Whine, Whine

Tomorrow is my first day back at work. I expected to have semi-mixed feelings about going back, since many people I know have felt a little relieved when they come back to work because it gives them a mental break from the exhaustion/tedium of raising infants. As I face the prospect of coming back, though, I'm finding that my feelings are pretty darn unmixed, if that's a word. Or, at best, they're a mix of dread and extreme dread.

As I see it, coming back to work right now is really a "worst of both worlds" situation for me. Observe:

• Kathy and I have been getting by with about six or six and a half hours of sleep a night, usually in three chunks between Leah and Riley's feedings. To get to the office on time, I'm going to have to lose the second half of Sleep Chunk #3. Boo, I say!
• It would be nice if I could compensate for this sleep chunk loss by sleeping through one of the nighttime feedings and letting Kathy handle it alone, but our weird feeding circumstances (the twins don't get enough milk from breastfeeding so we have to supplement with pumped breast milk or formula) would make it really difficult for Kathy to handle a night-time feeding without my help, unless, of course, Kathy were to grow an extra set of arms and hands. Which seems unlikely. And, come to think of it, not really that desirable. Again, I say boo!
• The babies are in the best mood from about 8 am to 10 am each day. During these blessed two hours each day, Leah and Riley are at their most adorable -- wide-eyed, smiling, cooing bundles of joy. These two hours are the ones when all the milestone moments happen -- first smiles, first laughs, first babbling sounds --that make all the more difficult hours worthwhile. My work day starts at 8 am, so I'm going to miss these hours. Boo!
• Riley switches into "holy terror" mode at about 6 pm and usually stays in that mode until about 8 pm or so. Riley basically spends these two hours frantically crying her eyes out during every moment that her parents, in her judgment, fail to pay her the amount of attention that she deserves. My work day ends at 5:15 or 5:30, meaning that I will get home just in time to watch Riley go ballistic. Boooooo.
• My poor wife Kathy is going to have to try to survive from 7:30 am-ish to 6 pm-ish every weekday, despite being outnumbered by a factor of two for most of that time. No doubt she's going to be pretty darn exhausted by the time I get home and will need a break from the babies when I get home -- which means that I probably get to fly solo right as Riley goes to her unhappy place. Boo!
  
• Oh and apparently I'm supposed to get work done at the office. Coming in and just sleeping under my desk is frowned upon, I'm told.
  

To sum up -- coming back to work equals boo.

Sorry for the whining tirade. I do actually realize that I'm lucky that I got to be around for the first eight weeks of my babies lives, which I know most dads do not. And I was able to, in the next-to-last day of my leave of absence, take a picture of one of Leah's ever-elusive smiles:


Pretty cute. All right, we'll call it even.

Mushy Post #2

In honor of the season, here are some things I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving:

1. Epidurals (I believe Kathy would second that motion)
2. The curious calming effect that white noise has on babies
3. Friends who somehow bring us lasagnas and cookies just for the privilege of seeing our babies
4. "Bedtime with the Beatles", which makes it possible for me to listen to baby Musak day after day after day without wanting to shoot myself
   
5. Outdoor cafes where we can eat lunch without worrying about our babies ruining everyone's meal with their fussing
   
6. The number of good takeout places in San Francisco
7. The glorious night two nights ago where the babies slept for one three hour and fifteen minute stretch, and then one three hour stretch. (Oh, glorious glorious night.)
8. The fact that my office somehow let me take eight weeks off to watch my babies grow a little
   
9. This girl I met eight weeks ago tomorrow:
   
10. This other girl I met about 25 minutes later:
    

Have a great thanksgiving, folks!

It's a Conspiracy, I Tell You

Last week, Kathy and I took Riley and Leah to visit our respective offices. They were incredibly well-behaved -- they slept through my entire office visit and didn't really cry at all at Kathy's office until just as we were leaving. I'm sure everybody at work must be convinced that our daughters are these perfect little angels and that we must be full of crap with our tales of fussiness and sleep deprivation. This always happens when people visit us too: Leah and Riley are either sleeping or happily cooing away when people are here, but then as soon as the visitors head out the door, they instantaneously turn into banshees and start screaming their cute little heads off.

It's all a bit suspicious if you ask me.

Now that I think of it, the same thing was probably happens when we visit our friends with their new babies. All our friends seem to have such well-behaved babies when we visit them, but maybe it's all an illusion. Maybe, just like Leah and Riley, all those super well-behaved babies transform into snotty brats the second we walk out the door. Hm...

The only explanation I can think of is that all the babies of the world are conspiring to convince all the prospective parents that raising babies is in fact very easy. Those unsuspecting potential parents are lulled into a false sense of confidence ("raising babies looks easy!") and they go ahead and procreate. This then increases the number of babies in the world, bringing them one step closer to their ultimate goal of world domination.

So, beware, all you prospective parents. Do not be fooled by the cute and calm faces you see below.



Babies, the jig is up.

Say Cheese, Dammit

So, we've had our first baby milestone. Today, I smiled at my daughter Leah and she smiled back. A real honest-to-goodness smile -- mouth open, eyes squinted, with a little coo added for good measure -- not one of those odd, closed-mouthed, I-have-gas-or-am-trying-to-poo-or-have-a-facial-tic "smiles" that they have both been known to flash once in a while. For those readers that are parents, you know, it's one of those moments that make all the sleep deprivation and stress headaches worthwhile.

