THE DEATH OF MR. MOM

So I'm two weeks into my paternity leave and having a pretty good time of it. It's fun hanging out with the twins, because they spend most of their time lying around looking cute, something like this. They're so cute and so much fun, I'll admit I've actually harbored the fantasy of leaving the world of paid work and becoming Mr. Mom. Ah, yes, the good life, changing diapers, cleaning bottles, driving to the doctor's office.

With that in mind, I had no problem when Julie and her mom decided to go to a barbecue this evening. No problem, I'll just hang out with the boys at home. I've got a TiVo full of family programming and a fridge full of breast milk and Thomas Kemper root beer. What more do you need?

So Julie leaves. The 3 Workman men sit around for a while and watch some travel program where a nice British woman walks around Portugal and asks people (in English) why their food is so yummy. Then, something changes.
It's a subtle look in their eyes... they actually start to look a little like space aliens. Then the crying and the hunger starts. Now I'm not afraid of a crying, hungry baby (I'm not even afraid of a poopy diaper, but that's another story), but I had two crying, hungry babies on my hands, and that can be a bit of a challenge. The problem has mostly to do with arms, or my lack thereof. I've only got two, and I really needed the number of arms one might associate with Vishnu.

Alas, I am no Hindu god, so I put the twins down on a bouncy chair and hurriedly tried to prepare two bottles. But then how do you feed them both at once? And the, when you're burping them at the same time and you're sitting on your futon and you're at a funky angle, how to you get back up and search for some more food because the babies have sucked down all the breast milk in the house and now you've got to find that crappy formula and heat it up and what on earth will happen if that lactation nurse finds out that I fed the babies formula, she'll have a fit because she thinks formula is basically poison and I really don't want to poison my babies but they keep crying and they're both sitting on my chest and I can't get off the damn futon...

Then Julie comes home, and in a matter of minutes, all is normal again. I go into the other room and call my bosses, "My job will still be waiting for me when I come back, right? Cool... I'll see you next week."