Excuse this jumbled rant. People often ask “What’s it like having 2 sets of twins?” Well…it is exhausting! It is also very rewarding. Now that they are all here, I would not have it any other way… PERIOD! I think about their births, the things that we go through each day, and I realize that I am blessed.
What Are the Odds of Having 2 Sets of Twins?
This is another question that we get all of the time. It usually starts with “Do twins run in your family?” My response is always, “I guess so!” or “Apparently!” with a laugh. The odds are greater than you think. Once you have one set of twins, the odds of having another set go up a bit. The odds of having 2 sets of twins is about 1 in 3,000. I consider myself very lucky!
What are Mornings Like?
We are usually late for everything! This is for a couple of different reasons. Sure, it is very hard to get 4 little kids ready to go in the mornings, or afternoons, or whenever! They do not like to cooperate. This is especially true of the 3-year-olds. Actually, that goes for the babies too. We try hard to keep them asleep for a while in the morning so that we can get dressed. Daddy usually ends up dressing all of the kids. He can get dressed faster. And one baby or the other will wake up fussy at the wrong time so I have to feed him. And Jayden crawls, so we have to keep an eye on him up in the bedroom area where we get dressed. He loves to crawl around and mess with the doors, dresser drawers, floor vents and everything else.
We tell the girls to put their shoes on only to discover 5 minutes later that they still do not have them on. We have to chase them down to put them on. The same thing goes for the snowsuits, coats, hats, gloves, etc. It’s such a process!
We have to put the babies in snowsuits, hats, gloves, etc., put bottles of milk in bags, make sure the girls have their shoes, extra clothes and all in their backpacks. Sure, we should do a lot of this at night to get ready for the next day, and we try to. But the fact is, when dealing with these 4, we are so exhausted by the end of the night that all we want to do is sleep!
Laundry Never Ends!
I usually try to do a load of laundry before bed, but that does not always work out. I can get it started, but waiting the 45-55 minutes for the load to wash is a struggle. I sometimes fall asleep. So that load gets dried in the morning, or Daddy will notice and dry it before he comes to bed. One thing I love about our new house is that our laundry “room” is on the top level right outside our bedroom. That makes doing laundry a lot more convenient, except that when I have a lot of clothes I sort them all over the floor in the hallway 🙂 But I don’t have to trek to the basement which is great!
There is No Rest on the Weekends
Weekends are filled with catching up on house cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping, or just laying around. We do a fair amount of cleaning on weekends since we both work full time all week and are too exhausted to clean during the week. My first frantic weeks in the house I made sure to load the dishwasher each night before bed and pick up around the house a bit before turning in. HA! Now, I don’t bother, because I want to sleep! I know for a fact that once these boys start sleeping consistently through the night, things will be much better. I think we both feel like we are just waiting for that defining moment.
Also, the daycare that the kids attend is fairly convenient to our jobs. The girls’ school is around 4 blocks west of my office, the boys’ school is around a mile southeast. It is close, but still a hassle to have to drop them off in 2 different places. We were told way back when the girls started (Feb 2006) that the schools would be merging into the nicer, closer location by the time my boys were born and that they would be there too. This was wonderful news! Well, the boys are now almost 9 months old and it has still not happened! There was a lot of paperwork, inspections, checks and double checks. Well, the wonderful director told me yesterday that she finally got her license to bring the infants over! YAYYYYY!!! They will be moving in 2 short weeks. This will knock around 20 minutes off of morning ritual. Plus, Daddy won’t have to carry the boys up a flight of stairs to their daycare center. I can’t wait!
So, this is the *busy* side of having 2 sets of twins, but it is also a great, great joy! I will write more on that later. 🙂
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