Well, You Asked...

So my sister emailed Mama Bear and I recently on behalf of one of her friends who is going to be having twins. Since we lived the chaos of twins, her friend wanted to pick our collective brains about what to expect, what was needed and all that fun stuff. So, here was my response (some names were changed to protect the innocent). Let me know if it was too much. My sister thinks it was over the top. But I can tell you it's all the truth.

Dear...

The first 2 -2 1/2 years are absolute hell. I'm not just saying that to scare you -- I mean it!!!

Think about what it's like to have have one baby and now times that by two. It starts with lack of sleep, piles and piles of dirty diapers, endless amounts of bottles, creative ways to feed two babies at once (utilize the boppy), and countless trips to the doctors office (who, by the way, if he was ever on time it would be a sign of the apocalypse).

And that's the easy part!

Just when that ends, they turn into toddlers!!! Avoid this at all costs!!! Once they learn to walk, your days of leaving the house are over. Avoid teaching them to walk until they are at least 30.

One goes up the aisles, the other goes down the aisles. You now have to decide who you are going to grab first. Some argue this is life's first lesson in teaching them who you love more. Usually it's the one nearest to the sharper items (at least it was in my case). But once you get him, don't just put in him the stroller, DUCT TAPE HIM TO THE SEAT!!! Trust me when I say he will find a way out when you turn to get the other child.

Then, this one touches this, that one touches that. "No" become the word you say the most. There was one point when someone asked me if we were Japanese, because I was in the store saying "Junior No! Peanut No!" the person thought our last name was "No."

When you leave the store, you learn that your children just broke their first law and you became an accomplice to a crime, as they have that cute little toy you walked passed hidden in their stroller. You know, the toy you said he couldn't have, took from him and put back on the shelf. Well, somehow he got it back. How? I still don't know, but he did.

When you get home and want to relax, you plop in a movie. You shut your eyes for just a minute only to open them to the toy hammer being slammed on your head.

Before you know it, you're in your own house looking for your son. You go upstairs, downstairs, in the bathroom, in your room, check under beds, behind couches and then you happen to look out the window and notice he's half way up the block walking to the playground. You go to get him and when you get inside, the other one has the phone in her hand. You grab it from her and hang it up. As you are in the middle of screaming at them, the police show up at your front door. Apparently she called 911 by accident when you ran outside.

After you convince the nice officer you are a sane individual, the day is over and as you lay in bed you realize you have to do it all again tomorrow.

Only one thought got me through this. I knew one day they would have to change my diapers -- and that is going to be my ultimate revenge.

Seriously, though, congrats on having twins!!!

Papa Bear

First-time Dad Woes

Being home during the day with infant twins is a challenging task for anyone, but is was especially hard for me because, well, I’m a guy.

I’m not speaking for all dads who stay home with the kids, as I’m sure there are plenty who could handle the kids and house with ease. However, for me it was difficult.

On top of having to make sure two kids were fed, cleaned, dressed, rested and kept in good health (which was stressful enough), at the beginning of my tenure as a Daytime Daddy there was a certain expectation of me to keep the house in good shape.

Now, just because I was home during the day it didn’t mean I was domesticated. Sure I can do laundry, but I’m a little challenged at folding it. Sure I can run a vacuum, but I’m not good at cleaning. And of course I can use a bathroom, but not good at…I think you get my drift.

Needless to say, it was very difficult for me to keep up the home and watch the twins. Fortunately, my wife caught on to this early on and the household duties were quickly lifted from my to-do list. I still did the “guy” things, like mow the lawn and balance the checkbook (not sure if that’s a guy thing or not, but for the sake of this it is), but the cleaning chores were taken from me. Mama Bear felt it was better for her to clean, rather than clean-up my clean-up. Apparently that’s how bad I am at cleaning.

To give you an idea of how challenging it was for me to just watch over the kids, here are a few things I did as a first-time father:

I used to write down the time of day the kids had a feeding and how much they had. This helped me remember when I fed them and figure out how long it would take for them to get hungry again. At the time it made sense, in hindsight it was silly. Now, I would tell someone to just feed the kid when he gets hungry.

