Valerie is in Utah to put her grandfather to rest; may he rest in peace. In preparation for leaving, she practically spoon-fed me everything I’d need to get through the next 36 hours: 4 night diapers for the twins,  [...]]]> It’s 2039 hours and all the kids are finally in bed — not all asleep, but hopefully soon.

Valerie is in Utah to put her grandfather to rest; may he rest in peace. In preparation for leaving, she practically spoon-fed me everything I’d need to get through the next 36 hours: 4 night diapers for the twins,  4 sets of pajamas for the twins, pajamas & night pants for Maia, clothes for everyone to wear to the zoo tomorrow, and a fully stocked and prepped diaper bag ready to go — just add hot water. Ohh, and not to mention, she prearranged help to arrive in the evening to get all the kiddos through the bed-time routine. How could it possibly go wrong?

Enter: The Daddy.

I literally had an average of 1.5 kids screaming at me for the last 3 hours.

We got home from dropping Valerie at the airport around 1650. Not a minute afterward, Stella starts wailing. A fresh diaper helps a bit, and into the Boppy so Elise can get her turn on the changing table — which prompts Stella to immediately go to 11.  No biggie, a couple of bottles and all will be happy again. By the time the bottles are ready, there’s a 2-part harmony on the couch as I settle down and try to make amends; which are patently rejected.  Holding them to settle them down is not helping, so, off to the bouncer/swing and futile attempts at giving paci’s. No joy.

Quick departure from the twins to help Maia through the potty. Afterward, she wants some juice and I offer her a sippy cup of water since it was handy and I’ve still got 2 screaming babies to settle down. She makes her displeasure known by throwing the sippy cup — landing her straight into the corner for time out.

Perfect! Now I’ve got all 3 kids screaming at me. And, what do I do?  Straight to the fridge and crack open a beer and take a good long pull from it and ponder my navel for a minute.  Which, all joking aside about being an alchoholic, was just the medicine I needed.

At 1830, I’ve round-robined through the kids and gotten to the point that Stella is fed, in PJ’s, and in bed (screaming), Elise is nearly ready for bed and rubbing her eyes, and Maia is running around with drawers full of smelly filth asking for me to clean her bum — which I ignore and, bad parent that I am, privately tell myself she deserves to fester a while since she had passed up a perfectly good opportunity to deposit said filth in the potty just a few minutes prior.

Seeing that I’m on the down-hill slope and feel like I’m 2/3′s done with bed time, I call up Rebecca to see where she’s at. Oh, not out of the driveway yet; well, she can save herself the drive (and not a small one either!) — I think I’m good. After all, when I needed help the most was an hour ago…

Har! Har! Har!

Stella gets transferred into the swing in order to get Elise down into a moderately peaceful crib. Now to the spackle job in Maia’s pants and into PJ’s for her. Then back to Stella to check on her bum to determine if the source of her continued displeasure is gooey in nature — it was not. But, a fresh diaper is still needed. While tending to this, Maia declares she needs her bum cleaned a second time.  I thought she must be joking. No, no; she dropped a second bomb in her pants.

At which point, it dawns on me that had I not called Rebecca, the cavalry would be arriving any moment now.

Finally, all the bums are cleaned, and Maia is fed, I’m fed, and Stella has finally contented herself in my arm after ~3 hours of nearly non-stop sceaming since we got home.  And, all that screaming was good for something: she’s finally got the sleepy eyes. So off to the crib for her, which restarts the fussing the moment her head is down. So, we rock and she settles into her paci’. But, the toddler is very keen on coming in and out of the darkenend room, over, and over again — to the point that Stella is taking note and looking more alert because of it. Sorry kiddo, ready or not, into the crib a second time …

At 2018, Valerie calls — which was good timing as Stella had just cried herself to sleep shortly after putting her down. Maia gets to say good night to mommy and we brush teeth and read stories.  But, not her favorite book, Richard Scarry’s “Cars and Trucks and Things That go”. Her Aunty Chellie got her that for Christmas and she hasn’t wanted to read any other book since then. Which is great as it’s a powerful incentive to get her to do things — eat her dinner, clean up her room, sit still for teeth brushing, and now: going poo in the potty. You got it — as of tonight: if she poos in her pants, no favorite story before bed.

