Wednesday morning (3:30 am to be exact) Josh sends me a text saying he locked his keys in his truck and that I'd need to come get him (yes, he works from 3-1). I was up with the babies, and would be up for another two hours (yes, they're still not sleeping). So, by the time 1 pm rolled around, I was beat. However, I couldn't leave my husband stuck at work, so I got the girls ready, threw on a hoodie got ready to leave.
We live on the second floor. Our babies are 18 lbs. These two facts lead us to leave the car seats in the car a lot of times because they're ridiculously heavy with the babies in them. That's what we did Tuesday night. So, when it came time to carry the girls down to the car, it proved to be a challenge. Here's what happened...
I grabbed Lillian with both arms and secured her on my left side. I then grabbed my bag, put my keys in the pocket of my hoodie and grabbed Sophie with my right arm. I walked over to the door, reached for the door knob and smacked Sophie's head on the door. Luckily, she didn't cry and I was able to get the door open and get outside. Then I needed to lock it. Have you tried locking a door while holding two babies? It's kind hard. I shifted Sophie over to my left arm, quickly grabbed my keys, locked the door and just before I dropped them both on the concrete, I got her back into my right arm. I proceeded to go down the stairs and out to the parking lot where it was currently raining. Lillian was slipping out of my arm so in a desperate attempt to save her from falling to the pavement, I gripped her pretty tightly. This induced a Heimlich Maneuver like chain of events which ended up in her loosing her lunch all over the parking lot. I didn't even flirt with the idea of doing anything about it because it was raining and I figured it would take care of itself. That was the only good thing about the situation...
Once I got to the car, I reached into my pocket for the keys only to find them missing. I couldn't put the babies down (no grass, dirty, wet concrete) so this time I scooted Lillian over to my right arm so I could look in my bag with my left hand. No keys. The only place they could be was in the door of my apartment. I spat out a few obscenities (sorry mom and grandma) and make the trek back up the stairs to retrieve the keys. Sure enough, they were there. By this time, my arms were falling off, I was wet, both babies were crying, and I wanted to go back to bed.
I once again made it back to the car and was able to get it unlocked (not before hitting Sophie's head again on the door). My next problem was that our unlock button recently stopped working. In order to unlock all the door you either have to reach over the seats/car seats or turn the car on, throw it in reverse and back into park. So, I put Sophie in the passenger seat and sat Lillian on my lap while I unlocked the car. I finally got them into their seat and hoped they'd calm down. Sophie did pretty quickly, but Lillian, whose lunch was being washed away, was now hungry. I started to cry a little and said a silent prayer that she'd fall asleep and luckily, within 10 minutes she did. I went and got Josh and all was well in the world again.
So this is what I don't get. How in the world do people do this? I would have given my left foot to have them magically get the ability to stand for that 10 minutes. When I was pregnant, people said to me all the time, "at least it's not triplets...at least you have two hands/arms...at least you're not out numbered...." Well guess what? I am out number for 10+ hours each day and although I technically have two arms, and they're strong enough to hold both babies, they're not strong or coordinated enough to do anything else.
Sorry for the pitty party. It actually was a pretty hilarious situation (minus almost dropping them on pavement), but I don't know if I can go out with them much more. Yesterday, the 3 of us made a trip to Target to spend some birthday money (even though I ended up getting stuff for the babies...) and I carried them down in their car seats. SO much heavier, but at least I could set them down at will. I think that's the only way I can do this until they start walking. But will it be easier when they walk? Doubt it. Then I'll be chasing two toddlers around.
So, I'm here to ask the question that I get asked all the time. Moms of twins, how do you do it? I really, really need to figure it out.
And because I know you people like seeing pictures of the babies, here's a recent one of them playing with bubbles. They looooove bubbles.
Also, Lacy gave me a pretty fantastic birthday shout out. Check it out. And thanks for the facebook messages, texts, and phone calls. I didn't respond to hardly any of them because... I didn't, but they were much appreciated.