My diaper challenges also started at an early stage. I would try and be proactive and as soon as I heard a noise I was stripping them down. Well, this didn’t work out that well. See, as soon as I removed the diaper, more would come out, dirtying everything in sight. Of course there was the time I lifted Junior Bear’s legs to ease his “exit,” only to learn I assisted in his wetting his face!

When the kids were older, I once dressed the Peanut Bear in Cookie Bear’s outfit and Cookie Bear in Peanut Bear’s outfit and sent them to pre-school. When asked by Mama Bear later that night what I was thinking, I responded, “I thought it was odd you picked out clam diggers for Peanut and full-length pants for Cookie.”

Point is, I often screwed up the easiest of tasks and was clueless I did so until someone pointed it out.

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Note to self: Expect the Unexpected

I've been real busy this last week. Not that you want to hear about everything I'm doing, but I've been full-steam ahead on the basement bathroom (drywalling the walls and ceiling and spackling everything), work has been exceptionally busy trying to fit in a bunch of meetings before the holiday and t-ball seems to be every night of the week (although it's just twice). Then, just when I didn't expect it, the washing machine starts acting up (looks like the pump isn't working right). Ugh!!!


Anyway, speaking of the holiday and expecting the unexpected, we had a unique exchange with Peanut Bear and Junior Bear regarding Memorial Day this week when we were getting ready for our Wednesday night t-ball game.


Peanut Bear asked, "Why do we celebrate Memorial Day?"


Mama Bear: "So we can remember all the people who have died fighting for our country."


Peanut Bear: "Well, I don't know any dead people!" (Saying it like she wouldn't be able to celebrate the holiday like everyone else).

...But wait, it gets better...

Junior Bear (jumping right in and not allowing Peanut Bear's punchline to fully sink in): "You mean, like the African Americans?"

...catching me completely off guard...

Papa Bear: "What?!"

Mama Bear: "They've been learning about the Civil War in school."

Papa Bear: "Oh. In kindergarten!!!???"

So then we had to take the time to explain all of this to them (and when I say "we" I mean Mama Bear).


...Everyone enjoy the long weekend!

Sleep Part 2: Sleep Safety

Last week I wrote about how sleep deprivation can take its toll on parents. This week I’m going to touch on how sleep can actually be dangerous – that’s right dangerous!

You might think I’m crazy. How can sleep be dangerous?

Well ladies and gentlemen, allow me to explain.

It all started simple enough. You’ll remember the end of my last post mentioned that the kids, especially Peanut Bear, woke me up in the morning by sticking her little fingers in my eyes, mouth, ears and nose (that’s right, I said nose), and take my word for it things quickly escalate.

By now you know I worked mostly nights and operated on very little sleep (sometimes just a few hours) when the kids were younger. As a result, I usually found myself dozing off, mostly during the daily dose of Baby Einstein.

I figured I would place the kids in the Boppy, put the gate in the doorway of the room, pop in a Baby Einstein and lay next to them on the floor. Well, I quickly learned that I needed to do one more thing before lying down -- and I learned that the hard way.

One day I went through these steps and before I knew it my eyes were closed. It was a light sleep as I could still hear the TV, but that was about it. The kids were just starting to crawl and that’s why I put the gate up (safety first is what I always say). It was shortly after my eyes closed that I was awoken by Peanut Bear hitting me in the face with a toy!

I don’t remember what the toy was, probably because she gave me a concussion, but I do remember telling myself to never complain about an alarm clock again. I mean, have you ever been awoken by toy hitting you in the face?! Trust me when I say it’s not pleasant.

Then there were the times Mama Bear insisted on having Peanut Bear sleep with us at night (you’ll find most sleeping stories that end with a Papa Bear injury have to do with Peanut Bear).

It seemed harmless enough. I mean, how much damage can a 1-year-old do when asleep?

Well, ask my nose.

