The fact of our situation is that there are two children of the same age and developmental station living in our home. If one is doing something the other isn’t, it’s difficult to not compare. Sure, one had to walk first, right? But when it was the same one crawling first, then walking first, then climbing and running first, it made the other seem to be falling behind. When one was saying words and the other was only grunting, we doubled our efforts to help the one we viewed as struggling. (All the while both were well within the expected range for those skills.)

Now they just reached their second birthday and had their 2-year checkup. In the past 6 months we have seen our littlest guy who struggled to gain weight (who was born 1 ounce heavier but by one-month was a full pound smaller) get not just a little bigger, but much bigger than his brother. Suddenly people are asking how far apart they are in age, since there is now a 3 inch and 4 lb. difference in size. I admit was scared to go to the appointment because while I knew one had really grown over the summer (He went through 3 shoes sizes since May!) and the other hadn’t.  was terrified we’d learn he hadn’t grown at all, or worse yet, he would have lost weight. I was afraid the doctor would question why he isn’t growing, why he hadn’t gained weight. I was questioning my own parenting, were we doing enough to make sure he’s eating the right foods? Should we be doing more? Was he really not growing, or was his brother just growing faster so it seemed that he was staying the same size? If we had only one kid that age would we have even noticed his slow-down in growth? Would we notice that he is wearing the same shoes he’s had since Spring is his brother hadn’t gone though so many pairs by now?

I dreaded that appointment for a month.  The good news is that he did gain weight, and height, though admittedly not much. He’s always been on the low end of the percentile chart, but he’s on the chart and his line is moving in the right direction. He’s healthy and happy. He’s just small. The doctor wasn’t concerned about his size or weight. She has a much better perspective of seeing them as two different kids, just two more patients that happen to share a birthday. I was relived to know he did gain some weight. And he did grow a little. I was even more relived that the doctor was fine with his checkup and deemed him healthy.

It’s hard not to notice he’s smaller than his brother. It’s hard to not compare. I have a friend whose twins are 2 months younger, who once told me she always worries about her kids whenever we get all four of ours together because her kids aren’t doing the same things mine are doing. I tried to reassure her that she shouldn’t compare our kids since 2 months at this age is a big difference. In another year they’ll have gained all those milestones and all be about the same skill-wise. Of course, this doesn’t mean I don’t do the same thing with my own kids. Why is that one doing such and such and the other isn’t? Am I doing enough to make sure one doesn’t fall behind? Maybe the hallmark of a good parent is to worry about these things, after all, I want the very best for my kids equally. How do other parents fight the urge to compare?

Jen Wood is a former computer geek turned stay-at-home-mom to amazing, vastly different and newly minted 2-year-old twin boys. You can follow the daily adventures of our family as we navigate the crazy road of twin toddlerhood, home preschooling and attempt to raise happy, well-adjusted citizens at goteamwood.com.

1. What was your reaction when you found out you were pregnant with two babies? [Your husband] Scott’s?

People ask me a lot if I was surprised by the fact that I was pregnant with twins. I’m fairly sure the subtext of that question is, “Were they spontaneous twins?”  Generally, I reply, “I think everybody is surprised by twins!”

In my case, my twins weren’t spontaneous; I’d undergone an ovulation induction cycle, and I knew that the risk of multiples was higher. However, I was also under close observation, and we never had any reason to believe more than one egg had been released.  My hormone levels rose higher than I was expecting them to, so I did wonder if something was up, but at around 5 weeks, 3 days, when I had my first ultrasound, the doctor only saw one gestational sac at first.  The second little peekaboo sac was definitely a surprise!

Scott wasn’t able to make it to that first ultrasound, so I called him at work afterward to let him know.  I told him, “Everything looks good… but we may need to think of some more names.”  He knew what I meant immediately.  He’s a low-key guy, but he was excited, and I’m sure a little bit nervous, when he found out.

2. How did your expectations of parenthood change when you discovered that you would be a mother of multiples.

I was always fairly sure that, despite not having a ton of experience with babies and small children, Scott and I could probably figure out how to raise a child on our own. Raising twins, I’ll admit, still sounds like a much more formidable task than raising one.  You can check with me again in a year to see if I’ve broken them yet.

