One Sunday in September

As I sit down to write on this September Sunday, Bruno is sitting behind me reading children's poems in Croatian to Miriam and Lydia, who are sitting in their bouncy seats listening and smiling. Awesome.

It has been quite a chaotic road to this peaceful moment. Wow did we have no idea how hard parenting twins would be. Awesome, but insanely difficult. Trying to get two completely independent little beings to eat at the same times and sleep at the same times. Having to decide whether to distract the hungry child or wake the sleeping child. Having to accept that, if you are on single parent duty, one child will be crying while the other child is being changed, bathed, moved, rocked to sleep.

OK, so I typed that last sentence about a half hour ago. In the interim, Miriam and Lydia both began what we call "melting": they went from happy play time with their Tata to yawns and frowns and pouts. We whisked them out of their respective bouncies, brought them into the nursery, darkened the room, swaddled the babes, turned on the CD of ocean sounds (and remembered to press "repeat": this is key to nap-time success.) Bruno took Miriam and I took Lydia, and we began to "shake them down", our term for dancing around the room with a swaddled child in your arms trying to lull them into closing their eyes and reaching unconsciousness. We have a silent dance of communication between us during these moments too. Bruno tells me how stiff Miriam still is by lifting her into the air with one hand: her body doesn't bend at all. I suppress laughter, which helps with soothing Lydia as I am now bouncing quite naturally. I bounce my way around to having my back to Bruno: I am looking for a report on the status of the eyes of my child. I turn back around to see Bruno bugging his eyes out: his way of communicating to me that my child may as well have sucked on an espresso pacifier. Bruno's has now gone limp in his arms and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't jealous.

We are now 5-10 minutes into the shake down, and Bruno's child (Miriam) is ready to be put down. I suppose I now have to 'fess up that Miriam only sleeps in her swing. And I'm not talking just naps: she sleeps all night in that stupid, life-saving swing with it's horrible click-click, click-click. She gets these leg spasms that wake her up every ten minutes and something about the shape of the swing keeps the spasms from waking her. So for now we are guiltily embracing the crutch and enjoying our well-rested child. And I suppose when she no longer fits in the swing, we'll figure out how to get her to sleep in a crib.

The moment at hand is that of getting Miriam into her swing without waking her. The child has a hair-trigger waking device; the slightest change of position, temperature, or rhythm will cause her to open one eye and stare you down with it as she fills her lungs preparing to yell out her fury at having caught you in the act of trying to put her down. Transferring her to the swing is a delicate delicate operation, one which Bruno is afraid to attempt, having had several infuriating failures in the past. So, I now have to place my wildly awake child down, hope she doesn't scream bloody murder, take Bruno's limp but highly sensitive child and get her into the swing. Happily, even if Lydia goes to pieces the one thing Miriam is immune to is noise: she's fallen asleep next to the speakers in the living room and peacefully slept through entire episodes of Mad Men pouring into her tiny ears.

I put Lydia down and the sweet child just lies quietly and stares at her sheep mobile. I count to three in my head, steeling my nerves, take Miriam from her father and begin to sail her through the air, mimicking the motion of the swing. I hover her over the swing, following its motion and gently, oh so gently, place her swaddled butt into the device, following it as it swings up toward me, and removing my hands as it swings my child back away from me. I step quickly out of Miriam's eye-line, in case that one eye is open and looking to express fury. A few moments later I deem the transfer to be successful, and head over to Lydia's crib. Bruno is standing there beaming: she has fallen asleep on her own, G-d bless her. We both make for the door, avoiding the creaky spots on the floor and pressing the door handle down as we leave to quell the squeaking hinges.

Just a typical Sunday afternoon with twin 3 month olds.....