See, Peanut Bear had this habit of violently swinging her arms outward when asleep, and it seemed that my nose was always at the end of that swing. I can’t tell you how many times I was smacked in the face over the course of a night. I started sleeping with a pillow over my head just for safety.

You’d think that Papa Bear’s Little Girl would threat him a little better, even if it was in her sleep. But I have to admit, it wasn’t Peanut Bear who put the biggest hurt on Papa Bear.

One night Junior Bear, who was about 2-years-old at the time, got a treat and slept in our bed. Junior Bear, though, doesn’t like sleeping under covers for whatever reason and he does move around a lot (which is an understatement) and this led to one of the worst experiences in my entire life.

At one point, Junior Bear – my offspring, the boy who will one day carry on the proud Papa Bear name, the boy whose dirty diaper I used to change changed – lifted his leg and kicked me in the privates!!!

I woke up in such pain, screaming at the top of my lungs. It gave a whole new meaning to a starry night.

Mama Bear couldn’t believe what happened. She, of course, got a good laugh at my expense. But this leads me to wonder why she never gets this treatment from the children?

Sleep Part I: Learning to Operate Tired

I once had a boss who said only one thing to me that turned out to be right – and it had nothing to do with work. He told me when I announced that my wife was pregnant, “You will now learn how to live just about the rest of your life tired.”

Boy, was he ever right.

Now, I could go on a completely different tangent on that boss and how wrong he was so many other times, but that’s a story for a different blog. So, for the sake of the PBM we’ll focus on this one thing he said to me that actually made sense.

I, like many first time parents, learned very quickly how different life is with kids and how tired you quickly become. The first night we brought the twins (Junior Bear and Peanut Bear) home from the hospital, my wife and I stayed up all night just starring at them as they slept. We were so paranoid that something bad would happen that we just sat on the edge of the bed and looked at them.

So, from that night nearly six years ago, I have been playing catch-up in the sleep department.

After we realized nothing would happen to them if we fell asleep, I can remember that we set our alarm clock for every three hours to feed them. The docs at the hospital told us the kids needed to have a bottle that often, so we carried that schedule into the wee hours of the morning. Also, since we had twins we also wanted to keep them on the same feeding and sleeping schedule, otherwise we might’ve been feeding and staying up around the clock.

Then, as the kids began sleeping a little longer and required only one overnight feeding, that’s when things really became interesting (for me at least). Since I was home during the day, I took many of the overnight feedings to allow Mama Bear the consecutive hours of sleep leading into work.

At this point, let me add that we formula fed the kids. We heard all the stories and got all the pressure from the nurses at the hospital on breast feeding, but with twins and a working mom, it just wasn’t going to work.

Here is my contractually required tangent…

Honestly, though, is everyone who is pro-breast feeding part of some kind of cult? I can’t tell you the pressure we felt from the nurses at the hospital. It honestly got to the point when I had to kick the nurse out of the room because she was making us very uncomfortable. I repeat, I kicked a nurse out of our hospital room!!! True story: At one point she told us our kids wouldn’t be smart if Mama Bear didn’t breast feed. Really?! Seriously?!

Trust me, for how much formula costs and how much we went through the first year, I would have much rather Mama Bear breast fed (if memory serves correct we spent around $3,000 in formula alone the first year), but breast feeding just wasn’t realistic with our situation.

Anyway, where was I?… Oh yeah, lack of sleep and overnight feedings.

As I said earlier the big theme of the first year with twins is keeping them on the same schedule. Same schedule and life is easy (relatively speaking), different eating and napping schedules and life is miserable.

So once we realized we could wait for Peanut Bear and Junior Bear to wake up to feed them, I would feed the kid who woke up first, then wake up the other (if they didn’t wake up on their own) to feed him or her, just to keep them on the, that’s right, same schedule. However, I realized that this wasn’t the best way to waste an hour of my life at 3 am. So, I had to come up with a different plan and that’s when the boppy became my best friend.

I would take both kids to the couch, put one kid in the boppy on my lap with the head on my right thigh to feed with my left hand, and the other kid on the boppy on the couch directly next to my right thigh with her head closer to me and fed with right hand.

