When you have twins, you receive a lot of comments such as "I don't know how you do it", "boy, you have your hands full", etc. I'm not going to lie, having twins can be tough, but as for how we do it? You just figure it out. Two babies need attention at the same time? You figure out how to give it to them. Of course there are also times when one baby just has a to cry for a few minutes while you deal with the other one. It becomes just as natural as taking care of one baby. But there are a few things that are noticeably more difficult with twins.
Grocery shopping. Now I'm not talking about the kind of grocery shopping where you just need to grab a few things, I can handle that. It's the full out grocery shopping for 1-2 weeks that I cannot possibly accomplish alone at this point. Right now, the twins are 4.5 months. Lucas is trying to sit up, but can't sit alone in a shopping cart (I'm honestly not sure how long he would tolerate that even if he could). If I only need a few things, I pop the babies in the snap n go stroller, try to make sure I also have my ergo baby carrier or baby k'tan to prevent meltdowns, and use the basket under the stroller as my cart. The snap n go has an amazingly big basket underneath, unfortunately it's not big enough to hold a whole load of groceries. To get a whole week's worth of groceries, I would have to wear one baby and put the other baby in his carseat, down in the cart. I never put a carseat on top of the cart since it is dangerous and babies have fallen off of the top of a cart and been injured. In case you weren't aware, once you get a carseat down in a cart, you have very little room left for groceries. If only I had been aware of tandem baby wearing with a large woven wrap when the boys were born, I could have potentially mastered this task, but for now, grocery shopping is a family trip with both Elias and I or one of us goes alone.
Bath time/ bed time. Just like most other babies, the twins tend to get fussy in the evening when they are tired. From 7 pm until both babies are asleep it is all hands on deck! One of us bathes, while the other keeps the other baby content and feeds him. Once bath time is done, we work on putting the babies to sleep. Asher is easy, we feed him, get him drowsy, set him in his crib and he usually goes to sleep. Lucas on the other hand fights sleep and only wants mom. He needs to pretty much be asleep before he will go down. If one of us is alone, neither baby gets the attention he wants/needs at bed time.
Walking the dog. This is another easy task with one baby. I would just strap him on in my ergo and off we would go! There likely would be no tears and no fussing and it wouldn't be much different than pre-baby walks. With two however, I have to make sure they are both content long enough to set up the stroller, put their cushions in there, get the dog ready and get both babies out the door and strapped in (p.s., neither child can walk to the stroller ;) ) I also have to make sure I have a pacifier and a baby carrier in case they get fussy or decide that they don't want to ride any longer. Then during the walk I have to keep Scrumpy from walking in front of both the stroller and traffic while also making sure that the stroller is off the road enough when there is oncoming traffic. This task isn't impossible, but just a bit more challenging.
Any sort of housework. If both babies aren't napping at the same time, I might have 5-10 minute increments to accomplish anything. In those times I wash bottles, baby clothes and diapers. You can imagine how the rest of my house looks.
Eating. See reason above.
No comments:
Post a Comment