Twin Dad Magician Performs 400 Shows a Year While Raising Young Twins with Wes Iseli – Podcast 293

Podcast: Download

Episode 293 of the Dad’s Guide to Twins Podcast Show Notes

Today we continue our father of twins interview series with professional magician Wes Iseli, father of identical twin boys. Listen as we explore his twin parenting journey, including:

• Juggling family while performing 400 shows a year as a magician
• Finding out about expecting twins at the 5 month checkup
• Healthy birth and home soon there after
• Twins not talking yet
• Getting to the twins to sleep at night
• Take turns with different behavior
• Homeschooling because they want to see kids
• Don’t worry about all the negative things
• and more…

Connect with Wes on his website.

Podcast Transcript

This is transcript auto-generated so please forgive any mistakes.

Joe
Today we continue our father twins interview series with a professional magician, who is a father of identical twin boys, who talks about how he juggles the responsibilities of fatherhood, while traveling on the road for all the shows, and how he and his wife manage that, while taking the whole family from show to show, plus the benefits that they’ve seen from homeschooling, their children and some key fatherhood insights that give us some good perspective along your twin parenting journey, All that and much more today on the show.

Intro
Welcome to the Dad’s Guide to Twins Podcast the podcast that will help you survive and thrive as a father of twins Now here’s your host, the author of the book, the Dad’s Guide to Twins, Joe Rawlinson.

Joe
Hey everybody. This is Joe Rawlinson. Welcome to the dads twins podcast. As always, you can find me on the web at dads guide twins.com. Today we’re chatting with another father of twins about his experience raising twins. Before we jump into that interview, I want to let you know that today’s show is brought to you by my first book for dads it’s called Dad’s Guide to Twins. If you’re listening to podcast, I know you love enjoying audio. You can get a free audiobook version of my first book by visiting freetwinbook.com. Today I would like to welcome to the show father of twins Wes Iseli. Welcome to the show, Wes.

Wes
What’s up, man? How are you? I’m excited. I can’t wait to get into this.

Joe
Fantastic. glad that you’re here. So what’s How old are your twins right now? And what’s something exciting about this age?

Wes
There’ll be three in September. And they are at a fantastic age man. I’m a magician. So we’re on the road all the time. We homeschool our 11 year old daughter and then we have two and a half year old twin boys. And we travel around as a family of six doing show to show so they come with us they get to experience different things. In the wintertime it was we’re doing a show and the babysitter just hanging out with the twins in the RV while my daughter does magic and then she’ll go back in the RV and then we all go out to dinner afterwards and then go home. Now that it’s springtime, and we’re doing you know, the most recent show we did was a school fundraiser. They had a gym, like a gym I guess in the backyard. What do you call it a playground area. So the babysitter just took the kids in the playground area wore them out they had a blast. They come up on stage they take a final bow one really likes the wave one really likes to blow kisses they own have their own little personality. And they did the audience. I can’t think of a better way to in the show. They get so excited they run across the stage they jump in my arms my wife holds the other baby. I introduce Julian Julian always runs to me I introduce him and then I tickle Lex and he’s bunching up ready for it. And take a Final Bout and then run it back to the babysitter we pack it up and go. It’s just a fantastic age. We have five acres here on a property. I have hiking trails that I love. And my little boys are just following me around like little little helpers. We had fire pits and I was breaking out the fire pits from the winter. And they were helping me I pretended to strain with the wheelbarrow and they pretended to push it like they were helping me it was adorable. We get lots of pictures so that sounds like a fun age for sure. It’s a great age, man.

Joe
Do you involve them in your shows other than just coming out the end?

