Daddy, I’ll tell you what I want, what I really, really want – and I want it now
DOUBLE TROUBLE FOR A FIRST-TIME DAD OF TWINS
LIFE has changed a lot, since those carefree days of early March, when I last wrote this column.
We’re trapped in the eye of a storm and our everyday existence is a challenge. It will change but until then all we can do is hope and pray the twins learn how to share, sleep past 6am or sit down at the table to eat meals.
Obviously, there’s the global pandemic as well, but an advantage to having three-year-old twins is our lives are already full, so Covid is akin to a celebrity cameo appearance in a
disaster movie.
It’s part of the picture but not the leading role amid the everpresent chaos – that’s reserved for Thomas and Emma, who’ve changed so much, I now refer to early 2020 as the good ole days.
For a start, they don’t stop moving from the moment they wake up (too early) to the moment they go to bed (too late).
I can remember when naptime was an event but that glorious hour when you were afforded precious time to cook, clean, wash or complete other domestic chores in peace is no more.
It’s just non-stop action, like being trapped in 24-hour-long Mad Max sequel, where nights are spent cleaning up the chaotic violence of the day, readying to do it all again.
Secondly, they’ve been talking for a bit, but they hadn’t realised the full power of the spoken word.
They now understand they can put ‘I want’ in front of anything, repeat it louder and louder until the thing they ‘want’ happens.
Initially, I refuse to cave in, remembering how J. Paul Getty didn’t agree to a ransom for his kidnapped grandson despite the endless intimidation.
Admittedly, they cut off his
grandson’s ear but in Mr Getty’s defence he did negotiate the ransom down from $17m to $2m.
Fortunately, it very rarely gets to the stage when they threaten physical violence because I cave in and give them exactly what they ‘want’.
Thirdly, there are the endless challenging questions. Emma was firing so many at me about the workings of the fridge, I later realised my missing phone was next to the butter in the door shelf. I’d put it there having lost the power of rational thought under interrogation. This sounds like I’m complaining, and don’t get me wrong, I am definitely complaining but it’s also been fascinating to watch them transform into mini human beings.
It also goes some way to explain why parents idolise their children because it’s never that long since they were only capable of lying in a basket, looking cute and crying.