The first month

From Bambini

Well I must say I am very proud of my children's fecal output. Not since I smeared my first creation all over the bathroom rug have I been more impressed with human excrement.

Not only is their output large, but it is soft and has an odor that is something wicked to behold. I imagine a mustard gas cloud in WW1 had a similar stunning effect on the senses. Like the mounds left by the TRex dinosaur in the last jurassic park movie, these kids diaper contents deserve to emptied onto a Hollywood sound stage, shot with 64mm film and projected onto a screen 80 feet wide to be fully appreciated... oh sorry, was that too much information? Well let me summarize; the boys are really growing!

Some of you have asked for an update to this blog. I have been waiting for something good to happen and, well it just hasn't. This is a very difficult time. The constant demands and lack of sleep are really making life difficult.

The real problem is the huge emotional impact that this event has. This has not helped our relationship needless to say. I am sure every couple goes through this, but just as quick refresher let me give you the highlights.

All those little things that your partner does that might be minor irritation on a good day, suddenly become the biggest annoyance imaginable. Conversely, all your buttons are lit up so the slightest comment feels like the charge of the light brigade.

I have this habit of taking off my socks when I get hot and leaving them where they fall (its a guy thing). Barbara can be the interior design nazi, so a trail of socks is not how she wants to find the house at the start of her work day, while the last thing I care about at the end of my all night baby vigil is locating and accounting for awol socks. You can imagine how it goes from there.

The bambini have definitely figured out that there is another one of them in the room. When one starts cranking, the other joins in for good measure even if he is in the depths of sleep. So when one is fussing about something like a wet daiper, you can be assured the other one will take the trouble to wake up and suddenly realize ten things that wrong with his body or its position.

Immediately after they pee, they want the bottle. Their bodies are pretty specific about this. Fluid out means major signal for fluid in. Changing a daiper can be a difficult enough if they are not co-operating, but you then have to do three things at once, give a little attention to the other one, prepare a bottle and pick up any offending socks.

The next 30mins are frantic going between the two and feeding. We keep their room quite warm so they don't need lots of clothes so by the time I am done, I am sweating. My original solution was just take off my clothes until I cooled down, but I realized there was the strong possibility I would forget myself and open the door to our nanny in this state, so now I have to take three or four showers a night to wash off sweat.

Once you have one taken care of the other one is sure to begin the process. Four hours can go by like this and if they get some problem that is not immediately obvious like air trapped somewhere, it can be a long four hours.

The bambini now have a catalog of sounds. There is the sheep noise, the donkey braying, the constipated croaking and everyone's favorite, full throttle screaming. Barbara has taken to calling them polleto (which means little chicken I believe) after the action when they are feeding on the breast. I call them pu pu, which is short for pu pu latte, for reasons which will be obvious if you dare to view the latest pictures.

I never really appreciated how stressed out babies can get. They don't just cry, their whole body tenses up they screw their face up and start rapidly breathing as though you had just cut off a limb. There seems to be no degree between calm and relaxed and total stress case. Its an effort just to get them to calm down let alone resolve the issue that created this response.

The next thing that happens on a full tummy is all this stress starts a fit of hiccuping. So now you have three things to deal with. The hiccuping can last ten minutes or until they calm down. Calming them down is part science part art and part good fortune.

We have found that playing music helps with getting them to sleep and keeping them asleep. I have some really nice adagio Schubert choral pieces I put on a CD a long time ago along with Ava Maria and so forth. That seems to approximate angelic choirs as far as they are concerned.

I also realized that Mr Ikea was probably more concerned about reducing material cost in his cot design than he was about the height of the baby when placed in it. To add to the fun, I have had excruciating back ache for weeks because, I finally realized, I am bent over the cot at just the wrong angle.

I finally broke out the cordless drill and fabricated a little height modification to the cot. I was sure it was going to get rejected by the fueng shui police, yet for some mysterious reason the practicality of the solution won the day.

From Bambini

I think I over did it a little. I made it comfortable for me, forgetting our nanny is a four foot south american. She has to stand on tip toes to get to the babies now... ooops. I am sure there will be a design flaw crimes tribuneral in the near future when I will hauled in to account for my misdeeds and sentenced to hard labor hanging curtains or similar.

They were one month old last Sunday. Its amazing how a month only feels like three years.