The only downside -- I became such a pro at this set up I often fell asleep in the middle of the feeding. And since I rarely noted what time it was when I got up to begin the feeding, I had no idea how long I was asleep. I guess it really didn’t matter, but it was very frustrating when I put the kids back into bed only to have them get up an hour later hungry again.

Then there were the feedings at 6 am-ish. Mama Bear would more times than not take these feedings. She was up already getting ready for work and she would knock out the feedings to help out.

Now, don’t get me wrong, this was a big help, but there was a big down side – Papa Bear wasn’t ready to get up yet and the kids often were. At first this wasn’t a huge problem, but as the kids got older and I started working until 1 am every night, it really became a problem for Papa Bear.

Mama Bear would put the kids in bed with me and turn on TV so they could watch whatever was on PBS or Disney Channel or Noggin while I slowly got going. It was great when the kids fell right back to sleep, but when they were really ready to get up, I paid the price.

Often times, Peanut Bear, more so than Junior Bear, would find my face absolutely fascinating. While I was trying to sleep, she would put her little fingers in my ears, eyes, mouth and nose (that’s right, my nose).

Does anyone have any idea how annoying it is to have someone else stick their fingers in your face, especially when you’re asleep? It was so annoying for the seriously sleep deprived Papa Bear.

Now that the kids are older, it’s nice to be sleeping through the night…well kind of. Next week, in Part 2 of this series I’ll talk about how sleeping can be considered a contact sport -- in our house at least.

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Down But Not Out

I was planning on starting a series on sleep deprivation this week, but I am going to wait a week as I need to get something off my chest. It’s a fairly serious matter and if I wait any longer to tell anyone, it might just get worse.

See, I’m in an abusive relationship. That’s right people, Papa Bear is being abused. I just don’t know how to tear myself away from this horrible nightmare. Every time I think things are going to change, it just reverts back to the way it was. I stick around each and every time, thinking things will get better, but it doesn’t and actually gets worse and worse each time.

Now, before you start thinking that Mama Bear is beating me, or that the kids are unleashing on the Old Man, let me just say that’s not the case. See, Papa Bear continues to get abused by one of his first loves – the New York Mets.

I know, I know, you’re thinking, “This guy is nuts. What the heck does he mean? It’s just baseball.” Well, for me it’s not just baseball. It’s more than that. It’s my original passion, one of my longest loves.

I understand that this isn’t your usual PBM Experience, but this is one of those topics that has molded me into what I am today and therefore fair game for The Memoirs. So deal with the rant.

First, let me tell you that as I write this the Mets are just 9-12, coming off a 3-3 homestand and heading into Philadelphia for a series with the Phillies. As you may remember, I am a long-suffering Mets fan living in the Philadelphia region, making this upcoming series even more painful for me.

Anyway, I’m not going to go into detail about everything that is bothering me about the Mets, but I am going to touch on some of it. So without hesitation, here we go:

This team is made up of a bunch of choke artists. The core of this team has choked away comfortable leads late in the season to miss the playoffs the last two years and the season prior to that choked in the playoffs. After the choke job two years ago, I felt this team should’ve been rebuilt, and when it wasn’t even after last season, I became irritated. Now, this year, this team can’t muster any late-inning magic or any kind of magic for that matter. Once this team falls behind they are done. It doesn’t matter if it’s late in the game or early in the game, once this team falls behind you can turn the TV off. This group has no guts, no heart. I’m sorry to say it, but this is how I feel at this time. I’m so freaking frustrated! Do you have any idea how hard it is to watch a game when you know your team is going to lose?!

Next…I really dislike Oliver Perez (I’m not going to say hate). The lefthander is a head case. One thing goes wrong in an outing, and he implodes. I didn’t think they should’ve re-signed him in the offseason, and instead signed a less expensive option like Randy Wolf. At least with Wolf you know what you’re going to get. Even in his bad starts he’ll gut out some innings. Perez folds like a lawn chair when things don’t go his way and the result is he taxes the bullpen and his teammates. I can’t stand him right now.
I want to believe in this team. I want to root for them. But when they show me absolutely nothing, it’s hard. Honestly, I feel like crying right now.

