I thought it would be fun and potentially useful to put in writing some of our opinions about what twin parents do and don’t need. (And I imagine some of this will be useful to new parents, no matter how many babies will be arriving.)

Twin-Specific Stuff

There are really very few “twin-specific” pieces of parenting gear that we found to be useful. This is probably because there are really very few “twin-specific” pieces of parenting gear. Still, there are a few things worth mentioning:

If you’re going to be attempting to tandem-nurse two babies, a double nursing pillow will probably be helpful. We had an EZ-2-Nurse pillow which we never ended up using, but lent out to someone who thought it was effective. Also, it has a really stupid name.

Everyone except us loves a Double Snap-N-Go. If it works for you, it’s a great way to cart around two infants: just snap in the car seats, and away you go. We found its length to be really awkward. If you’re trying to cross the street, for instance, the far baby is essentially in traffic before you can see around the parked cars. Or maybe that’s only a problem in our neighborhood?

A good double stroller is probably going to be your biggest purchase (unless you’re getting gold-plated cribs) and is almost certainly worth spending a little extra to get a model that you’re really going to be happy with. It should be comfortable, foldable, maneuverable, and ideally weigh less than your car. (I could probably write a whole separate post just about strollers.)

That’s really it, in terms of double items. With everything else it’s a question of buying two (or more).

Other Stuff

Sleeping: Our twins slept together in a co-sleeper until they were two months old. (At that point, together they weighed enough that they caused the mattress to bend and in the middle of the night we’d find them kind of tumbled up against one another in a corner.) From there, we moved them into their own room where they shared a crib until they were about four months old. We found that they could share as long as they were short enough to fit side-by-side in the crib in landscape (as opposed to portrait) orientation (that is, perpendicular to the way you expect a baby to lie in a crib). Frankly, I liked having them in the same crib both because it made life a little easier for us (there they both were!) and because they seemed to be happier when they were next to each other. Awww. Once they lengthened out a bit, we put them into adjacent cribs.

Quantity: There are certain items that you’ll use and dirty often enough that it really is worth it (from the point of view of maintaining your sanity) to just buy way, way more of them than you think is sensible. Trust me; when your baby drops her pacifier on the floor for the fifth time, you’ll be much happier to just grab a clean one from the drawer rather then wash it off. You really almost cannot have too many burp cloths, bibs, bottles, pacifiers, and receiving blankets.

Docking stations: We tried to arrange our house so that there were “baby docking stations” close to hand wherever we were. Upstairs, downstairs, bedroom, living room: there needs to be someplace to safely park at least one baby so you can deal with the rest of your life (or your other child) for thirty seconds. The memories are hazy now, but I’m pretty sure we had a total of three bouncers, one travel swing, one cradle swing, two pack and plays, two cribs, two Bumbos, two playmats, two Boppies, an Exersaucer, a Jumperoo, and often a relative or two. (Not all at once.) Still, it’s probably worth it to map out your house and come up with a plan for where you’re going to stash Baby A when Baby B spits up down your shirt.

Speaking of bouncy seats, you will definitely want at least two of these. We had the best luck with the kind on a metal frame, like this. Why? Because you can put one baby in the seat, rest your foot on the frame, and gently bounce them no-handed while you attend to their twin sibling. This was a lifesaver for us. If the bouncer makes horrible noises while flashing obnoxious light and waving brightly colored plastic animals about, all the better.

Monitor: In general, I think the idea of a video monitor is overkill, but I do admit there were times it would have been useful. With one baby, when you hear noise over the monitor, you know that the baby is awake. With twins, you hear noise, and you might not know who is awake, or if both are awake, or if one is awake and the other is still asleep so you might actually have a chance of yanking the awake one out of the room and letting the other one sleep, or if they’re both awake so you’re better off just letting them work it out for themselves for a bit because once you go in, it’s all over. We spent a lot of time hovering around the audio monitor going, “Oh, Eloise is up. No, wait, that’s Julian. Wait, is it Julian? Nope, sorry, it’s Eloise, but I can hear Julian doing his kicky leg thing against the mattress. Or wait, is it just Julian kicking and making noise, and Eloise is asleep?” Point is, it would have been nice to be able to see. We had, roughly, this monitor, and it served us very well for two good long years until it suddenly stopped working while we were on vacation.

Diaper bag: We have, I think, three diaper bags at this particular point in time, and the one we use most often is the Skip Hop Duo Double Diaper Bag. It’s roomy (even for cloth diaper supplies), it fits on a double stroller, and it’s nicely unisex. However, for a recent trip we suddenly realized that a backpack would be even better: and it was! We just bought a regular backpack (as opposed to a backpack that was officially a diaper bag) and it was really helpful. (Of course, we had this brainstorm right as we were getting ready to start potty training.)