Wes
So at two and a half there’s really not a lot they can do you know and we I’m a different kind of animal. We have our own reality show that follows my family around doing 400 shows a year. We also do 400 shows a year. So the kids have to be able to hit their marks and if they don’t hit their marks, I have to be able to cover for them to make it look like that was part of the show. So writing a fail into the show that if it’s a success, it’s a success. If it’s a fail, it’s still a success. It’s hard to write for two and a half. When in September, maybe next year there’ll be in the show. My little girl when she she’s 11 now but when she used to come out in the show, I used to say have a pocket my hand and I’d show my hand MD make a fist and she would show her hands empty. I made her do that because I wanted the audience to know that she wasn’t doing anything. And she’d reach into my hand and pull out a silk and then we turn the silk into a dub together. But all she was doing to reach into my hand and pulling out a silk but that’s all she needed to do. And that was it was just perfect. It was awesome. So something like that for the boys. I was thinking because they’re identical twins. I was going to do a play on twin telepathy. Boy, that’s great. But I’m really I’m really struggling on the premise like I was going to do. Here’s the idea I had a whole bunch of different m&ms, different colors. And one kid just reaches in a bag and pulls out a color. But it’s hard to show think about a 500 seat audience. How do I show that unless I’ve been on camera then my wife is filming. But my wife also has to hold and direct a two and a half year old. It’s just really hard to do that. And then the other kid would actually reach in the bag and plug the same color without knowing what color that kid got because of twin telepathy. I have everything written. But I need the effect. The m&m just doesn’t play big enough. I have to figure out something I’m working on it

Joe
was fun premise. I like that. I like that. Yeah, that’s great that you can involve the whole family in the show. And so you alluded to some major lifestyle challenges just sharing the first minute like, we’re homeschooling. We’re on the road all the time. How do you How did you or when he’s first hit the road? Was it with infant twins or how do you manage that when they’re really really young?

Wes
Yeah, my daughter. We had to induce her because her due date was New Year’s Eve. So we induced her so she was born on the 26th and she took a final bow four days after being born. So the boys being born during the pandemic. They had seven days so they’re really my little girls making fun of them saying Oh, you guys had an easy you had you had a whole week to prepare. But all they did was take a final bow was this at the end of the show. We just introduced him during the show. But yeah, we put them right in the car right away who wanted us to the travel. We work resort that’s five hours away a lot. And we live out in the country. So a close show for us is an hour away. More than that. I mean, we usually are traveling we have the RV pulling a trailer, and it’s six of us. It’s my wife, my daughter myself, my twins and a live in babysitter. It’s my wife’s niece. She’s 18 Now, and she pretty much lives with us.

Joe
That’s great starting with a young man they don’t know any difference, right? They don’t

Wes
know any different and I have friends that complain. Oh, my kid would never do that. I can’t keep my kid in the car all the time. They don’t know any different. That’s their life. And you know we did that illusion show this weekend. We I worked on a television show called the carbon arrow effect. We worked on the scenes there. We went to a full Penn and Teller in Las Vegas on the biggest stage. My daughter sees all this stuff. She’s seen it for 11 years. Being in television being on television seeing dad doing radio call ends on like showing up at the news station and being on the air on the radio station with the microphones on my face. Our morning news talking about a show that’s upcoming. She’s just used to it. That’s, you know, we don’t understand how the rest of the world lives because we’re so in our bubble. What do you mean? You take your kids to soccer practice every day of the week and then you have games on the weekend and then you have to work well what do you get groceries done, but your work nine to five? How does that work? That’s weird to us. So that’s great.

Joe
You’ve got a good system in place. When you found out that you would be having twins What was your situation like at that time and how was that news?

Wes
Well, so we have our reality television show. So we’re filming all the time. So I’m filming checkups, boy that that video footage was boring because it’s just my wife getting checked out. That’s boring footage. And then five months into the pregnancy. We’re going to find out if it’s a boy or girl in my wife’s belly. And this is going to be exciting. What do you think? It is one and we have it on video. We don’t know. We’re just filling out the paperwork. And my daughter and my babysitter were just sitting in the car playing video games. They were playing uno something and I told them art we’re going to this will be five minutes we’ll be right back. And when they did the ultrasound on my wife, they were like that’s the head. That’s the heart. That’s the arm. I said oh, I want to play alright. That’s an arm right? Yes. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I see it as it looks like it’s holding the ball. What is that? And the lady went over and she said that’s another head. I’m not qualified for twins. She scoots away from the desk and she leaves the room in that instant. So I pick up the camera. I’m like, Honey, and she’s like, Yeah, the lady just said, Uh huh. What do you think? I don’t we’ll figure it out. I guess it doesn’t run in our family. It. We didn’t do fertility treatments. I went to general you know, public education. I didn’t know that was an option. I thought you had to have something in your family. That was an option. We were both in shock. So we had the gender reveal the next day. And it was it was quite a shock for everybody. Five months into Nolan. Every time they went to check the baby’s heartbeat they read left to right with the monitor and they fell in the first baby. My wife knew all of her times. We tried for a year for the second pregnancy. So she knew all of her dates and everything. So they were like Yeah, you’re good. You’re good. You’re growing at a good pace. You’re doing good. I never would have thought

