40 years of wild parties didn’t kill him – twins may!
By a dad who had twin girls at 50
RONNIE Wood must be crazy. Either that or his legendary boozing over the years as guitarist with the Rolling Stones has totally pickled his brain. Twins at 68? Seriously? Yes, I’m sure there will be a nanny involved somewhere in the childcare arrangements, but he’ll still need to be active. He’ll still have babies to deal with.
I worry for him, truly I do. Forty years of rock’n’roll excess may not have killed him but being a father of two-year-old twins at the age of 70 might just accomplish what alcohol and drugs did not.
I should know — I became a father to two girls, Leila and Caitlin, two years ago when I was 50. And if I’m finding it tough at 52 (and I am, I really am), then I have no idea how poor old Ronnie will deal with it.
This time next year, some people will be telling Ronnie that the worst is over, that the first six months are the toughest. And it’s true, the first six months are tough. Given my aversion to nappies, I started life as a father of twins by striking a deal with their mother, Donna. If she took care of all the nappies, I’d do every night feed.
That arrangement lasted all of two weeks before my mum told me how awful I looked — as if I’d just survived an explosion. My hair, once jet black, had gone grey almost overnight. The continual bending to pick up the girls was playing havoc with my 6ft5in frame, too, and my back started to spasm every morning as I crawled out of bed.
However, gradually things became slightly easier. At five months the girls started sleeping through the night. It was still hard work but once you’re enjoying seven or eight uninterrupted hours’ sleep a night, everything seems so much brighter.
That’s until the little monkeys start to crawl, which they did around one month later.
Everything changes as soon as children have worked out how to get around. Nobody ever tells you this fundamental truth: as soon as a child can move itself, your life, as you knew it, is over. You are entering a period of perpetual servitude. And if it’s twins, all bets are off.
For until that point, at least when you put them down somewhere, they would still be there when you returned.
Twins may have a reputation for being in tune with each other, but clearly our two never got the memo. From the very first instant they could move, our girls have never gone in the same direction. Never.
This is not so bad when they crawl. A few cunningly deployed bits of furniture, a stairgate and a parent’s foot and you have a baby corral. Obviously, both parents can’t be out of the room at the same time, as something will be sure to happen. A child will just disappear.
Once, having been left in charge of the girls while Donna took a sacred once-every-threedays shower, I nipped to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. On my return it quickly became apparent that we were one child shy of a pair.
Caitlin was over in the corner, contentedly chewing on the edge of a rug, but Leila was nowhere to be seen. I heard a burp. I gingerly lowered myself to the floor without putting my back into full spasm and looked under the sofa.
LEILA had wedged herself in and was unable to move. However, she had found an old pen top and was chewing happily on it. I debated leaving her there while I drank my tea, but thought better of it.
This disinclination to follow each other becomes much more serious once they start to toddle. Just plonk them outside and watch what happens. One will head east, the other west. It’s uncanny — just as if they are magnetically repelling each other.
This would be tough to deal with for a young man. For a man in his 50s (or, gulp, 70s in Ronnie’s case) it’s bound to be much more so.
I have knees wrecked by years of football and, while I wait for replacement knees, a very slow jog is the best I can manage. Let me tell you now — a slow jog doesn’t catch a twoyear-old toddler.
Consequently, I have one piece of advice for Ronnie as a fellow older father: ‘Never go out with the twins alone.’
Another piece of advice would be to find yourself a cheap online provider of reading glasses. Back before children, I would sometimes spend as much as £200 on a pair of spectacles. Now I spend that amount a year, but on five pairs of replacement glasses.
For some reason, children find them fascinating. In my office I have two spare pairs, just in case the girls — who really can move very quickly these days — decide to snatch a pair off my head and make a run for it. I’m certain that somewhere on our land is a well-stocked spectacles cemetery.
Yet despite the back spasms, the wrecked knees, the rapidly greying hair (Ronnie may need to invest in even more hair dye than he does at present) and the bulk-buying of glasses, I wouldn’t have it any other way and I suspect Ronnie wouldn’t either.
My exuberant brace of poppets are a gift. For as long as my body creaks along, I will love them fiercely and without reserve. Although I really would love to know where they hide the glasses.