The tricky part is the hallway. I carefully try to place my foot on our wood floor hallway in the tiny spots that don’t creak loud enough for our neighbors to call the police. I gently place my hand on the door knob and open the door, without letting go because if I do it will slam into the wall. I look into the room and bask in the sweetness of my 5-year old twins sleeping silently, peacefully, infusing my heart and soul with love, affection and utter goodness.

This is my little indulgence.

To me, looking in on my sleeping children is like treating myself to dark chocolate in the afternoon of a very tough day at the office. It has become a special moment for me even though it probably lasts less than 90 seconds. But going to bed often reminds of what tomorrow brings, another day away from my children, a day of stress and pressure, and seeing them before I go to sleep is a lovely reminder as to why I am here and what is truly important to me.

The ironic thing for me about my little indulgence is that I have only started doing it in the past year or so. I remember hearing stories about how parents would sneak into their baby’s room and watch them sleep and couldn’t understand how they could do it. For what felt like forever, our children were awfully light sleepers and if we tried to get near their room they would wake up. To complicate things even more, for about three years, our children slept on a completely different floor from us and it was not in the least practical to go upstairs to their room to check on them before bed. We relied entirely on a monitor to let us know whether they were sleeping or not. With the constant buzz of the monitor, I always believed some of the romance of listening to our children sleeping was lost.

But last year we took our bi-annual trip to Ecuador (my wife was born there) and ended up sleeping in the same room with our children. We would put them to bed and leave the room, spending time with our family down there before going to sleep ourselves. We were so worried about whether our children would be able to sleep with us in the same room – especially if we went to sleep at a different time from them. But every time we entered the room, I found myself marveling at how they looked sleeping, so peaceful, so delicate, precious, adorable, every single good feeling I have for them reflected back to me. It was delicious and I was awed by how much I enjoyed it, by how it helped right my orientation, my perspective on the world and my family. In essence, seeing my children sleeping was like an anchor, bringing me back to the place I want to be, to who I want to be; their daddy.

Around the same time, we moved and instead of sleeping on different floors, we were now sleeping in rooms right across the hall from each other. Now before I go to sleep at night, it is easy for me to take a little peek into their room, to see how they are sleeping, to renew what is good in my life without the stress of the day wearing on me, to see only the good in my children, in my life.

That is my little indulgence.

I have been extremely frustrated with Elijah, my four-year old son, because of his refusal to go to sleep without screaming at night. And I feel certain that the issue involved in both school and going to sleep are very similar – separation. But I’ve been intensely trying to help him go to sleep smoothly at night for eight months now and I’m running out of patience. All for the same reason I am upset about leaving him at school – I don’t want him to feel like we are abandoning him, that we don’t love him – I have been unwilling to let him cry it out (okay, my wife also doesn’t want that to happen). But it doesn’t matter what I do or what I say, he insists on making the process as difficult as possible. Tonight, as I sit to write this, I have let him cry. I refuse to go up anymore.

It always comes back to this. I try everything I can think of to not let him cry it out and I always fail. Always. For the past several weeks, every single time he got upset, I went upstairs to try and calm him down, get him into bed and help him think about all of his Happy Thoughts so that he could go to sleep. For the most part it only reinforced to him that if he gets upset he will get to spend more time with me. That was clearly not my goal.

Finally, out of utter frustration, a few nights ago when he started screaming and banging on the door, I went upstairs, picked him up, and put him back into bed without saying a word. I think the shock of me not saying anything stunned him enough that he fell asleep. But the next night I had to do it 4 or 5 times and again last night 5 or 6 times. It was absolutely frustrating and Elijah’s screaming was getting Jordyn upset as well. He knew when he banged on the door that I would come up to put him back to bed and so he kept banging on the door (I never said he was stupid – just frustrating).

Tonight he started banging again within 10 seconds of me leaving. Then again after I had put him back into his bed. This was clearly not working and I went upstairs, put him back into bed and told him that I was not coming back up for the rest of the night. He cried and screamed as I left.

In about five minutes he was quiet and presumably asleep. Is it any wonder parents feel like their kids are smarting than they are?

I’ve been thinking about how to help him adjust smoothly without causing the pain I vowed never to inflict on him. But I’m beginning to wonder if it would only drag out the torture, the way my going up to try and calm him down does at night. It stops the crying, maybe even holds off the pain, but when I leave again, it’s like reopening a wound and the pain picks up where it left off and he starts crying again. If there is one thing I’ve learned from leaving him in the morning every single day, it is that it has to be like removing a band-aid.

If you do it slowly, the pain drags on. If you rip it off real quick, there is a moment of fierce pain, but then everything is ok.

Clearly, I need to apply that “wisdom” to the other area where separation seems to be an issue for my boy, like going to sleep.

Many twins begin to interact with each other around six to ten months of age. As same-age siblings begin to discover one another, it’s a thrill for parents to watch as the two hug, play, and communicate. Even their sibling squabbles are fascinating to parents who are learning to discern each child’s unique personality. Most enthralling to parents of twins, however, is the ease with which each twin seems to anticipate the other’s needs.

While parents of singletons complain that their preschoolers often have a hard time learning to share their toys with other kids, several parents of twins seem to have a special story about how easily the two share their belongings and how one child seems to look after the other. It’s not that preschool-age twins never fight or argue, but parents are understandably impressed with their twins’ compassion toward each other and their overall ability to get along.

When it comes to their twin relationship, they seem to have interpersonal skills that singletons of the same age simply don’t have.

With this in mind, many parents of preschool-age twins relate that twinship has some sweet benefits that make up for the initial rough ride. Parents rightfully brag about how the twins take care of one another, share their possessions, and play with each other for long periods, thus freeing up mom and dad to have a bit of time to themselves. While parents of singletons must become their child’s social secretary, scheduling play dates and classes in order to afford their youngster the chance to be around other kids, parents of twins consider themselves lucky to be freed from making such arrangements. The twins have each other. But is there such a thing as too much togetherness at this stage in your children’s development?

Given that twins appear to enjoy being with one another, what’s the harm in their spending most of their time together? Since twin togetherness is taken for granted as an inherent piece of the twin relationship, it may not occur to you that your twins might be missing an important part of their social and emotional education by not having the experiences singletons have. When they cling to the safety net of their automatic friendship with their twin, many children have difficulty forming relationships and making friends outside the family. In identifying so closely with their twin, they can come to feel that they must always act according to the needs of the couple, rather than their own needs. If twins go through their childhood as a couple, they miss out on experiencing their individuality as they interact with other people.

Perhaps you’re wondering, isn’t considering her twin’s needs a good thing? Won’t the constant attention to each other’s feelings teach my twin children compassion when they get older? The problem is that twin relationships involving too much togetherness push compassion into the unhealthy realm of negating one’s own abilities, desires, and goals.

Various child-development experts agree that a parent must parent a child; a child cannot parent another child. However, in so many instances, twins are left to parent one another because their parents misunderstand the twin relationship. Being twins is an opportunity to have a close sibling relationship with someone your own age, but it does not take the place of being nurtured and guided by your parents. Time spent playing with your twin is not a substitute for one-on-one time with mom or dad. Nor does it offer the same opportunity for developmental growth as making new friends—at the park, in a class, or at preschool. A healthy twinship evolves when each sibling goes through the process of developing an individuated self. Parents need to encourage this process by spending alone time with each child and providing each twin with enough opportunities to be separate from the other.