On the other hand, especially since we struggled with conceiving, I had developed a lot of ideas and theories about how we were going to raise our hypothetical only child. In some ways, finding out that we were expecting twins was freeing. Even in my naivete, I know that there will be times when I can’t meet both babies’ needs at the moment those needs arise. I feel like I’ve been able to give up my expectation of being Super Mom before the kids have even arrived.

3. Can you tell me a little about your experience with doctors specializing in multiple pregnancies? How did you find them, and how do you think working with specialists has benefited you?

I bought Dr. Barbara Luke’s “When You’re Expecting Twins, Triplets, or Quads,” not long after seeing the babies’ heartbeats at 6 weeks gestation.  I found the information in the book helpful but general, and I wanted advice more closely tailored to me.  I spent a lot of time searching the Internet for resources on twins, especially locally.  While I didn’t find a whole lot locally (aside from the Moms of Multiples group), I did find the Texas Children’s Hospital Program for Multiples in Houston.  I was most interested in the nutritional assessment they offer, to see how it compared to the one in Luke’s book.  Generally, it was fairly similar, but with a stronger emphasis on lower-fat foods. They also follow similar 20 pounds by 20 weeks guidelines.

My twins are dichorionic and diamniotic, and I’ve really had a fairly uncomplicated pregnancy throughout, so I think the program was less helpful for me as it would have been for, say, parents of identical twins with a higher risk of TTTS. But I learned a lot about my babies and was very relieved to have a clean bill of health as we finished up the first trimester. It’s a great program, for those who are able to get to Houston, and it was completely covered by my insurance.

4. What personality traits do you predict for your babies, based on feeling them move?

Even before I could feel them move, I could see the differences in my babies on each ultrasound.  Starting at 8 or 9 weeks gestation, it became apparent that our little boy, Baby B, is quite a wiggler.  Our girl, Baby A, does her share of moving as well, but she’s never been nearly as active as her brother.  I anticipate we’re going to need to get Baby B involved in lots of physical activity to burn off all that extra energy.  On the other hand, our girl really likes to kick her mama in the bladder, so I’m predicting a typically complicated mother/daughter relationship with her!

5. What reactions do you get from people when they learn that you are expecting twins?

The most common reaction I get is, “Do you know what you’re having?” And when I tell them we’re expecting a boy and a girl, they almost always reply, “Oh, wow, that’s perfect! You can be done!”  As though we would have been required to keep trying for the opposite sex if we’d had two boys or two girls.  Or an only child, for that matter.  I’m learning a bit of zen, when it comes to responding to curious comments.  People generally mean well, and I don’t think they really think through their response. It’s as much small talk as anything.  (I’m sure I’ll be less patient when we can’t walk down an aisle at the grocery store without being interrupted, but people generally can’t tell I’m carrying twins, so I feel like I’m undercover for the time being.)

6. You are 33 weeks into your pregnancy right now. How do you feel, physically?

I’m definitely starting to feel tired and uncomfortable!  I anticipated that I would feel progressively worse as the pregnancy went on.  In actuality, it seems a little more cyclical than that. I hit a wall every couple of weeks, then I adapt and feel better for a while.  My quarter-mile walk to the office is definitely starting to feel like a long way, though!

7. What do you know now about multiple pregnancy, or pregnancy in general, that you wish you’d known earlier?

I spent the first two-thirds of my pregnancy mentally preparing myself for the possibility that I might be on bed rest or out of work for a long time.  I didn’t expect that I’d actually be pretty good at carrying twins, and still working at 33 weeks.  Knowing that would’ve saved me a lot of worrying early on!

8. You and Scott will both be returning to work after parental leave. What will your childcare arrangements be? How are you going about choosing?

This July, we spent our fifth wedding anniversary shopping for infant childcare, three months in advance of the anticipated arrival of our twins, and six months in advance of when we’d expect them to start daycare. It felt really unfair that we had to choose a childcare provider to care for our kids when we haven’t even had a chance to meet them or get to know them yet.  We visited four childcare providers and finally chose a Montessori school with an infant program in our neighborhood.   The rates were comparable to most of the other infant daycares in town, but we were impressed with the age-based Montessori classrooms, and we had a great rapport with the teacher in the infant room.  She lives in our neighborhood, as do many of the kids in the school, and she has twin grandsons.  We felt that our babies would be in good hands in her care.  Picking a place close to home means it’ll be equally convenient for Scott or me to drop them off and pick them up, and we hope we’ll be able to get to know other parents and kids in our area.

