1. Drive a minivan
2. Listen to children's music
3. Give my children sugar before their first birthday
4. Attempt the cry it out method
5. Use formula
6. Be THOSE people in a restaurant
7. Be THOSE people on an airplane
8. Talk about my children's bathroom habits to anyone who will listen
9. Stop caring about my appearance
10. Become a human snot rag
Things I Have Done as a Parent:
1. Drive a minivan
2. Not only LISTEN to children's music, but listen to it BY MYSELF. (I can't help it - I really like some of that Sandra Boynton stuff)
3. To be fair, I think Nick was actually the first one to break this rule on his own birthday and it's not like we're giving the twins sugar EVERY DAY...but occasionally, they MAY get a bit of cookie. Or...today, when we take our Christmas card pics, they may be bribed with graham crackers.
4. Attempted the cry-it-out method. We resisted it as long as we could with Jack, but somewhere around 7 months, we realized that he was TOTALLY PLAYING US in the middle of the night. We would still come into the nursery and rub his back or check on him, but yeah - that happened. And as a result - he started sleeping better, being less grumpy during the day, which meant that we were sleeping better and less grumpy. Although, he's almost 11 months old and still wakes up at least twice a night, so it's not like it was entirely successful.
5. I've come to realize that while breastfeeding is awesome if you can do it, it's not worth your own mental sanity. BFing one baby is hard enough - but, two? Wow - crazy town. I think there were periods early on where I didn't sleep for multiple days because it was an endless cycle of breastfeeding and pumping. It was actually my lactation consultant who told me to throw in the towel. At first, I was upset - but I quickly realized that it didn't matter how we fed our babies - just that we fed them. And a happy, marginally rested mama is much better than a crazy, hasn't slept in days mom.
6. In all fairness, we really haven't had that many problems with the babies in public, however we have had a couple of screaming babies throwing food incidents. My twenty-five year old self would totally judge.
7. This was not entirely our fault, but Jack and Ellie got sick with hand, foot and mouth disease while we were visiting their Tio Dan and Tia Ninil in Rochester, NY. Jack pretty much screamed/cried the entire day we were traveling. By the grace of God, Nick's mom was traveling with us so we had a much-appreciated and useful set of hands and people were far more understanding than I expected. Example: on one leg of our flight, a deaf woman suggested to us that we have Jack sit next to her because she couldn't hear him anyway. How nice is that? Ah...faith in people - restored.
8. At what point will I cease to obsess over how/when my children are pooping? I'm not entirely sure.
9. Perhaps "stop caring about my appearance" is an over-statement, but I certainly never imagined that I would routinely go to work without makeup (I always take my makeup bag with the intent of putting it on before I see anyone and inevitably, I forget and then people look at me worriedly and say things like 'hey, Sarah - babies keep you up late last night?' D'oh!)
10. I've just given up. Got a runny nose and no kleenex handy? Here's my sleeve. Gross, but true.
So, the moral of the story is - under no circumstances should you EVER say NEVER because it pretty much guarantees you'll go against your original thinking.
In case you're wondering, I did not ENTIRELY abandon this blog. As it turns out, parenting two babies is kinda time-consuming. Who knew? I have approximately a dozen half-finished, half-edited posts and I'm going to sloooowly start trying to update them. But since the babies are approaching one year old (SOB SOB SOB), I figured I'd better start updating their 'baby book'. As an apology for my absence...adorable baby pictures.
