Update! Things start to get interesting.

Week 30; 8 (?) weeks to go.

Firstly, a quick note to my readers:
Thank you. I'll try to post more often. To make it easier for yourself to follow my less-than frequent blogging, you may want to consider subscribing in order to get an email notification every time something awesome appears here. Just a thought.

New Year's Eve. Goodbye, 2013. Wassup, 2014: The Year of the Babies. I wonder, occasionally, if we should adopt a new year notation system along the lines of B.C./A.D. or somesuch, then I remember that it's not like we're the first parents ever, and if all parents were to reset calendars at zero when their children were born the world would, frankly, be even more confusing than it already is. So we're sticking with the current system.

Now. As noted above, there are roughly eight weeks left before the fetii become infants. This is only an estimate, mind. Our doctor tells us they could come as early as 32 weeks, also known as "too damn soon."

So what does one do in the last waning days before the young'uns arrive? One makes a list, composed of both the mundane (re-organize the kitchen cupboards) and the more fun (revisit favourite restaurants). Truth be told, there's not a ton left. The cribs are assembled, the stroller and car seats have been purchased, the baby blankets have been received from friends and family (and man, we're talking a shit-ton of baby blankets), and so on and so forth. Are we ready? Hells no. And yet (I'm sure I'll regret these words many times over), kind of. I mean, these past 6-7 months have involved a mental transition, largely unintentional, in which I seem to have slowly come to terms with my own impending fatherhood. The idea is still daunting, of course, but is no longer a completely foreign universe. I will be a father. Bethany will be a mother. We will be parents.

Normally, I would end a post like this with something along the lines of "Bring it on," or "I got this." Watch:


...The idea is still daunting, of course, but is no longer a completely foreign universe. I will be a father. Bethany will be a mother. We will be parents.

Bring it on.

Right? But, no. As prepared as I am feeling right at this moment, I am in no way prepared to tempt the fates with such presumptuous arrogance. So let's try again:

...The idea is still daunting, of course, but is no longer a completely foreign universe. I will be a father. Bethany will be a mother. We will be parents.

Bring it on. Eventually.

Auditory Input

Week 18; 22 to go.

My parenthood app tell me that the fetii have ears now, which means that they can hear. Anything they hear right now will be the very first time they hear it- laughter, the cats, the beep of the microwave or the rumble of the vacuum cleaner. Their first exposure to Beethoven, to the Beatles, to U2. They need, in short, some guidance.

So what do we put on Baby's First Playlist? Well, it has to

a) be awesome, and
b) have the word "baby" in the title.

This leaves us with:

1. Sir Mix-A-Lot: Baby Got Back

2. Nancy Sinatra: Bang Bang (My baby shot me dead)

3. Travis: Hit Me Baby One More Time

4. Moxy Früvous - My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors

And, of course...

5. The Arrogant Worms- Baby Poo

What are the first songs you'd want your child(ren) to hear?

Hamster balls and hand dryers

So. In my 30-odd years on this planet, I've spent a not inconsiderable amount of time...

...as a child (the first decade and a bit)
...as a babysitter (the next decade or so)
...working as an educational tour guide, then as a teacher (this last decade)

This is all to say that I am not entirely unfamiliar with miniature humans- at least, once they're old enough to expel their own feces without assistance, tie their own shoes, and maintain a conversation in complete sentences.

Babies and toddlers, on the other hand...less so. I mean, I'll figure it out. How hard can it be? Nutrients go in at one end, waste comes out at the other. Unwrap, wipe, rewrap. Speak in a calm, soothing voice. Do not drop. If dropped, be sure to catch on first bounce. And so forth.

So we have this running joke, my wife and I. I'm the youngest of two children, with no cousins, nieces or nephews on the continent. She's the second-oldest of 6, the daughter of a daycare owner, and has already changed dozens if not hundreds of diapers.

We'll be discussing facets of childcare, usually with friends or family, and our intended strategies for once the fetii are out in the world. I'll make a suggestion that will range anywhere from mildly inappropriate to utterly ridiculous.