The problem with the "baby's first social smile" is that it lasts about 0.5 seconds and as soon as it's over, you want to see her second social smile, and dammit, you want to see it NOW. Basically, the smile is the parental equivalent of crack. (Uh, semi-pun not intended.) After the first smile, I spent the next ten minutes making faces, talking exaggerated baby talk, doing anything to make Leah duplicate her smile as she sat there with a confused look, wondering why daddy was suddenly acting like such a freak. And meanwhile, daddy was totally ignoring his other daughter, who could've been juggling knives at the time and he probably wouldn't have noticed.

And of course, the second instinct is to try to catch it all in a photograph so that you can relive the moment later. Unfortunately, every time I try to catch the babies doing something cute in a picture, they always seem to stop what they're doing right as the camera clicks. That's another thing that would be a nice invention -- a camera that takes a picture of what was happening two seconds ago.

I'd like to end this post with a picture of Leah smiling. Unfortunately, I don't have one. So here's a random picture of Leah yawning, probably taken a couple seconds after she was doing something much cuter.


And just to give equal time and make sure that Riley doesn't think I'm favoring Leah when she reads this blog in ten years, here's a picture of her being cute too:

Instant Celebrity Status

One thing about having twins that I was not really expecting was the massive amount of attention you draw just walking them around the neighborhood. As we walk around the neighborhood, tons of random strangers will stop us to coo over the babies and ask us questions about them. All of a sudden, just because we happened to have two babies at the same time, we suddenly seem to have become neighborhood celebrities. Even the homeless woman in front of the bakery congratulated me on our beautiful twins. And that was before I gave her my spare change.

Actually, there are two reactions we get. Women generally react as I just describe -- they stop us, say "Aw... twins!", then they ask us the usual questions about whether they're identical, whether they're a boy and a girl or two girls, how old they are, and what their names are. Then they smile, they tell me how beautiful they are, and they go on their way.

Men we pass on the street react in one of three ways:

1. No reaction because they're listening to their Ipod.
2. No reaction, then a double-take, then they go back to listening to their Ipod.
3. A double-take, a gasp of "Twins!", then a look of pity directed at me that seems to translate roughly to "Dude...you're screwed. So sorry."

Reaction #3 is a little disheartening. I'm guessing that reaction usually comes from guys who are parents. I've got to say, I prefer the women's reactions. Hope it didn't sound like I was complaining about those -- anyone who wants to stop me on the street and tell me how beautiful my daughters are is okay with me.

That's a picture of them in their car seats right after a stroll around the neighborhood. As you can see, it's exhausting being the neighborhood celebrities.

Ah, The Dreaded Double Meltdown...

Over the past week or two, Kathy and I have been visited quite frequently by the scenario we like to call the Double Meltdown. I'm guessing you could probably figure this out by its name, but a Double Meltdown is what we call it when both Riley and Leah start crying/screaming at the top of their lungs at the same time. It is, uh, most unpleasant.

For the first three weeks or so, Leah and Riley each seemed to be able to sleep through the other one's screams, meaning that Riley could be yelling her head off and Leah could be right next to her blissfully sleeping away. Unfortunately for us, over the past week or so, that's changed, so if Riley screams loud enough, Leah will now wake up and join in the screaming fun. And thus, another Double Meltdown is born.

Most of the time, the Double Meltdown is a little stressful but not much of a problem. We've got two babies and two parents -- so each parent picks up a baby and changes and/or burps and/or comforts her. Presto -- problem solved.

Occasionally, though, one of the parents will be unavailable for some reason -- taking a shower, taking a nap, buying groceries, picking up dinner, taking a walk because his or her head is exploding -- and the remaining parent gets to try to deal with the Double Meltdown on his or her own. When this first happened to me, my first instinct (after the panic instinct) was to try to comfort both at the same time. I think this involved some sort of gymnastics of holding and rocking Riley back and forth while awkwardly patting down on Leah's belly while she lay in the crib. That didn't work out so well. Riley, sensing that my attention was not 100% on her, protested by screaming even louder and turning an alarming shade of reddish-purple. And Leah, showing disdain for my half-assed attempt to comfort her, unleashed her own hearty yowl of protest.

So, our new response to the Double Meltdown is to respond first to the "Squeakiest Wheel", which is the polite way of saying we try to first comfort whichever baby's cries are the screachiest and most annoying. (I guess we should call it the "Screachiest Wheel".) Because Riley is so good at screaching, Riley ends up being the Screachiest Wheel about 99.9 percent of the time, meaning that Riley is almost always the one who gets comforted first.

I'm hoping that Leah doesn't view this as personal challenge to work on her crying technique to make it more screachy. If that happens, we'll have to come up with a new way to decide. Maybe a spirited game of Rock-Scissors-Paper or something.

A couple photos of the babies during happier times:

Our Alex P. Keaton Moment

Scene from our house last night:

Fade in.

8:00:00 PM PST: CNN and NBC announce that Barack Obama has been elected President of the United States. Dave and Kathy rejoice while Leah and Riley sleep peacefully. All is well with the world.

8:00 and 5 seconds: Leah begins crying hysterically.

8:00 and 8 seconds: Riley begins crying hysterically.

8:00 and 10 seconds: Dave and Kathy's rejoicing abruptly ends, as they hope and pray that the double meltdown isn't some sort of sign that they've given birth to two future Sarah Palins. Although that would probably make Grandpa Umezaki happy.

Fade out. End credits.

Getting back to Halloween, we didn't have enough energy to do the costume thing this year, but we did dress them up in these stylish little numbers on Halloween night:


I am particularly fond of the socks. I also like how it looks like they are reenacting the video for "Walk Like an Egyptian".