↓ GET DAD A BOOK BUNDLE ↓

Joe
if I’m honest. It’s pretty late in the process to find out.

Wes
And then being a magician. This is this is set out well. This was June 2020 End of the World. I mean, I’m an unemployed magician with twins on the way and it was it was very scary. But we were like, hey, we’ll figure it out. What are we gonna do with shows we know how to do one and a show. We did it. 11 years ago, we waited to have the second pregnancy because we used to just pass the baby back and forth. My wife would do a spot in the show. I own the baby. And then, you know, we have with my little girl she’s 11 Now she would be in the car seat underneath the table with the doves and the bunnies people that didn’t know she was at the event she would be napping or you know watching an iPad or something they didn’t even know she was there. But how do you deal with twins? So luckily this her niece stepped up and said you know, I’d like to homeschool myself my senior year I can do it online, and then I can be there to help you guys are like Yes. Awesome. So that just fell in our laps and it worked out perfect.

Joe
How did the pregnancy go for your wife? Are there any challenges with that?

Wes
So after everything was over, I mean, no she she did fine. She was really trying. We’re entertainers so she was trying to stay thin. She’s gonna fit in boxes, right? So she’s just trying to stay stay thin and towards the end she was like forget it. I don’t know if it was the mind shift of there’s twins now eating for three or whatever. But the last part of the pregnancy she just really ballooned up and went out of control. And then she was trying to lose the weight after the pregnancy and they’re like, well, you’re breastfeeding for too. You’re going to be eating more. You’re going to be doing this you’re going to be holding on to the weight until you wean. You won’t lose the weight. She lost the weight and they still couldn’t do it. She was killing herself and treadmill and she’s really educated herself and become a health coach. Now and now. She helped me lose 50 pounds. She’s lost 70 pounds, and she has clients all over that she really helps. And I’m passionate about magic. She’s passionate about that because she knows what it’s done for her. So it’s been pretty awesome. But as far as complication, she bled it 12 weeks, which we tried to get pregnant for a year, so she was freaking out. She ran to the doctor and the doctors like there’s there’s the heartbeat, everything’s fine. I don’t know what it was. And then after she gave birth, went for the first month checkup he’s looking through her file, and he said, you know, that could have been a triplet the last we’ll never know. But that that makes sense to me. So who knows? But no complication, natural childbirth. She took I think that lady like kind of demanded her to take the towel. No, at the end. She’s like, No, I’m good. I’m good. Yeah, she’s She’s tough. She’s tough and it we did Bradley Burfict birthing with our first baby Lana, and it’s a husband Coast childbirth and my wife likes to say you know, we’re not hippies. It’s not something that you know, we’re just no drugs or anything. No, that’s fine. But you have to put a needle in your spine and one out of a million people who have spinal damage or some kind of nerve damage the rest of their life one out of a million. She didn’t want that chance. So she said if I can handle it, I’ll do everything I can. She did the first one. And then the doctor says, you know, I had our year checkup. They’re like, you know, they’re still talking about you, the lady that gave birth to twins. You know, it was pretty intense. And the birthing process with twins was crazy because with the first baby Bradley birthing I’m holding their hand I’m rubbing her forehead. So Bradley birthing his I didn’t know anything about it either took the classes, but save all your energy for pushing. So you’re not even allowed to foil your eyebrows. You’re not allowed to tense up so the husband’s constantly looking over the wife. Oh, you’re curling your toes. Don’t relax, save your energy. Just be there for them and do anything you can for them. Let them save their energy for the pushing. Because there’s a there’s a contraction, there’s a release and arrest and there’s a career attraction. She needs all the energy she can get for that and you’re supposed to be there for for that. So you know I’m brushing up on my notes for Bradley birthing for twins. looking it up looking it up. I’m thinking I’m ready to go. We did it last time. She does all the work on just your coach. Get in there and they’re like, Alright, you got to put your gown on. What do you mean gown? I didn’t have to a gown last time and you had to go in the room in the operating room. And you have an anesthesiologist each baby had a nurse or yeah nurse. Natalie had a nurse and there was three, two doctors in the room. Two doctors in the room and an anesthesiologist, just in case they had to knock her out because she didn’t want anything that it was way different way different