B: Cloth diapers or disposables?
J: Neither! The cats can use the litter box; our babies will be at least as intelligent as cats.

B: What kind of stroller should we buy?
J: No stroller! Oversized hamster balls that we can roll down the street with our feet.

B: Ooh, these towels are supersoft and will be great for drying baby skin!
J: Oh, are we going with towels? I was thinking of one of these. We can just wave the babies up and down a few times and they'll be perfectly dry almost immediately!

And so on.

Now, the reason for this strategy is simple- each of these conversations inevitably ends the same way. Bethany rolls her eyes, and says, "I'm never leaving you alone with the kids."

Genius.

You've got questions. We've got answers.

  Humans are naturally curious. We wonder about this, that, and the other. There are questions we ask, and questions we don't.

About a decade ago, I spent a summer working as a tour guide at a WWI battlefield in northern France. It was a great experience, and I learned a lot about Newfoundland, Canadian military history, and finding entertainment in small-town Picardie. However, I (and the other guides) quickly learned that we had been hired to answer the same few questions, over and over again, the answers to which:

A: Yes, we're all students.
B: Philosophy.
C: Yes, from Canada.
D: No, not from Newfoundland, although some of our coworkers are, and have dubbed us honourary Newfoundlanders.
E: Yes, it really does make you think.

A few years later, I spent a year teaching English in South Korea. When I spoke to friends and acquaintances from home, I again got many of the same questions repeatedly, the answers to which:
A: Yes, I liked it a lot.
B: The students spoke some English already, but most didn't speak it fluently.
C: Yes, I already knew how to use chopsticks.
D: Yes, I learned some Korean.

And so forth.

And what are your answers when you tell someone you're expecting twins?

  A: I know! Two!
  B: We don't know the gender(s), nor do we intend to find out before they are born.
  C: Yup. Twins!
  D: Do they run in the family? They do now.
  E: Nope, not identical.
  F: They each have their own placenta, whereas identical twins typically share one.
  G: She'll continue working until she can't or they're born, whichever comes first.
  H: That's right. Twins!
  I: The grandparents are thrilled.
  J: Yes. Twins. Really.

Every so often, of course, are the questions less frequently posed, those that require more than a single rote sentence to answer. In Korea, I actually set up a portion of my blog to answer these. And, I thought, why not do the same thing here?

Ask a Father-to-be-of-Twins (FtboT)! Send your questions to twinfestation (at) gmail dot com, where they will be answered with haste and good cheer.

Shit, Holy Fucking

Week 15; 25 to go.

It hit me the other day. Bethany was getting up off the couch and as she leaned forward, the belly was suddenly, unexpectedly, ever-so-much-more-so full, in a way it hasn't been up to now. There have been several of these moments over the last little while, each one just serving to confirm and reinforce what I already know, but still can't quite believe.

It's telling somebody new, and answering the requisite questions.* It's realizing at 9:45 in the evening on Labour Day that you've just had the last child-free summer of your life, or at least for the next couple of decades. It's looking at fruit in the grocery store and thinking, huh. This week they're the size of plums. Next week, they'll be the size of peaches. The week after that, lemons. At this point, mind you, I start questioning the baby app on my phone. Are lemons really bigger than peaches? Apparently,  I'm not the only one wondering this.

So there's still some shock, and some acceptance, and some giddy excitement and the ratio of one to the others tends to vary by day. Some days I'm Tulo ("Wait. What? No, seriously- twins? What?"), some days I'm Fernandez ("Hells yeah it's twins!").

Holy Fucking Shit Indeed.

But twins. Due in March, though we're given to understand that, being twins, they're quite likely to come early. I keep thinking about how busy we'll be between now and then, and then I attempt to calculate just how busy we'll be after that. It's almost literally inconceivable, pun not intended.

Mission Statement: This blog is intended as a record of the journey to parenthood. There will be humour, and reflection, and, title-post notwithstanding, only occasional swearing. I want to look at what it's like to get ready for the next phase of my life, and record the experience as often as I feel like.

*See next post.