Pay it forward

When you have twins, one of the things people frequently say is, "Well, you get what you can handle."

There have been many instances, over the course of developing and writing our book, that Christina and I have maintained standards that are well . . .less than professional. For example, we regularly write together in my basement, at the computer, under posters of Buzz Lightyear. One time we had a conference call and were forced to lock ourselves in the playroom because there were five loud kids elsewhere in the house. And by locked, I mean locked. I live in an old house and the door got stuck. We literally could not get out. We had to call the babysitter on her cell phone (downstairs) to come and save us. Sometimes we feel pretty out of our element, like we're not "handling" things at all.

Over the past several months, we have been feverishly trying to craft and formalize our survey. The survey is, for us, the most important part of our book. We have gotten so much parenting advice and support from each other and our friends with twins, the whole Twin Set project is really our attempt to replicate that safety net to a broader group. The input of as many moms as possible will help make the book relevant to tomorrow's mothers of multiples.

True to form, the final stages of working out the kinks in our on-line survey provided its own humor. My older boys re-discovered the solid chocolate hockey pucks they had gotten in their Christmas stockings. I tried to monitor the chocolate intake while simultaneously massaging the branching functionality in our survey. Clearly, out of my element!

That's why we are especially grateful to all of you who participated in our survey and got your friends to participate, too. We know you have your own hockey-puck and locked playroom door situations to handle, yet the response has been overwhelming. Passing on lessons learned and words of encouragement seems to be something of a mission for mothers of multiples. Maybe we're all in our element after all.