The Best of It

I can’t count the number of times I’ve looked at the Cupcukes and thought ‘OMG, there are TWO of you.’ Over the past two years the shock of having two (two!!!) babies has slowly faded away and been replaced by wonder and amazement at how much freakin’ fun they can be. They are no longer twice as much work as one, at least most of the time. Now they’re twice as much fun.

I love how they play together; much of the time they don’t need to discuss what they’re going to do, they just know. One game moves into the next without a word of either encouragement or complaint. And I love how they can crack themselves up over something that is lost to rest of us who live outside their twinny world. I also love how kind they usually are to on another. They are quick to hug their sister if she cries or to run to bring her an ice pack to soothe her boo-boo, real or imagined. They rarely fight, and when they do it resolves quickly with a little grown-up intervention.

And they have each other’s back. Woe betide the foolish toddler who tries to bite one of the Cupcakes! There was a biter for a while at their daycare. He bit most of the other kids, but S2 and H2 always came home unscathed. When DH finally asked their teacher about their lack of battle scars she told him that Biter had indeed tried to bite the girls, but whenever he would try to chomp on one of them the other twin would rush in and beat Biter over the head until he left her sister alone.

Jenny mentioned how terrific it is to watch them learn from each other. I agree. By now the Cupcakes will sometimes actively try to teach each other how to do something. It doesn’t always work, but it’s really, really cool to watch. They are really sweet about encouraging each other (Don’t give up, H2!). And when they want to work together to get something done - watch out! They have figured out how to drag the 5′ by 3′ coffee table around the living room to, um, increase their access to things that are too high for them to reach without a stepladder. I can assure you that they had no adult help in coming up with that idea.

But my personal favorite has to be when I see them again after being gone for a few hours and they both come running toward me as fast as they can yelling ‘Yay!!! Mama!!!!!! Yay!!!!’. Both of them talking as fast as they can, trying to tell me what they’ve done while I was away while simultaneously trying to climb up into my arms, together. It just doesn’t get any better than that.