We all have things that we depend on, things that make us say “without X, I just don’t know how I’d get by”. The boys can be a lot of work even for two parents, and without these five things, I just don’t know how we’d do it.
- Pre-Made Formula: When a baby is hungry, he wants to eat. Now. So making him wait while you mix a bottle of formula is less than optimal. That’s why we started making all of the bottles ahead of time. The formula is good for 24 hours, so we make 8 bottles in the morning and 8 more in the evening to keep in the refrigerator. Sometimes there is an afternoon batch as well. It ends up being enough to get us through the day and night and saves us precious time when hungry babies are waiting.
- Drinking Cold Bottles: Sally somehow got the boys to drink formula straight out of the fridge. Another great time saver. It’s amazing. The boys don’t have to wait five minutes for us to warm up their food, which is especially helpful at night when we are barely awake. We’d recommend it to anyone.
- Swaddlers: These are some of the most amazing things ever invented. Instead of trying to wrap the boys up in regular blankets that they can get out of, we use Swaddlers which have velcro. A quick wrap keeps them nice and tight… and asleep. It is one of our bedtime staples. Without it I don’t know if they’d ever sleep at night 🙂
- Swings / Carseats: At this point they boys don’t do too much. They’re starting to stay awake a bit more during the daytime and usually that means that they need to hang out in our arms or on our laps. Sometimes we need to do things that we can’t do with them in our arms, and this is where the swings and car seats come in. Sometimes they’ll just sit in one and look around, other times they fall asleep.
- A Fantastic Mother-in-Law: It takes a village to raise a child, so it takes two for twins, right? Well it definitely takes more than one person and sometimes more than two. That’s where Sally’s mom comes in. She came over every day the first two weeks the boys were out of the hospital to help us keep up with the house and keep them satisfied. She continues to come over during the day to help Sally while she’s on maternity leave and she’ll help me when I’m on vacation with them for a couple of weeks. I don’t know what we’d do without another hand to help us feed, bathe, and entertain the boys.
So there you have it, the five things we can’t live without. Things will change as they get older, but I think we’ll always have a top five.
Relatively Ambitious 