I always believed, as involved fathers go, I was pretty high up there if you were to grade my level of involvement. As soon as I walk in the door from work, I herd our almost 5-year old children to the dinner table, sometimes even remember to set it, too. We talk about their day, I give them their medicines and vitamins. I get them changed into their pajamas, take them to the bathroom, and even take them to bed five nights a week. When they wake up in the middle of the night upset, I’m the one they call. On the weekends, I spend almost every moment I can with them, even often having special time with them, just the three of us. I have even spent entire weekends just the three of us when my wife has gone away. I couldn’t imagine how I could be more involved, to be honest.

Well, I am learning, now that my wife has started working full-time, that there was a whole area of their life I was not at all involved in; their school.

My wife, Gem, stayed home to be with our kids after they were born and it was easily the best decision we made in terms of our children. Who better to be with them than someone who has the most incredible capacity for unconditional love of anyone I have ever met? During the first couple of years when they didn’t have school she spent all day with them and I really felt it was my job when I walked in the door to try and take over some of the primary parenting roles so she could get a little break. Of course, my getting involved also served to build a strong relationship with my children – something we both felt strongly about.

Leaving every morning was very hard for me – and for some time hard on my kids – and I learned when I walked out the door to put them in a special corner of my mind so I wouldn’t feel too guilty about leaving and could focus on work during the day. When our kids started going to preschool, I had very little to do with it. Gem would take them every morning, pick them up every afternoon, and when I got home I got to hear how their day went. I was not involved, because it wasn’t necessary or really at all possible for me to be involved. I couldn’t take them to school without showing up to work two hours late and couldn’t pick them up from school if I went to work. My lack of involvement in school meant that I didn’t know what was involved in them going to school.

With Gem now working full-time, there are mornings where she has to leave early or nights when she comes home late. I love my wife deeply, but obviously she can not do everything and I have found myself needing to step my game up a notch in order to meet the new challenges in our family life.

I have been making more dinners – certainly not one of my strengths, I have to say. But I am trying and learning. I try to remind myself the only way I will get better at it is if I do it more. I have been making their lunches as well and dealing with the notes from teachers, requests from other parents and all of the stuff that I had no idea went on inside their backpacks every single day.

It is weird to not be so confident as a father again, to be unsure and uncertain like I was several years ago. When they were born, I had no confidence as a father and was always afraid I was doing something wrong. You can imagine that doing everything twice for my children helped me to get past that pretty quickly. But now I find myself once again entering uncharted territory, delving into something that has been done so well by my wife. While she does it with ease, I am stuck trying to figure out if they need one or two snacks or if they need juice (which I forgot to give them this morning). If I had to do it everyday I would get good at it pretty quickly, but I do it only a couple of times a week, if that much, and I don’t have the hang of it, yet.

But I am trying to be kind to myself, to understand that every time we do something new, we’re not perfect at it yet. Plus, my not doing it perfectly is better than my wife having to do everything herself. Besides, in another few weeks, I will probably be packing lunches like a pro, like my wife.

Until then…I hope nothing I do leaves them too hungry until they get back home.

My little girl loves me. In fact, the other day she told me, “I love you too much!”

And I just looked at her.

“Do you mean you love me so much?” I asked her.

“Oh yeah. I love you SO much!”

But it made me wonder if my little girl’s love for me feels like too much for her. Or maybe it is too much for me?

Her love is strong, so intense, that sometimes I get scared about how much she loves me. Is her adoration, bordering on idolization, just setting us up for future problems? Sometimes as she caresses my face, seemingly memorizing every feature, I find myself wondering, will she end up with a completely unrealistic view of love based on her feelings for me? Am I destined to fail her, to never live up to the intensity and purity of her feelings for me? What would that mean for our relationship? Will she end up with unrealistic expectations of her partner because of how special our connection is? Am I making it impossible for her to have future relationships?

I don’t know. I just don’t know.

So that self-doubt sits on my shoulder, like a little devil, telling me something is wrong here, that this isn’t love, but something evil, dangerous, and I should begin to break away from her, to save her from myself. That somehow rejecting her now is better than whatever future series of failures and rejections she will experience if things don’t change between us now.

But on my right shoulder sits my little angel, represented by all of the research I have done on the subject of involved fathers and by the belief that loving her can’t be wrong. The research into girls and women with involved fathers has shown that their self-esteem, their self-satisfaction, the length of time they wait to engage in sexual activity is in direct proportion to their feeling loved by their father and the health (from their perspective) of that relationship.

Isn’t that what I want for my little girl? For her to grow up and be intelligent, strong, independent, and healthy, to make smart decisions about her sexuality rather than act out because of something she is missing? Has there ever been any doubt about that?

No way.

This battle continued in my mind, back and forth, particularly fierce this weekend when my wife relayed a story to me.

She was driving our children to school and listening to Marc Cohn’s first album, the same album she and I listened to seven times in-a-row the night we decided we wanted to give our relationship a chance, to see if maybe there really was something special between us. She told them the story and afterwards my little girl said to her, “I’m so glad you picked Daddy. I just love him so much!”

As tears leaked from my eyes after hearing that story, I thought to myself, Can love that pure be bad? Especially when that love is returned ten-fold in my love for her?

Maybe our love will have side-effects I can’t imagine right now, but my little girl will always be certain of one thing; she is loved. Hopefully, this will mean she will never have to worry about whether she is loveable or not, about how she deserves to be treated by her partner, about whether she is entitled to a healthy, loving relationship.

So while I still struggle with the intensity of her love for me, I plan to keep giving her everything I have right back in return.

Many fathers are breaking new ground by becoming more active, more involved in their family – especially with their children. Previous generations defined fatherhood more in terms of providing the economic necessities families need. But this generation, more than any other, has determined that their role as a father does not end with providing economic security, but continues to building a strong bond with their children. Unfortunately, so many of these fathers don’t have role models, don’t have a blueprint to follow in terms of what being involved in the lives of their children actually looks like.

January is National Mentor Month and that seems a perfect time to make sure all of these trailblazing fathers understand that while they may not have a role model for the kind of father and man they want to be, they are transforming themselves into the role models they never had. Today’s involved fathers, in their quest to be a better father, to better meet the needs of their own children, are ensuring that their children will never be without a wonderful fatherhood mentor.

Most dads know they want to give more than they received. They want to see their children more than their fathers saw of them. They want to feel more than their fathers felt with their family. They want to know their children. They want to witness their child’s firsts – first crawl, first word, first step, first throw, first hug, first everything. They want to be there to soothe when their child is upset. They want to help ease their fears and also make them laugh. They want to be more than just the disciplinarian – they want to play and have fun. They want to be a central part of their children’s lives and not just a play a supporting role. They want to be more than just a one-dimensional parent. They want to develop a three-dimensional relationship with their children. The trail this generation of fathers is blazing will make it so much easier for their own children to follow.

This blazing a new trail can take enormous effort. It involves pushing ourselves past our own limits, past our own fears so as not to inflict or impose those fears, those limits on our own children. It involves surpassing the model of fatherhood we grew up with, learning what we wanted but didn’t have and what we had that we want to pass on to our own children. This process of growth can be an incredible process, a process that is challenging, daunting, but phenomenally rewarding.

