The Advantages of Twins

So 5 years ago when the twins were 7 months old I don't think I would have been able to foresee a time when having twins would ever feel easy. We were still in the midst of frequent night-wakings and I had just returned to work and was finding life to be exhausting. They weren't walking yet of course but were moving around enough that you couldn't simply put them down and expect them to stay put. Connor would scream with frustration because Quinn could crawl away and he could not yet. Every meal time was dreaded by me because of the need to clean up two high chairs. I found myself trying to come up with meals that were the least messy to deal with but then felt bad because nutritionally, they were sometimes lacking.

This year has been interesting because with the twins starting school, there are a whole new set of twin-like challenges. Strangely enough for the past couple of years I haven't felt like a mom of twins, just a mom of 3 boys (and recently of 4). Because Connor and Quinn are so different and have such different interests and because in general people don't spot that they are twins and just assume they are close in age. But now with them attending Kindergarten together, they seem very much like twins again. When I get the update in the afternoon about their day, one will start out explaining something they did and the other will finish the story.

They will look to each other about things like what the name of one of their friends is or what exactly it was they had for hot lunch. They sit and do their homework together, partly because I have them do it that way but mostly because if one is working on something for school, generally the other one wants to also (not always though ;))

I find the whole duplicate school folders/papers/announcements bit to be annoying and feel like there out to be a way to consolidate and conserve paper. I also find helping two non-reading kids work through their homework to be an all consuming task, which wouldn't be a big deal except that I often have an 11-month old pulling at my leg and a 9 year old asking for help with his homework as well.

But.. as the title promises... there are advantages as well. They are upstairs happily playing Legos at the moment. In general, they always have a built in buddy whether it be to walk with to a friends house when one of them is feeling too shy to go it alone, or to sit with on the school bus, or to play with in the house on a rainy day like today when their aren't any neighbor kids home to play with. At this age, Andrew was a bit lonelier and wanted to be out with neighbors all the time -- but most of the neighbor kids we had then were older and we didn't always let me hang out with them.

I went to let them know that Teagan was napping and I would be going downstairs and Quinn was literally trying to shoo me out of the room "Okay okay mom -- bye!" because they were so wrapped up in their make believe game. They had tried to include me earlier but I was opposed to the need for my Lego characters to have weapons (one of those things about boys that I don't get) so they decided I didn't need to play.

Ahhh... all good things must come to an end, Quinn is down here saying he is "bored" already... what a bummer!