Mommy and Daddy Aren't Very Funny

Everything's about to change.

Kathy's going back to work on Monday, and we're all kinda freaking out about it. Well, Leah and Riley aren't exactly freaking out about it. But mommy and daddy are pretty much basket-cases right now.

We have a nanny named Elsa all lined up to start working full-time next week. She's been working part-time the past three weeks helping Kathy take care of the babies. The babies love her. Actually, let me rephrase that. The babies looooooooove her.

I didn't really get a full sense of this until yesterday. I don't usually get to see Elsa in action because I leave for work before she gets here and she's gone by the time I get home. But yesterday, I took a vacation day from work so I could spend one last day with Kathy before she went back to work. Kathy and I went out for lunch and had a nice walk around the City, and then returned home to find Elsa playing with the babies, who were both laughing. And not just laughing. They were laughing like we had never heard them laugh before. They were laughing like it was 1999.

Kathy and I can easily make Leah and Riley smile. On occasion, we can make one of them giggle. Very briefly -- a like "tee hee hee". But we have never even made them both giggle at the same time. This was both of them laughing. And this was no "tee hee hee". This was an extended guffaw that went on and on. It was like one of the laughs you have as an adult that make your sides hurt and tears stream down your cheeks. If Leah and Riley had been drinking milk, it would have shot out their nose.

Kathy and I have been sort of shell-shocked by the whole experience. You want your babies to love their nanny, but you don't really want them to love their nanny more than they love you, especially when they're not even with her full-time yet. So ever since then, Kathy and I have been a little off our game, trying over and over to duplicate what Elsa was doing to make them laugh, and failing miserably. Instead of making them laugh, we actually seem to be frightening them. And lately, we haven't been even getting the tee-hees.

Come on, Leah and Riley, throw your mommy and daddy a bone here. You could at least fake some laughter. Is that too much to ask? We promise to stop taking embarrassing pictures of you...

Social Experiments, Part 2

If you've been paying extra close attention to some of the pictures in this blog lately, you may have noticed something a little odd about how Kathy's been dressing the twins. Take a look.

In this picture, you might notice that Leah's dressed kinda like a tomboy, and Riley's dressed like a girly-girl. It's not just this picture, either. Go ahead, take a look at some of the other pictures on the blog. You can scroll down. I'll wait here.

So Kathy has apparently made the executive decision that Leah's the tomboy of the family, and so she gets dressed in things like jeans or overalls, or in bright colors like red. Riley's apparently the little princess of the family, and so she gets dressed in flowy outfits with flowers and pastel colors.

That's right. Our babies are only four-and-a-half months old, and - behold - we have already subconsciously assigned them their roles for their lifetime. Now, it's true that Leah is bigger and stronger than Riley, and Riley is a bit of a drama queen right now, so if you're going to pick a tomboy out of the two, then Leah's definitely your best bet. But the social implications of this early role assignment are kind of mind-boggling. If Leah does grow up and become a tomboy-athlete type, will that be because that's her natural personal tendency, or will that be because her parents have subconsciously conditioned to her to be that way by dressing her up in jeans and overalls and stuff?

Of course, now that I've publicly blogged about this, Kathy's totally going to reverse herself, and start dressing Riley in jeans and Leah in dresses. This, of course, will result in a sudden identity crisis for both of our babies, the fallout of which will take years of therapy to recover from. You just can't win, you see.

Sorry Leah and Riley. We tried.

Bouncing Baby Girl

So, here's the dream I had a couple nights ago:

I'm standing on the sidewalk watching Leah cross the street. A car comes out of nowhere and hits Leah, but just barely, so that she kind of bounces off the car and lands in the gutter. I scream and start running toward her. She stands up quickly and dusts herself off, but she is obviously in some pain as she tries to walk again. She walks with a major limp and winces with each step.

And then I wake up.

Here are the thoughts that run through my mind as I wake up:

Thought #1: My dream self let Leah cross the street by herself! Ohmygosh, I am a terrible parent.

Thought #2: Where the heck was Riley in my dream? My subconscious mind totally forgot about Riley! Ohmygosh, I'm a terrible parent.

Thought #3: How come my dream self wasn't at all surprised that Leah was WALKING across the street, at age four months? Didn't I realize that this was a major milestone for her? Ohmygosh, I'm a terrible parent.

