Another way to drive myself crazy

For all the times my babies are good and sweet and smiling and happy, there are an equal number of times when they shriek in chorus, refuse to eat their nice, organic puree and generally carry on as if they have just been dipped in boiling oil.   Unfortunately, when I have the rare babysitter/helper around they are the former.  I wonder if maybe it isn’t hunger, boredom, or general malaise, but is it me?

With twins there is the challenge of keeping two little needy non-comprehending creatures happy and satisfied at the same time.  Twins may have come in a set, but they are not going to settle for being treated like one entity.  One baby likes to be tossed in the air, tickled and chased around; he will crawl as fast as he can across the bed and pause to look over his shoulder to make sure you are “coming to get him”.  He laughs and shrieks the whole time.  The other baby is a little more tranquil, he LOVES to me carried around, he is the perfect Attachment Parenting style sling baby.  He could sleep in his sling for hours, and he has, too.  So how do I carry one baby in the sling while I run around after the other?  Poor babies, they are having to learn how to wait earlier than many other ten month-olds need to.

My dear husband finds it difficult to change two diapers at once.  Admittedly, is isn’t easy wrestling one little one while the other yanks on your clothes and howls to be picked up.  Also, there is the man-mind thing – you know, one thing at a time.  Women’s multi-tasking abilities have so clearly come from the hunting-gathering-keep-the-baby-quiet-at-the-same-time part of our human history.  (Stop the baby crying!  The saber-toothed tiger will hear him and come into our cave to gobble us up!) I have grown very accustomed to feeding them together, changing them together, carrying them around together, doing everything as a unit, that when I find myself with just one baby, I feel a bit at odds, as if a part of my essential equipment is missing.  Have I become too wrapped up in the Mother of Twins identity?  Can I operate with just one?

A terrific thing about writing down what’s in my head, my feelings and impressions, is that it triggers a thought process that may not have otherwise been developed.  Here I am; being a mama and struggling to make it work; sometimes I feel successful, other times I have to slap my cheeks to try to calm myself down.  Here I am as well; loving being a mama, loving the feeling that they look to me for comfort and happiness and afraid of not being important once I can no longer say – they NEED me.  Right now their needs are relentless and overwhelming.  Am I too busy being their caretaker to have fun?  Too busy performing the series of tasks necessary to keep them safe and fed and comfortable that I am neglecting making them happy? 

Or am I just looking for another way to make myself crazy?