Every step we take in our personal growth as people, and as parents, gives our children a head start. The growth in ourselves we’ve worked so hard to achieve actually becomes part of our children’s foundation, giving them one less obstacle to overcome. If we men begin to break the “tradition” of distance, then our sons will have an easier time being involved with their children. If we men break the “tradition” of lack of emotion from fathers, we make it easier for our sons to grow up believing it is healthy and important to experience their emotions. We also make it easier for our daughters to find a man she can be truly emotionally intimate with. Every foot of path we clear on this new trail – even if we only partially clear it – creates an easier path for our children.

Because it’s not just about being a good father, about being a good mentor or role model.

Our children define so much of themselves based on who we are. Our sons build their definition of manhood based on us, on what we do, on how we are, on who we are and how they see us. The healthier they see us and relate with us, the healthier they will be, the better chance they will have at having strong, healthy relationships throughout their lives.

But our daughters also define manhood based on who we are, on how we act, on what we do. They develop their ideal partner based on their emotional (and sometimes even physical) profile of us. Their sense of self, their self-esteem is so intimately wrapped up in our relationship with them. And, of course, their ability to attract and be attracted to healthy men is based on how they view us, on their relationship with us. If we have taught our daughters they are special, unique, beautiful and intelligent, they will expect men to treat them that way. If we don’t…

National mentoring month is a good time to congratulate all of you trailblazing dads, to remind you of the incredible work you are doing to not only improve your life, but to improve the generations that will follow you in this world. You are the foundation for all that comes after you and that foundation looks pretty strong from where I’m standing.

Ahhh, the holiday season. The season of lights and presents and holiday cheer. The season of shopping and stress. The season of overwhelment. But this year we have a solution to it all. This year, we’re going to Disney World!

Really.

Not only are we one of those families where we have both Jewish and Christian members so we celebrate Chanukah at our house and Christmas with my wife’s family, but we also celebrate a birthday during December as well.

Or two.

Actually three.

Okay, we celebrate four birthdays during the month of December.

Well, to be completely honest we celebrate four birthdays in one week of December. In our family, we have four birthdays during one week and then we spend 51 weeks of the year recovering from and preparing for that one week.

My children were born a day before my wife’s birthday. In fact, her birthday present that year was getting to hold her children for the first time (they were born 2.5 months early and were in the NICU – we didn’t actually try to have all of our birthdays in the same week). My birthday is four days after my wife’s and we often spend those days teasing each other – me about how old she is and her about how much of a baby I am. My wife is four days older than I am and those four days are the only days of the year anyone would ever know. Since we’ve been together, she and I have always shared a birthday party together. When our children were born, well, we didn’t have to schedule another party, did we?

For their first birthday we threw a very small gathering for family. It was lovely but obviously the kids had no idea what was going on yet. The second year we threw our traditional party for all of us – with four birthday cakes! They were young enough to understand they were having a lot of fun and family kept coming over and giving them more presents. Each time family came over someone brought another cake and we celebrated someone’s birthday one more time. Between Chanukah, our birthdays, and Christmas we were lighting candles and handing out presents almost every single night it seemed. By the time January rolled around and there were no more candles or presents after dinner they asked us, “Where are candles? Presents?” That was our first inkling as to how overwhelming and challenging this was going to be.

By the time last year rolled around we threw a birthday party for them and their friends from pre-school and then afterwards threw a party for ourselves – though again we had the four cakes (everyone gets to choose which kind they want like Baby Einstein or Butterflies or ice cream cake). We tried better to control the number of presents they received and even hid a whole box of them (then we were able to give them a new present every month or so), but the entire month still ends up being so overwhelming and truly takes its toll on all of us. It is just too much. It is truly a year of celebrations squished into two weeks. My wife and I have joked about running away, maybe taking a cruise for that week or something. This year we got an opportunity to go to Disneyworld and we took it.

I have no doubt it will still be an overwhelming week in the Magic Kingdom, but it will be a week of only us together, away from the chaos of presents and cakes and celebrations.

This year we won’t be focusing on presents and cakes and candles. This year we will be celebrating the birth of our wonderful family, a family that during this holiday season is reason enough for me to celebrate.

When we started selling our house and looking for a new one last year, I drew upon my years of therapy training and experience and my well-honed instincts and sat down with my almost four-year old twins and explained to them that we were looking for a new house. Every weekend we were going to be having open houses as well as looking for our new home. I didn’t want my children to get stressed out by what they were seeing, all the strange people, all of the talk of a new home. I wanted them to understand what was happening all around them.

That was easily my biggest mistake in the moving process.

My children – especially my little girl – became so stressed, so anxious, I’m not sure she has been the same since. She became afraid to go to school in the morning, afraid every time we left, afraid we were going to move without her, afraid she would be all alone, afraid she would not have a bed to sleep in. She became afraid to go to sleep at night and began having trouble sleeping through the night, waking up with nightmares. It was horrible and I felt terrible. I knew my talk had actually made everything worse for her instead of easier.

Fortunately, once we moved and they saw their new bedroom, saw that Mommy’s and Daddy’s room was right across the hall, that they had a wonderful playroom, that the backyard was nice, that the house was safe, things got a lot better. But I vowed to be more careful about what and when I explained things to my children.

Recently, my wife, Gem, started working for the first time since our children were born 4.5 years ago. While it is only part-time in the beginning, it is a major shift for our family. A shift we have intentionally not talked to our children about. As anxious as that made me, “Mr. Talk About Everything to Be Prepared,” it has worked out much better than our move.

I remember my wife and I sitting at the dining room table brainstorming how and when to talk to our kids about this. We rehashed the tough move and the effect it had on them, nervous about making the wrong move, hurting them again despite our best intentions. Finally we decided we would basically follow their lead. We wouldn’t bring it up with them. We wouldn’t make a big deal out of this. We would go with the flow.

We did talk about her starting a new job in front of them, trying not to hide anything from them, but also not sitting down for “A Talk,” either. On her first day, I stayed home from work and spent the day with my children. On her second day, their Nana came up from Philly for her weekly visit. On day three, their Tia (Aunt) spent the day with them. Tia was going to be their primary caretaker when my wife and I weren’t around and they absolutely love her so that made my wife’s absence a little bit easier to handle.

When Gem told them she was going to work they took it in stride. A couple of weeks later Gem even brought them to her office so they could see it, see where Mommy is now spending her time away from them – the way they have visited my office countless times in the past 4.5 years.

Of course, the adjustment has been significantly harder on us and has made me wonder how families manage to do any of the things that need to get done, like groceries and other errands, when both parents work. It is terribly hard and overwhelming, so much to do in an incredibly short period of time. What’s worse, is now we both miss our children, now we both have little heartaches for the time we don’t see them, the things they are learning without either one of us around. More and more of their time is spent without either of us now and it wears on us both.

But at least, while it has been rather stressful on us, our kids have been spared much of the stress and anxiety – in part, certainly, because we spared them from “A Talk.”

Sometimes it is too easy to forget why we’re trying to get our children to do certain things, to get so wrapped up in the goal that we forget we want them to do it because we care and love for them so much. I’m just going through another of those moments right now. The enjoyment of the process has turned something that seemed like it would be a chore, something I wasn’t sure we could do, to something I have begun to look forward to every night.