Joe
because most twins are born via C section in the operating room and so they had to be ready. So that’s that’s great that the babies are in the right spot. And she was able to help them naturally. So did the Bradley method help in this case?

Wes
Everything so it was so crazy with twins. You’re worried about one flipping over the odds of one flipping over and not one was locked in position and her cervix and he actually came out with a knot on his head because he was locked in her cervix for I don’t know a week two weeks. He still if you really feel his head. He’s got a little lump over here where he’s locked in. He’s like his skull formed that way. But I mean, you really have to show somebody can’t tell that like he has a bump in his head. And the other one was just swimming to and fro. And we didn’t know which way he was going to go. But everybody just dove right out. It was just perfect. It was perfect. It couldn’t have been any more flawless.

Joe
So were they able to come in they’re able to come home with you shortly thereafter. Do they have to spend extra time in the hospital?

Wes
Dude, we didn’t even stay we didn’t even stay that whole time a lot it. I think they wanted us to stay. Three days. We stayed. I think we were out in like 45 hours. Yeah, it was great. It was great. We’re like, you can’t sleep anyway because they’re checking on you’re constantly in the hospital. Now you got twins. It was just and you got you know we didn’t have visitors this time because it was COVID but um, it was like you know what, just let us go home. We have family that can help us we have my wife can rest the babies. It’d be quiet and somebody’s not constantly checking somebody’s temperature, somebody’s vital signs. They would just let it sleep. So it was great. We got home and had family here. Started off that whole process.

Joe
How was your How was the reaction from your daughter to having two little ones in the house now?

Wes
She was more disappointed of she wanted sister. And she had identical twin brothers. So that was the main thing. She still says you know, I would still like Sr. and we’re like no, please, we’re done. We’re done. It’s so hard on the road with you know a big family and everything so you’d have a lot to take care of when you go to a show anyway, he each venue sounds like it would be the same. You go on to a theater but it’s not the loading and unloading out is different. Some managers want to talk to you and tell you their expertise and their business and you’re like I got a show to set up we can we talk after the show or something. And you know, every show is different and then have the babies on top of it. It’s just another where do you put them? You know what do you do you can’t keep them in the RV for six hours. You can’t keep is there? Is there a dressing room? Is there a room that we can set them up? Is there a room we can give them a nap? Where can we feed them we have to figure all this stuff out logistics of the twins on the road. That’s a whole nother thing. But now that they’re you know getting close to three it’s getting easier it’s getting easier. So my twins are lazy. How old are your twins?

Joe
My girls are teenagers now.

Wes
Okay, mine mine are two and a half and are just now wanting to start maybe like pick up a piece of candy and put it in her mouth. They wouldn’t. They they wanted you to give it to them. Like you give a piece of candy they pick it out they go Now you give it to me and they’d hand it back to you and then they’d open their mouth. They didn’t want to feed themselves or two and a half and they really don’t have a vocabulary. Like they don’t talk they do the twin talking back and forth. But they don’t talk every once in a while they’ll say a word and we’re like what? You know, it just it’s shocking. But yeah, they started to do the twin babble thing. So

Joe
you do you and your wife understand their babble. Like you know what they’re trying to say.

