Wednesdays

I started looking after Ben and James, my one-year-old twins, for one day a week in September 2013.

My wife Amanda was going back to work after maternity leave, and faced with spiraling childcare bills, me taking the step into the world of ‘Daddy Daycare’ made financial sense – but the romantic in me also knew it would be a precious chance to spend quality time with the boys at a really young age. The sort of chance most dads don’t get.

I’m a public sector communications manager and my employer was really flexible and agreed to my request to work longer days four days a week so I could care for the boys on Wednesdays.

I went into it with my eyes open – I knew doing the school run and looking after Ben and James all day wasn’t going to be an easy day off, and it was hard to adjust at first.

But I got to grips with it soon enough. And so did the boys. They seemed to really embrace the idea of spending a full day with Dad. Rather than put them in front of the TV, I played games with them, read them stories, had puppet shows, got outside whenever we could and just did the simple things. It was beneficial for me at work, too – my job was quite stressful at times, but looking after the boys put all that in perspective. I worked hard, determined to make the most of my time in and out of the office.

I began to really enjoy my Wednesdays. With kids, and especially multiples, life is generally so chaotic that grabbing a camera or a phone to film something is not the first priority. There are bums to wipe, mouths to feed, cleaning to do – the list is endless. But I’m quite sentimental and realised that I needed to document what we were doing on Wednesdays somehow.

… my job was quite stressful at times, but looking after the boys put all that in perspective.

I always have my camcorder handy so I can capture anything the kids do that is vaguely interesting, and I started filming snippets of stuff Ben and James were doing. Not really with any purpose or goal, but just to look back on years later. I didn’t do anything with the footage for ages but kept filming short snippets every now and again.

Then I started doing video work as part of my job and the idea of pulling together a short two-minute montage telling the story of our Wednesdays started to take shape.

The finished film isn’t exactly Oscar-winning stuff, but to me, it’s really special. I wanted to show the boys in later years that I tried to make our days together fun and exciting. As the boys got older they got more interesting to film – learning to use balance bikes and scooters, being able to go on the trampoline, running through puddles, feeding the ducks – simple, but fun stuff, and scenes that also show the unique bond that exists between twins.

Now they’re four, Ben and James have started school and it’s the end of an era – but as a friend said when I posted the video online, it’s time to look forward to the next one. Although the boys might not be so keen to be filmed as much in future!