9. What have you already done to prepare for your twins’ arrival? What do you have left to do?

I feel as well prepared as a naive almost-mom can be. Our nursery is packed full of onesies, diapers, and random plastic baby accoutrements. We have places for the babies to sleep (though they may have to share for a little while). We’ve got a double stroller.  We’ve got infant car seats, and we’ve installed them into one of our two cars.  We’ve gone to all the classes we plan to go to in advance of their birth, and we’re trying to enjoy some nights out together before the nuclear bomb that is parenthood drops on us both.

I do still have a rigorous nap schedule to try to maintain for the next three to five weeks.  And a lot of work to wrap up.

10. What questions do you have for other parents of multiples?

I feel like I’ve heard the answers to most of my questions, and they all seem to vary from family to family. (How long did it take to feel like you had everything under control?  Were you able to breastfeed two babies at once?  How do you handle the financial burden of two infants at once, especially when you add in the huge expense of childcare?)

I’d rather hear words of reassurance.  Tell me when multiples get to be fun!

We are now just under four weeks away from Tiny and Buba’s first day of preschool. T and I chose to send them to a local co-op school that strives to build a strong connection between the child’s home and the school. As a result, we’ve already spent a good amount of time on the school grounds, connecting with other classmates and their parents, and talking about what it will be like when they start preschool this fall.

Back in mid-June, we received the kids’ class list noting which days each student will attend. All 20 kids in the class have schedules that allow them to know all the other children in the class, even though only 12 kids attend on any given day (meaning, their schedules all overlap at some point in the week). To help them all get to know each other, optional playdates were set for Monday afternoons and Friday mornings from late June until the week just before school begins. The playdates take place on the school’s playground, helping them become familiar with the school grounds as well.

Recently, each family received a welcome letter from the teachers. The letter included photos of the two teachers to post on our refrigerator for the kids to view and talk about. The teachers are currently in the process of setting up a home visit to each family, where they’ll talk and play with their incoming students and get to know a little more about them.

Similar to many preschools in our area, Buba and Tiny will have a visiting day prior to the real first day of school. On this day parents come into the classroom and stay as the kids get their first introduction to the school and their classroom. The visiting session is just one hour long and only three other students and their parents will be with us (five kids attend each one hour time slot throughout the visiting day). The following Monday, the children begin attending school on their own, but just for two hours each day. It isn’t until the following week that the full schedule of three hours a day, three days a week kicks in.

Tiny is naturally confident and independent, and I’m sure she will have no trouble transitioning to preschool this fall. But for Buba, who has a harder time separating from T and me and who takes longer to warm up in new situations, I’m so, so glad he’s had all of these opportunities to ease into the whole preschool thing. He already knows and looks forward to seeing a handful of his classmates, and he’s confident enough now to explore different areas of the school grounds (there are four different play areas) without me right by his side. He was very shy when we happened to meet his teachers during one of the playdates, but I’m hoping the home visit will help him become a bit more comfortable with them.

Fingers crossed that all this leads to an easy and smooth transition once that first day of school finally rolls around!

So, how are you/will you prepare your children when the time comes for them to begin school?

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While I hate to wish away the summer, this one will not go down as one of the best on record. My kids need routine, they need structure, and they need some time away from each other. I am so thrilled that they are in separate classrooms.

When I first learned that my twins’ Montessori preschool “strongly preferred” not to put siblings in the same classroom, my stomach dropped a little. My little ones would be only just three years old and going to school for the first time, having been at home with me this whole time. I always assumed they’d be in the same class in preschool, and then maybe I’d split them up in elementary school. But I loved the school so much, I decided to take the plunge.

I am so, so, so glad that I did.