Wes
Normally they have conversations, it has all the rules of you know, back and forth conversation. But knew no. I mean, they say eat our 11 year olds the worst our 11 year old doesn’t eat. So we’re like honey Eat eat. So the babies they know eat they’ll say Eat eat when they want food. They’ll some some say milk when they’re thirsty. But lots of times they just point but yeah, and the doctor, we asked the doctors, they’re not talking. They’re not really talking. We have another friend that has like an 18 month old little girl and she’s having full conversations. I’d like to lay down the swing again, Mom, please. And my little boys are like eat milk. That’s it so the doctor is like they have each other they don’t need you guys and you’re giving them everything they need. You’re checking their diapers, you’re giving them food, they have naptime. Yeah, they’ll say night because we say that a lot. You know, I’ll snuggle them at nighttime. Our thing is I don’t know how I would love to listen to more your podcasts and find out how other parents do it. We don’t know how to do it. We had him in separate plate. We had him in separate cribs, and they would reach through the bars and like hurt their arms trying to hold the other one and just be near them. So we got rid of both cribs and just put them in one crib. But now they play and they stay up the whole time and you can’t get them to our one goes to sleep Why don’t get on top of the other one. Just slap him in the face like wake up you’re not playing it. So to put them to bed at nighttime. naptime is pretty good naptime. They’re ready to take a nap. But at nighttime they don’t want to cut the day off. So I have to go in there and put one of my right arm one on my left arm and hold them at night kiss them and you know night and I’m sitting there like this until they fall asleep and then I sneak out. But if not, there’ll be all over the place. They’ll play all night long.

Joe
And we had trouble when our girls were about that age too. We had trouble with him keeping each other awake. And we had to we tried several different things we tried separating them like we’d put one to sleep in our room, when to sleep in their room and then we’ll say we’re asleep. We transfer them to the, you know, their beds, or their cribs and other times I would have to or my wife would have to say stay in the room with them like you’re describing. And we tried to start it off being right next to them then it was like across the room from them and it was by the door and then it was you know how you know put them down and leave the room so it took a little bit to kind of Sleep Train them that way. I know it’s it’s difficult because you’re in different places a lot or they’re gonna they’re going to sleep right so it’s not just at the same

Wes
location hotel room and in the RV and yeah, how do

Joe
you handle nap? Times when you’re on the road?

Wes
It’s tough. They really don’t like sleeping in their car seat. But I mean that car seat their stroller, but sometimes you just have to it’s naptime. So my babysitter, lock them in. They’ll have a temper tantrum, and we’ll just put on an iPad of Sesame Street episode. And they’ll just watch it this is naptime. And you know sometimes it’s one will sleep 15 minutes and one will sleep three hours, but that’s all we can do. And then you know a lot of times they’re you know, it really messes them up when the car rides and we tell the babysitter and my and my daughter keep the lights on in the back. Of the RV to make it look like daytime on the way home. So they’re not up all night. We just trying to keep normal schedule, even though our schedule is crazy. You know, sometimes you’re getting home at three in the morning. Sometimes you’re leaving at six in the morning. So I mean it’s not like nine to five or you know, a three to three.

It’s it’s all over the place that depends on who wants us and where we’re going. So it’s already hard enough on the road, but we got it. Potty Training and r&b is gonna be something though. That’s going to be something that has not started yet. And has not started yet. Then my wife is like, you know, boys, they say it takes it’s later anyway. They just show no interest in it right now. So we’re not the type of people that’s going to every time they have a glimmer in their eye. We’re gonna put them on a toilet. We’re gonna we’re gonna do the best we can but it’s hard. It’s hard because we we I have my business. We have the television show. We have magic show. I have a nonprofit. I have a podcast. My wife has a health coach business on top of everything else. That she helps me with. Potty Training is low on that list. So we’ll get it though. It’ll get done.

Joe
So how do you find time to work on on the business, your wife on her businesses is are you relying heavily on your niece the babysitter during the day to free up that time or how do you juggle those things?

