Kathy and Dave U Plus Two

So I get back the other day from my little weekend getaway in Hawaii and log into my little blog site tracker. For some reason, I get a little thrill out of knowing that people other than Kathy and my sister and my parents are reading about our little adventures.

Blog site-tracker thingy informs me that my blog received 36 visits in about a 24 hour period starting on Memorial Day afternoon. Which, I probably don't need to tell you, is a lot more than usual. I know there are people out there who read my blog from time to time, but I'm not egotistical enough to think that masses of people were breaking away from their Memorial Day barbecues because they just HAD to check in on our latest wacky baby adventures.

I look a little closer and notice that 32 of the 36 visits came from people searching Google for "divorce rates for parents of twins", which is a topic I mentioned briefly in a post I made about the effect that having twins has had on our marriage. That's weird, I think to myself. Why in the world would there be this sudden nationwide interest in the divorce rates of parents of twins?

I'm stumped, so I shut down my laptop and glance at the trashy magazine on my bedside table, which has a cover article on Jon & Kate Plus Eight's recent marital problems. A smart person might have made a connection between the flood of visitors to my little website and the fact that a famous couple with twins is having marital problems. Apparently, I'm not a smart person.

So it seems that on Memorial Day, the TLC channel ran the first episode of the new season of Jon & Kate Plus Eight, which, for the uninitated, is a reality show where they follow the adventures of this family that has one set of twins and one set of sextuplets (meaning, um, "plus eight" kids - get it?). The kids on the show are cute and all, but if you've watched the show, you know that the real fun is watching the parents, Jon & Kate, fighting. "Fighting" is kind of a generous term, because mostly it's just Kate scolding her husband in exasperation while he stands there looking like a dejected puppy.

In a shocking (shocking!) development, Jon and Kate have recently run into marital problems which have made them the subject of trashy tabloid magazine articles everywhere. You've probably seen them on magazine covers at your local supermarket checkstand, even if you've never heard of the show. This magazine cover I have right here is headlined "Jon and Kate: A Marriage in Crisis!" Um, not that I read those magazines or anything. Um, yeah.

Anyway, on the first episode, Jon and Kate finally came out and addressed all the recent issues and problems in their marriage, and Kate apparently at some point mentioned how the divorce rate among twin parents is so high, but that she used to think that they were going to be the exception to the statistic. Apparently the mention was prominent enough to send at least 32 nervous twin parents running to their computers to Google "divorce rate for parents of twins".

On the one hand, I feel vaguely protective of my fellow twin parents and think that the sudden joy that the world seems to be taking from their misery is a little sad, especially since I also like to think that Kathy and I are going to be an exception to the scary statistics. On the other hand, clearly I'm a freaking hypocrite, because I have the episode sitting on my Tivo, and the truth is I can't wait to watch it and gawk at the wreckage that is their marriage. Which, who knows, could be just part of the big plan. Part of me thinks that maybe we're all suckers and Jon and Kate are out there somewhere counting their money and having a good laugh together.

Leah and Riley appear to be amused by the whole thing:

Don't Get Around Much Anymore

Back in our pre-baby days, Kathy and I were always taking trips. Day trips, weekend trips, plane trips, long road trips, we pretty much did it all. People would refer to us as the "trip couple" (and Kathy as "Kokomo Kathy"). Traveling was, like, our couple super-power. When people saw us, they would always ask us what our next trip was, and they knew that we would always have an answer lined up.

That all came to a screeching halt about seven months ago with the new additions to our family. In the past seven months, we have stayed entirely within a 45-minute radius of our house. For the first few months, we pretty much only got into the car if we needed to go to the doctor's office or the grocery store. Nowadays if we're feeling particularly adventurous we'll brave crossing the Bay to visit some friends in Alameda, but when we go much beyond that, we start to get kinda nervous and itchy.

For some reason, even though Leah and Riley are pretty well-behaved in general, Kathy and I can't shake this uneasy feeling that if we breach the borders of our protective San Francisco bubble, something's going to go horribly wrong and the babies will start screaming their heads off, and we won't be able to stop it because the only thing that will magically calm them down will be something that we left sitting in their toy box at home. And so they'll keep crying louder and louder and louder until their heads eventually explode. And we will stare at the smoking remains of our children, and we will think to ourselves wistfully, if only we had stayed at home -- our babies would still have their heads.

