Raising Boys and Other Crimes Against Humanity

I remember reading in one of my college business books that teams go through four distinct phases before performing well together: Forming – Storming – Norming – Performing. They meet and play nice initially (forming), over time personalities inevitably collide (storming), everyone gets used one another (norming), then once the road is paved, they work well together (performing).

I'd put our family in the Storming phase. The last two days have been pretty sleepless with a lot of crying. I realized at about 4 AM that to consider using a pillow to shut up a screaming baby is human, but to then finish changing his diaper and gently hand him to mom for feeding is to be a dad.

And Mother Earth will have more charges to bring against my stay on this planet... we initially signed up for a cloth diaper service that got great reviews. The ecological case for cloth diapers against disposal is unshakable and to boot since we have a slight volume discount with twins it's actually cheaper. But let me tell you, those diapers are huge, clumsy, look like they are squashing my babies' guts and take a LONG time to put on (even after practice). When a baby is screaming in your face at the top of their lungs in the middle of the night and you know the countdown to them getting mad enough to pee on you is dangerously close to zero, then every second counts. We are switching back to Pampers, and I have never felt better about it. They can name a landfill after me - I'm ok with that. Anything that takes stress out of my life right now is a Godsend.