Wes
The babysitter only really works during shows. So right now my wife is booking magic show. She’s in the office downstairs and returning health coach calls she scheduled those in throughout the day. And then the boys are in the living room and they have the gates blocked up and they have all kinds of toys and they have Elmo on and then when I get off this call, I have another call tonight at 530 and I’ll take them on the trails and go play with them in the backyard and we’re going to have Daddy Daddy son time. I have bunny rabbits and birds from my magic show and chickens and ducks. I have doves and roosters and chickens and ducks and bunny rabbits I guess Yeah, I don’t know like 40 animals in a cage outside. They just go out there and they just love it. And boys are totally different than girls. Because my little girl wouldn’t want to get her shoes dirty. And my boys have no they don’t understand what Dirk is. They just I don’t know how much shoes look that color. They weren’t that color earlier. They have no perception. My daughter would get sad and she’s got her shoe at three years old. My kids don’t care when kids come home come in from playing in their hands like they weren’t black gloves from just picking up dirt. Just throwing it they love just getting dirty. Totally different than a little girl.

Joe
That’s fine. Our boys we had two boys before the twins and then there are identical girls and it’s very fun to watch those differences between them. So speaking of differences, you got identical boys. So as we know identical twins are not truly identical. So let’s talk about what how do you focus on some of their individual attributes and personalities.

Wes
It’s crazy because they’re not identical. I mean they are but they’re not. Like you said, so we had Di Di twins. I don’t know if you know what that is. They had separate sex leper placentas. By but we had the DNA done and on a billion markers. They’re identical, which is a 30% chance with dye dye twins. One has thicker hair. One has thinner hair, but it’s the same hair color. One has straighter hair and one has curly or wavy or hair. That’s it. The one that was on top and the one that was locked in the cervix. The cervix one obviously came out first. So he’s the oldest. He’s thinner. And the one up top got the food first. They said he got the food first and they had to go down to this one. I don’t know if that’s how it works, but that’s what I was told. And yeah, so the oldest is always bend about a pound thinner. So it shows in his cheeks too. You can tell on his face. So hair and size, about a pound difference and looks like in his cheeks.

Joe
So obviously is to use the parents or does everybody everybody could tell this difference?

Wes
No. I think people can tell if they spend a little time with them. I mean, if you just glaze that oh, they’re identical twins. Yeah. Oh, wow. Now spend 15 minutes with them and really spend 15 minutes if you’re having dinner with me and the twins are there and you’re talking to me and you’re glancing over once in a while you still might get them confused, but if you spend 15 minutes playing with the boys to lock it in. Yeah, it’s no it’s no problem. But you know the boys, they take turns being the aggressor, one will pick on the other one all day long. And then the younger one is the bigger one. So I’m like man, stand up for yourself. And then the next day, he is beaten on the younger brother, which is bigger and it’s like, do not that hard. It’s like, I don’t know. They love each other. My wife gives them baths independently. I know some twin parents put them in the same bathtub. But we just don’t want one slip in or whatever and out of our hands and a second. So she’ll give one a complete bath and drive off and then the other one. And when the second one gets out of the bath that we put it back in the living room because we’re all gonna sit down and watch TV. They run up each other and hug like they hadn’t seen each other in weeks and it’s just so adorable. So adorable. After they’ve been fighting all day long.

Joe
Right? I just think just forgive and forget and just move. Oh, that’s my brother. Yes. The twins are approaching three. And you have plans to homeschool them I suppose. Just like you did with your daughter.

