Child Sleeping Position: The Upside-down Pirate

For those of you that do not have children, you know about “potty training,” but you might not know about an equally daunting and important challenge called “bed training.” For those of you that are wildly imagining a process that involves a bed going through a basic training obstacle course with gun fire zipping over its head, and black eye paint applied to its camouflage sheets…you are wrong.
Bed training for the parents, is the art of reminding your children that we paid good money for their crib or bed, and we have a three bedroom house for a reason.

Bed training for the children, is the art to “Train” their parents how to share their bed.

Having twins, this is a little harder.  Because what most parents will tell you, unlike “potty training,” “bed training” is not a “once they know it, they are good” type of deal. It’s a… they are good, they are sick so you let them cuddle, you train again…they are good, you go on vacation and they have to sleep with you, you train again…they are good, they are sick again…and so on.

Times this by two if you have twins.  So with a constant “guest,” you start realizing a few things. One thing that I noticed is their different sleeping positions.  One night while I was wide awake because the “guest” wasn’t yet comfortable, I decided to name these positions.  Now that I have a blog (3^rd day and 3^rd post…doing good) I have decided to post some of them.  I will do one per post, that way if I can’t think of anything to post, I can use one off of my list (by the way the list has about 10 right now.)  So without further ado….I present to you…”THE UPSIDE-DOWN PIRATE”…

Some of you might not get the name (which I came up with at like 2am a couple of days ago) so here we go…

The child is the “upside-down.” I know that part is the easy part.

I…am the “pirate,” because… 1. With his foot in my eye, it’s like an eye-patch on a pirate. And 2. Every time he kicks me, for some reason instead of saying aaaahhh, it almost comes out Aaaaaarrrrg.  

NOTE: As a parent you are supposed to teach your kids how to have a positive attitude so I will always make a positive comment after every “Position Post”

POSSITIVE TO THIS POSITION…

With my eye completely darkened by his foot…I only need to use half of my sleeping mask instead of all of it.

Thank the football Gods for the NFL season

Yesterday was a good day, not only did I start this blog, but the news came that the NFL lockout is now over, which means there will be a full season.  This is very important because without my weekly boost of “Man-liness” I started wondering what else I would do with my weekends.

I compiled a list of actual things I did during the lockout. (NOTE: If you are a MAN some of these may be really scary, however football is back so you don’t have to worry anymore.)

I took the family to  “Sesame Street live”…

I watched an episode of Oprah with my wife…

I went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond…Twice…

And as a final sports fix….gasp….I watched Women’s Soccer…

Luckily they signed a 10 year deal so I won’t have to go through this again anytime soon.

A lesson on twins

So I will start my first post as a lesson.

 I don’t necessarily blame everybody for not totally understanding the concept of twins, but if you have them you get the same DUMB questions and comments over and over. 

This weekend I took the boys out for a Daddy Day.  Husbands, this is a great way to give your spouse some alone time, and this way you get total control on where you go and where you eat.

 At the restaurant I was asked by the waitress “Are they twins?” “Yes,” I answered knowing that this will lead to those DUMB questions and comments I mentioned earlier.  “Are they identical?” she asked. “No!” I answered trying not to yell and scream.  You see my boys at least to me, look very different.  The big difference is one is blond and the other has dark hair. There are many other differences to them, but that is a hard one to miss. So thinking I was done with the questions I felt like I had to answer or she would not take us to our table…came the question that still stuns me to this day. “Are you sure they are not identical?”

Ummmm…how do you answer that? I think as the father I would be the subject matter expert if my kids were identical or not…but I guess my credentials should be questioned for some reason. 

So here comes the lesson in hopes that you will never be that waitress.

Paternal (identical) twins,  develop from 1 egg and are identical

Fraternal (not identical) twins, each get their own egg and sperm so they will not be identical. They might look a little bit alike but not any more than a regular sibling would.

Now here is another misconception…just because they are not identical…does not mean that one is a boy and one is a girl.

As a proud father with two strong and healthy boys, I was constantly disappointed by the assumption that one of my boys was a girl (not the same one, it differed every time.)  You parents out there that have dealt with the wrong gender guessing will understand my pain.  There is no way to avoid these want to be “psychic baby gender guessers.” I say NO WAY because I tried them all.  I tried dressing them in blue, having them carry a football with them, and once saying the word “Boys” every three words, and I still got this…

So the moral to this lesson…if you are going to be a parent, get ready for stupid questions.  Instead of getting mad…save it, and start a blog.