There’s a point to that long winded recap of the evening, and this brings me back to the original point of this post — how much my wife rocks. She handles all this hell chaos EVERY DAY! And most of the time, she makes it look easy. Granted, bed time is almost never done single handedly. But while I’m at work there’s all the same stuff going on and she still has a smile for me when I get home.

Thank you, Valerie, for making this family run so well.  I wouldn’t be able to do it without you!

I didn’t sleep prior to the 1 AM feeding, [...]]]> For the singleton parents out there, let me just say that having twins is not twice the effort of having a single baby and puts a distintly non-linear increase of stress on parents of multiples. My present state of sleep deprivation is doing nothing to help this opinion.

I didn’t sleep prior to the 1 AM feeding, which is my own fault because I chose to read TDIClub forums and get things prepped for the evening.  Both kids fell asleep on half-full bottles. Not 15 minutes after putting them down, they decided it was “non-productive poo time” and proceeded to grunt and scream for the next hour. Failing to find any useful appeasement, another round of bottles was warmed in hopes that they just hungry. Stella powered hers down and contentedly dozed off; Elise found no such satisfaction.  She’d calm down just long enough to think, “FINALLY, peace and quite”, and just as I was about to nod off she’d belt out more screams.  Valerie had been getting small bits of sleep throughout this, but, she’d been up since 5:00 AM that morning and was dragging too heavily to be of any help for Elise. So I returned the favor of sending her to the office as she had done for me the night before.

The discomfort continued on. Elise would not stay quiet. Somewhere along, Stella filled her diaper (literally — it’s unreal the volume of poo she saves up) and proceeded to wail from the discomfort of all that smelly gooey goodness left for me. By now, it’s 5:00 AM; both are in high grump for food.  At 6:00 AM with the twilight glowing behind the curtains, both kids are quietly pulling on pacifiers and slumber falls upon them.  That left me pondering if there’d be any value in getting 1.5 hours of sleep (best case) before Maia woke up. I’d convinced myself that I might as well just start my day without a wink of …

7:15 — Wah! Wah! Wah!

As I groggily woke up and searched for Stella’s pacifier, Maia and Valerie bound into the bedroom. A brief synopsis of the night was exchanged, and was sure she’d have pity on me and take the terrible twosome away to let me sleep under the silence of my earplugs. Work would be there at noon, or whenever I’d be rested enough to be functional — I’d be useless with only an hour of sleep.

And she did take the screaming Stella. And then she brought her back, with two bottles in hand. And a toddler in tow. A toddler that was very happy to see me. And the lot of them climbed into bed. My night was clearly over and so the day started with a brusque departure from bed and hardly a word to Valerie as I staggered out the door for work.

I wasn’t totally useless at work. Absentmindedly stumbled through the day; dumped coffee and cocoa on a wall, of all places. Dumped soup on the kitchen table as sat down for dinner.  It was like being drunk, but without the warm fuzzy happy feeling.

Those with triplets or more, my hat’s off to you. I’d have rolled the dice to figure out who goes up for adoption.

I was supposed to be there but the doctor’s office was running late and I couldn’t wait. I was [...]]]> Last Monday, Valerie went in for her first pregnancy check-up, which happens around the 10 week time frame. This is when they confirm the due date and you get the first sonogram picture of the baby.

I was supposed to be there but the doctor’s office was running late and I couldn’t wait. I was back at work wrapped around fiber optic cable trying to connect up some test equipment by the time Valerie finished up. I’m in a noisy environment from high-pitched fans screaming in every direction.

My phone rings and I expected Valerie to be a bit miffed that I left the waiting room before the sonogram time came; she wasn’t. She said something that sounded like “we’re having two babies”, and it didn’t really make sense to me. She repeated, “we’re having twins, but don’t worry, both babies are just fine.”

My brain just shut off, “Ok. I’m glad your appointment went well. I’ll talk to you later”. The minimal thought required to plug in the cables in front of me became all the challenge I wanted.

I called her back an hour later, “Were you joking with me?” She assured me she was not. “There are pictures to prove it when you come home.”

Now, almost a week later, we’ve both settled into the reality and are excited about it. Not entirely confident, but, we’ll make the best of it.

I always joked to her that the only way we’d have 3 kids was if we had twins this time. That’ll learn me…