Thought #4: It was kinda cute the way Leah bounced off the car and then dusted her little baby clothes off...

Surprisingly, this was actually one of the first dreams I've had with the babies in it. It's as if the fact that I'm a parent hasn't yet sunk into my subconcious mind, and so it just goes on having dreams about work and high school and falling and stuff. I guess this dream might be a sign that my subconscious brain is just starting to accept the new parenting role, but it can only accept one baby at a time. So, Riley, you're next. Watch out for those cars.

Some pictures from the baby's happy weekend with the grandparents:

When Babies Get Too Smart

As the parents of twins, Kathy and I are always living in fear that one of our twins is feeling totally attention-starved. There's really not much we can do about it though. Fact is that there are two of them and there are two of us, and at best each parent can pay attention to one baby at a time. And of course there are times when the other parent is off doing something else for the moment and you're left to entertain two babies at the same time. For those times, the best that you can do is try to quickly bounce your attention back and forth between babies, hoping that neither of them notices that you're only giving each of them 50% of your attention.

But somehow even though these babies aren't smart enough to talk or sit up without falling over or go to sleep when they're tired or eat calmly when they're starving, somehow they're incredibly perceptive when it comes to noticing when you're not really fully paying attention to them. They're much more perceptive than us adults are. Sometimes when I'm reading or blogging or something, Kathy will talk at me for a long time and I won't hear a word she's saying, but it'll be minutes before Kathy realizes this. But Leah and Riley can sense within about 2.5 seconds if nobody's paying attention to them, and you better believe they don't let mommy and daddy get away with it.

Sometimes Leah's playing in her Jumperoo and seems to be off in her own little world of joy, and I think it's safe to temporarily turn my attention to the newspaper or the Entertainment Weekly or my Ipod. But thirty seconds later, that girl who had just been dancing and laughing like there was no tomorrow is suddenly stonefaced and glassy-eyed with boredom. And if I don't immediately turn away from the newspaper or Ipod and start singing to her or dancing in front of her or something, the pouty lower lip comes out, and it's all over.

Those girls have us right where they want us.

But at least we're bigger and stronger than them and can make them dress up in silly outfits and take pictures of them against their will:

Everybody's Doing It...

Before Kathy became pregnant with twins, I had, to my knowledge, met exactly two sets of twins in my life. One set was a pair of identical twins on my soccer team when I was eleven years old, and the other was the twin daughters of one of college roomates. That's it. I had never really even noticed any twins walking around San Francisco or in our neighborhood. Twins seemed like one of those rare things that celebrities occasionally had, but that almost nobody in real life had.

But once Kathy and I knew we were going to have twins, all of sudden, some sort of twin-radar got activated in our heads, and all of a sudden, it seems like they're everywhere. The city's crawling with them.

Kathy's radar is especially sharp. She can spot them out of the corner of her eye, from blocks away. The other day, Kathy saw a guy getting out of his car and decided that this guy was definitely the father of twins. She decided this purely because of the look in his eye when he saw Kathy pushing the twins in the stroller. And she was right.

Earlier this week, Kathy randomly met a mom who also has two twin daughters and lives two blocks from our house. They talked for awhile, and made plans for us all to get together today for some coffee.

I'm sure we were quite a sight walking around with our two gigantic double-strollers taking up the entire sidewalk. Kathy and I get quite a lot of looks and double-takes when we take Leah and Riley for walks, but a lot of people walking by will usually be wrapped up in their own thing and won't notice us. But as we walked around pushing two sets of twins, believe me, we caught pretty much everybody's attention. Not that people were treating us like freaks or lepers or anything. But I do think I heard the words "Oh my god" about eight or nine times.

And then as we were sitting having coffee, another couple just happens to stop by the coffee place with, you guessed it, their two twin daughters. And there we were, three couples, three sets of twin daughters, drinking coffee like it was the most natural thing in the world. And as people walked by and did their little double-takes and triple-takes, I could just see the little thought-bubbles over their heads like in a comic strip, saying "Sheesh, it's really true -- EVERYBODY'S having twins."

I'll sign off with some pictures of Leah and Riley with their new toy (which is taking up the last empty space in our living room):

Color Blindness

Kathy and I get stopped on the street fairly often by people who want to look at our twins. About a quarter of the time, the person will look at the twins, coo or smile at them for awhile, and then ask us "So, are they identical?"