My 4.5 (okay, four and three-quarter) year old little girl has decided she doesn’t want to wear diapers at night anymore. Over the past couple of months we have begun the push to get our twins out of diapers while they sleep. We decreased the amount of water in their sippy cups they kept on their night tables. Then we stopped the water at night altogether. We’ve even tried to encourage them to get up when they need to go to the bathroom and come to our room and we’ll help them to the bathroom. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out so well. Changing two sets of sheets at 3:30 in the morning was not a fun way to start the day – for any of us. Fortunately, Jordyn refused to give up. Much like her Daddy I am proud to say, once my little girl makes up her mind, she makes a commitment to achieving her goal. She has decided she only wants to wear underpants at night and she is doing whatever it takes to make that happen.

And so am I.

We decided, after talking to our pediatrician, that we should wake her up before we went to bed and take her to the bathroom. I took that responsibility on and for the past three nights I have woken my little girl up at 11:00 or so at night and taken her to the bathroom.

I first thought this was not going to be fun. I worried about whether she want to be woken up. Would this just be another fight? Would we wake up her brother sleeping in the other bed in their room? I worried how it would affect her sleep. Would she be able to fall asleep afterwards? Would she want me to stay with her? If Jordyn doesn’t get enough sleep we all suffer so her sleep is especially important.

The first night I gently woke her up.

“Jordyn. Come on. Let’s go to the bathroom.”

She popped up out of bed. “Okay, Daddy.” She was ready. We held hands down the hall to the bathroom and held hands on the way back. She crawled into bed and fell fast asleep before I was even out the door, I think.

The second night she was more tired, but did very well. More hand holding and I even got to hear one more “I love you” as I walked out of their room.

Last night she was so tired that I picked her up out of bed. I have to tell you, one of the greatest feelings as a father, in my life, is feeling my little girl mold her body to mine when she is tired. She wraps her arms and legs around my body, puts her head on my shoulder, and melts into me. It is a feeling of closeness like I have never felt before. It was so wonderful I barely even felt her weight as I carried her down the hall.

She went to the bathroom and afterwards I offered to carry her back. She didn’t say anything, but after she dried her hands, she reached her hands up to me. I gladly picked her up and carried her back to her bed.

“I love you, Sweetie Girl.”

“I love you, too, Daddy,” and she fell asleep.

I thought it would be such a hassle to wake her up to try and get her to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, another thing for me to remember before I go to bed at night. Instead not only am I helping my little girl achieve something she really wants – to wear underpants at night – but I also get one more cuddle, one more special, intimate moment with her.

And there can never be too many of those.

4:00am

That’s what the clock read. Is it raining? I should go look out the window to see if it is raining because if it’s not I can turn off the alarm and sleep a little later.

But I can’t get up to go check…tooooooooooo sleeeeeeeppppppppyyyyyy…

…

“ELIJAH!” I heard myself scream. All of a sudden I am out of my bed so quickly that I forgot to get my glasses, running towards the stairs. I don’t know what I heard, but somehow I knew he was in trouble and he responded with a sound. I can tell from his voice he is on the stairs. Is the monitor working?

He started crying loudly.

I picked him up, halfway to the top of the stairs, and held him close to me, whispering soothing words, trying to calm and quiet him down. After a short period of time he was whimpering into my shoulder.

“Let’s go upstairs and check on Jordyn,” I whispered to him. I thought I heard her stirring up there and can only imagine how our outbursts have frightened her.

I carried him upstairs, while he wrapped his arms around my neck. When I opened the door, I checked that the green light on the monitor is on (which it is) and I wonder why he didn’t say anything before he started the dangerous trek downstairs in the dark.

I put him down and checked on Jordyn, who clearly seemed like she had been jolted awake. But my little girl is extremely good at falling asleep – I could not possibly count how many times she has been woken up by Elijah in the middle of the night and though we’re both a bit out of practice, I am sure she will fall asleep without my help.

Elijah and I sat and talked a little. I asked what happened and he said he heard a noise. That is often the case and my only guess is that he had a dream that woke him up and he was unable to go back to sleep. Instead of crying out loud, he started the journey from his room, through their playroom, to the stairs and down the stairs. If I hadn’t heard him on the stairs he would’ve had to go through the dining room, then through a small hallway leading to our bedroom. We use to keep a childproof device on the doorknob so he couldn’t get out, but have since decided that is no longer safe. It’s just that it doesn’t feel safe without it when he starts that adventure on his own in the dark.

I reminded him he is going to camp tomorrow and he needed a good night’s rest and he smiled. I reminded him he’ll see his teachers and new friends and he smiled some more. He finally seemed ready for sleep and I asked him to get into bed and he did without struggle.

“Tell me about your Happy Thoughts.”

“All the people that love me,” he says.

“That’s a good one…You know I’m one of those people, right? You know I love you, Elijah, don’t you?”

“Yeah”

Then I say my usual goodnight greeting. “SSsssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssoooooooooooooooooooooooooo much I love you, Elijah.” In the winter, he had gotten scared by the hissing of the radiator in the middle of the night so I thought maybe I could associate that hissing sound with something positive and it has stuck.

“So much I love you, too, Daddy.”

“Oh good,” I said smiling at him.

I kissed Jordyn goodnight, made sure she was okay. I think she was still a bit shaken but seemed ready to fall asleep – if only we would stop talking.

I kissed Elijah one more time and opened the door.

“Daddy?”

Uh oh.

“Yes, Elijah?” I said cautiously.

“Maybe…”

Oh no.

“Maybe tomorrow after scho—Maybe tomorrow after camp…”

Please don’t ask me to pick you up Elijah. I can’t. I have to go to work.

“Maybe…”

Please, please don’t ask.

“Maybe we could call you?” he said finally.

“Absolutely! I would LOVE that. Let’s remember to tell Mommy in the morning okay?” I said with relief dripping from every word.

“Good night! I love you” and I closed the door and walked downstairs.

When I returned to my bed, finally, my heart still racing, thumping in my chest from the adrenaline rush of his first, almost unheard, cry. I looked at the clock and couldn’t believe what I saw.

4:16am

On Sunday we went to the mall with my Okapis. While Elijah, my 3-year old son, got a haircut with Mommy and Abuelita, I got Jordyn, his twin sister, all to myself. And it was lovely. One of the biggest frustrations I have during the week is not only do I not get enough time with my Okapis, I don’t get good time with my Okapis. I get the worst time of the day with them, the time when they are their most tired and that is the most structured. They need to eat. They need to take their vitamins. They need to change into PJs. They need to get nebbied. They need to brush their teeth. They need to go to bed. They need to do it within 1.5 hours of me coming home. I just don’t understand why it doesn’t become a lovefest every single night.

I also almost never get time alone with either of them. We keep meaning to change that, but keep running into challenges. Of course, the time I had with Jordyn was lovely; we even got a chance to look at some clothes for her. She is ridiculously smart, very observant and does wonderful things with her tone of voice – not only does she pick up new vocabulary very well, she is astute enough to mimic the tone, as well, appropriately. I don’t get to see that side of her enough at home, but at the mall with all of that stimulation and the fact that she has been there more than I have because she goes with my wife – especially when it is cold or wet – it really comes out. I was having a great time when Elijah, my wife and her mother met up with us.