We're trying to get out a little more, just so the babies become aware that there's a great big world out there. This weekend, we went to the zoo. It was nice to get out, but truthfully, the babies didn't really give a damn about the animals. They are way more interested in Sophie the rubber giraffe than they are in a real, live 30-foot tall giraffe walking around right in front of them. For one thing, Sophie's a heckuva lot more squeaky. And then after an hour, they both melted down, which wasn't unbearable, but still, it wasn't the most fun thing in the world to be running around with a screaming 20-pound baby strapped to you on the hottest day of the year as you try to find where the heck that darn zoo exit was.

Anyway, this weekend, my college roommate is getting married in Hawaii. Kathy and I briefly flirted with the idea of a Hawaii trip with the whole family, but we eventually got freaked about by the complicated logistics and chickened out. So now it's just me going to Hawaii this weekend, while Kathy and my parents spend the weekend in San Francisco with the babies.

I guess Kathy and I continue to be imprisoned by our own fear. People I've talked to about this think we're being silly, I can tell. But most of those people don't have twins. Let me tell you, the image of two babies sitting in our laps crying their lungs out for six hours straight is a pretty big deterrent. I mean, all you parents of single babies out there, picture the volume of your own baby screaming as loud as he/she possibly can. Now multiply that by two. That's loud. Is it worth going through that just to spend a weekend making sure your babies stay out of the sun and don't ingest too much of that Waikiki sand? No, we didn't think so either.

But the good news is Dave gets to go to Hawaii! Sorry, Leah and Riley! (And more importantly, sorry, Kathy!)

A Moment Like This

Here's a scene that has played itself out in our living room the past three mornings, exactly the same way each time:

• With the babies' morning feed just finished, mommy and daddy sit Leah and Riley facing each other on the couch, within easy reach of each other.


• Leah starts to grab Riley's bib and pull it toward her mouth. Mommy pulls Leah's arm away so that she doesn't choke her sister to death. Riley looks amused.


• Leah and Riley stare at each other in wonderment for about 20 seconds, apparently fascinated by what they each must think is the most life-like and sophisticated toy ever.


• Leah starts trying to grab Riley's face and pull it toward her mouth. Mommy pulls Leah's arm away so that she doesn't take a bite out of her sister's face. Riley looks amused.


• Leah and Riley stare at each other in wonderment for another 20 seconds.


• Leah, with a big goofy smile on her face, stares right into Riley's eyes and makes this long birdcall-like noise, that sounds roughly like this: "aaheeeaaaaawwwweeeeeaaaaaah!" (Hope I got the spelling right there.)


• While Leah's making this noise, Riley smiles broadly and stares at her with rapt attention, as if she is telling the most fascinating story ever.


• Something in the air changes and the spell is abruptly broken. Leah puts her thumb in her mouth and looks away. Riley looks away and appears to be intensely bored all of sudden.

Maybe that description doesn't sound all that exciting, but it's actually something we've been looking forward to for like months: the moment where the twins actually interact with each other as sisters rather than just being that-thing-that-wakes-me-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-and-takes-away-my-toys. It is nirvana for us new twin parents. It is the new-twin-parent equivalent of heroin. As soon as the moment is over, dammit, you want to see it again. Now. Now-now-NOW.

Unfortunately, Leah and Riley have sensed their parents' desperation and have therefore decided that they will only do one performance a day. Other than that two-minute period each morning, you can put them right in front of each other face-to-face and they will avoid eye contact at all costs, suddenly looking up at ceiling, staring down at their feet like shy teenagers.

So now I sit here, at 8:30 pm at night, looking forward to my next fix tomorrow morning. Ten and half hours to go.

The girls have me right where they want me now. I'm a goner.

Share Alike

One of the biggest advantages of twins, I'm told, is that they can play together, meaning that they will socialize at an early age and therefore learn concepts like sharing and entertaining themselves. I say "I'm told" because I've yet to see this in action with our girls, and I don't envision it happening any time soon.