Wes
Yeah, yeah, yes. And the cool thing is, we didn’t plan it this way. But as you get higher and homeschool, it’s less responsibility for the parent, it becomes more responsibility for the student. So they start doing more. We haven’t done online classes yet. But my daughter is doing a lot more like reading comprehension on her own and answering those questions and then my wife just has to like check up on her once a week. My wife does some sections of schooling. If it’s two hour day, my wife probably does 25 minutes now instead of the full two hours. So as they get older, like the babysitter, her junior senior year, she did it all on her own. There was no teacher follow up. There is a test at the end of the year and SOL tests, just a checkup to make sure you actually did the work. But yeah, it’s pretty lacs, but we try to do it the right way. There are people that cut corners and skimp on things but we’re like, No, we don’t want to hurt them because of our business choice. You know, we could send it to regular school. I just wouldn’t see my kids and, and I do this little pitch every show. Not that I’m trying to sell homeschooling. I’m just trying to justify we don’t have political or religious reasons. I just want to see my kids man. My little girls already living it. It happens really quickly. You know, I couldn’t wait for my boys to Follow me outside. Now they’re following me outside. Now they’re hanging out with me on my trails. Next thing I know they’ll be on dates. It’s just it happens so fast. I’m trying to have them with me as much as I can try to slow down that aging process but there’s no slowing it down.

Joe
That’s the beautiful thing about you know running your own business and working for yourself. You have that flexibility to be with your family and you know in between those work moments. And that’s something definitely to be cherished. We actually homeschooled our kids for five or six years when they were really young. And you mentioned like the time per day. That’s what surprised me the most was like when they go off to school for eight hours a day. Most of that is like wasted time. Like if you could focus their education and just a few hours a day. They get everything they need and then you have the rest of the day to do whatever you need to do. That’s one of the big benefits that we enjoy plus traveling in offseason when not everybody’s vacationing was also a benefit to homeschooling.

Wes
Well that’s us because we’re working resorts. I live here in Virginia, and we have ski resorts, like 45 minutes in different directions. Live like in the valley and during the summer. There’s nothing for those people to do. I mean they can go hiking, but they hire a magician to come in to have nighttime entertainment. So we’re doing 183 shows June to August. So we don’t take our family vacation until September. And the beaches are still open, but boy, they’re empty. And I love it. We love it. Yeah, yeah.

Joe
The beaches are empty. All the prices drop after Labor Day. It’s just it’s great.

Wes
Yeah, it really is. Yeah. My wife, her family always went to the mountains for vacations. And when I took her to the beach, she was like, Oh, this is great. I love it. I said Yeah, honey, but we’re in the offseason. What do you mean there’s people here? Okay. And then we had a show in Myrtle Beach, Fourth of July weekend and stuck her down to the strip and it was like 45 minutes to go three blocks and she’s like, whoa, this would be awful. And like this is people summer every year. We love the offseason.

Joe
So let’s imagine one of your friends comes to you. They get the news that they’re having twins, what would be some key advice that you would give them to help them along their journey?

Wes
I don’t overwhelm yourself thinking about the negative things. Just take it one day at a time. And one issue at a time you know, whatever you’re going through whatever the challenge is with your babies or baby at the time, it’ll pass and you’ll get through it and you’re not the first parent ever. You might be the first parent you know to have twins, but you’re not the first person ever to go through this. And it it seems like that temper tantrum that whatever that bad thing is that you’re going through seems like it’s taken forever pass it’ll pass and you’ll get through it and it’s all gonna be worth it man when you have two kids giving you a hug at the same time. My kids are coming up to me when I come in I This is so great, man, daddy, and just giving you a big hug is the best thing in the world and you get to at once, like, yeah, my brother’s like which one’s your favorite? You gotta have a favorite. I don’t. You gotta have a favorite. You really don’t and they’re totally different. But you love them. It’s crazy. But I mean, I think I think fear is the main thing that gets into any twin debt. I think you’re just overwhelmed with oh my gosh, sleepless nights with one sleepless, well, I mean, you’re up. You’re up to him. Luckily I have an amazing wife that I’d say did 90% of the work. I mean, besides bringing them into the world. Here’s something funny, I’ll tell you not to do that we did. We, we said okay, because we don’t know what the heck we’re doing right? I said, Honey, this is what we’ll do. This is my plan that I came up with and I’m super proud of it. I’m losing my voice. Sorry. We’re both single parents. You take one I take one and we switch off each week. Because you don’t want to raise one alone. We’ll switch up. Dude, I don’t dress me. That’s out the window on day one. But I thought you know, it made sense to me that I’d take one you take one and that way you’re not overwhelmed. But that doesn’t work. That doesn’t work. So don’t do that. Don’t do that. But uh, yeah, it’s I think people get in their own heads. That’s That’s it. I’m repeating myself over and over.