OK, that’s a lot of words. And I have more to say! I think I’ll save it for another post, where I’ll talk about the systems, as opposed to the stuff, that we found especially helpful.

And so, without further ado, here are some cute things the kids have done over the past few months:

Having kids who are learning to talk really makes you aware of the things you unconsciously say all the time. For example, whenever we Julian’s on the changing table and we open his diaper, he says, “Oh my goodness!” He also has adopted “how about…” as his very own verbal tic. As in: “Julian, do you want grapes or apples?” “How about grapes!” Or: “Julian, which book do you want to read?” “How about this one!” Or: “Julian, it’s not your turn now, it’s Eloise’s turn.” “How about Julian!”

We apparently also are constantly asking them if they remember things. “Do you remember when Aunt Lauren and Aunt Morgan came to visit?” “Do you remember when we went to the doctor’s office?” And so on. They both now will, unsolicited, point to books, food, toys, people, whatever, and say, “I remember that!” It’s kind of adorable.

There’s something particularly adorable about a toddler describing her emotions in complete sentences. Eloise delights me with “I’m excited about it!” or “I a little scared,” or “I had a boo-boo but I feel better.” (Really, her peppy little “I’m excited about it!” just kills me. Kills me.) She will also, if she’s having a particular good meal, or being particularly patient during a diaper change, or something like that, will occasionally bust out with, “I doing a great job.”

The other day Julian was standing at his play kitchen, clearly hard at work “making” something, so I asked him what he was cooking. “I makin’ chocolate chip cookies!” he replied. “Oh?” I said, “I love chocolate chip cookies. How are you making them? What are the ingredients?” “Um…,” he said, “chocolate… and cookies!”

They both love making up nonsense words. About 15 percent of the time if you ask Eloise a question, she’ll pause for a second and then say “… Odo!” Julian will sometimes get in a phase where he’ll say nothing but, “Dee!” and then collapse giggling. Eloise in particular seems to have extended this into a talent for nicknaming. For a long time she couldn’t pronounce Julian’s name as another other than “Dee-dee” which she then extrapolated into the especially cute “Dee-deedle-ee.” Most recently she turned “Mama” into “Mommy” into “Monamee” into “Pondapee.” She now pretty consistently refers to Rachel as Pondapee. It’s… unique.

As much as I love that they’re growing up and learning more words and so on, I’m going to miss their adorable toddler mispronunciations. Julian still has his pronouns reversed (he’ll hold up his arms and demand, “Pick you up!” or “Sit on my lap!”). Eloise turns many of her “r”s into “l”s, so, for example, there’s a conversation every night about which book she’ll be allowed to bling into bed with her (“I bling dis one!”) and in the mornings, she’ll often insist on having oatmeal for bleakfast.

There’s so much more I could write! But I’ll take a bleak here. Er, a break.

I had such big plans. My children were going to eat nothing but healthy, organic, locally-sourced, homemade food. And exciting food, too: they were going to love exotic noodle dishes, cheeses of all sorts, chiles, olives, and all of the things I love that I never ate as a kid. I was going to spend my evenings and weekends happily cooking, filling our freezer and pantry with meals and snacks, and all of our friends would marvel how well it was all going.

Ha.

Ha, ha. Ha.

I am led to understand that there are people out there—food people—people with a love of food, and cooking, and eating, who have children, and manage to stay food people, who have adventurous, agreeable children with big, broad appetites, who make every mealtime a pleasurable and laughter-filled experience for the whole family. We do not have these children. If you do have these children, I am beyond happy for you, but I’m afraid I have to ask you to please, if you wouldn’t mind terribly, shut up about it.

There are days they eat almost nothing. Or days that they’ll only eat pasta. Again. Days when the food they’d happily tucked into only days ago is now emphatically and tearfully rejected. Days when I want to throw my hands up and never set foot in the kitchen again.

At our lowest moments (kids screaming, food everywhere, my head in my arms on the table) my wife reminds me of the advice our pediatrician gave us at their first birthday: “At one year, you can reasonably expect one good meal a day. At two, expect one good meal every other day.” These are, to be sure, low expectations, but they’ve become our mantra. If they don’t eat dinner, we remind ourselves that they ate lunch. Or vice versa. Or that they ate all of their oatmeal at breakfast. And that we’ll try again tomorrow.

There are victories, though. There are only a few parenting moments more proud than sitting across from my wife at dinner and watching both children gleefully shovel mujadarra or chana masala into their faces. Or hearing Julian urgently ask for “more more black beans!” Or having to remind Eloise to chew, chew, chew, and swallow before putting more chicken in her mouth.

