On Parenthood

We have twin girls who have just turned 4.

I have heard people say, children are a gift.
Well there were quite a few times during the first six months that I wished I had kept the receipt but since they turned from babies to kids, they are just awesome.

Sincere congratulations to you and your wife.

beautiful man. Congratulations.

I’ll never win the War of Lady Babies, as I have FIVE and have given up. It’s possible I have no Y-chromosomes to pass on. It’s ok though, because they’re all beautiful and brilliant and good at getting anything they want from me.

Also, I’m studying Judo for when they start dating.

Nice post Jeff. I’m a twins+singleton Dad. Yes, I started with twins. All boys. My youngest is 5. So, he’s given me the first 5 years back.

We have friends with girls. You’ll be amazed at how much faster they develop.

WOOO WOOO WOOO WOOOOOOO!!! Congratulations, Jeff! Having more kids is an even greater joy than one! Not only will your toddler get new eyes to poke, new mouths to stick toys into and new cheeks to kiss, but you will have some of the most trying and delightful times yourself. When our second girl was born, life drastically changed. We thought one was work… two (let alone three) will blow your mind, man. Our girls, though trying at times, are the delight of my life and my constant joy. Congrats and best of luck! … you’ll need it! :smiley:

Congratulations, Jeff, and thanks for a great post! Although I will say that my pie chart is 96% Most Sublime Joy You’ve Ever Felt, vs. 4% (if even that) for the other (PITA), but I know that every parent’s experience is different. My child just hasn’t been a PITA very much during her lifetime (yet). It seems like that when I was expecting, all people could tell me was how “horrible” she was going to act, and how much of a pain and hassle it was going to be with her most of the time. they would tell me all of these horror stories about kids and how terrible they were, and how hard they were to handle, and after she was born, I just simply didn’t experience that. She has been very easy-going, and a very easy baby to take care of. And with every stage, I have parents telling me, “you just wait until the next stage. She’s going to be awful. You’re going to have your hands full, and she’s going to be very difficult to deal with.”…but I keep waiting for that stage, and it just hasn’t come yet. I know teenage daughters are really difficult to handle, and it may be that when we come to that stage, I am sure I will be having a difficult time, but for now, I’m just enjoying her as is right now. I haven’t really lost any sleep due to her, either. She sleeps through the night, and pretty much always has.

And it may be a difference also, between boys and girls, because I have friends who had boys, and they have had a lot of hassles with their boys, as babies growing up. Also, I have friends as well who have had both boys and girls, and they have said that it was such a completely different experience, that their girls were much easier as babies than their boys were. That being said, I have also had friends who had boys who had about as easy a time with their boys as I had with my girl, so I think it is very individualized towards each child, specifically, but I will say that in my personal experience, in my life, the percentage of girls who were easy as babies is greater than the percentage of boys who were easy as babies.

But I would definitely say that “You form ideas about what love is, its borders and boundaries. Then you have a child, look up to the sky, and suddenly understand that those bright dots in the sky are whole other galaxies.” is right on and I love that! I love that description of the love a parent has for his or her child(ren). I described my personal experience the day my child was born to this: Do you remember in “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas”, when he was at the top of that mountain, holding up the sleigh full of gifts, and he hears them singing, and there is a line that goes like this: “the Grinch’s small heart grew three sizes that day”. Well, when my daughter was born, I physically felt like my heart grew ten times its regular size that day! I was completely overwhelmed by love for my child, in a good way. I had no idea I had that capacity to love.