Then it was as if I had disappeared.

Before I knew it I was standing alone, and the transition from special time with Jordyn to being invisible was jarring. I was so taken aback by the shift from being The Daddy to all of a sudden being what felt like nothing. I get special time with my Okapis – we call it Los Tres Amigos time, but I don’t get one-on-one time and was amazed at how special, how enjoyable it was and then, as I was just getting warmed up, it was gone.

I did recover and even got some nice one-on-one time with Elijah when we went to buy little basketballs to play with in our backyard. Then we quickly grabbed some lunch and afterwards, I was left behind at the table while everyone else started walking to the car. It was that same sensation of no longer being visible. I was carrying the loot we had purchased (my wife calls me “my pack mule”) and trying to catch up, when all of a sudden Elijah dropped back and wanted to hold hands with me. So my wife took the cup I was holding and I held hands with him. Then Jordyn fell back so she could hold hands with me and I gave the bags to my mother-in-law. I went from wonderful individual time to a jarring sense of invisibility back to being The Daddy again, holding hands with my beautiful Okapis and loving every minute of it.

“This is the life,” I said to them.

“This is the best part of my life,” Jordyn said.

“It’s the best part of my life, too, Sweetie Girl.”

And another weekend sadly came to an end in the Okapi household.

The other night our whole family went to have Chinese food together. As we were getting ready to go outside into the frigid cold, I started zipping up Elijah’s jacket, but was having a little bit of trouble. It was the second or third time I had done it that day and now I was pretty certain. I turned to my wife and said, “I think we need to get him another jacket. He is getting too big for this one.”

“No!” he almost screamed.

“What, Elijah?”

“No, but I’m not getting big. I don’t want to be bigger!”

And therein lies the crux of many of our problems.

I’ve always thought that most children wanted to grow up fast. Being older or bigger means being able to do things they can’t do now, it means privileges, rights, they don’t currently have. It is only as we get older that we wish for time to slow down, to pass by less rapidly. But I am finding myself perplexed that neither of my twin three-year olds really want the privileges of growing up.

My children started sleeping in toddler beds when they were a little older than two-and-half years. We transitioned them after a week where they seriously tried to climb out of their cribs (Elijah even jumped out in anger) and complained about how they didn’t want to sleep in their cribs anymore. But now, several times a week, they tell me they want their cribs back, that they miss their cribs. The same cribs they wanted out of their room so they could sleep freely and get in and out of bed whenever they wanted. While I’m pretty certain if we brought the cribs back into their room, they would get very upset, we’re not going to find out. There is no going back.

In addition, my children are not potty-trained. And have absolutely no desire to use a potty. None whatsoever. I joke that they will see the benefits of using a potty when they are packing to go off to college. When they have to choose between a suitcase of their clothes or iPod accessories and bringing that silly box of diapers, they’ll say, “Oh, I don’t need those anymore.” Then, and only then, will we finally be done with diapers. We have tried so many different things to persuade, to bribe, to entice them to give it a shot, but they are adamant. Sure, they complain when we change their diapers, but even that doesn’t make them want to use the potty.

When it comes to eating, Jordyn is willing to eat most things even if she only really wants to use her fingers. Elijah, however, struggles with eating almost every night. His modus operandi is to procrastinate until just about everyone else at the table has finished. Then, after having been reminded and then urged and even enticed to eat, my wife or his Tia or his Abuelita or his Nana will try to feed him until he is done. He clearly seems to relish being fed by the women in his life he loves the most.

This summer Elijah and Jordyn will start camp and in the fall they will start pre-school for the first time. They have never been to daycare, because we didn’t want anyone else taking care of our children. Instead of daycare, my wife stayed home to be with them every day. Now, they don’t want to leave Mommy, they don’t want to go to school. This also means we are unable to use school as an incentive to being potty trained.

I believe all of these issues are related by the fact that my children don’t want to be bigger, they don’t want to grow up, they don’t want to lose being a baby. I know that this is “normal” in the developmental process, but it has been going on for a rather long time. They don’t want the rights and privileges that go along with getting older. They are fearful of the unknown future and the changes it might bring them. They want the comfort of what is familiar, of Mommy, and hopefully, even of Daddy.

But I wonder if we are sending them a message that we don’t want them to grow up? Or maybe we are pushing them too hard to grow up? I really don’t think so, though I am not certain enough to rule it out. I do feel like we are dealing with forces we don’t fully understand – the toddler mind.

One of the reasons I became a therapist is because I have always had a gift in being able to understand people, their motives, their thought processes, to intuit their feelings. This has certainly helped me with my children, more than I ever imagined actually. But, it is not enough and it is situations like these, these larger developmental issues, psychological struggles, where I feel the gulf of lack of communication between us and them. They can’t tell us what is going on. They probably don’t even know. But it is our job to help them nonetheless without hurting them too badly in the process.

Right now, I feel we are stuck in the middle of two opposing forces. My children on one side, wanting to stay exactly the way they are, not wanting to get bigger, to get older and the reality of school and clothes and everything else that signals our children are getting older and older every single day. What makes this even more difficult is while I am tired of changing diapers and of cleaning up after their messy eating, I am sad to see their clothes get too small for them. I am sad to see the toddler accent disappear. I am sad my little girl doesn’t easily fit on my chest anymore or that carrying them both at the same time is harder and harder. This is the best my life has ever been and a part of me doesn’t want it to change, either. But I keep this buried in the corner of my heart and hope that they don’t notice, hope that sharing their growing up experience continues to be the most incredible time of my life.

I have written quite a bit about how hard leaving my three-year old twins every morning is for me. To sum up: I hate it. I hate leaving them every morning and feel there is something fundamentally flawed with a society that makes it so difficult for parents to stay home with young children.

Yesterday that difficult experience took a surreal turn. Yesterday, I didn’t leave my children to go to work. Instead, I brought them with me! My wife and I and our children took the train and the subway together to get to where I work. I kept reminding them this is how Daddy goes to work every day and they seemed like they were trying to absorb it all.

I took the opportunity to bring them to work because my wife had a meeting elsewhere in the city. When we got to my stop, we all got off and said goodbye to Mommy. They handled it very smoothly and we started walking out of the subway into the building I work, while she got back on the subway to head to her meeting.

When we got inside they were SO shy. Everyone was excited to meet them (apparently, seeing two bulletin boards of pictures and the hundreds of pictures on my screensaver is just not enough) and this was a bit overwhelming for them. I’ve been working there since before they were born and many of my colleagues have heard quite a bit about my children. Now, they are closing in on 3.5 years and haven’t been to my office in over a year.

After awhile they did get comfortable and behaved very well – even letting me get some work done while they were there. At one point, I stood up from my desk to go talk to a colleague and bumped into my children. For a brief moment I had gotten lost in what I was doing and I was taken aback to find them there. Something about that unnerved me, but I wasn’t quite sure at the time what it was.

I had been wanting to bring them in for some time and I think they really enjoyed it – especially Elijah who has more trouble than Jordyn with my leaving. That place, my work, is the cause of so much pain for him, I’m quite surprised he didn’t spit and stomp all over it. Instead, he enjoyed seeing the place that takes me away from them. When we had lunch afterwards he said, “Remember we went to your work?” When my children ask me if I remember something, they usually ask about something that has significance to them – not necessarily a positive experience, but a significant one. When Elijah does it, he tends to be asking about stuff that connects him to his parents. It is possible that seeing my work was another connection to me for him – rather than the cause of pain it has always been.

