date: Mon 22 Dec 2025 09:44:51 PM PST
subj: twins uhg kids tough
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Ah the kids, the kids! 

They are different, at 8 months. My daughter she is just
starting to roll over. She is the happiest person when she isn't
hungry. She loves to chat all the time about stuff. Usually
right after she has had a meal. These days she isn't eating much
though. She has developed an eating diversion. Anything that
gets near her face, whaaa bam, kung fu hands are up. She is
lightening fast to block anything approaching her face, ...
unless it smells like peanut butter. That is the only thing I
have to get past her climbing hands. But if she is asleep or
about to be asleep or she is going to bed, she allows a bottle
past her defenses. One exception to all this is bed time tired
or not, she expect her bottle. She wants to be put in her rocker
chair and a bottle must be delivered pronto, or its waaaaah. 


My son seems on the verge of crawling. He does planks a lot. At
8 months he is stronger than me already. He is mostly doing
planks then getting on his knees and rocking back and forth. For
awhile he had his sister were just grumps. About three weeks of
grumps, and lots of tantrums. He still is tantrumING a bit, but
during those three weeks they were growing a tooth! Although my
wife has been saying they might be teething for the last three
or four months. On a Friday the physical therapist from the
state came by for a session, and pointed out his tooth. I guess
all this time she was right. Both of them have their little
bottom tooth. Now that one has grown in, they are so much
happier. Mr. Grump is now back to Mr. Smiles. He loves music, so
on my days off when I take care of him, the three of us party to
rock music. Lately its been one of my late father's audio
cassette tapes the album Yes 90125. So good, we dance to the
music and they smile. 


Some days are pretty dang hard, but holly smokes nights have
gotten a lot better. One day after months and months of not
sleeping well, feeling a bit like I'm going to die. Seriously
for a guy my age it was pretty bad, and I think it might take me
a year or more to recover if I ever do. I dreaded every single
night knowing its going to be so short, wondering how many times
I'll be woken by one of my kids. If its not my son every two
hours, one of those two hours is going to be an hour or less,
where my daughter wakes up and needs to eat. I resigned myself
to this is life, no sleep, if I die from it, so be it, at least
I tried my best to take care of my kids. 

One night after many nights of thinking about this thing called
sleep training my wife mentioned long ago, and the pediatrician
said I can start with my son, I decided at 12 in the morning, my
wife was surprised to find my son crying his head off. His
crying hurts my wife, and myself, but its a pain I have to
endure, but my wife couldn't. I'm sitting in their room where
the crying is the loudest, I suddenly see the door open and my
wife is about to come tend to her baby. I wave my arms in anger
like a flight traffic controller trying to signal to leave to
the room. I can't remember if she even saw me in the dark. I
tell her I'm doing sleep training. Well turns out I was
overridden that night.  More dreaded nights go by ...  about 14
of them, and its getting worse for me, and my wife!  Sleep
deprivation is just gnawing at us.  Again I argue and plead my
case we must start sleep training, now is the perfect time..
although it wasn't said like I've written it, it was via painful
arguments and terrible convincing. My wife and I worked it out
as difficult as it was, sometimes in our tiredness over
workedness and just being parents we discuss, lose it a bit, but
through it all we work it out, and we started sleep training.
Neither of us really knew how it would go, or how to do it, but
we started it, the Ferber method seemed like the best choice.

The ferber method goes like this: When they go to bed and if
they wake up to cry wanting a bottle or whatever, you don't give
them one. Let them cry for 5 minutes, then go to them and rub
their tummy or something for about 1 minute, let the know all is
fine, and then leave. When they cry again wait 10 minutes, do
the same thing, and each time increase the duration they are
alone by 5 minutes, until they stop crying. The first night was
really rough, one baby would cry, wake the other, then back and
forth we go, each baby upsetting the other. So sad, one time I
went in to let my daughter know its ago, bed time, my daughter
just wants someone to be with her, I lean over, tell her its ok,
put my hand on her head and she grabs my arm, pushes her face
into my arm, and stops crying. I stayed with her for about 5
minutes, she is so dang cute and hearing them cry breaks my
heart at times, other times it causes anger. Once I threw an
empty bottle in the house. Other times I felt like crying
myself, my children have no idea why dad is crying. After about
3 days of sleep training they both started sleeping more and
more, now after weeks of a routine my son sleeps through the
night. I thought my wife and I would never sleep again ever.
Life got so much better now that we are able to sleep, its still
really freaken hard, but at least we get to sleep a bit more. 

One of our friends who also had twins who are now four months
old messaging my wife about how they can't take much more,
there is no rest. My wife lets them know they can do it just got
to get through the next three months and then the rest will get
better. 

To all you new parents out there, and those with multiples, keep
going, keep strong as you can, you'll get through it, you can do
it. We love you. :)