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.