One of the things I love most about my twins is how different they are. They really are complete opposites and individuals within their twin bond, which is great, we want them to feel like they are unique and know that they’re not just ”the twins”. However, I do feel those differences often play against us, in various areas of our lives.
They have always been bad sleepers, but to make that even more difficult they have opposite preferences on how, or when, to sleep. He loves a good nap and waking up very early, she’s never wanted to nap but would sleep in in the morning. So, what this actually means is that we get a short, fragile break during the day, and still get to wake up at 5am. Not only that, but he normally feels like he was hit by a truck when she wakes him from the nap, and she acts like a gremlin fed after midnight when he wakes her in the morning. It’s a lose-lose situation, really.
These little disagreements translate to other areas of our daily life, too. They will take turns to go through I-hate-food periods so that we’re always worrying about at least one of them not eating enough, and we’ve gone through the same thing on not wanting to go to Preschool.
As any parent, I'm sure, we’ve also gone through our fair share of sickness and illnesses in the house. I have worked in childcare for many years and honestly didn’t think the same child can get so many different diseases in one year. Luckily enough, we do seem to have overcome the constantly-sick period, but for what it felt like an eternity we were going through viruses back-to-back. It was as if someone had given us a "Sick-Bingo Card" and we were going for the big prize. For most of these, one of the twins would get it first and throw the whole family daily routine off course, no work, no school, no sleep, no peace! When that twin was almost recovered and we stupidly thought for half a second, we might have gotten away with just the one sick twin, the 2nd one would join in and we had to start all over again.
Do they sometimes agree on any of the above? Yes, but only for the non-desired option. We’ve gone through periods where neither of them wants to sleep, eat or go to Preschool, and of course we’ve gone through periods where both of them have been severely sick at the exact same time, turning our house into a scene from A&E on a Saturday night.
On (very) rare occasions, all planets and stars have aligned, and we’ve had an early night with no overnight wakings and a sleep in (sleep in in our house means 7am). There’s also been a day or two where both have surprisingly eaten their whole dinner and we’ve spent hours trying to figure out what we did differently so that we can recreate it every single night (unsuccessfully). We have even experienced a week or two where they’re both extremely happy to go into school. But all this happens less often than an eclipse.
It's hard to keep up too, especially when it comes to food. She likes mash potato, he doesn’t, he likes fish, she doesn’t. Apple for him, banana for her. Ham sandwich vs. peanut butter sandwich, she wants chocolate, he wants jellies… it never ends. The only food item they agree on is berries, which, again, doesn’t work in our favour because we are 2 trays of raspberries away from re-mortgaging our house. We thought we were winning in parenting when we got rid of the cost of nappies at the 2-year mark, but then were met by the berry mafia. If there's a black market for berries where you can buy them half price, I want to know, I'd happily break the law for that.
Despite all this, there are some areas where there are never disagreements, of course. These are: asking for TV, asking for snacks (and treats), disliking going for a shower, and disliking going to sleep. They will always team-up for these, no exceptions.
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