u/Striking_Pattern_434

I had a weird moment of curiosity this morning and decided to track every single thing I did in a day. My daughter is 14 months and I'm home with her full time. Here's what my day looked like:

6:45am wakeup, diaper change, she fought me on the onesie. 7:15am breakfast — oatmeal, which she ate about 60% of. The other 40% went on her face, the tray, and the back of her head. 8:00am cleaned the kitchen, she followed me around pulling tupperware out of the cabinet. 9:00am park, where she ate a wood chip before I could stop her. 9:30am snack, cheese dust everywhere. 10:00am tried to fold laundry, she unfolded it faster than I could fold. 10:45am diaper change, she grabbed the dirty one. 12:00pm lunch, avocado and pasta, both of which ended up in her hair. 1:00pm nap time, she fought it for 20 minutes then passed out. I spent her nap cleaning the high chair, doing dishes, and staring at the wall for 10 minutes. 3:00pm she woke up, we did crafts, the markers said washable and they were lying. 4:30pm another diaper change. 5:00pm she played in the yard and came in looking like a dirt goblin. 6:00pm dinner, more pasta, the dog got involved. 7:30pm bedtime, bath, books, she finally went down at 8:15.

I counted 11 diaper changes or cleanups. I'm not even going to add up the hours. We're going through a pack of wipes every few days at this rate, which my wife pointed out when she saw the amazon order history. I just know I sat down at 8:30pm and my wife asked me what I did all day and I genuinely couldn't remember half of it until I looked at my notes.

My wife's been out of town since yesterday and today was my first real full day alone with our twin girls, who are 8 months old. Going into it I honestly felt pretty solid. I do diapers, I make bottles, I know the routine, I know which baby wakes up happy and which one wakes up ready to file a complaint. I wasn't worried.

Morning was fine actually, weirdly fine. Got through bottles, naps were decent, I drank actual warm coffee. I remember standing in the kitchen around 10am thinking yeah okay I can do this, this isn't so bad. That was probably my mistake.

Lunch is where it all went sideways. We've been doing solids for a few weeks now and I don't know what I was thinking, but somewhere in my head I had this idea that feeding two babies would just be like feeding one baby and then doing it again. It's not that. It's two babies staring at one spoon with two very different timelines for how fast they expect things to move. One kept grabbing for the spoon every time I went near the bowl. The other one was yelling at me between bites, not crying, just yelling, like she had something to say about the pacing and wanted me to know it.

It started fine and then it didn't. There was a little sweet potato on one cheek and I figured I'd get it in a second, turned to her sister for like five seconds, looked back, and somehow that smear had spread to her sleeve, her tray, both hands, and the back of her ear. I don't know how the ear thing happens. I've decided I'm not going to try to figure it out.

I grabbed the Momcozy wipes off the diaper caddy, we always keep a pack open there, and just started going after whatever I could reach. Wiped one hand, the other one had moved on to rubbing sweet potato into her bib. Got one cheek, somebody slapped the tray and I lost my place entirely. I wasn't cleaning anymore so much as just reacting.

One of them needed a new outfit by the end of it. Both high chairs needed to be wiped down. The floor I kind of just accepted and moved on from. They were both completely fine the whole time, laughing and smacking stuff around, totally unbothered. I was the one standing there with sweet potato on my shirt not totally sure what had just happened.

That was just lunch. That's the thing that keeps getting me. My wife does that and then does the next thing and then the next thing after that, all day, without anyone around to hand something off to. I've told her a hundred times that I know she works hard and I appreciate it. And I meant it every time. But I don't think I actually knew what I was talking about until today when I was the one in the room with nobody else coming to help.

My girls are genuinely so funny and I love them a lot. But when my wife gets home she's getting a real apology, not just a thanks, and I'm taking nights for the foreseeable future.