She's a pro... Him... Not so much...

We are getting into a good grove with the girls. Laurie is officially on her own all day while I am running off to work. Compared to her 10 hours alone with the girls last nights 45 minutes with 2 sleeping girls should have been a breeze for me. The key word in the sentence above was "SHOULD".

I had just put Ziadie down for the night and mommy waved to me as she snuck by Ziadie's door. I heard Amelia fussing a little so I went in and picked her up. I got downstairs just before Laurie was heading out the door. She asked me if I was sure I would be OK. My response, and I quote 'Piece of cake' !!

Well It didn't turn out how I imagined it. First of all the girls didn't stay asleep, and it certainly was not a piece of cake.

Laurie left and within 2 minutes Amelia was wailing at the top of her lungs. Of course I am a veteran daddy now, so I reached into my repository of tricks and did the walk and bobb with her. No Luck. I dug deep and pulled out the old football bobb/back rub move. No Luck. So I went to my safety net, the car chair/swing... She got even more angry. At this point I knew I was in trouble. Little did I know this was just the beginning.

15 minutes passed and I had tried everything, even considered the whiskey in a bottle move :-) When I thought it couldn't get any worse...



Ziadie awoke having night terrors... I hustled upstairs and set Amelia down in her crib in hopes of quickly soothing Ziadie and getting back to Amelia. I picked Ziadie up and started talking to her, letting her know daddy was there and everything was alright. The trick to nightmares/terrors is to get them out of that half asleep stage, talk to them for a minute, get them awake and then very quickly put them back to sleep. Works 99% of the time. It just so happens this was my 100th time doing it because she just got even more worked up. Amelia by this point was at the point of hysterics. So I laid Ziadie back down in her crib and ran to get Amelia.

I picked up Amelia and tried soothing her but at that stage there was nothing except breast milk that could sooth her. So I brought her into Ziadie's room and laid her down beside her crying sister. I had to come up with a plan. Ziadie was at the point were she was kicking and screaming so I tried picking her up first. It was funny because I swear that there was a brief moment when Ziadie looked over at Amelia and had a little smirk between her crying fits. Kind of like a "Daddy picked me smirk". Of course Amelia was still crying so I had to put Ziadie down and pick her up.

I put Ziadie back in and told her to stand up, I then scooped up Amelia and in the same fluid motion scooped up Ziadie. Ziadie was OK with this solution and almost immediately put her head on my shoulder and started settling back to sleep. Problem was that Amelia was not buying it and continued to wail at daddy. This caused one of the strangest chain reactions. One girl would be crying, which caused the other to crying, when the other one heard her sister crying they would stop, the other one would continue to cry, which would start the process all over again. Finally I figured it out. When it was Amelia's turn to calm down a little I put her down. I then raced to Ziadie's bedroom took 1 minute to sooth her and put her to sleep. I then raced back and picked Amelia up and held her till mommy got home.

A little add on to this story, by the time Laurie returned from the store I had tried calling her 4 times :-)

At any rate men, its not a "Piece of cake". Don't get cocky and think otherwise, remember you may be the king 99% of the time but believe me when the perfect storm hits, you'll be running to the momma !!! RUNNING !!!!