Joe
That’s good perspective. Yeah, I mean, when when stuff comes up, that’s when you deal with it. But there’s no point in worrying about all the hypothetical challenges because there’s an endless list of things that can go wrong with twins or raising twins, but just deal with what’s right in front of you. And you know, it’d be fine. It’d be fine.

Wes
Although boy this morning one woke up at six in the morning. And my wife took him downstairs and my wife did office work. She tried to get him to go to sleep. He wasn’t going to sleep. So he’s just playing in the living room watching television. My wife did office work. She said I got caught up in the office. He’s still not asleep. It’s your turn. Tag. Okay, now it’s nine in the morning. I get up. I go downstairs, I tuck him in that covers and we watch Elmo together and he goes to sleep. We sleep till 11 And then she’s like, You didn’t wake the other kid up. He’s never going to have a nap. Honey. I thought I was doing good. Okay. So Julian the oldest he’s on the couch. I wake him up as everybody here watch TV. I’m gonna go get your brother up here at Bank. I go upstairs. I give the brother a kiss to wake him up. Temper Tantrum off the bat just rolling away from kicking me thrashing, rolling across the floor. And then I’m screaming and I’m like buddy, and I’m just taught buddy, buddy. And then just boom, and he runs over and hugs me and kisses me. Like whatever this wave of emotion, switched on a dime. And now he’s my best friend and wants me to take him downstairs sees his brother. He’s happy to change his diaper ready for a bottle ready to play? Let’s rock. It was just he just overwhelmed emotion. Maybe I woke him up from a good dream. I don’t know but and that screaming in my face and temper tantrum and you just got to ride that wave. Because on the other side of it, man, there’s a love there’s hug and it snaps on a dime. It’s crazy.

Joe
That’s right. The kids are often quicker to change their attitude than we know we may hold on to some kind of garage or something longer than they do. They’re well already past that. So as you’re working on lots of stuff, you got shows you got a nonprofit, the reality show. If listeners want to connect with you and support what you’re working on. How should they reach out?

Wes
wesiseli.com has links to everything I do. Facebook: Wes Iseli. My wife, Natalie Iseli, she posts lots of pictures of the babies on on her Facebook page. Yeah, find us. Check us out. If you have questions about raising twins. If I can’t answer it, my boss, my wife, she’ll help you out. And she loves talking twins. She’s on all the twins, Facebook groups. She loves it. It’s awesome.

Joe
Fantastic. I’ll link up to that in the show notes for the podcast. Was thank you so much for sharing your story with us today. We really appreciate it.

Wes
Thanks for having me, man. This was awesome.

Joe
I hope you enjoy the chat with Wes about his adventures as a magician traveling with his whole family including very young children, and how they make it all work. So surely if he can get his twins to take a nap or go to sleep at the end of the day while they’re always on the road. You and I can manage when we go on a one week vacation somewhere.

If you would like to connect with Wes. I’ll link up to his website and his contact information in the show notes for this episode. You can find all the podcast episodes over at twindadpodcast.com. If you’d like to share your story like Wes did today, I would love to hear from you. You can reach out to me on Instagram or Twitter at @twindadjoe or email me [email protected] and I would love to hear from you.

Again today’s show is brought to you by my book, Dad’s Guide to Twins. You can get a free audiobook version of this book which is perfect if you’re still expecting your twins. You can get that copy at freetwinbook.com Once again, that’s freetwinbook.com Thank you so much for listening, and I’ll see you next time.

Subscribe to the Podcast

To subscribe to the podcast, please use the links below:

• iTunes (for your iPhone, iPad, iPod, etc.)
• Stitcher
• Subscribe via RSS (non-iTunes feed)

Share Your Thoughts

Please let me know what you think of this episode of the podcast, you can contact me with any questions or comments or leave a comment on the blog.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a rating and review on iTunes by clicking here. It will help other parents of twins find the show!

Download the Podcast

Download the podcast in .mp3 format (right click and “save as…”)