Famous Last Words

Before the babies were born, Kathy bought me one of those "Father's Guide to Having a Baby" type books. To be honest, I didn't really read very much of it, but one of the things I remember is that it warned prospective dads that with mommy doing all the breastfeeding and having such a close bond with the baby, dads might feel a bit "left out" of the parenting process since there wasn't really much for them to do at first.

Tee hee. Not much for them to do. [Insert maniacal laughter here.]

Well folks, if you want to avoid the problem of the daddy feeling left out, let me highly recommend having twins. As the dad of twins, you can be involved to your heart's content. Because while mommy is awesome and can do a remarkable number of things for the babies, there's only one of her and there's not quite enough of her to go around. Because we have twins, I've gotten to be intimately involved in pretty much all aspects of parenting. Feeding, bathing, changing, dressing, burping, calming, you name it, I get to do about one baby's worth of it.

Uh, except for breastfeeding. I'm pretty sure I can't do that.

And trimming fingernails. Those fingernails are too freaking tiny. How the heck am I supposed to trim those things?!

Tomorrow, I get to check one other thing off the list that I haven't done yet, which is to take care of them completely on my own during the night. Kathy's got a work meeting tomorrow night, which means that it's just me, Leah, and Riley from 5:45 pm until they go to bed. And while Leah is usually pretty okay during that period, it's kind of a crapshoot with Riley. On about half the nights, Riley will eat her bedtime meal and then go to bed with maybe a little fussing, but no big deal. On the other half of the nights, getting Riley to eat her bedtime meal requires an elaborately awkward ritual where I feed her while standing up and bouncing around, in a dark room, with white noise playing in the background, while I simultaneously sing either "Hey Jude" or "Edelweiss" to her. And while that ritual is usually fine and dandy, it's gonna be hard to do that while feeding Leah at the same time unless I can figure out how to hold a bottle with my foot or something.

And yet, when Kathy suggested that we try to get our nanny or somebody to come over and help me tomorrow night, I stubbornly refused. No way. I got this one. I can do this. No problem.

So why did I do this to myself? Because I'm a guy, probably. It's like that whole no-asking-for-directions thing.

But more than anything, I'm just kinda curious to see if I can do it. If tomorrow night goes well, it'll be a huge triumph, and as a dad, you've got to take your triumphs where you can get them. Plus I'll be able to say that I've done something that not even Kathy has done yet. I'm actually sort of perversely excited about it.

And if it ends up being a total disaster? Well, at least it should make a good story for the blog.