I never really know quite how to react to that question. Usually I just politely say "No, they're fraternal." But the reaction in my head goes something like this:

Let's see. One of them has a gigantic head, almost no hair, and looks Asian. The other one has a little pea-sized head, tons of hair, and looks Caucasian. If they were identical twins, they would look the same. That's why they call it "identical". Dude.

(It's almost always a dude.)

Then I got to wondering if maybe they only look totally different to me because I'm staring at them all the time. Like when they interview parents of identical twins and ask them how they can tell the twins apart, and they always say things like "Oh, I don't have any trouble telling them apart. They look totally different to me!" Or, like, you know how the Olsen twins are not identical twins, but they totally look the same to everyone except their parents and their agent? My daughters aren't the Olsen twins, are they?


Nah. People are just blind.

Speaking of different-race babies, I don't know if you read about that couple that had two sets of twins, and each set had one "black" twin and one "white" twin. The articles make the family sound like some sort of freak of nature, when all that really happened is that this couple had two sets of twins, and two of the kids look more like Dad and two of them look more like the Mom. That wouldn't be that big a deal if the couple weren't interracial.

Personally, I think it's pretty cool that we have one Asian-looking daughter and one Caucasian-looking daughter. But I do sometimes wonder how it's going to affect them as they grow up. I mean, are people going to even believe that they're twins? Are they going to be totally confused when they meet a white girl named "Umezaki"? Are people going to just expect Leah to be good at math and cover her mouth when she laughs? And are they going to expect Riley to, uh, I dunno, become a vegan and shop at Whole Foods?

Meh. Who cares, I guess. At least people will stop asking if they're identical.

Twin Bonding

One of the things I've been looking forward to most about having twin daughters is watching that close twin-sisterly bond grow between them. I think my expectations might have been a bit unrealistic. For some reason, I kinda expected the bond to be obvious right away -- like they were going to pop out of the womb holding hands. And singing "I'll Be There For You" in unison or something. I dunno, at least some evidence of their impending lifelong bond.

The truth is, today is their 4-month birthday and there still ain't much of a bond as far as I can tell. They have become more somewhat aware of each other, but it's been a slow progression. I think I can break up the progression so far into four basic phases:

Phase 1 -- Obliviousness: Otherwise known as the "Twin Sister? What Twin Sister?" phase. During the first week or so, we could've stacked the two babies on top of each other and they still wouldn't have known that the other one was there. Riley could be crying at the top of her lungs with Leah inches away and there would be absolutely no reaction from Leah.

Phase 2 -- Annoyance and Hostility: After the first week, Leah and Riley seemed to realize that the other one was there only when we laid them down side by side facing each other. Kathy and I did this often during the first month, as we were very excited to watch our babies interact. Of course, during the first month, babies are still just spastically flailing their limbs around in random fashion. So, what would usually happen is that Baby 1 would kick Baby 2, causing Baby 2 to cry and wave her arms around wildly, causing her to poke Baby 1 in the eye, which caused Baby 1 to kick some more, etc. -- basically creating an endless loop of kicking and scratching that would end only when we finally separated them to outside the flailing radius.

Phase 3 -- Disinterest: During the next couple months, Leah and Riley seemed to be aware of the existence of the other twin, but didn't really care much one way or another. We would put them in front of each other and they would stare at each other blankly for about three seconds, then turn their attention to something else. Anything else. The blank screen of the TV, the painting on the wall, the cat, the ceiling -- all far more interesting to them than their sister lying right in front of them.

Which leads us to Phase 4. I don't quite know what to call Phase 4 other than to say that it's a level just slightly above "disinterest". Right now, when Kathy and I we put Leah and Riley on the mat next to each other, Leah will usually grab Riley's arm or hand, put it in her mouth, and start chewing on it.

Maybe the best term for Phase 4 would be "Hunger".

Also, when they're both in a good mood, Leah and Riley will now coo and babble in unison, creating the vague and unconvincing illusion that they are having a conversation. A conversation where both people are talking over each other and neither person is remotely interested in what the other one is saying.

Actually, maybe that IS starting to sound like a normal sister-sister relationship.

The other good thing about the Hunger phase is that it provides plenty of fodder for cute pictures where Leah and Riley are holding each other's arms (i.e., right before Leah puts Riley's hand in her mouth):