Now that they can express their preferences, some meals are a little easier. At breakfast, I can ask, “What do you want for breakfast?” and get answers. Usually the same answers, but answers, nonetheless. (Julian: “Bagel!” Eloise: “Oatmeal!”)

With the understanding that eating is still a work in progress, and that we have a success rate far below 100 percent, here are the guidelines we try to stick to. These are inspired by Ellyn Satter’s Child of Mine, which I have not yet managed to read in its entirety. Still, the capsule version that I liked was this: “Parents decide what, when, and where to eat. Kids decide whether, and how much.”

What’s for dinner is what’s for dinner. I’m going to make one meal for the family each night, not two, not three, not four. The twins are going to eat what we eat… mostly.

There’s at least one thing they reliably like on their plates. Their dinner plates will have our dinner on them, but I try to design each meal so that there’s at least one component they recognize and have eaten before. Sometimes that’s as simple as making sure there’s broccoli or green peas or corn on the cob on the side. If dinner is especially adventurous (say, a delicious potato and fontina cake that Rachel and I really enjoy) I might put out some chicken bites or something. But the key to this rule, for me, is not going back into the kitchen for something new. Ever. Almost ever.

No seconds until you’ve tried everything on your place. The danger of having something they like on their plates is that they can tend to focus on that to the exclusion of everything else. It’s great that you like the pasta, Julian, but if you want more (and I’m happy to bring you more) you have to at least try the meatball. This has led to a lot of comical putting one molecule of food in their mouth and spitting it out ostentatiously. That counts. They might not eat the new food this time, but maybe it will be a little less unfamiliar next time.

Eat as much or as little as you want. My childhood is full of stories of being chased around the house by my father trying to get me to eat just one piece of chicken. I can’t believe that was fun for anyone. If our kids don’t want to eat something, that’s their choice. We try to tell them, “I think you’ll be hungry later,” but if they say they’re all done, and want to go and play, as long as they’ve at least made an effort to put something in their mouths, I don’t want to fight with them.

Keep trying. I’ve heard that to get a child to try, and potentially like, a new food, you have to offer it on at least ten separate occasions, even if they’re going to refuse it nine times. This is exhausting and demoralizing, and it’s the part I have the most trouble with. When they refuse to try (or spit out) the food I’ve lovingly, carefully, painstakingly prepared for them, it’s really hard not to take it personally. But my ever-patient wife reminds me that we’ll try again. And again. And again. And we do.

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. As much as I want to give them healthy homemade food all the time, it really won’t kill them to eat something from the (gasp!) grocery store freezer. Chicken nuggets, or little pouches of applesauce, goldfish crackers, or even the occasional cookie aren’t going to harm them, and don’t make me a bad parent.

A toddler isn’t going to starve himself. Everyone eats, eventually. Trying to keep our own anxiety levels down helps make meals more pleasant for everyone. And maybe, if we keep this up, in six to twelve months, they’ll be happily helping me cook, and trying our pad thai, and asking for more samosas. Right?

Right?

Colleen’s latest post ends up being really timely for me, because it helped to catalyze some sort of vague ideas I had bouncing around in my head. Circumstantial factors helped, too: I happened to see the most recent post pop up on my iPhone while I was sitting in the passenger seat of a DCYF van, riding alongside the Child Protective Services investigator I was shadowing for the day.

We all judge each other, all the time. We rarely say anything about it, of course. If I’m sitting a few tables down from you at a restaurant and see you chewing with your mouth open, I’ll scoff silently. If you see me walking down the street with my shoes untied or my pant cuffs tucked into my socks somehow, you’ll probably experience a little mental snigger. We judge each other’s driving, our choice of romantic partners, our wardrobes, our taste in music, our Facebook posts, our writing, our singing, our posture, and, of course, we judge each other’s parenting.

How often have I caught myself thinking less of someone for making a different parenting choice than I did? More often than I’d like. Cloth diapers vs. disposables. Plastic toys vs. wood. Plastic bottles vs. glass. Sleep training vs. co-sleeping. Strollers vs. baby-wearing. Breast milk vs. formula. Midwives vs. OB-GYNs. Nannies vs. day care. Staying home vs. returning to work. Pacifiers. Junk food. Discipline. Clothing.

(I want to emphasize quickly that although this post has coalesced as something of a response to Colleen’s post (or perhaps it’s simpler to say that it’s inspired by what Colleen wrote) it’s not at all intended as a criticism of anything she said or did. I wholeheartedly agree that, yes, babies belong in car seats, and I applaud her decision to notify the police that this family was being so obviously unsafe. I wish I could say with confidence that I’d have done the same thing. Parenting may be mostly shades of gray, but some things are blank and white, and this is pretty clearly one of them.)

