My wife and I are methodical about how we care for our kids. We have to be, there are three little ones in this house that have very different needs and schedules. We knew this would be true before we had our twins. Life was going to slap us across the face. Hard.
We staggered our bonding leave from work. Krystal would take the first chunk of time and max out whatever allowance she had. Once she got back to work, I would take my leave of absence. This allowed for us to care for the twins almost exclusively for the first 8-ish months of their lives.
There’s a lot of pressure placed on the person who isn’t working. Your calendar is mostly open even though a routine is being practiced with all the feeding and napping that happens. Between naps we did what we could maintain the house. Wash dishes, pick up toys, maybe even start cooking dinner. The twins could be nearby for almost all of those things. I learned there was one thing that needed to happen but was nearly impossible to tackle: grocery store trips.
Grocery runs are frequent in this house. During my leave I had every intention of being Super Dad. This meant taking our infant twins with me if I needed to run and errand. When a grocery run was needed, and twins were loaded into the car and off we went. I did not plan to take them out of their car seats - they were not ready for the seat positioned up by the handle yet. I was just going to set their carseats up there and push them around like all new parents do. I discovered the problem. There are two of them. There is not enough room for two car seats in the upper deck of the cart. So, one went in the basket.
As I made my laps around the store, groceries began piling up all around the kid in the basket. My list was only half finished - I had a lot more to go. I negotiated with an employee at self checkout to allow me to go outside with my cart to retrieve a second cart. Now I was pushing two carts and things went a little slower. I received a few grins of admiration (likely pity now that I think of it), before my tour of the aisles was complete.
This was not a task I would be performing again.
Everything is more difficult with two (let’s ignore the fact we have another who is 2 and half years older). This trip to the grocery store was not the first time I confronted the fact head on. Take, for example, feeding. Early into my leave of absence we introduced our girls to solid foods. This event happened multiple times every day and was utter chaos. Once the kids were sat in their chairs, plates ready to be served, it was a 45-minute ordeal that culminated with a mess on the floor, tears in their eyes and sweat pouring off my face.
I used to joke early in their lives that parents of multiples should be candidates for another pair of surgically attached arms. Two arms per child is a good ratio. One arm per child is not.
I even saw a good tip online about getting a hamper to transport twins to other parts of the house, like some luxury airlift service performed by dad. This was especially helpful when moving them both to bed for naps. But coming down stairs without the ability to see where my feet were being planted felt like a safety issue, and the hamper was demoted to its intended purpose.
Even with all the challenges, I’m still impressed by certain things. I thought sleep was going to be impossible for them. It seemed one was always fussy or crying when sleep was supposed to be happening. Surprisingly, one crying did not wake the other one up except on occasion. I felt for a long time they were aware of each others presence. In the early months there wasn’t much interaction with the other. Then around 9 months they began to realize they could affect their sister. This started with eye poking and crying. Today, one of the most heartwarming things I experience is watching them hug each other.
Attention has become scarce in this house. With three kids, the best we can do is give focused time to two at once. The third will always find a way to make that challenging by demanding what they’re not getting. What has worked well is shuffling babies between the adults. This kind of looks like a slowly played game of hot potato. Every few minutes one kid gets a new set of arms, or a moment to do their own thing. This would work better with more adults, alas.
As happens, we prevail and the things that need to get done are somehow complete. My grocery store trips did get made, although slightly different. We lucked out by having a grocery store just about a half mile from home. Instead of taking the car, the kids get loaded into the stroller. I’m limited to buy only the things that can be put under the stroller seats. It’d be nice to have a less hills to get to the store, especially once I’m fully loaded, but I’ll take a bit of exercise even if it’s unintended.
I’m feeling certain our lives would look different if the twins were our only kids. Having one older who demands a lot of attention has made us less flexible. It takes a ton of time and preparation to leave the house, and even more patience to make it worth doing. I tell my wife that if we had a singleton after our first born we’d be fucking killing it. We’d have this down to a science with two kids. And toddler fussiness would not have a chance to break through the mental and physical stamina I'd have. But with three kids our family feels complete and every day brings new joys (and challenges to overcome) to our home.