People are fascinated by twins. When my twins were young, people would stop me in the middle of the grocery store so they could touch the faces of these boys who looked exactly alike. And now that they’re 4, not much has changed.
Most of the time those people who stop us and exclaim over how cute our twins are say they always wanted twins. And I always find myself thinking the same thing: No you didn’t. Because, you see, everybody likes the IDEA of twins, but when it comes to the day-after-day-it’s-never-going-to-end work of getting two babies through the first year of life and potty training two at a time and dealing with 3-year-old twinanigans? You don’t even know what you’re saying.
My twins are identical. They share the same noses, the same eyes, the same skin, the same DNA. One of them has a mole on the backside of his left arm, near the top, and that’s the only way you can tell them apart—unless you’re their mother, of course. One of them writes with his right hand, the other writes with the left. They complete each other in every way.
That’s part of the problem. Since these guys were tiny little babies, they’ve completed each other. Our first night home from the hospital I tried feeding one while the other slept, and as soon as the first one started slurping, the second one woke up and screamed his head off for half an hour because he was starving. I changed my strategy after that hellish night.
Our twins have always shared a room, because when one is without the other, they go wandering, looking for whatever is missing that they can’t quite place. And then, when they find each other, their world is complete again.
But let me just tell you. Don’t let those cute little smiles fool you. These guys can be little devils.
They will tear apart a room in three seconds flat, before you even have time to high-tail it up the stairs to see what all the thumping is about. They will destroy something right after taking it out of the box. Just ask their remote control cars they got for Christmas or the 9-year-old’s silly putty he brought home from school. Ask Husband what they did to his iPad when he wasn’t looking, even though they’re not allowed to touch it.
When they were still in diapers, my twins thought it was funny to wait until after we’d tucked them in and closed their door for just a minute of peace and quiet, to poop and then sit up in their beds and quietly paint all the walls they could reach brown. I’m not sure which of them had this brilliant idea, but I bet the look of horror that painted Mama and Daddy’s face like their droppings painted the walls was probably the most hilarious thing they’d ever seen. And we never learned our lesson, because we’re foolish and, also, desperate for a little peace and quiet, like I said, so they did it for three days straight before we decided to put them in footie pajamas so they couldn’t do it again. They were thwarted for two days and then they figured out how to wiggle out of those footie pajamas. We cut the feet off and zipped them up backward so they couldn’t let themselves out this time. That’s when they figured out how to unzip the back just enough to wiggle out of the neck hole and do the deed again. So we cut slits in the neck of the pajamas and zip-tied the zipper to the neck so they couldn’t possibly, no matter what they tried, get it off. That’s when they figured out how to climb out of their cribs, meet each other in the middle and wriggle, fantastically, out of a three-inch hole and do their deed yet again. I thought we were never going to get through that mess. Pardon the pun.
And then we were finally, finally, finally out of that fun stage, and it was time for the potty training. I’ve blocked that from my memory, it was so traumatic.
Now here we are, trying to find our way through twinanigans that have grown much more sophisticated since the paint-with-poop days. Just when we think we’re one step ahead of them, they’ve figured something else out. We fixed their sliding door closet with a door hinge that would keep them from opening it, and they pushed their dresser across their room to reach it. We took the dresser out, removed the doors of the closet and raised their clothes so high I have to stand on tiptoe to reach them (and I’m five feet, nine inches tall), and they figured out how to stack their pillows and folded-up blankets to climb up the wall and reach the hangers (I think they’re part Spider-Man.) so they could fling them all over the floor. So we took all their clothes out of their closet. Problem solved.
I opened the door after nap time that day I thought the problem was surely solved to see one 3-year-old dressed in his 6-month-old brother’s shirt and pants, unaware that the five inches of leg sticking out below the pants was a dead giveaway that he’d gotten into the clothes again.
I have no idea how they do all this. It’s not like I’m not paying attention or something. I mean, sometimes I’m distracted by other crises in my house, but I’ve always got one eye on the twins, because I know what twinanigans can do to a house and a life. I know they are the ones who will steal out of their rooms when we’re not looking so they can bring back their brother’s LEGO creation balanced precariously on the banister and play with it in bed. I know they’re the ones who will stash a permanent marker under their mattress and, when the lights have all gone out for the evening, will take to painting the place with their spider-people. I know they are the ones who will wander in the middle of the night and eat a whole tube of toothpaste or a whole container of vitamins that’s clearly not child-proofed while the rest of the house snores blissfully on.
I know they are the ones who will try to play with their favorite forbidden toy—the plunger—and end up flinging potty water all over the bathroom walls. I know they are the ones who will be set free from their backpack leashes, for only a couple of seconds, and disappear into an elevator in the blink of an eye and stay missing for half an hour before the elevator finally dings and they come running out talking about a sister they met. I know they are the ones who will run out into the middle of the street when a car is coming and not feel the least bit afraid, because they have no sense of impending death.
They’ve pulled over tables on themselves; they’ve tried to climb up bookshelves to get this one book they wanted, because they wanted to do it by themselves; they’ve marked their face with my mascara and lied about it, they’ve stuck their hand in the toilet with floating poop and then wiped their hand all over their shirt (every other day), they’ve figured out how to open a medicine bottle, they’ve helped each other reach the cookies I hid in the microwave, they’ve stood on each other’s shoulders to empty the toy cabinet, they’ve hit each other across the face and then hugged each other in the very next second.
They are relentless.
I didn’t have a single strand of gray hair before I had my twins. Now I find a new one every day, and they’re only 3. We’re in for a long ride.
But even though they’re hard, even though every day I wonder how much more of their twinanigans I can take, there is something else that twins bring to a life, and it is this: bright spots here and there, when they’re laughing hysterically with each other over some inside joke or when they’re coloring together and one keeps the other from marking on the floor so he doesn’t get in trouble or when they’re climbing into my lap for a story.
In moments like these, it’s easy to see why so many people tell me they always wanted twins. Twins are glamorous. They’re special. There is nothing like it. And, when it’s all said and done, it’s fascinating to watch two people who look exactly alike discovering their world, together, in their completely separate ways.
I did not expect twins to be so difficult. I did not expect them to be so wonderful, either.