For me the experience was captured by that moment where I was taken aback to find them there. Work has always been separate from my children and having them there was like the bringing together of two worlds that were meant to always be separate. How many times have I been at work, looking at their pictures, wondering why I do this every single day? How many times have I gotten a phone call from Gem and wanted to leave work right then? How many times have I walked out the door, still hearing their screams in my head? How many times have I heard my children ask me, “You have to go to work?” and wishing I could say no, but having to say yes. I have carefully built a firewall between these two lives of mine, my two worlds. Work is the place I go everyday, where I am without them, where I try to simultaneously keep my connection to them, but not think too much about them so I can get through the day. It has been a balancing act.

Today, when I was leaving for the train, Elijah said, “I’m going to miss you, Daddy,” but it didn’t have quite the same pain that saying goodbye has often had in the past. Maybe seeing work, sitting in my chair, playing with stuff on my desk, seeing all of my pictures of them, is helping him with my leaving.

When I walked into work this morning, however, as usual they weren’t with me, but I remember them having been there. Those same images that might help my children deal with my leaving better seem to threaten to ruin my firewall configuration, to blur the line between my two worlds; the world where I want to be, the other where I have to be.

It’s springtime and you know what that means… babies! Maybe it’s just that we’ve all been bundled up all winter, but around here, spring seems to mean babies are everywhere. Whether they’re peering out of strollers, hanging in a sling, playing on a blanket in a park or patiently awaiting their arrival in mommy-to-be’s belly, babies abound in beautiful weather. (Must be the result of Mommy and Daddy being cooped up during winter…)
So, whether you have to buy a gift for a new baby, big brother or big sister or have a new arrival coming into your own household, Gaga Goods is the place to find gifts you’ll go ‘gaga’ for.

Gaga Goodiebags are a Clever Parents favorite. The Big Brother Goodiebag is chock full of toys for the special fella including a Learn to Draw Animals Magic Slate from Crocodile Creek, Extra Large Crazy Faces Playing Cards from eeBoo, A Day at the Zoo Play Scene from Mudpuppy, A Bug Checkers Magnetic Travel Game from eeBoo, a 7″ Polka Dot Playground Ball from Crocodile Creek and a great Big Brother tee (in size 2, 4 or 6) packed in a Gaga Goodiebag tote.

Other faves include birthday sets like the “birthday girl” tee and “gimme cake” bib and the bestseller “two peas in a pod” gift set for twins, designed by Gaga Goods owner, designer and mom of three, Kathryn Adler. More bestsellers include the Big Brother/Big Sister tees and for babies, the most popular designs are: Sweet Pea, Lil Punkin, Prince Charming & Fairy Princess.

Learn more and shop away at www.gagagoods.com

I knew as soon as I met my husband that he would be a great father. We agreed early in our marriage that we wanted several kids (he wanted five, I wanted a more reasonable three). So six months into our post-wedding bliss we decided to start the baby-making process. At first it was fun, as you might expect. But quickly we discovered that things weren’t going to happen as we planned, and further measures than the regular old bedroom romp would be needed to produce our first baby.

We sought the expertise of a fertility specialist, which was the most emotionally draining time of our lives. The amount of needles, blood tests, ultrasounds, and the abundance of terms like “timed intercourse”, “insemination” and “ovarian hyerstimulation” were enough to ruin any marriage. Luckily, we prevailed, and finally on September 18, 2005 the home pregnancy pee stick turned POSITIVE!

Beyond thrilled, we headed into the fertility doc’s office two weeks later for our first pregnancy ultrasound! The doctor had told us it would be very early to see much, so the main goal was to see “how many” were growing in there. The treatment we had done had a risk of multiples, so they wanted to make sure there were only one or two babies growing. While we knew there was a risk for more than two, we had pushed it back in our minds and took the attitude of “we’ll deal with it if and when it happens”.

Well it happened. That day we found out we were having TRIPLETS! Seeing those three little embryos on the screen made me almost pee in my pants and my husband almost passed out. The doc warned us one would probably miscarry, but not our little ones. We prevailed and so did they!

It was a difficult pregnancy. Thirteen weeks of strict bed rest (I could only get up to use the bathroom), open surgery at twenty weeks pregnant to remove a gallbladder filled with fifty tiny stones, three hospital stays before the big one at the end when I was admitted for pre-eclampsia. Finally, on April 13, 2006 at 9:30pm baby A’s water broke and off to the ER we went.

Robert came out first weighing 3 pounds, 9 ounces. Owen followed at 4 pounds, 6 ounces, and Quinn came out last at 5 pounds 2 ounces. Three healthy boys! The doctors were amazed at how big they were for being born 7 weeks early, and I assured them (during the c-section mind you) that all the Dairy Queen I ate finally paid off!

The boys spent 2 weeks in the NICU learning how to eat, and on the first of May we brought them home. They are now a year old and what a year it has been!

My wife and I were taking a few minutes to catch up with our days when she said, “Did I tell you what Jordyn did today during nebby?”

“I don’t think so.” Nebby is what we call the nebulizer. We have to nebulize our two-year old twins every night to try and prevent asthma from developing and to decrease the congestion in their pulmonary system.

“She was holding her Elmo in a blanket and patting him on the back saying, ‘It’s okay, Elmo. It’s okay. It’s almost over and then you’ll feel better. You feel better, right?’”

Tears were welling up in both of our eyes and we couldn’t say anything at all. I had no trouble picturing my little girl doing that, hearing her voice in my head, seeing Elmo snuggled up in her arms.

“That little girl has been through so much.” My voice sounded hoarse, cracky and my wife looked like she hadn’t heard me.

“I know. I know,” she said, her voice sounding far away.

Our daughter and son were born almost two-and-a-half months early. She weighed only three pounds. She had trouble breathing and needed a ventilator for a couple of days until she could breathe enough on her own. She spent one month in the hospital before we could bring her home with us.

Two months after she was born, before her due date, and only four weeks after she came home from the hospital, Jordyn required laser eye surgery on both of her eyes to prevent her retinas from becoming detached and going blind. I’ll never forget waiting all morning for the surgery to start while she was starving and thirsty from not being allowed to eat or drink anything – as if the surgery wasn’t torture enough. Then afterwards, my little girl’s face was swollen and she clearly didn’t feel good, but she had no idea what was happening. I wanted so badly to help but there was nothing I could do for her. My wife and I comforted ourselves by telling each other she wouldn’t remember any of this. If it had to happen, now is the best time since she wouldn’t have any knowledge of it as she got older.

A few months later we found this thing on her belly and day after day this thing grew and we had to take her to a specialist. Because this growth could become cancerous, she needed to have it removed. I will never forget pinning her down with my hands to prevent her from jerking around, trying to soothe her with my voice and listening to her scream and cry. Afterwards my ears echoed with the sounds of her screams the way it does after leaving a bad rock concert. All of this while my face was only inches away from the doctor slicing the growth off of her belly. As she grows, her scar grows with her, a constant reminder of that traumatic day. I keep hoping it will disappear, allowing me to pretend she never had to go through this.

