Unclear on the Concept

The first basic rule of toddler-hood is that if Toddler sees somebody having fun playing with a toy, Toddler wants that toy, and dammit, Toddler is going to grab that toy, no matter what. Kathy and I see this phenomenon all the time when we take Leah and Riley to these "toddler activity rooms" at the local children's museums, where "toddler activity room" is really just a fancy term for "room with a bunch of cool toys in it." I personally enjoy watching all the parents at these places nervously hovering over their toddlers trying to prevent them from stealing other kids' toys. Inevitably, the parents will get briefly distracted and then turn back to their toddler just in time to watch little Aidan (or Liam or whoever) knocking over little Emma (or Ella or whomever) and stealing her choo-choo train (or fire engine or whatever). And then Aidan's embarrassed parents will turn to Emma's parents, smile apologetically, and say something like "Ohmigod. I'm so sorry. Aidan doesn't really get the concept of sharing yet."

It's definitely true that 16-month olds don't get the concept of sharing, but fortunately most 16-month olds have a bunch of toys of their very own waiting for them at home that they can play with to their heart's delight -- no sharing required. This is unfortunately not the case with Leah and Riley, because if they ever try to play with a toy to their heart's delight, their twin sister will come over and pry that delight right of their little fingers.

Yep, Leah and Riley fight over toys. Con-stant-ly. Basically, Kathy and I spend about 95% of our parental energy trying to prevent or break up toy fights. Right now, we have three techniques that we use to prevent Leah and Riley from fighting:

1. Distract. (As in "Hey Riley, look at this bottle of Tylenol! Isn't it WAY more interesting than Leah's monkey doll?")
2. Buffer. (As in "Daddy's going to sit right here between Riley and Leah so that they can't bite each other. Isn't that nice?")
3. Separate (As in "Hey, Leah! You know what's a really fun place to visit? The guest room! Come with me and experience the wonder!")

The most obvious strategy to prevent toy fights would be to have two of every toy, but we've found this strategy to be a big loser. When we give one toy to Leah and one identical toy to Riley, this just means that Leah will soon decide that it sure would be great to have both toys. Like, we have two fluffy pink dogs, but let's say we give one dog to Leah and one dog to Riley, and then close our eyes and count to five. By the time we get to five, Leah will be sitting there hugging both fluffy pink dogs with a big grin on her face, while Riley will be looking on, plotting which part of Leah's body she should bite first.

While the girls haven't learned to share, sometimes instead of fighting they'll negotiate a trade. Leah will trade one of her fluffy pink dogs for Riley's baby doll -- everybody wins, everybody's happy. Another parental triumph! Peace reigns in twin-sister land!

Of course, ten seconds later, Riley yells out in protest because Leah has taken back her fluffy pink dog. We watch as Leah bear-hugs both fluffy pink dogs plus the baby doll.

Peace is a very fleeting thing around here.

La La La La

Once upon a time, back in our pre-child days, Kathy and I used to listen to this thing called "music". And when a band got mentioned on the radio or in a magazine or something, I used to actually know who the heck they were talking about. In fact, I used to spend hours on iTunes downloading music and burning stuff on to mix CDs which I would listen to in my copious amounts of this odd thing called "free time".

I guess you could say that we still listen to music, if by "music" you mean exclusively the CD from the Music Together class that we take Leah and Riley to on Saturdays. Yep, those girls sure do like that CD, and who could blame them? It's chock full of timeless gems like "My Ball is Big and Round" and "Whoever Takes Care of You Comes Back (Because They Do Love You)", sung by some very perky-sounding folks. The girls like it so much that it's become the go-to CD for those situations when one of the girls inexplicably goes into a snit and we want to snap them out of it. Which means that we play it one or two times a day, every day. Every. Single. Day.

Even when the CD is not actually playing on our stereo, it's playing in my head on endless repeat, over and over and over. Right now for example, the CD in my head is playing Track 3, which is "Clap, Clap, Clap Your Hands". That's one of the good ones, actually. Don't get me started on Track 5, which is "She Sells Seashells (By the Seashore)". Trust me, you don't want to hear about it. I hear that song in my nightmares.

And if that sounds bad, believe me, it gets worse. I don't know if you've ever had a two-second song snippet from a kid's toy stuck in your head, but it's, um, not very fun. Yesterday, the words "Spin, spin, a letter!" repeated in my head about 493 times over the course of about three hours. I'd better stop talking about it now or else it's going to become wedged in my head again, and I just don't know if I can go through that again.

The good side of all this is that Leah and Riley are becoming more and more musical, which is cool to see. They'll now actually clap in pretty good time to the music, or bounce around in a way that bears a passing resemblance to dancing. Or at least as much a resemblance as what mommy and daddy call dancing.

And then on Sunday, we were in the car driving home and out of nowhere, Riley started singing a spontaneously made-up musical composition. It wasn't bad, actually. The melody was kind of a cross between Frere Jacques and the Jeopardy theme song. The lyrics went a little something like this:

Ah wah DEE Tah
Ah wah DEE Tah
Ah wah DEE Tah
(repeat about 15 more times)

So maybe it was a little repetitive, but I think she was going for a radio-friendly kinda vibe. I found it pretty darn catchy myself, especially when compared to that She Sells Seashells song.

And when we got home, Leah picked up the kazoo and had a good ol' time playing it for about 15 minutes. Or I should say, she had a good ol' time until Riley started trying to grab her kazoo, at which time Leah started whining and crying. This normally would be a bummer, but in this particular case she was whining and crying with the kazoo still in her mouth, which as it turns out sounds pretty freaking funny. Sorry Leah, it's hard to take any sound seriously when you hear it through a kazoo.

Time After Time

It's one of those parental cliches that time goes by so quickly once you have kids. You know the conversation -- you'd better enjoy each moment you have, because before you know it, your daughters are are (off to school) (off to college) (embarrassed to be seen with you). I have that conversation all the time -- I say "time is going by so fast!" or "I can't believe they're 16 months old already!" or "where the heck is the time going?" And it's true -- a lot of the time, I'm amazed that I'm the parent of a couple of 16-month olds. How'd that happen?

The truth is, though, that in a lot of ways, time often seems like it's going incredibly slowly. Like right now, Leah and Riley have colds. They've had this cold for about a week, going on a week and a half, but let me tell ya, it feels like they've been sick for about a billion years. If I search deeply back in my memory, I can remember a time when they didn't drip snot all over the house and my clothing. Ah yes. Those were the days.

In San Francisco here, it's been raining off and on for about three or four weeks. Three or four weeks of winter weather never seemed like a big deal before we had kids. But three or four weeks when you're trying to keep a couple of girls who recently discovered walking happy while confining them to about 100 square feet of open floor space, that's a whole different ballgame. And Punxsutatawney Phil says 6 more weeks of winter!? I'm going to kick the crap out of that frickin' groundhog.

Seriously -- when you've got a cranky, sick girl that you're trying to keep happy, and it's pouring outside, and you look at the clock and it's two hours until her next nap, trust me -- time ain't flyin'.

And recently, I've been looking at some of the pictures and video footage I have from the past year or so, and I swear -- even the videos that are from just a few months ago seem like ancient history to me. Wow -- Leah and Riley used to just lay there on the ground all day!? Really!?! We just put them on the ground and they just stayed there? And why did we think that was difficult again? I can't remember.

Anyway, speaking of video footage, I thought I'd share this. To those that don't want to watch a couple of twins being cute for two and a half minutes, for Godsakes don't click below.