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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.