Snooze Alarms and Shopping Carts

It’s a little like losing an arm, you know.  When you have twins.  Because rest assured, you’ve most likely got ahold of a kid at any given time of the day.  You learn to hold them and the bottle with just one arm because, jesus, you’ve got lots of other stuff you could be doing with the other arm.  And you might not get much downtime sans baby.  You have to learn how to make a bottle with just one hand, eat dinner with one hand, type with one hand, calm down a second baby with one hand.  I wonder how one-armed people deal with twins…

Even with two arms, the logistics can be difficult at times.  When the wife and i are home, we obviously both get one.  But when we’re alone, there’s a lot of concessions that need to be made, and tips and tricks we’ve tried to develop.

My wife is a big fan of feeding two babies at once.  She lays them down in front of her and shoves two bottles into two mouths.  I acknowledge that this is effective and time saving, but i don’t care for it myself.  Let’s face it, babies are at their most boring while they’re eating.  And i don’t want to distract them, because they’ve got a job to do.  So while a baby’s eating, i’m watching some tv or facebookin’ it up.  What if something crappy comes on and i need to change the channel?  If both my hands are tied up with babies, how can i work the remote?  How can i add snarky comments to people’s facebook statuses, or harvest my farmville crops?  No, feeding two babies at a time is not a good option for me.

So, my greatest friend is the pacifier.  You may know it as the ninny.  I know it as the piehole plug.  If i’m feeding one baby, its a good way to zip those lips of the other baby till i’m done.  If the other baby is whining and crying, how can i hear the tv?  Not good for anyone involved.  So i sit the kid in a swing, turn on those blinking lights, and plug up that piehole.  Both kids get to eat eventually, and i get to watch another episode of The Simpsons.  It’s win-win.

The pacifier goes by another name in our house – the snooze button.  My wife didn’t get it at first but she’s come to embrace the idea.  If, on a rare occasion, a baby would wake up in the middle of the night, i would go in the nursery, check their diaper, and shove a pacifier in their mouth.  Then i’d go back to bed.  Sometimes it would be a false alarm and the baby would go back to sleep.  Sometimes the baby would cry again in a few minutes.  It’s cool.  Just like a snooze button, i got an extra few minutes to sleep.  Instead of being jarred awake and not in a good mood, i get to wake up gradually, and the baby still gets to eat.  My wife has gone from bitching at me, to actually calling it a snooze button.  Which is why i love her.

Shopping is made more challenging with babies.  When together, we have many options.  We can ‘bjorn it up,’ each adorning our Baby Bjorns.  Or we can put them in our awesome beast of dual stroller.  At BJ’s the carts are double-wide, so we can actually put the car seats next to each other up on the front part.  And there’s always a mixture of options – one in a Bjorn, one in the cart, etc.  When we’re alone, however, options are a lot more limited.  Especially when i take the girls out, and realize the stroller is in the wife’s car.

This requires a strategy.  One, i have to park close to carts, so i can park, run and grab one, and take it back to the car – without, you know, abandoning my babies.  Then i put one, in her carseat, in the bottom of the cart (whoever’s sleeping).  The other goes on top the cart, with the diaper bag going on the rack underneath.  Now i have to move carefully, because the cart feels like i’m pushing 12 christmas hams.  I can only buy as much stuff in the store as i can fit in the cart alongside the girls  (ok fine, i sometimes put things on the girls, but only lightweight stuff.  it’s like toys.  they don’t know any better).  Getting back to the car goes even slower.  Then, since every parking lot is somehow on a hill, i have to carefully put the first girl back into the car, while holding the cart still with my foot so it doesn’t roll away with my other girl (and worse yet, my groceries!).

There’s a a reason besides cart logistics that shopping takes much than it used to.  It’s the celebrity of having twins.  I’m sure you parents of singletons get stopped plenty, but when we go out with twins, we get mobbed.  You’d think we were pushing around Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston (don’t i wish).  Everyone wants a look.  Everyone has comments, or suggestions, or their own stories to tell.  I mean, crowds form.  Lines, with velvet rope and a dude with a clipboard.  I feel like i could charge admission, and actually get it.  I bet i could rival street performers just by rolling the twins’ stroller out on the corner and holding out a tin cup.  Hey, i am looking for a way to start a college fund…