Wherever you go with twins, you won’t go unnoticed.
I’m from a small town in one of the Canary Islands, and we visit a good few times a year. The weather is always lovely so most of our day is spent outside, which means it only takes half a day for the entire town to know we’re back around.
My twins are very loud, noisy, they run everywhere, they fall (and cry), they bump into people, they climb, they play their own games, loudly, they laugh, they fight... you really can’t miss them. I think the “twin effect” gets so much attention, too. People always find them so entertaining, amusing, fascinating even.
They’d stop and try to talk to them, they’ll ask me questions, “Are they twins?!”, “You’ve your hands full!”, and my favourite “Oh, I have 7 kids, 4 goats and 3 parrots but couldn’t do twins” (Thanks…). To be fair though, even my granny, who had 5 children pretty close to each other and was a SAHM, has told me a few times, “I know I had 5, but twins…”. They’re a lot.
And sure, being out with your twins in public can be chaotic, especially on your own. Sometimes I think if I filmed myself out with them and Durex saw it, I could make good money for starring in one of their ads. But that’s never stopped me, really. From the very beginning I always made an effort to get out of the house, even if sometimes it took me longer to get out than the actual time we spent anywhere.
Now that they’re 3 and a half, I mostly get out of the house to stop them from tearing it apart. They do play a lot together nicely at this age, which is great, but this often involves doing the most random stuff you can imagine – like using freshly-clean, just-folded pillowcases to make beds for their dolls, or taking out every single container from the kitchen cupboard to store stones, sticks and leaves, or making a “pool” by laying all 568 teddies that they own on the floor of their bedroom and pushing their beds together to make a boat. They’ve even made games that involved emptying full drawers of clothes (ours, that is, not even their own). Yes, it is lovely that they can entertain themselves like that and I do love they have such great imagination, but it also forces me to leave the house for an entire evening sometimes, just so that we can come back for bedtime and keep the house intact for a couple of hours. This way, I can save my husband and I having to spend 50 minutes at night trying to put it all back together or googling “how to find your Sky TV remote”. FYI – you can ask the TV to “find my remote”, it will start beeping so you can follow the very-vague sound all around the house until you find it inside the Doctor Set case or the Lego box.
I truly believe I have become an outdoor person out of necessity, for the sole purpose of keeping my house in one piece.
Whatever the reason is, getting them out of the house can be difficult, but it’s necessary. So don’t be afraid, do it. Pack all your snacks, spare clothes, toys for the car, water, jackets, blankets, sunglasses, more snacks, books and teddies, go to the toilet 15 times before getting into the car, and a couple of more times just as you're getting into the car, and just go. Bring the mess somewhere else, save your house.
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