Don’t get me wrong, my son and daughter really are the best of friends. They play together all day long, and it makes my heart practically burst to see how much fun they have together.  They fight, sure, and push each other’s buttons like any siblings would. But the arguments are forgotten as quickly as they start, and back they go.

At the same time, however, they are not completely dependent on one another. Both are pretty independent, adaptable, low-anxiety kids.  They love doing separate outings on the weekends, and were thrilled to get their own rooms when we made the move to toddler beds.  In the months before school started, I did my best to explain that they would be in different classrooms, with different teachers, and they thought that was simply peachy.

We have a full year of school under our belts, and I have never regretted having them in separate classrooms. The worst I can say about it is that there’s a little extra juggling on meet-the-teacher night.  While it’s certainly no secret that they are twins, I love that the teacher can see the individual kid, rather than having any temptation to compare to their twin. I love that they can make their own friends and do their own work, relatively free from the influence or distraction of their “other half.”

And for those who would have anxiety over this setup, I will provide the perspective someone pointed out to me. They are in school three hours a day, five days a week. They’re dropped off in the same car, at the same time, to the same building. They play on the same playground at the same time (I’m told they often look for each other – how sweet is that?). They are picked up together, and then spend the other 21 hours of the day in the same house, doing the same activities.  There is no shortage of togetherness.

But as the summer winds down and they are in each other’s faces all day long, I know I’m not the only one who is looking forward to school starting again.  They can’t wait to see their teachers (“and tell her I’m FOUR now!”), and though I don’t expect they’d ever say it in so many words, I think they’re just as excited to have a little personal space, too.

Our family just arrived home from our second trip to the Twins Days Festival in Twinsburg, OH. Last summer we attended a wedding in Philadelphia with our 9-month-old twins. We packed the car for a road trip from Chicago but had to divide our drive into a few days. Looking for a half-way point we saw Twinsburg, OH on the map and thought, “Hey, we should stay there, it’s a town named Twinsburg.” A quick Google search revealed Twins Days Festival, a record-setting gathering of twins from around the world which just happened to be the weekend we were driving through Ohio. We had to go. How could we pass it up?

We enjoyed our first Twins Days experience so much, we decided before we even left Ohio we would try to go back every year. It is an experience unlike anything I have seen. The sense of community and camaraderie among twins from all over really is amazing. Among the many activities, our favorite has been the Double Take Parade, which encourages any and all twins to join in the themed parade. This year’s theme was Circus, a truly fitting theme for a gathering of twins. My boys were dressed as Human Cannonballs, with their wagon outfitted as a cannon. There are also lots of research studies for twin participation, and mingling with twins young and old. The youngest set there was 8 weeks, the oldest was 96 years old! There are lots of contests, carnival rides, food, and fun. Friday night is a Wiener Roast for twins and their families, Saturday night there are fireworks and Sunday morning is a pancake breakfast. For older twins there is a golf tournament, a 5K and lots more.

So much I have read and heard since we were expecting twins focuses on the challenges: the high-risk pregnancy, the bleary-eyed, soul-crushing sleep deprivation, the expense, every-rough-patch-times-two. Dress them alike. Don’t dress them alike. Separate them in school. Keep them together. Everything I read seems to threaten all the ways I am destined to mess my kids up. Plus, as much as strangers are fascinated with and willing to offer up comments about twins, they are almost always negative. “You’ve got your hands full!” or “Double Trouble!” or “Better you than me!”

It is easy to lose sight of how wonderful it can be raising twins. We have twice the giggles, twice the hugs. My boys are growing up spending every day with a best friend. I get to watch my two tiny infants as they grow into little boys. My boys are 21 months old, racing from milestone to milestone, growing noticeably each day. I wonder every single day how they can possibly be cuter than they were yesterday and how did I get so lucky to be here for the ride. The truth is that while my boys are fraternal and are very different, they were born a pair. Twins Days is such a unique celebration of twinship, I want my boys to grow up appreciating how truly special it is to be a twin. In Twinsburg for that one weekend a year, they can be among people who know what it’s like to go through life with a doppelganger, with a relationship unlike any other. They can be part of the community and celebrate being twins.

