How parenting changes you and brings you a new skills set (Parenting in general)

Member Name: Happyjaw

Product:	Parenting in general
Date:	06/02/09 (114 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: You could mastermind a world takeover, if only you had a babysitter

Disadvantages: A 24 hour job without the pay

In the early part of 2005 I found myself stood in the kitchen eating pickled onions and once the whole jar was empty I had the first notion that perhaps I should take a pregnancy test. Not one solitary onion remained in the brand new jar.

That moment heralded the beginning of the biggest change in my life. From childhood to adulthood takes years, teen to real adult and so on, even a degree takes three years but a pregnancy is just nine months, or less and BAM! All change at parenthood station.
Parenting has been my great delight, my biggest challenge and my best education, a real all round life changing event and one which will be a part of me forever now.

My twins were born in 2005 and life has never been so amusing nor so difficult and I wouldn't change it for the world. No matter what they put me through, I love them dearly.

We had a really lovely health visitor for a little while, a bit of a hippy, all long hair and long skirts with a 'love cures all ills' attitude. I suspect she may have been related to Mary Poppins. She gave me the sage advice that it takes about a year for a couple or parent to adapt to the changes that come with the birth of a child. That made perfect sense of course but my interpretation of her comments differ now. She meant that everything changes, everything you are is redefined. You are a family not just a couple, a parent rather than a person and a raging maniac lacking sleep instead of a colleague.
A late night is 9pm in the first few weeks or months, that person who was regularly out at 4 am night clubbing is a distant memory, sleep is your best friend. Even spontaneity becomes a rarity when you have to feed and change the baby and pack a bag first before setting foot outside the door, by which time you've been vomited on twice and the smell of milk sick is now de riguer.

Our twins presented us with horrors to deal with;
My partner found to his shock one morning that Twingle 2 can get out of her cotbed - she was 14 months old and so NOT ready for a bed yet.
Twingle 2 is very energetic, excessively curious, excellent at meddling, fantastic at emptying drawers and boxes, loves switches , gadgets and climbing and can mountaineer anything like a mounbtain goat - she really needed to stay in a cot a while longer and we hadn't anticipated that problem yet.
She only had smaller toys in her cotbed, a lesson learned from my own childhood, so we knew it wasn't a one off from climbing on a pile of toys.
Our girls are very tall and the recommendation that the cotbed sides should be up to 75% of their height was quickly not being met. Having said that, we think her method of escape was a bit more white knuckle than a normal climb, we think she jumped and hurled her top half out over the rail. She can get her foot onto the rail too but not quite high enough to climb out yet.
What could we do?
For safeties sake we put a mattress on the floor beside her cotbed in case she launched herself out again. We could have done with an extra rail to attach to the cot side but my googling for such an item yielded no results.
Someone jokingly suggested a dog crate and the idea of such constant safety was tempting for a just a second, they only come in shades of black or brown though.
She's just not the kind of child you let loose at night. Twingle 2 takes my knickers off the radiators when they've been washed and runs round the house with them on her head! Does that seem the actions of a child who should be allowed to roam free? Nope!




I had got to the stage of considering the virtues of putting extra strong velcro on the back of all her pyjamas and sewing a corresponding a strip on her sheets.

So, faced with a problem solving test worthy of Mensa I googled myself silly and found all sorts of things I never knew existed, including giant sized cots with roof bars for giant sized babies.... the erm... adult variety. Realising the internet would not be my saviour I had to think of what we had on hand. We ended up with the two cots in a peculiar L shape against the walls, creating extra high sides and breathed a sigh of relief.
It didn't take long for our gruesome twosome to suss a new technique and the two of them started cot swapping on a regular basis much to our amusement and terror.
By 15 months we had to give in and both girls ended up in their cot beds with Tommee Tippee bed sides and that began a new test, the 'stay in your bed and sleep' test.

Every stage of a childs development brings new possibilities, new scrapes to get into, new ways to damage themselves or you or your house and new ways to cause you sleepless nights or cost you money trying to solve the problem. It could be keeping them alive, dressed, clean or fed but they will always find a way to challenge the very basic principles of parenting. Refusing food, screaming worthy of NSPCC interest at bath time, trying to bounce head first out of cots, they are demonically creative and you have to think on your feet powered by your sleep deprived brain.

In the weeks following the advent of beds we were treated to such Olympic events as;
They emptied all clothes from chest of drawers, removed the drawers, and sat in the recess of unit. Seriously messy and the unit becomes much lighter and therefore more easily moved. Scary furniture wrangling ensued.
They opened the wardrobe and climbed in - Daddy couldn't find them until one accidently moved the door and they were found. Worrying for Daddy, hilarity for Mummy, doors tied together with a hairband and later an IKEA door guard which may remain until they leave home at this rate.
One day we find a twin stuck under the bed after yodelling banshee style down the monitor, she climbed under but hadn't developed the skills to reverse, cue twingle 2 screaming in panic and me leaping up the stairs Olympiad style.
They discovered that the radiator doubles as ladder, twingle 2 was found on the window ledge (mysteriously without nappy) and you thought the mountain goat comment was a joke!
Another day an arm was stuck between bed head and wall, cue screaming again. Twingle 2 (surprised how often it's 2? ) found fun in dropping dummy down the gap between headboard and wall, tried to retrieve it, her arm got stuck. Mummy learns how to leap 14 steps in under 3 seconds as a result.

Bizarrely we considered ourselves out tortured by our friends child who had the most wonderful brightly coloured plastic car bed and was found screaming beneath it in a similar incident, strange reminiscencent of a tragic Toytown accident. Imagine the scene at A&E, he was run over by his own car!

