The Men in My Babies' Lives

Since school started a few weeks ago, I've gotten a lot of questions about how the babies are doing and how I'm doing being back at work.  Invariably, the question is, "Getting any sleep?"  Well, yes, in fact, I'm sleeping quite well.  I'm so exhausted by the time the babies are all in bed and their bottles and breakfast are prepped for the next day and my clothes are laid out so I don't wake Joe up getting ready in the morning that it takes me absolutely no time to fall asleep.  Sometimes I'm so good at it that I'll fall asleep before I even make it to bed!

The other question, usually from women who are obvious "Mommy" types, is about how hard it must be for me to leave the babies to come to work every day.  It's true that it's harder now than it was in January when they basically just lay around the house being cute.  Now that they crawl and play and giggle and smile, I do miss them more.  And I'm lucky that they're still asleep when I leave the house, because it's harder to leave when they give me pathetic little sad faces as I slip out the door after coming home to cuddle them before an evening meeting.

But I'm also lucky that they have such amazing people taking care of them while I'm off working.  Through my new membership in a handful of multiples groups online, I've heard horror stories of women whose husbands don't help at all with the kids, whose friends and family promised help but never delivered, and who are tearing their hair out at the work, which is in turn keeping them from enjoying their children.  I remember my dental hygienist telling me the story of a patient with two-year old twins whose husband had NEVER been left alone with them.

Joe is home with the Salvateenies every day I'm at work.  He gets help with breakfast or lunch feedings nearly every day from our friend Tom, the master baby wrangler.  This Friday, when Tom is busy, our friend Rick is coming over to help in the middle of the day. If Joe needs to leave before I get home from work, or if we need a babysitter so that we can both head out someplace, my brother is there with bells on.  [After staying with our kids for 10 hours one recent Sunday, my brother told me he'd been talking to a man in a bar who related that he'd babysat for 3 kids the night before, but that at least he'd been paid $120.  My brother replied that he'd watched 3 babies for ten hours and had had to pay for his own pizza for dinner.  Of course, I offered to reimburse him for the pizza...]

We have countless female friends who drop by as well, but I think it's particularly amazing that the primary caregivers the Salvateenies interact with, who aren't me, are mostly men.  No wonder Caroline is growing into such a princess!  She's the only girl around!