In spite of the huge amount of love I have for my child, and the positive experience I’ve had with it, I have decided not to have any more children unless something happens and my life changes drastically in the future. If I end up with as guy who is bent on having children and knowing that joy, I wouldn’t want to deprive him of that and would be willing to give that to him, but only if I was close to 99% sure he and I could have children in a good environment for them, where they wouldn’t be in a really bad position, economically or otherwise, and also only if I was 99% sure he would make a good father. Otherwise, I plan to not have any other children, because I had my child, and she is AWESOME!!! And it is because she is so good that I don’t want to have any more. I have known parents who had more than one child who have said, “If I had known what it was like with my later children, I wouldn’t have had any more (or at all)”. I don’t want to end up feeling like that. Another thing is that I love her so much, that I don’t want her to have to share my attention or love or anything else with anybody else. I don’t want to take anything at all away from her. I just feel like I did it right the first time, and I don’t want to take a chance of having an experience that is not so great the second time around.

Jeff:

Great post.

As the father of two I remember those tumultuous and joyous years. Now, both of our children (ages 22 and 19) are in college and we’re discovering something called “empty nest”.

Enjoy the experience!

Great post. Congratulations on the upcoming twins!

Ha, I’m in the exact same boat. My daughter celebrated her 1st birthday this past Saturday the day after the doctor informed us my wife is pregnant with twins due in late April.

@Stacy Conaway

lol that list had me in hysterics, did you just reel them off?

Very funny :slight_smile:

I can’t believe no-one has pointed you towards http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outnumbered yet, one of the funniest and truest tv series in recent years. And yes, I’m outnumbered at home, and all 3 kids are girls as well. My last male ally, the cat, passed away last week so I’m all on my own…

@Matt

I’m out numbered as well…due to the triplets we had to bring in help…Mother in law…then sister in law lost her job…brought her in, more help. Two cats…both female. That makes 8…lately I’ve been stricken with the urge to go to tractor pulls, perusing tool catalogs and eating a lot of beef jerky. I think nature is trying to balance things out.

Congratulations on the impending adventure, and on writing a post that distracted every one from being pedantic about the 3rd paragraph.

Congratulations Jeff and Mrs Jeff,

At 30, my daughter is still teaching me new stuff like just how precious life really is.

At age about six, she helped me to realise that computers were more about communicating than counting beans, pointing me in the right direction to appreciate what the web was all about.

They are a never-ending source of joy who mitigate the pain inherent in real life and brings into focus the richness of creation, the cosmos and the complex tapestry of human society. Enjoy!

Congrats on the twins! You think kids are fun? Wait till you have grandkids - you can spoil them and then send them home!

Hey, me too: Out daughter was born in April of 2009, we are now expecting twins in May of 2012. Thanks for the spot-on (Oso?) blog post. It’s nice to hear that there are other parents out there just like us.

Beautiful. Thank you for writing about children in such a wonderful way. Too many people see them as something that gets in the way. Parenthood is exactly your graph and you nailed that 1%.

congratulations!

Congratulations!

It’s funny.

You have that first kid, and you go through the spectrum of terror through euphoria, and all that you just described. You realize that what you thought you saw before as love was just the shadow cast from the real thing. You make it through those first few months of sleep deprivation with your sanity more or less intact, and suddenly you have a crawler, a walker, a little person forming in front of you. You’re getting the hang of this.

So you decide to have another! Immediately you’re terrified again. There isn’t possibly enough love in you to share with another kid. You won’t love this other child nearly as much as your first. Or, you think that what you have with your first will be somehow diluted by having another. You fret, you worry. You question your decision making. You’re not ready for this.

And then have have that second (or second and third, as the case may be :slight_smile: ), and you realize something. Love among a family doesn’t get watered down. Strangely, it seems to reflect back among its members, getting stronger instead of weaker. You still have that ache in your chest that you’ve become familiar with when snuggling down for bedtime stories, true, but now you get it when the little one grins at her big brother, or you hear them playing and laughing together. It’s a whole new world yet again – completely not what you expected, but still somehow better.

Enjoy!

Congrats!

A small piece of advice from someone who is made the transition from 1 child to multiple children. First is understand that it is another big transition. Second, try to take Henry’s view of things. In a few months he will go from being the center of the Universe to having to share that Universe with 2 others. If you give it some thought I am sure you can make it so that this will not be a loss for him.