I could go on forever on this, but I have to move on and admit that I have issues. I’m trying to deal with them, but I fear I’m creating a monster and here’s why.

This past football season, after the Giants (my football team and by default Junior Bear’s team) fell behind to the Eagles in their playoff game; Junior Bear started screaming “Damn it.” I was so mad at the team I didn’t say anything to him.

Mama Bear, a bandwagon Eagles fan (the worst kind), told him to stop it. He didn’t and kept going. “Damn it. Damn it. Damn it,” he said over and over, daring her to do something with some real anger in his voice.

Mama Bear asked me, “Are you going to say anything to him? Tell him to stop maybe?”
I said, “Why? He’s right. They stink right now. He should be mad.”

Well, Junior Bear got sent to the naughty step and the Giants still lost.

I don’t know. I’m try to not let my teams’ results affect my moods, but it’s hard. To be honest, though, a little passion never hurts. I tell myself that it could be worse, because even though the lows are hard to deal with (see this year’s Mets as example), the highs are great (see Giants Super Bowl win versus Patriots two years ago as example).

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When NeighBears Attack...

It was a harmless weekend in the Papa Bear household. Kids had a t-ball game on Saturday, Gamma and Pop Church came down to visit from north Jersey and Pop Doo Wop and I worked on the basement bathroom on Sunday.

The weather was wonderful all weekend and on Sunday before I resumed the bathroom project (Mama Bear thinks this is going to be done before Memorial Day, I beg to differ) I did some yard work. I’m trying desperately to grow grass in the yard, so I was planting some seed and then watering.

The kids, along with our NeighBear’s kids (we’ll call them Ry-Ry NeighBear and Bruiser NeighBear for now, I’ll have to get the official names from the parents), helped out. Ry-Ry is the age of Peanut and Junior, while Bruiser Bear is 2, is the height of a 5-year-old and has the strength of a 16-year-old. He is also my little buddy. Like everyone else, he loves The Papa Bear!!!

Anyway, they all helped me spread the seeds and then I let them water the lawn. First, I soaked them all and then let them go wild on each other.

That was until Ry-Ry Bear decided to get me. He gave me this look and I said, “He’s knows better then to get Papa Bear.”

He then smiled and skwirted away!

As he soaked me head to toe, I ran towards him, snatched the hose from him and got him back. Just as I was getting him, Mrs. NeighBear came home from the store and was laughing that he got me. I’m a good sport -- it was funny -- but I think I scared Ry-Ry Bear when I got him back. I think he thought I was mad at him, or he was just mad at me for getting him.

Either way, it reminded me of a time when I was finishing the basement. It was a late summer day and I was lugging drywall into the house all by myself.

Now, keep in mind this drywall trip was frustrating. I was at Home Depot for like an hour trying to get everything, as the people there are not very helpful. I had 10 sheets of drywall and at least three employees walked right past me and never offered to help, leaving me to pull it off the shelf, put into the cart, get off the cart and into my minivan all by myself.

It’s really amazing to me, because I’m trying to lug around all this heavy material, and Mama Bear goes there for light bulbs and gets offers for help at least four or five times.

Anyway, it was a hot humid day and I was sweating like a beast. I was carrying two sheets of drywall at a time over my head, into the house and then down the basement. Junior Bear, who was three at the time, for whatever reason had the hose. As I made my way with the last set of drywall, he saw my vulnerability (hands over my head, carrying something heavy and not able to move quickly) and he absolutely soaked me with the water, forcing me to move quickly and as a result, the drywall broke in two pieces over my head.

Mama Bear, who was standing on the porch watching, thought it was the funniest thing she ever saw, and while I stood there completely defeated, Junior Bear continued to soak me.

All those years home with him and his sister and this is the thanks I get. I hope he doesn’t think this is something I’m going to forget very easily.

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