My boys are often subject to lots of attention when we are out and about, and sometimes I feel like they are a spectacle. (I imagine it is nothing compared to identical twins or even triplets or quads!) I want them to feel proud that there are two of them, and love that they came into this world as a set. Twins Days Weekend is always the first weekend in August in Twinsburg, OH. For more photos and information about our trip, you can check out our rundown of our weekend as well as photos form this year and last. You can read more about the adventures of our family at goteamwood.com

When I was pregnant, I always wondered which twin I would tend to first. They are our first born children, so I didn’t have to worry about an older sibling. However, wondering which twin I would tend to when they were both crying always perplexed me. The articles I read all said to tend to the older child, as he/she would remember that you went to the baby over him/her and develop anger at you and the new baby. Twins are the same age, I guess technically Zachary is older than Maxwell by one minute, but how would I decide!? When the boys finally arrived and we started the “assembly line” for everything we did;  bathe one, bathe the other, diaper one, diaper the other, that worked well. The first baby was usually the fussy one and the second twin received the same care to “simplify” our lives.

In infancy, the “assembly line” worked rather well. The twins are 2 now. Just toddlers, no tiaras. In the morning, Z woke up covered in vomit. And then started the diarrhea. Over and over again. I tried to get him to drink, take freezeys, ice chips…  nothing worked or would stay down. He was getting more pale, the circles around his eyes were darkening, he had poor skin turgor and hadn’t peed in 18 hours. I switched into my nursing role and headed to Google (hehe), a call to his pediatrican gave me some deadlines. I had until 1700 to get him hydrated enough to produce urine or I needed to bring him to the hospital for fluids. Great.

I coddled Z all day. Let him have short time without a diaper to encourage urination (hey– every other time I take the diapers off, the boys pee all over the floor). But, no avail. I didn’t give Max much Mommy-time that day. I was worried about Z. Worried like a nurse more than a mommy. I gave Max a few extra snacks, let him watch the same Barney movie over and over, all while I obsessed about Z’s urine output. We ended up in the hospital for IV fluids and when I was finally putting Z down for bed at midnight, I opened the nursery door and it reeked like vomit.

M was covered in puke and sleeping (so lethargic he didn’t even cry). All I wanted to do was crawl in a corner and hide, but instead, the “assembly line” came into full force. Changing sheets, giving baths, brushing teeth, diapers, jammies, water, crackers, blankeys, kisses, high-fives, bed.

Two kids the same age. Both want their mommy and as they get bigger, my lap gets smaller. We marched through the next 3 days with the same scenario each day. Vomit, diarrhea, laundry, baths, repeat. Repeat. Repeat. More “assembly line.” I felt like the boys were newborns again. Little sleep, strict schedules, worrying incessantly about voiding and output, keeping track of intake, laundry, laundry, laundry.

Now that the bug has moved out of their little systems, I realize that it really is the “assembly line” that keeps our house running smooth. So, MOM’s and new blog friends, “What keeps your house running smooth when chaos is wrecking havoc in your life?”

Twins or otherwise, I think every mom wishes her children would be good friends in addition to just siblings. Some hope age works in their favor, others put some faith in gender, and certainly the twin moms hope that there’s that mystical “twin bond” that everyone goes on about.

My brother and I were not close. In fact, we actively loathed each other as children, and are now at least friendly as adults. But we have never been close, despite (or maybe because of) the scant 17 months that separates us in age. I very much hope that my kids do not have as difficult a relationship as my brother and I had, especially as kids.

One of the things that stuck out for me in the Nurtureshock chapter about siblings had to do with close relationships. If I’m remembering correctly, those who reported being closest with their siblings were not necessarily the ones who fought the least. Rather, they were the ones who had plenty of positive interactions and memories to counterbalance the (all-but-inevitable) fighting.

I can’t really think of any such memories with my brother from our childhood. My memory could certainly be failing me, clouded by the perception that we always hated each other, but maybe that’s part of the point?

Still, I watch my kids and how they play. Most of the time, making my heart swell, they seem to really enjoy playing with one another. They make up games, scenarios, races. They destroy the room with pillow forts and throwing stuffed animals around. They jump all over the place. It doesn’t surprise me, nor does it particularly alarm me, how quickly they can go from giggles to screams. Par for the course, I’d say. But what does amaze me is how quickly they can go from screams back to giggles. They don’t seem to hold grudges for very long, if at all. If one kid goes to time out for hitting/jumping on/grabbing from the other, they barely wait until the timer beeps to get back into their shared game.

