Angry Birds

Today was a beautiful pre-spring day with a blue sky and the temperature hovering around 40 degrees. It was a good day for a hike after taking a couple of days off to help a friend move his son to Minnesota. My thoughts drifted to Amy during my trek, remembering when the kids were young.

Our first child, Claire, was a dream child. She slept through the night from the first day we brought her home. She was so low maintenance that it lulled us into thinking parenting one more child would be a relatively small adjustment.

Chaos theory presented us with a very different path in the next pregnancy.

“Oh! There are two in here,” exclaimed the ultrasound technician during Amy’s eight-week appointment. After an initial period of stunned silence, Amy and I looked at each other and laughed. Even though we couldn’t stop smiling for days, our thoughts quickly turned to more practical matters, like daycare, cars, and housing. Going from man-to-man coverage to zone coverage would mean a big adjustment in philosophy and expectations.

Foremost among those concerns was daycare. We realized quickly that it would make no financial sense for us to put all three kids into daycare, along with the added stress on our careers and mental health. Amy was determined to be an integral part of their development. She felt strongly that the early years would be the most critical part of their lives, and did not want to leave anything to chance.

So, Amy told her employer that she would not be returning from maternity leave. I had the easy part; I could escape to my job every day. Amy would have the challenge of keeping up with three kids, and the physical and mental exhaustion it entailed.

Neither Amy nor I remembered much from the first two years of the twins’ lives. From the very beginning, we knew we were in for a wild ride. Unlike Claire, Morgan and Carson felt the need to be fed exactly every three hours. Sleeping through the night was not an option. Add to that the fact they both had colic the first nine months, and… Well, you parents get the picture!

We would line up eight bottles with premeasured formula each night for the 8 and 11 PM and 2 and 5 AM feedings. All we had to do was add room-temperature water, shake, and feed. To get some semblance of sleep, we would both do the 8 and 5 feedings, but I would stay up and do the 11 PM, and then Amy would take the 2 AM. The theory was that we would both be able to get at least five hours of uninterrupted sleep. With the colic, however, this was a rare occurrence for both of us.

The one vivid memory I have of these feedings was the panic I felt while feeding one of the boys hoping and praying the other would not wake up until I finished with the other. Typically, as they neared the completion of their bottle, they would get sleepy and lose momentum eating. We could not afford delays, so we cheated with a trick to get them to wake up and finish their bottle. We pinched their heel. This usually roused them enough to finish their bottle so we could switch to the other.

We battled exhaustion constantly during the first year. Claire continued to be that dream child by being Mom and Dad’s little helper. Whenever we needed an extra hand, Claire was there to hand us an extra diaper or whatever was needed without complaint. She loved the boys dearly.

As Morgan and Carson grew older, the switch to rice cereal could not come fast enough. Our theory was that getting them to eat solid foods would reduce the quantity of food needed and thus the number of feedings. This never worked. Even as young men in their twenties, they continue to have 2^nd breakfast and 2^nd lunch.

One of the more memorable feedings came one Sunday morning. I was attempting to feed the twins before we went to church. Amy was getting ready upstairs, and I had both boys in their bouncy seats on the kitchen table. I was shoving rice cereal into their mouths as fast as possible, but they were particularly hungry that morning. They were extremely animated between bites and bounced precariously in their seats like angry birds waiting for their parent to feed them. As I went spoonful to spoonful between them, Amy came downstairs and saw them bouncing vigorously on the table. She just sighed, grabbed a baby spoon, and took over feeding one of them.

Needless to say, we were late for church that morning. Exhausted as we were, we both looked back at those times as some of the happiest of our lives. Innocent and pure, this memory is one of our most cherished. Miss you, Babe.