What We Do and How We Do It Part #1

People are forever asking us how we "do it" with twins. I'm always tempted to tell them there is no trick, you just do what you have to, but when it comes right down to it I have to admit we do have little tricks up our sleeves that we've developed over the last 3 months. (Lest I get too proud of myself I just think of all those moms out there with twins plus an older child, two sets of twins, or larger order multiples like triplets or quads!)
In the interest of keeping a good record of our twin journey here are a few things we do to keep ourselves sane:
1) Avoid "passing the buck" when it comes to a crying baby. Very frequently, after an hour and half or so of feeding, changing, playing, and rocking the babies, we finally get settled on the couch with both babes sleeping away in the nursery when suddenly the quiet is shattered with a wail. It would be really easy at this point to get into an arguement about who's "turn" it is to care for the crying baby based on who is the most tired, who was the most busy today, etc. But we've fallen into the patter of having "his and hers" babies. Basically, whoever held that baby last is responsible for getting it back to sleep and/or pacified. It's not like we ever sat down and discussed this, or that we even really acknowledge the rule in the heat of the moment, but if you were a fly on our wall at 6pm each night you would see this pattern play itself out pretty regularly. Usually a baby becomes your responsibility when you feed it, since the babies eat about every 3 hours during the day that means you are responsible for that baby for at least 3 hours (we also typically switch who we feed at each feeding though that also has never been discussed). It works well since we avoid arguments and by keeping eachother's sanity in mind the other person knows when to step in and give a break when it's needed.

Since I never have more than 15 minutes at a time to myself the next section will have to wait for next time...