How to Keep Infants Awake

I totally dropped the ball in training my twins to be good sleepers. Consult another blog for tips on how to make babies sleep, or read this to learn how to keep infants awake.

Top 5 Steps to Keeping Infants Awake

1.    Give them everything they want, particularly in the middle of the night. More milk? You got it! Your binkie, the one you just threw out of your crib? No problem, I found it!! It was on the wall-side of your crib, by the baseboard, and I broke my back to get to it and sucked off the dust… but here ya go, little baby!

2.    Let them sleep on you and next to you, even if that means you get a portion of the bed equivalent to a bacon strip. I promise you won’t roll over on them, because you’ll never get into that black-out state of sleep with your shoulder throbbing from putting all your weight on it.

3.    Use a really uncomfortable Pack n’ Play as a basinet; its such a high quality cardboard mattress.

4.    Don’t let them cry. It reflects poorly on your parenting skills if they do, and all those people who watch you operate in the middle of the night might judge you.

5.    Have a really obnoxious dog, one you haven’t trained not to bark. Make sure he barks at everything, like a cabinet door opening, or you dropping a pen. It shouldn’t be hard in his newfound state of confusion and neglect.

So there you have it, you’re on your way to successful sleep deprivation!!

Rough-housing

My (barely) one year-old sons are rough-housing already. I call it rough-housing because that’s a positive spin on “hurting each other”, and I’m an optimist. I sigh and tell myself as I pull them apart, “boys will be boys, huh!!!” But again, they’re only one… so I don’t think the influence of gender on behavior comes into play as much as I hope. They do things I’m not equipped to respond to, things I’m half in denial about because they’re so cute. I think, “No… I didn’t just see that happen, he has too much baby fat to strike that fast! Or, “He didn’t mean to push him, he was gaining his balance! He has a hard time understanding his center of gravity in the morning.” However its time I’m honest with myself; they are doing things to one another. Things like stealing toys and retaliating. One using the hair on the back of the other’s head as leverage to stand. Slapping his brother’s back as he crawls by. Pulling onesies until the baby falls over. Pushing. Biting. I’ve even seen a head butt.

I witness these things and think, “What? Why are you doing that, you sweet little baby?!  You are mine, but he is mine too, so don’t!”

Then I reason with these one year-olds in the following ways:

1.    “NO! “

a.    Response: Blank stare followed by another hit to see if I say it again. Here my child is thinking, “that was interesting, I’d like to see my mother in that state of confusion and panic again”

2.    “Play nice! Play nice!”

a.    Response: Crying, or sometimes a continuation of what was occurring. The response to this varies.

3.    Me fake crying (occasionally I am the victim of this one year-old abuse)

a.    Response: one twin laughing, one twin legitimately crying in fear of my unusual, obnoxious, and foreign sobs

4.    “Kiss! Kiss your brother!”

a.    Response: twice I have got them to open mouth kiss. 

 I win. This is clearly the way to go.

Going to the Store With Twins

People frequently inquire, “So… how do you go to the store with twins?” My answer to this question is that I push my stroller while pulling my cart. Here are the keys to this monumental feat:

•  Moving like a bat out of hell, not making eye contact with anyone who might slow me down to comment on how much my twins look alike. When this happens, and it will, I catch my subconscious remarking impatient and terse things… actually they don’t ya crazy lady/they’re fraternal/I think you just woke them up/I now have twenty less minutes to get this done/etc.. I think I become less of a human when I enter the store. Someone is being really nice, and all I can think is “excuse me, please God, I really need to get to the paper plates”. It’s pathetic.

• Occasionally abandoning my cart and running things back to it like a game show contestant.  The trick here is to immediately place a few items in the cart so when it sits alone in aisle 3 another shopper doesn’t take possession of it. But really, who doesn’t take a cart into the grocery store? If you don’t need a cart, you probably don’t need to be there until next week when you have more of a shortage of items in your kitchen.

• Repeatedly saying “sorry, very sorry” as I knock things off shelves. This happens mostly when turning. On the straight-aways, I pick up speed baby! Around corners, I am the bull in the china shop. It doesn’t matter. Sacrifices must be made.  I acknowledge publicly that my stroller will need to be listed in “fair-poor” condition when I go to re-sell it on craigslist in a few years.

• Having a very focused look so people are a bit frightened and clear aisles as I approach. Frizzy hair and a bit of a disheveled appearance help here. Maintaining this state is easy with two infants.

• Being prepared to either a) forget things, even though they were definitely written on my list, or b) lose my list entirely (sometimes prior to entering the store, sometimes within the store).

• Last, speed is critical. A quick, polite nod will suffice as people make such keen observations as “wow, you’ve got your hands full!!” I sure do. Now if you could actually move your cart to the right six inches so this volatile caravan could access the Cheerios, that would be greattt....

And that's how I go to the store. 

I should add, I occasionally order online and get my groceries delivered. Although the delivery method is not as exciting as the one I described above, they do bring the bags right into my kitchen... which is awesome.