I know they’ll get older, get their own friends. They’ll probably be more separated by activities and gender and interests. But I really, really hope that they can continue to seek out each other’s company and be each other’s most trusted friend. What mom doesn’t want that?

The $10,000 question… how will our soon-to-be Baby 3 fit into (and/or change) this mix? Will it be big kids versus pesky little sister? Will the girls band together and leave Daniel the odd man out? Will the little one and Daniel find a shared love that Becca has no interest in? Or will they all get along at different times and different stages? Only time will tell.

For your enjoyment: 20 seconds that makes any mom smile…

Here’s a quick review:

• Monozygotic (MZ) multiples (can be twins or higher-order multiples) were created when one fertilized egg split to form two or more embryos.
• Dizygotic (DZ) or trizygotic (TZ) multiples were created when two or more eggs were fertilized.
• Triplets and higher-order multiples can be any combinations of monozygotic and di/trizygotic.

Monozygotic multiples are commonly known as “identical” and di/tri/quadzygotic are known as “fraternal.” These terms can be somewhat misleading as they suggest that monozygotic multiples are the same in every way. The truth is that the moment the egg separates, the two eggs cease to be identical and they are then influenced by different internal and external conditions. As a mother of monozygotic twins, I can tell you my daughters look very similar, but they are unique individuals and should be treated as such.

Anyway, back to the workshops, I learned a lot of interesting trivia about multiples. Did you know:

• that monozygotic twins have more variation in birth weight than dizygotic twins, but by age 10 monozygotic twins are closer in weight and height than dizygotic twins?
• there are more sets of female monozygotic twins than male sets, and more sets of female conjoined twins than male sets?
• for most cancers, the risk of getting cancer isn’t any higher even if your twin has it
• even though monozygotic multiples aren’t supposed to run in families, there are some cases where it seems to recur in families or to occur more often than expected in families with dizygotic multiples
• language delays and learning disabilities seem to be more common among multiples
• dizygotic twins may run in families and may be passed down by both men and women
• there are mirror image twins where some traits are opposites (one is left-handed and one is right-handed, one has hair that parts on the left and one on the right, etc)

Since dizygotic twins run in both my family and my husband’s, we assumed that the twins we were having would be dizygotic. When they were born, the doctor said he thought they might be monozygotic and sent the placenta for testing to confirm his theory. If he hadn’t taken that step, we may have continued to assume they were dizyogtic even though they look very similar. I’m not sure if having that information makes a difference to us, at this point. Many families go for years without knowing the zygosity of their multiples, and apparently 75% of them are right about their assumptions.

Do you know for sure the zygosity of your multiples? How did you find out? Why is it important for you to know?

The Twins Days Festival is really geared toward TWIN MOMS and their offspring. I’m more of a twin mom. Lower case.

We attended at our twins’ request. As we pulled into the parking lot, my boys were excited to see sets of twins in matching outfits. Attendees had decorated their cars as well. “What’s so special about being twins?” my 8-year-old singleton grumbled.

Oh, that’s a fun one to answer at Twins Days.

As we entered the high school where registrations were being taken, I was overcome by a wave of emotion at the throngs of identically dressed twosomes and threesomes. I was excited for my boys. In our quest to treat twins as individuals, I think we often go overboard and treat them as though being a twin is somehow a weakness that needs to be hammered out of them. We frown at sets of twins with rhyming or alliterative names. We tsk-tsk parents who dress their twins alike. We want them in separate classes, with separate friends. It felt good to be in a place where all the pressure to prove I’m fostering their individuality is removed, and their sameness is accepted for what it is.

The sameness is not just accepted, but celebrated. It seems a lot of effort is put into looking identical at the Twins’ Days Festival. These twins all matched completely – haircuts, clothing, shoes, glasses, hairstyles, purses, jewelry, etc.

