sippy cup, or their teddy bear, or securely-fastened hair barrette, and waits. When the tears come, Lila reaches out a little hand, gives her victim a soothing pat or two and coos sympathetically, "It's okay, I sorry," and returns the object. Then she runs away, alert, looking for someone else who may be in need of one of her apologies.

At night, not content with removing every blanket, stuffed animal, and crib sheet out of her crib, Victoria has taken to removing herself as well. I'm not sure about the whole routine, but I'm fairly certain, given the sickening thud we hear at the closure, the Russian judge is deducting points for the dismount.

Potties are fun, potties are exciting, potties are most definitely not for peeing. Potties are the obligatory prix-fixe dinner before the pee-pee theater. My girls sit, delighted to be there, happy to listen to the stories, sing the songs, catch-up on old times, but after a while they get a little impatient, wondering when they can finally get up and pee already. They use diversionary tactics. One will stand up, "All done!" and while I look in her potty, the other will make a break for it, peeing gleefully past me on her way to our new couch.

Two-ness is everywhere. That and pee.

Shhhh

Shhh. Shhhh. Don't say anything. Don't spoil this for me.

I'm not sitting at my computer. No. I'm at the beach.

I'm not staring at a monitor. I'm not staring at anything. My eyes are closed. The sun shines red through my eyelids.

I'm not fully-clothed, wrapped in a robe because I'm cold, because my windows leak air. I'm in a bathing suit, gently covered in a beach towel, keeping my skin from burning.

That sound is not the sound of my babies waking up from their nap. No. That is the sound of waves.

Do not spoil this.

That is not stale, cold coffee I'm drinking. It's a frozen drink. A frozen drink with a paper umbrella, fresh fruit skewered on its wooden pole.

Those are gulls I hear, not cries from the babies' room. Gulls. Swooping down for a crust of bread from a playful child. A playful child who is not mine.

Shhh, gulls, shhh.

Shhhh.

That Grandma, She's a Sharp One

Here is the second page of a three-page story Kathryn made at school today. It was titled A Day at the Park.

"Grandma noticed. I was bleeding through my head."

This is why all of our parent/teacher conferences include at least one remark that Kathryn frightens the other children. 

Ask The Dad

Hi The Dad,

I'm a mom of 13 month boy twins. Tell me how you did the whole ferberizing/rocking to bed, weaning off bottle, getting them to eat with an utensil thing.  I have a babysitter and my mother in law watching them, and they are treated like singletons (rocking to bed by each caregiver/still need a bottle before nap/bedtime).

I am thinking about staying at home, but the prospect scares me because I would be taking care of them all by myself and up to this point, they've had someone always there to hold them if they needed to be held.

HELP! When does it get easier? Or am I at the "easier" stage already and just don't appreciate it?  I have them with me after work and on the weekends, and I'm so tired.  What is your daily schedule with them? Free play? TV? (they don't watch alot of TV).  How do you get by??

Thanks for any sort of advice you can give,

A

Dear A,

True story: When my twins were around 11-months old, we started attending storytime at our local library. It was a once a week event, and the sheer effort of getting there usually left me knackered for the rest of the day, but we went every week without fail. Why? The ladies. Storytime at the library meant forty-five minutes of non-stop adoration from the ladies. I would walk into storytime, clean, groomed, in each arm a gently cooing baby, with just a little hint of loin-stirring cologne, and the room would fall quiet. Throughout storytime, moms and nannies, singletons in their lap, would sit around the circle, ignoring stories of George's curiosity, transfixed instead by the aura of me. They would whisper to each other. They would point. The braver ones would reach out and touch the hem of my pants, hooting like the half-apes of Stanley Kubrick's 2001. I was their monolith.

Here comes the true part: One day, weeks into the session, a new mom showed up. With her twins. And her nanny. She was a mess. Her entrance into the room could not have been more chaotic had she been Grandma Clampett driving her loaded-up car of Beverly Hillbillies straight into our circle. She had at least three diaper bags dangling off each arm. Her nanny had two. They took their place in the circle with a cacophony of grunts and sighs, oofs and ahhs, zipping and unzipping of bags, setting out a virtual smorgasbord of bottles, cups, and treat-filled Tupperware bowls. Finally, their home-away-from-home made, the mother with one baby, the nanny with the other, storytime began only to be interrupted a few minutes later by the mother looking over and exclaiming, "Oh my God! You have twins, too?"

I smiled and nodded.

"Do you take care of them yourself?"

Another smile, another nod. Let the adoration begin. I am ready.

Instead she said something that almost made me reach over and collapse her windpipe with a single, well-placed punch to the throat. She said, and I swear I am not making this up, "Oh, it must be so much easier that way."

She must have taken the sound I proceeded to make as a request for clarification.

"I mean, your girls must understand that there's only one of you. They must have learned patience, right?"

Storytime was still going on, so I didn't verbally respond, hoping instead that the core of her brain, the part that biologists claim dates back to our wild animal days, would recognize my wide-eyed stare, and thus trigger her 'fight-or-flight' reflex, hopefully choosing 'flight' because 'fight' would involve a very sudden and devastating bombardment of two eleven-month-old twins upon both her and the nest she had made in the library's storytime room.

This woman and I lived in different worlds. I could no more talk to her than I could have a meaningful conversation with Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Or answer a letter by a person who uses the term ferberizing, a word I had to Google just after I got your letter.

Still, your letter was so wrenching, your tone so plaintive, that I thought I'd try anyway.

Your boys are thirteen-months old. They are adaptable. If you are fool enough to try to take care of them solo, they will adapt to it. It will be ugly, and the first few weeks will make you want to take a job, any job, just to get back out of the house, but eventually they will adapt.

At bedtime, you will sit with both babies in your lap. You'll read them stories, sing them songs, rock them together. You'll put one down while you put the other in his crib. The screaming will be horrendous. It will be mind-blowing. You'll get the other into his crib, then you'll sing songs. You'll move their cribs closer together so you can reach both of them, patting their backs, soothing them, calming them. It will work. Not right away, but it will work.

Bottle weaning takes place when you stop giving them bottles. Get nice, soft-topped sippy cups and explain that their milk now comes from that. It will be ugly. You will feel like a terrible person, a bad mom, but eventually they will drink from the cups. They won't die.

Eating with a utensil? Forget it. Not important, not essential. They'll figure it out by kindergarten. Until then, let them use hands.

When does it get easier? Every day.

It gets easier every day.