So here's what usually happens when we try to make the girls "play together". Typically, we'll sit them on the floor facing each other, putting ten toys or so between them. Then we sit and watch the action unfold, like so:

1. Leah eagerly grabs a toy and immediately puts it in her mouth and starts chewing
2. Riley tentatively picks up a toy.
3. Leah sees Riley picking up a toy and decides that Riley's toy is infinitely better than the one that she's currently chewing on. She yanks Riley's toy out of her hand and starts chewing on it.
4. Riley sits staring at Leah with a mildly miffed expression. She watches Leah chewing on her new toy for about thirty seconds.
5. Riley tentatively picks up another toy.
6. Leah sees Riley picking up the toy, and even though she's holding a great toy and there are eight other wonderful toys on the ground to choose from, yanks Riley's toy out of her hand and starts chewing.
7. Go to Step 4 and repeat ad infinitum.

Here's an illustration of Step 4 for ya.

It doesn't really go on "ad infinitum", I guess. In reality, Riley starts getting a little bored after five or so cycles and resigns herself to just watching Leah play. But she never seems to get particularly upset about Leah's bullying tactics. She seems to have accepted that "my sister is going to steal my toys" and chalked it up to it being one of those mildly annoying facts of life, like taxes, or like how time goes so slow when you're standing next to the kettle waiting for water to boil but so fast when the babies are napping and you're trying to get eight things done before they wake up. (To pick a random example.)

Riley seems to have reacted to this situation by deciding that she doesn't really like toys all that much. Even if Leah's not around and you put some toys in front of her, Riley doesn't look all that thrilled. Sure, she'll grab a rattle and shake it a couple of times and listen to the noise it makes, but there's no joy in it like there is with Leah. It's Riley's little defense mechanism -- better not get too attached to a toy because you know Leah's just going to take it away as soon as she sees it.

This may be why the only toys that Riley gets really excited about are things like the Jumperoo and the Exersaucer -- toys that you actually sit in, meaning that nobody can take them away from you when you're playing with them. When Riley's playing in the Jumperoo, Leah can watch jealously but she can't actually take the Jumperoo away from her sister. At least not until she's strong enough to physically lift the Jumperoo over her head and turn it upside down, dumping Riley on to the floor. But I guess that if Leah's ever strong enough to do that, we'll have much bigger problems to deal with.

The Parent Trap

Kathy and I have recently come to the realization that at some point during the past two months, Leah and Riley got together and swapped personalities.

I've talked a little bit about how Riley suddenly went being the fussy, "challenging" one to being a happy-go-lucky angel, and how Leah has taken over Riley's role as the fussy one. But it goes beyond that.

At exactly the same time the babies started switching temperments, they also switched their mommy/daddy alliances. Basically, Leah went from being a mommy's girl to being a daddy's girl, and vice versa for Riley. All of a sudden, those daddy games that Riley used to think were so hi-LAR-ious were now met with cold, detached gazes, while Leah became the one who couldn't get enough of daddy. They switched at exactly the same time -- there was no period where both the babies liked mommy or both liked daddy. The babies just woke up one day and switched alliances as if it were one of those plot twists on "Survivor".

And then yesterday, without warning, both babies switched alliances again. I got home and walked over to Riley, leaned over and said "Ba-ba!", and Riley started laughing her ass off. I'm talking 90 seconds of uninterrupted, rolling-around-on-the-ground, tears-coming-out-her-eyes, gasping-for-breath laughter. I walked over to Leah and tried the same thing and got a confused look of disdain, followed by a glance over at the still-laughing Riley that seemed to say "what the hell's wrong with HER?"

Then Kathy came in and tried repeatedly to duplicate the Riley laughter. For several minutes, Kathy was dancing around, singing, twirling around, jumping, chanting "Ba-ba", using rattles like maracas, making raspberry sounds -- pretty much doing everything she could think of short of standing on her head. I thought it was pretty freaking funny myself, but Riley just sat there with a Bruce Willisey half-smirk on her face. Leah, however, was enchanted. The babies had switched alliances yet again.

It felt like one of those sitcoms or movies like the Parent Trap where the identical twins keep switching places without telling the parents. And then the clueless parents wonder what's gotten into those twins, but they never catch on that the twins are just changing their hairstyles back and forth, and the one who used to wear her hair in pigtails is now wearing it in a ponytail and the one who used to wear it in a ponytail is now wearing it in pigtails.

Leah and Riley aren't identical twins and don't even look remotely alike, so I haven't quite figured out how they're managing to make these little switcheroos. But I'm telling you, something fishy is goin' on here, I just know it.