In Any Language

For those of you who see Aidan and Matthew regularly, you will have no problem identifying the twin on the left from the twin on the right. It's amazing how two beings conceived, carried and born at the same time can look so different. Besides both being boys. And there will be no comparisons made there.

All jokes aside, I feel really lucky to have been blessed with twins. I'm an adventurer at heart, a seeker of change, and I honestly wouldn't have missed this special adventure for the world.

How many people get to experience this?

Twins are special. They light up a room and make people smile. In any language.

When they are first born, you are aware of being center stage, but the feeling fades as they get older. You forget the the three ring circus because, well, they're just your kids and the three ring circus part has become old hat by now.

So that it really does come as a surprise when they light up a room and make people smile.

Yes. Yes. GERMANS TOO! I'm telling you, I can take center stage at the Breuni Mall any day. Young mothers - two year old in the stroller and newborn in the Baby Bjorn, looking slightly harassed and totally exhausted by their own ordeal - walk by and almost cross themselves when they see my four lined up on the bench eating their icecreams. You see them counting. "One. Two. Three. Good Lord, that poor woman has FOUR of them!" They run on quickly, afraid my fertility might be contagious!

But I get plenty of comments and pats on the heads too. Comments for me. Pats for the kids. Men too. Okay the men DID used to cross to the other side of the mall when they saw me coming - eight months pregnant and one kid on each hand - but those were the younger businessmen. Like they thought I was going to walk up and pin the blame on them. "Congratulations. You've just won yourself a full-grown family!" Quick. Run. Hide.

But the older men - 50s or so - get a big kick out of us. Let's face it. The boys match. All three of them. We look good. The three ring circus on its best behavior.

People used to try to hook me up with other twin moms too. I remember one time, I was feeling particularly grumpy about the lack of double-stroller access to Ryan's ballet class and running after two one-year olds heading in separate directions. And a very well-intentioned lady mentioned getting me together with her friend with twins. And I thought - "yeah great - this is what we really need. Two of us with FOUR one year olds. You suck. What a crappy idea."

But I was tired. She meant well.

(For the record, now that the boys are older, we ARE hooking up with more twin moms; we have two sets of twins that make up the four man T-ball team so far and there are a couple at the local pool. Seems they can't stand to stay inside either!)

Being center stage can get old. Especially when everyone else knows a better way to do it. Like they did with THEIR twins, right?! Don't go there. I have never been given advice by a twin mom - or offered any myself. Other than: WHATEVER WORKS FOR YOU. Twin moms don't judge.

But it can be fun too. Like the time in Mallorca when the boys were 10 weeks old and all we heard were shouts of "gemelos". They couldn't believe we were there with TWO newborns. Like it was any easier at home than at the beach.

And in Italy, when we took the kids out biking, me bringing up the rear with the 10 month old twins in a tandem bike carrier. You'd hear. "Uno. Duo. Gemelli. Gemelli." The circus was in town.

It's sneakier now that the twins are older and dressing themselves. Their sense of fashion is entirely different. So that you leave folks guessing as to how close in age those two really are. As if I intentionally gave birth to two beings three months apart somehow. (All that worry about whether you dress em alike or not; c'mon, they wear what they wear and sooner or later they choose on their own anyway and end up wearing a spiderman costume or police outfit most days of the week.)

So that it's more and more fun to see them becoming individuals.

My children are great.

Sometimes it just takes a stranger's smile to remind me of how lucky I really am.

Sleep Deprivation? First Thoughts.

I knew those twin logs would come in handy some day - and not just for feeding purposes. I remember being in awe (and I still am) at anyone who had managed to write one of the twins books I had devoured during my pregnancy. The best I could do was to jot down some notes on the log and hope that I'd have the chance to look back at them some day.

What was I thinking?

It's a blur now, but it's fun to see that most of my thoughts were positive - and that the thrill of parenting my two little guys vastly overshadowed the exhaustion.

The first 48 hours brought contradictory thoughts hourly - hormones maybe? Shock?

1. It's good that I already have two kids at home, so that I am better prepared to deal with this. A little naive maybe, but I still do think that having had experience parenting two children previously, kept me calmer and better able to cope than a new mother with two at once. (On the other hand, I had "grown-up" activities to deal with in addition to caring for the two babies.)

2. This is much better with two babies, than with one. One just seems so boring now. I swear to God, I thought this more than once, so take all the moaning with a grain of salt.

3. NOW I feel like a MOM, and not just some fat lady stuck at home with two kids. God bless maternal hormones; they'll get you through if nothing else will.

4. And then on midnight July 5 - I am DYING here, have had NO sleep, each baby has had two bowel movements, they are screaming and.....wow, finally the nurse came with pacifiers, some glucose, and an offer to take one of the kids to the nurse's station for a few hours. The nurse was summoned by one of the other mothers in the room, at her wits end only listening to the neverending battle going on in my corner of the room. The pacifiers were not MY idea, but something that the nurse INSISTED was going to be necessary with twins. Not a bad idea. Matthew used his 9 months and Aidan 18 months. I've never been a fan of pacifiers - but I am a fan of sleep.

Two days later, I'd learned a lot more.

5. At least I have learned not to bother TRYING to sleep. It is less frustrating that way.

6. Birds are not as cheery at 4:45 in the morning when you haven't slept all night.

7. I alternate between being jealous of the other moms - the time they have to themselves in comparison to me, and the ease of caring for only one baby - and feeling sorry for them. I have these TWO FANTASTIC PERSONALITIES to take care of.

8. Why is the woman with the C-section more mobile than I am? This because I was still trying to figure out how to get out of bed with two babies in my arms.

9. Once at home on July 11 I actually felt that I am playing house with two dolls. This is so much fun!

But the entry on July 9 is most astounding. I sleep more and easier with these two than I did with Andrew. Andrew was a monster - I was up with him 2 to 3 times a night for the first 7 months. I remember telling people that Andrew was a good precursor for twins because caring for two wasn't really all that much harder than caring for him had been.

And I realize only now - with my recent energy spurt - that I had been exhausted and depressed by the pregnancy for the last two months. I carried to 39 weeks with a dropping platelet count and was BEAT by the end. But who would have guessed that I had energy, and that I was having so much fun, that I actually didn't miss the sleep I wasn't getting at the time.

The July 9 entry also offers up an explanation for my twins' differing sleep and feeding patterns. Already I see them as two totally separate individuals. They don't seem to be at all like twins, or to be "the twins". It's like I just had two entirely different kids at once! They are fraternal twins, they still look nothing like eachother - and they are still as different as two kids can be. You wouldn't guess them to even be siblings if you didn't see them wearing the same outfits. And you would never believe that they have been exposed to the same parenting style and the same experiences.

I think it's awesome. I've read that fraternal boys are the ones least likely to exhibit that mysterious "twin bond", that they are way more competitive than cooperative. And maybe that's made it a bit harder. My guess is that identical twins, sharing the same DNA, would have similar sleep and feeding patterns early on, and similar play habits later on. Girls, in general, are supposed to be more cooperative, even with a male twin. Whenever I saw twin girls in the first two years, they always appeared to at least be running in the same direction.

Maybe I just have way too much time to think about it all now that I get a full night's sleep regularly.

Yesterday, I gathered the four kids around the table, and we planted seeds - just like I used to do when I only had the first two to contend with. Have I finally figured this whole mothering thing out? Far from it - but I do have my moments.