Parents carry the strangest things with them. Tiny boxes of raisins and random small toys, dummies, bibs and a vast array of other clutter. Sometimes these items are a full on assault weaponry section against screaming, sometimes they'll only enable you to finish your 30 second cup of tea before all hell breaks loose. A kid kit must be carefully planned and you have to have a bag to keep it all in and it just gets bigger as you spend more and more time rummaging in the deeper echelons to find that elusive dummy/Peppa Pig figure/BickiePeg.
I managed to whittle my bag down to something smaller than a cruise trunk once the girls were potty trained but found I was spending more money when I was out, buying them drinks and snacks and small items of badly moulded plastic to keep them entertained whilst I did the normal and boring parts of being an adult, shopping and so on. Now we're back onto a bag slightly smaller than suitcase and armed with spare knickers for accidents and the accompanying wipes, chocolate bribery, a selection of Barney match cards, several uninflated balloons and a Mr Men book. This is of course besides my own junk.
So the concept of Yummy Mummy is slightly limited by the fashionistas provision of kid kit sized bags. At the moment big bags are in, 1 for the mummies!

Parents sometimes have to deal with things they never wanted to deal with. I have a weak stomach for blood and gore besides the more frequent poop and vomit, so potty training was a delight (I have a whole review on that treat too!).
We started again with the blasted potty training with the gruesome twosome at 2.5, now to some of you it will seem rather late but we'd tried it before and frankly it was a waste of time.
Twins have their own development issues and potty training can be one of them.
So, this time Twingle 2 (the oh so giddy and outgoing one) took to it like a duck to water. Ish. The potty HAD to be the Royal Potty. . The stickers were irrelevant, it was the HUGE box of chocolate buttons to be doled out at regular piddle intervals which helped.
We had a couple of trainer wee's (the ones in the trainers, down the legs and over the floor which involve the trainers going in the wash) and a couple of pants poo's (Disney princess knickers full of poo anyone?) but otherwise she's did very well and we don't even have to reward her with chocolate anymore.
Twingle 1 is a totally different toilet.... I mean story. She squatted next to the potty, she decided the middle of the night was the time for potty training and demanded to be taken for a wee, despite otherwise being perfectly happy to use nappies.
One night, in the middle of the bath she decided she needed the loo, ok, fair enough... except she decided that after she watched herself wee in the bath, where poor Twingle 2 was playing with the bath letters. Cue shower.
Then, once she's in her pj's and armed with a nappy she decides it's time to go again, just when I'm lifting Twingle 2 out of the shower, bad timing but no problem, I shot into action and had pj bottoms and nappy off in record time, except there's a warm wet piddle in the nappy and a dreadfully earnest child sat on the loo doing nothing.
Nappy back on, Twingle 2 dressed and so on and off to bed.
One hour later there is much wailing to be heard over the monitor and when I arrive to defend my daughters from the evil monsters which must surely be creeping out of the wardrobes to eat them alive, I find Twingle 1 sat, without her nappy, on a very soggy bed happily declaring it 'wet mama, wet bed!'.
Well yeah! That's what happens when you take your DRY nappy off you wally!
Full bed change, nappy back on child with the strict instruction to go to sleep and wee in the nappy.
Then follows a reasonably quietish evening followed by a quietish night and a loud and brash morning with loud 'URGH!' sounds over the monitor.
Twingles Daddy rescues girls from nappy strewn bedroom with suspicious smells emanating.
As a result, Twingle 1 for a while went to bed with her nappy securely fastened back to front and nary a complaint was been made.
The moral of the story is that gaffer tape and reversed nappies can many a sane parent make!

How versatile we must become and how patient. How extreme our skills. Surely parents of young children are hugely useful in our ailing job market? We can invent a cure or a plan whilst running a home, dealing with the kids and still looking like we actually know what's going on. We can mend anything or make the break seem like a great invention and we can market it well, with coercion and enthusiasm. We work to be one step ahead of the opposition. Perpetually planning for eventualities and being prepared with a vast artillery of insane ideas.

Several months later and bringing us right up to date the end of Twingle1's potty training;
She took herself for the long and drawn out process that is a wee for her.
She insists on having the pink trainer seat on, the footstool in just the right place and trousers and knickers entirely off and deposited on the floor for safe keeping. She them gets comfy and will either engage you in conversation or request that you leave the loo whilst she wee's.
Piddling done, she wipes, flushes, shouts 'bye wee', waves and then goes about removing the pink seat, occasionally replacing clothing, washing hands, drying and then gaily running about the house.
In this instance she neglected to replace her clothing. So, spying her little bare bottom galloping around the kitchen with glee I asked her to put her trousers and knickers back on.
Twingle1 then vanishes back in the loo.
'Great' thinks I. 'No argument.'
A couple of minutes later, after completing my task I wondered where she was and despatched Daddy to locate said bare bottomed twin.
A low groan emanated from the loo and Daddy shouts me to witness the devastation.
Having seen the resultant toothpaste decor/soap froth/toilet paper scattering and piddle misses before, I felt Daddy could deal with this one so I refused.
Then he announces that there is a pair of trousers half way round the U bend and the knickers are no where to be seen!
Oh wonderful!
He retrieved the trousers but the knickers are long gone.

In a wonderful display of dexterous parenting we used the opportunity to explain to Twingle 1 about the loss of her dearest Charlie and Lola knickers, hard earned with sticker charts for successful ablutions in the right places but now they are half way to the North Sea and will (hopefully) never be seen again.
It remains to be seen if she learned from the experience, but I know we did; we need to go back to Ikea for more of those doorguards.

If you'd like to know more about our twinsanity, I have also reviewed the 'toddler stage in general'.



My writing may appear in the same or slightly altered format on Helium, or other sites.

Summary: The highs and lows of parenting twins and what we've become as a result