Shortly thereafter, we found out that while the eye surgery saved her from going blind, it wasn’t enough. The problem was her brain wasn’t paying attention to the signals one of her eyes sent. If that continued for too long, she would lose her sight completely in that eye. The solution was for her to wear a patch over one eye for one hour a day to try and strengthen the weaker eye.

The hour she wore the patch quickly became the worst hour of the day for all three of us. She would rip it off as soon as we turned away and we would have to put a new one on. Then we started to notice every time she ripped it off, she was ripping out her eyebrow hair as well. The patch the doctor recommended was essentially a band-aid and stuck to her face with adhesive. Before I knew it, I found myself pinning her down once again just to put the damn patch on her. If we put the patch on her, we were clearly causing her pain. If we didn’t put the patch on her, we would allow her to go blind. We chose the lesser of two evils and hated ourselves for hurting her so much.

Then the doctor said she needed to wear the patch for six hours a day because her eye was getting even worse. Getting Jordyn to wear the sticky patch for most of the day was a horrific struggle with neither of us winning. She would rip it off, we would put it back on only so she could rip it off again. Within a day or two she developed irritation over her eyes from ripping the patch off so much. Fortunately, I found a place on the web called Patch Pals (www.patchpals.com). The patches could fit over Jordyn’s glasses and they had designs on them. We bought her a panda and a helicopter to try out.

They changed everything. She thought they were adorable, she got to choose which one she wanted and if she took her glasses off, it was easy and painless to put them back on. All of a sudden six hours a day was relatively easy – which worked out very well since when we went back to the doctor he wanted her to wear it eight hours a day. He also told us she would have to wear it eight hours a day for about one year and would wear a patch for a significant part of the day until she was six or seven years old.

During the initial patching period, we found out that both of our children have something called Reactive Airway Disease. It is essentially the precursor to asthma. Both of our children’s air passages are smaller than they should be (primarily because they were born so premature) and when they get colds, the mucous restricts airflow and they have difficulty breathing. To prevent this from happening, they have to be nebulized every night with a preventative medicine and if they have a cold or are coughing with an additional medicine as well.

It has been almost three years of surgeries, of patches, of nebulization. Three years of consoling ourselves that she has been too young to remember what she has been through, that it probably hurts us more than it hurts her. But when my little girl comforts her Elmo, mimicking the way we have comforted her through all that she has been through, our hearts break. She does remember. Maybe not all of it, maybe not everything, but too much. And as much as I want to, I can’t do anything to change that.

But I have to remind myself that she comforts Elmo, because she has experienced our comfort, our love, and it has helped her. When I see her running around or intently watching a video or trying to read a book, I wonder if, even though she has been through so much, and remembers more than we had hoped, she has been affected less than we feared. My little girl doesn’t have cancer, she can breathe well, she can still see. It could’ve been so much worse for all of us. Everything we did was not to hurt her, but to save her from something even worse. She comforts Elmo because we succeeded, not because we failed.

Q. Do you have any tips on helping 2-yr.old twins who tantrum at the same time and very, very often? Most of the time I’m the only one there to listen and it just doesn’t seem like it’s enough!

A. It sounds like you’ve got a challenging situation on your hands! I’m glad you’ve asked for our help. It’s really hard when two children both have issues at the same time. And this often happens, because once one child is upset, the other child becomes very sensitive to whatever feelings he or she has stored up. Then, off they both go.

It sounds like you’ve got a challenging situation on your hands! I’m glad you’ve asked for our help. It’s really hard when two children both have issues at the same time. And this often happens, because once one child is upset, the other child becomes very sensitive to whatever feelings he or she has stored up. Then, off they both go. I think that it will be good to think of your children as each having an “emotional project” that they are working on. Maybe it’s frustration—two is an age when a child’s expectations of what they can do and how the world should work for them often runs far ahead of what they can actually accomplish. So they expect a lot, and don’t tolerate dashed expectations at all. This is actually a good thing–we don’t want children who are willing to go around feeling discouraged all the time! We want children who hope for a lot, try for a lot, and blast off a lot of feelings when it all doesn’t work out 100%. Their strategy–get the upset out of the way the minute it hurts –is really challenging for a parent (especially one parent with twins!) but also very normal, healthy and intelligent.

Small children are smart to tantrums. Smart to toss out the frustration or bigger feelings spinning around inside. Often, little frustrations can trigger a child’s storehouse of feelings left over from things we might not even consider. A crowded prenatal environment, a difficult birth, early separation because of medical issues, or other common occurrences with twins that no one considers out of the ordinary, might be quite hard on a vulnerable infant. So if a child’s tantrum goes on for more than about 15 minutes, you can guess that he or she has moved on from offloading a momentary frustration to working through an issue that has caused some fear or deeper uncertainty. And, as loud or maybe even uncomfortable as it may be for a sensitive parent, this is all perfectly OK.

So, to handle the situation (which will resolve over time, I promise) there are a couple of strategies that will help you. The first is to find a listener for yourself–someone who won’t interrupt you, won’t judge you or your parenting, who won’t give advice, and who will marvel at your love, your energy, and your resourcefulness, even when you’re describing your hardest moments. You’re working very hard and you deserve some caring attention!

We have a booklet on how to set up a Listening Partnership, in which you exchange this kind of listening with another person, perhaps another parent or a friend. You can find it at http://www.handinhandparenting.org/literature.html. The chance to relax, to talk about how hard you are working and the kinds of feelings that come up when both children are beside themselves is often uniquely valuable and helpful.

Second, just sit down, keep the kids from hurting themselves or each other, and listen. When they begin to wind down, ask them warmly as possible, “Are you still thinking about the toast I cut the wrong way?” or “Yes, your sister has the ball you want. I’ll help you wait for it” or “We really do need to brush teeth now. Are you ready yet?” and if they’re not finished being upset, they’ll go right back to an intense tantrum or cry, scrubbing out the emotional distress that has filled their mind. You can spend a minute offering connection to one, then turn to the other and offer a minute to him/her. Or longer. You can try to keep a hand on the one you’re not looking at, so that each of them have some sign of your willingness to connect. The longer the tantrum goes, the faster your child will move through the emotional project he or she has started.

If you are tired and out of patience yourself, as they begin, you can sit with them, manage general safety, and have a cry yourself. We all have days that can be improved this way! Just try to stay close to them, because they need a general eye out for them while they’re working things through, but it’s OK for you to release some feelings, too–your job is such a big one, and you’ve been struggling through for a couple of years now! The example brings your children that much closer to you, reminding them that Mommies and Daddies have feelings just like they do.

Times when you’re too stretched to pay good attention while they tantrum, try to at least stay close by–being abandoned by an adult while feelings are wide open is a scary thing for a child, and it prolongs the upset greatly. Closeness, attention, openness to the feelings, and reassurance that you’ll stay with them even when it’s hard is really all your children need from you–they’re doing the hard work of clearing out upsets and recovering from emotional bumps and bruises. They just need the space to do that, with your caring flowing toward them whenever possible.

If you’re interested in more about the how and why this approach is so effective, you can review our Suggested Reading list or website for additional resources.