I’d made a terrible mistake. Two terrible mistakes, actually. First, my boys were not dressed exactly alike. (This is because I am a twin mom [lower case] and just felt proud that I had the same shirt in two different colors clean at the same time.) Second, my boys have very different haircuts, due to a series of unfortunate attempts at saving money on haircuts. (Lesson learned.)

My hope that the boys would be recognized as twins was washed away by a river of candied apple slobber.

There weren’t many sets of twins or trips whose parents had made my mistake(s). Or if there were, they blended in with all the other non-twins. I was asked if my older three were triplets. I was asked if Miss A and P were twins, when G was standing right there next to them. The boys were not obviously twinnish enough, and I felt like I’d short-changed them.

This event highlighted how very lower case I am.

For most of the evening my kids’ social anxiety kept them very calm and well behaved. I received compliments. But as the kids got more comfortable with their surroundings, things escalated until they were having a four-way chasing/wrestling/punching fight that resulted in multiple minor injuries. As the violence progressed, I thought, “If there’s any public place where this probably won’t be unusual, this is it.” Based on conversations with the moms of multiples I know in real life, face-punching is sort of twinspeak shorthand for “hi, how’s it going?” But the whole evening, I only saw one other set of twins punching each other in the face. I have no explanation for this.

So, Twins’ Days made me feel inadequate. It made my daughter feel jealous. But it made my boys feel fantastic. Don’t mock me, but I’ve shed tears over how much they liked being there, and how they clearly identified so closely with all of these other people who sprang to the earth paired with another. It was such a powerful experience that it made me want to convert to TWIN MOM. Whether we subject the whole family to the festival in the future, we’ll definitely take the boys back each year, for as long as they want to go.

My kids, before G shunned his older sister for having failed to split after fertilization.

Aside: I had the pleasure of meeting up with Kim Schmidt, a HDYDI reader and mother to an 8-year-old singleton and 3-year-old twins, all daughters. She’s writing about the Twinsburg festival for American Way magazine, and I hope she’ll let us link it here when the piece is published. She blogged a bit about the festival here.

Next year, HDYDI meet-up in Twinsburg, Ohio!

Jen is a work-from-home mom of 5-year-old twin boys, and two girls ages 3 and 8. She also blogs at Diagnosis: Urine, where she examines the finer points of potty training failure.

This is mind-blowing in any number of ways, of course.  But looking back on this blog, which I started back when they were six months old, one thing that really strikes me is how much the “twin thing” has changed over the last three years.

The last 12 months, the centrality of their twin-ness to my parenting experience has really faded into the background. Oh, it’s still a major factor of my identity as a mom, don’t get me wrong. I will always carry that as a badge of pride, maybe as a war wound, too. I love that my kids are twins.  While they may not be as inseparable as some, they are most definitely close.  They fight, sure. They get on each other’s nerves in ways I find both exhausting and amusing.  But the last year in particular, they really have become each other’s very best playmates and have tons of fun together.  With almost no words spoken between them, a piece of rope will turn into a 20-minute game of chasing and hysterical shrieking.

While there will always be benefits and problems that are specific to having twins, my day-to-day life is no longer a series of unique logistical problems in the way it was that first 3, 6, 12, 18 months. Having twin newborns, infants, and young toddlers is so intense and so uniquely challenging, it makes for an entirely different experience of parenting from those who have “just” one. People are incredulous when they ask “how do you do it?”, especially because if we parented just like a singleton-parent-times-two, we’d never make it. We don’t fuss over every little thing, we simply don’t have the time.  That experience is foreign to us.

Today, though, I don’t think my life as a parent of two three-year-olds is nearly so different from my friend with the two-year-old and four-year-old.  Much more these days, I’m simply a parent of two children.  When people start to give the, “oh, wow, twins, that must be so hard!” reaction, they now start to backtrack and realize that it’s not so different from their life as a parent of two, even if they had them one at a time.

The intense difficulty of those first months has not been negated. It forever changed me, primarily in what I think are really positive ways (even if that was in a “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” kind of way).  My kids and their twin-ness will always have something special that their singleton friends don’t.  I will always proudly be a Mom of Twins.

But I’m also just a mom of two kids, like so many others.  The specialness of my experience is fading a little bit, I’m blending in.  I’m OK with that. I’ll never forget where I came from.