I messed up.

I screwed up yesterday afternoon. It was a pretty major screw up.

Before I get to the part of the story where I messed everything up, I need to tell you the story from the beginning.

My birthday was yesterday. On Wednesday night, I mentioned to my brother and his family that I took vacation days from work on Thursday and Friday. I could pick the twins up from daycare on Thursday afternoon and they could hang out with Aunt Monica all afternoon.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

So, yesterday afternoon rolls around. I've never picked the babies up from daycare, I've never loaded car seats into my car, and I've definitely never driven with babies in my car.

I got the car seats loaded just fine, and the babies loved the car ride. On the way home I stopped and got some food to go, since I was too lazy to wake up early and cook something for lunch.

I got home, loaded the babies and the food into the house, and that's when disaster happened.

I wasn't really paying attention to the babysitter when she told me who ate when and who got changed when. I was too nervous about the car ride to pay attention.

One baby was awake, and she was not happy. I warmed a bottle up, and she fell asleep. Fine, I thought, I'll put the bottle in the fridge and sit down to eat my lunch.

Nope.

The same baby started crying again.

I warmed a bottle up, then the same thing happened. This cycle repeated itself a few times, until the awake baby finally decided she was hungry enough to stay awake and eat.

My lunch was sitting on the table and was cold at this point.

The baby ate half a bottle, then I decided to burp her. We didn't even get into the burping position when she barfed all over me, and her.

Who barfs on their aunt on her birthday?

It took that baby an hour to drink that half a bottle that just came back up. And then she had no milk in her, and she was crabby again.

You guys, this baby stuff is hard work.

She finally ate the other half of her bottle, burped without barfing, and then drifted off to sleep peacefully.

Meanwhile, her sister woke up and she was not happy.

I told them that I was hungry too, but I wasn't crying or throwing a fit about it. They didn't really care what I had to say.

Something I now know about twins: they are never on the same schedule. They don't sleep at the same time, eat at the same time or poop at the same time. That would just be too easy, you know?

Anyway, sister woke up and was pretty crabby. A diaper check revealed absolutely nothing, so I decided she was crying because she was hungry.

I warmed a bottle up, but she was crying bloody murder so I took the bottle, which was mildly lukewarm at that point, and gave it to her.

She spit it out and cried even louder.

What the hell, kid? I thought you were hungry?

She cried a few minutes, she fell asleep, then she woke up again screaming in agony. I did the same thing. I took a bottle from the fridge, warmed it up a little, then gave it to her.

She spit it out.

This cycle repeated itself more times then I'd like to admit. I finally just gave up, decided she wasn't hungry and let her cry.

I called it tough love.

Something about this kid you need to know is that she doesn't give up. That poor baby was so heart broken and pissed off at the world that something had to be wrong with her.

I did a diaper check. I told her I was impressed her farts stunk so much. She was not happy and was still screaming.

And then baby No. 1 woke up and started crying. I just couldn't do anything right yesterday afternoon.

This time, I took the bottle out of the fridge for baby No. 2 and warmed it up for a long time. Like, 10 minutes.

By the time I tested it on my arm, it was almost too warm to give her. I held a crying baby in my arms and told her that she had to wait at least two minutes to drink her milk.

I timed it. At the two-minute mark, I stuck that bottle in her mouth and heard silence for the first time in three hours.

It was then that I realized my mistake. One of the babies likes her milk warm, the other baby doesn't really care.

I gave cold milk to the baby who likes warm milk.

Oh my God! I've known that about this child forever. I messed up, starved the kid for an hour and created a temper tantrum so loud and dramatic it almost caused another world war.

By the end of the afternoon, my dog and I laid down to take a quick power nap before dinner. My dog was as exhausted as I was from all of this.

At dinner, both babies basically slept through everything in the restaurant.

They were perfect little angels.

The good thing about babies is that they're babies. They won't remember that I got their preferences mixed up and completely screwed the milk situation up.

I'll try harder next time, babies.

And if you care, my lunch is still sitting in my fridge.

At least some of us ate lunch!