A recent blog post at the New York Times shared the experiences of a lawyer who represents parents accused of abusing or neglecting their children. She describes what happens when the instinct to judge another’s parenting is taken to its logical and legal extreme. To be sure, there are parents out there who should be judged. There are parenting choices that are, simply, objectively, better than others, and some that should never be made at all. Still, that impulse to judge, to disapprove, to intervene can become extremely hard to resist when it’s directed at someone who already has a history of making bad decisions.

I can’t tell you anything about the DCYF case that I witnessed, except to say that it involved a family reacting badly to a crisis that I would expect any family to react badly to. It just happened that this family was already in the system, and so warning signs become red flags, and red flags send white vans driving out from Providence. (I do want to say that the investigator I had the privilege of shadowing handled the entire situation with incredible poise, professionalism, and compassion: I was humbled and impressed.)

I think of myself in my worst parenting moments: when I’m at my wits end and snap at my children, or pull them too roughly out of harm’s way, or say something, exasperated, forgetting that they can understand. I wouldn’t want anyone to witness these moments; I can imagine how they’d look through the eyes of an average, judgmental parent-on-the-street, much less through the eyes of someone bearing the card of the Department of Children, Youth, and Families.

And look at me: even in my worst parenting moments, I’m married to the mother of my children, we both work at good-paying jobs that we enjoy, we have family and friends nearby who are able and willing to help, and we can afford food, shelter, clothing, and quality child care. I have every advantage. When I’m driven to the edge and fail to be the parent I want to be, should I be judged for it? Well, maybe. And so should anyone, perhaps. But parenting is fundamentally about compassion: compassion for our children most of all, but also for ourselves and for each other, each struggling to do the best we can for the ones we love most.

I’ll try to remember that the next time I find myself shaking my head in middle-class disapproval at the parent with the shopping cart full of soda, or the kid I think is over- or under-dressed, or the house that’s full of Fisher-Price instead of Melissa and Doug. And I’ll try especially hard to remember it the next time I have the urge to tell another parent that the way I’m doing it is the right way.

(Still, people: kids go in car seats, infants sleep on their backs, and no honey before age one.)

This is a common scene, right? We’re driving home from running some errands and decide as a treat to stop by the playground to kill some time. The four of us roll into Humboldt Park, and the kids proceed to tear it up in the way that kids do.

(As a side note, because we hadn’t exactly planned to go to the playground, and because we sometimes let the kids influence what we dress them in, Eloise was wearing an adorable but completely impractical skirt and brand new white sandals. Just the thing. We must have looked like those parents who dress their daughter in inappropriately dressy girly clothes all the time. We’re not those parents!)

There were a handful of people there, including three mothers, each with a young daughter about the same age, who seemed to be casually acquainted. One of their kids kind of wandered over to where Eloise was playing and so the three of us ended up tossing a ball back and forth. The new kid, Sadie, was adorable, and the small talk with her mother was pleasant, and I thought, “Hey, new friend?”

And then they had to leave and I found myself kind of weakly waving goodbye.

How do new parents connect with one another and schedule these “playdates” that I’ve heard so much about? I’m sure that we’re at something of a disadvantage because both Rachel and I work full time, so we’re not often a part of the weekday kid scene. (Back before I went back to work, I befriended some of the other parents in the delightful classes we took at Bellani, but since I was demoted from “stay-at-home dad” to just “dad” I haven’t had a chance to see any of them.) But even on a weekend, when I do make meaningful eye contact or pleasant chit-chat with another parent hovering by the jungle gym, I have no idea how to seal the deal.

I think it’s so awkward and difficult because it’s essentially like trying to hit on someone you just met; I wasn’t any good at that back when I was single, and I’ve been cozily partnered up for more than a decade. There’s just no way I’m going to be able to successfully pick someone up at a playground.

I often wonder how much of it is gender-related. I see little clutches of moms that seem to gather together as if by some kind of electromagnetic force. Is new parenting secretly a “no boys allowed” club? Or does a guy wandering up to a bunch of women just exacerbate the creepy pick-up vibe? “Hi there. I think our kids are about the same age… laydeez.”

(This reminds me of a YouTube video that’s a couple of years old but is still, I think, funny. There’s probably nothing in it that’s precisely inappropriate for a family-friendly blog like this, but I feel that I should warn you, as Ira Glass occasionally says, that this video does acknowledge the existence of sex.)

I am generally baffled as to how new parents find each other. Most of our pre-kid friends still don’t have kids, and although we’ve met a few new friends with children, our social circle seems pretty narrow. How do you all do it?