You know how some parents look forward to going back to work to get a break from their children and spouses? I’m not one of them. I hate going to work in the morning. Absolutely hate it. I hate leaving my family – especially on Monday after I have spent so much time with them during the weekend. To make matters worse, my twin 19-month old children hate it, too. Sometimes they will cry and scream when I lean down to say goodbye. Other times they cling to me when I give them a hug and refuse to let go – as if I really want to leave in the first place.

My children have developed different ways of dealing with my leaving in the morning. Jordyn, my little girl, has somehow learned on her own to keep her connection to me throughout the day. She will point to pictures of me and yell out, “Da-Dee!” Or, and this just broke my heart, she will pick up my sneakers, take them to my wife and say, “Da-Dee shoes.” When she started to do this, my leaving in the morning wasn’t as hard on either of us.

But for my little boy, my leaving was much harder on him. When he gets excited, he sometimes actually has to back away from what got him so excited while his whole body shakes with emotion. He is already quite attuned to his emotions; he just doesn’t have the tools yet to deal with all of them. To deal with my leaving, he either would cry or scream or remain distant. When I came home at night he would barely acknowledge me, while his sister would scream out “Daddy” and lift up her arms for me to pick her up. I felt hurt and angry – mostly at myself – thinking about how much I was hurting Elijah every morning.

This continued until my wife observed that somehow Jordyn was able to remain connected to me during the day, while Elijah wasn’t and that was why he had such a difficult time. The challenge became how to help Elijah feel connected to me during the day.

My first thought was maybe a piece of clothing, like one of my shirts. I also took a lunch hour to look around at different stores to see if there was something I could buy that could better tie us together in his mind. While I was trying to find a long-term solution, I decided to give him the towel I use when I ride my bike in the morning. I asked him to take care of it for me during the day as I gave him a hug and a kiss goodbye.

The second day I gave it to him, he said “Tow-a?” The third day, my wife told me that he had been in our bedroom while I was at work and had found one of my work shirts on the floor. He then laid down and put his head on it and said, “Da-Dee.” He got it! He connected to me while I was not there. When she told me about that, I had tears in my eyes.

This morning, a few weeks after we started the “interim” solution of the towel, he was reaching out for it because he couldn’t wait to hold it. During the day, he tries to put it on his shoulder and wear it like I do. Now, not only do they not get too upset when I leave, but they even wave “Bye, Bye” to me as I drive my car in front of the house on my way to work. Work, where I have pictures of them all over my wall and have a slideshow of them as my screensaver – trying to keep that connection to them during the day so I don’t get too upset.

TWINS !! TWINS !!

Whether they are boys or girls, or one of each, here are a few of the Notebook’s favorite baby shower gifts for the Mom expecting twins:

Skip Hop Duo Double Diaper Bag ($80) — This bag hangs on a side-by-side double stroller with ease. And looks great! Also a great carry on or travel bag. If the parents are using a front and back double stroller, go with the Skip Hop Duo bag ($54). It’s still large enough to carry all the essentials. The Moby Wrap. ($35) These wraps made of t-shirt-like material are soft, comfortable and roomy enough to carry twins (see the twins cradle hold) — a feat worth bragging about.

Graco Twins Pack and Play ($190) — The first pack and play we have seen with twin bassinets. We like it! Hanna Andersson outfits ($57-$59 for outfits above)– The Notebook’s favorite choice for outfits that don’t necessarily match, but look great in pairs. And great quality!

As a teenager growing up in Eastern Europe, Maki Temesvary grew up having facials. She loved that experience and with the help of her mother and grandmother, Maki started making her own homemade concotions with fruits and herbs from their garden. When Maki moved to the US, her skin suffered from the stress of new foods and a different lifestyle. “Everything here was new to me and along the way I forgot what I had learned back home,” says Maki. “My skin was getting worse and I developed cystic acne. Doctors prescribed a variety of drugs, but nothing seemed to really help.” Her own experience led her to years of studies in cosmetic chemistry, nutrition and aromatherapy. Maki has worked with skincare specialists from around the world and today Maki trains estheticians from around the world and performs facials on some of Hollywood’s top celebrities.

The Mi Ámore Skincare line of includes three primary products: Moisture Me After Shower Body Oil, OH Baby! Baby Butter and Natural Glow Face Complex. All are made with hand-selected ingredients from South Africa, Northern Italy, the Far East and Tahiti. “Using these rare and unique botanical oils and butters, our single goal is to provide expecting mothers with the absolute highest quality skin care products. No gimmicks, no additives and no chemicals.”

Not only do these products smell fabulous and feel great on your skin, they really do the job. One mom of twins used the Oh Baby! baby butter every day during pregnancy and not only loved that the products are all natural and the silky feel and how well it hydrated her skin all day, but “I’m happy to say, that even after twins I am stretch mark free.”

According to Mi Ámore founders Andy and Maki Temesvary, the biggest factors affecting complexion are sun exposure, smoking, genetics, stress and lifestyle (e.g. food, exercise and daily skin care ritual). What tips can they share for people in search of a beautiful complexion? “As a general thought, less is more. A glowing complexion comes from the following basic daily skin care practices: cleanse, exfoliate, moisturize and protect with daily SPF sunscreen. In addition, we need to keep in mind that what we put on and in our bodies affects how we look and feel. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is key to having beautiful skin, but the real secret to glowing skin is to know your skin type and care for in accordingly. Too many people treat their skin with the wrong products. Instead of improving the condition of their skin they worsen it by overdoing it.”

“The biggest complaint and problem pregnant woman come to Mi Ámore for help with is a change in their skin condition, especially the face. Some skin becomes more oily or more dry than usual. Woman that never have acne usually break out and those who usually have acne see an improvement in their skin condition. This usually happens all within the first trimester. The first three months of the pregnancy affect the skin the most due to the shift in hormone levels. Mi Ámore’s Natural Glow face complex was created to help balance, hydrate and calm the skin with antioxidants, essential fatty acids and flavonoids. Stretch marks also are a major concern with the expansion of a woman’s belly. As the breasts and abdomen grow, most women develop stretch marks across the belly and breasts. These small, depressed streaks of differently textured skin can be pink, reddish-brown or dark brown, depending on the woman’s skin color. It will help if you gain only the recommended amount of weight (usually 25-35 pounds), and do so slowly. Moisturize your body to reduce itchiness and dry skin. Mi Ámore’s Oh Baby! Belly Butter! and Moisture Me after shower body oil were formulated to help prevent stretch marks and relieve itchiness and dryness of the skin. “Pregnancy Mask” is another top complaint woman write to us about. Some women experience a brownish darkening of the facial skin. This change is called the “mask of pregnancy”. It is more common in women with dark hair and pale skin. The woman usually has brownish, uneven marks on the forehead, temples and middle of her face, around the eyes or over the nose. The darkened areas may get even darker when exposed to sunlight. Most of these marks usually fade after delivery.”

“A woman’s skin (and body) goes through many changes over the course of the pregnancy, some temporary. Overall, keep it simple. Treat your skin as it is after pregnancy not as it was before. Though you are now extremely busy with your new bundle of joy, don’t neglect your face and body. Take a few moments to cleanse and moisturize before going to bed, allowing your skin to rejuvenate itself.”

Learn more about the Mi Ámore line and purchase products at www.miamoreskincare.com. Also, look for new products coming soon: Mi Ámore’s Moroccan Mommy Mask and C-Section Scar Therapy as well as a new, natural and organic line of baby care products.