From the time we first established a sleep schedule for our sons, my wife and I ritualized the process. We get the boys, Jack and Eli, fed. Then we let them roll around on the carpet for a bit, playing with their toys. We tuck them into sleep sacks about 10 minutes before bedtime, give them each a pacifier, sit them on our laps and read to them.

“Oh the things you can think up,” I read aloud, from Dr. Seuss, “if only you try.”

Our boys, fraternal twins, are just eight months old, so their vocabulary right now seems to consist of “ba” and “gah!” But when we read they often appear transfixed, as if we are imparting great wisdom. With the last Seussian syllables still sounding in our ears, we trundle them upstairs, turn out the lights, sing them a song and tuck them into their cribs. And that’s that. But it isn’t only that. What I mean to say is that the sum of these parts adds up to what is, often, the most emotionally satisfying part of my day. And with each passing week the boys themselves seem to render this ritual ever more powerful. Most nights, in fact, as my wife and I sing “What a Wonderful World” we alternate between staring at our boys and staring at each other. And the four of us wind up tethered into a semi-circle: Me holding Jack, who grasps one of Lisa’s fingers, who cradles Eli, who reaches across and holds on to my thumb. “I see friends, shaking hands, saying ‘How do you do?’” my wife and I sing, smiling at each other in the dark. “They’re really saying, ‘I love you.’”

Lately, I’ve marveled at how much deeper, richer and more meaningful my life seems now than it felt nine months ago, before the boys came kicking and squalling into this world. And I emerge with a question: Namely, why haven’t more parents shared stories with me like this one?

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At first, I must admit, I didn’t quite understand.

I’d tell someone my wife was pregnant with twins, or they’d find out, and, well, most of them raise an eyebrow and ask the same question: “Oh,” they’d say. “Do twins run in your family?”

The first many times, being a bit thick about these things, I wasn’t quite sure why the question sounded so loaded, why some subtle hesitations and feints as they spoke made me feel like I was being investigated. But the question kept coming—from passing acquaintances and even, at times, total strangers who only overheard me telling someone else our happy news.

“Why is that everyone’s first question?” I asked my wife one night. “Why is that so important?”

“Because that’s not what they’re really asking,” she replied. “What they really want to know is if we were receiving some sort of fertility treatments.”

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That's Jack on the left and Eli on the right. Adorable, right?

A few weeks ago, I made a brief trip to our pediatrician’s office. The weather outside was brutal, one of the few really cold days we suffered this winter, and everyone inside looked haggard, except for the babies. They clucked and cooed and wailed. The one nearest me just kept repeating, “Ba! Ba! Ba!”

I was waiting in line to talk to the receptionist and could not help but look at this babbling kid and the thought just sort of came to me that both my babies—my wife and I had fraternal twin boys—are cuter than this baby. And that sort of got me started. The next thing I knew, I was killing time by looking at all the babies and children, coming and going, and stacking them up against my Jack and Eli.

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The second time my wife developed mastitis, an infection related to breastfeeding, she sat there shivering on the couch, feverish and chilled, swearing repeatedly, “That’s it. I am so done! I’m weaning. Done. No more breastfeeding.”

I greeted the news cautiously, but after my wife spent the majority of the next 15 minutes dropping “f” bombs on the entire notion of breastfeeding, I chimed in.

“Do you mean it?” I asked. “Are you really done?”

“Hell yes,” she said. “I am sooo done.”

“Good,” I told her, “because I’m done, too.”

At the time, I believed she might actually have reached her breaking point. Her first bout with mastitis necessitated a four-day hospital stay; for months, she endured cracked and bleeding nipples and a stabbing pain that radiated across her entire breast. Every so often, if a few days passed without my seeing her grimace, I’d ask if the pain subsided.

“No,” she’d say, “I’m still waiting for the good part.”

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Baby Eli smiles for the camera.

I became a new parent last July—twice over, to fraternal twins, Jack and Eli.

I’d been warned, by long-time parents, “You’ll forget the whole first year.” The life of a new parent, particularly with twins, devolves into a timeless haze of diapers, breasts, bottles and burp cloths. I decided to write a column as a way of preserving some trace of my memories, so on Be Well Philly sister site, the Philly Post, I’ve written on topics ranging from breastfeeding and miscarriage, co-sleeping and circumcision. My favorite column remains the one in which I advised a great many people—maybe even you—to shut up.

Now, each week, I’m bringing my posts here to Be Well, where I hope you’ll join me on this new journey. And I also hope you’ll pipe in every now and then with your thoughts and advice—even if we completely disagree with each other.

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