The strangest thing happened last week. Someone must have kidnapped the boys and replaced them with cranky imposters. Over the weekend we unknowingly got the originals back and normal service was resumed.
I have a couple of theories over what might have happened last week. It might have been the knock on effect from the birthday, they quickly got used to people coming in and handing them colourful parcels for them to tear the paper off and might have missed it when their mean parents didn’t hand them a bunch of presents this week. It might have been a sugar hangover, they ate their own bodyweight in chocolate and crisps and it’s possible that they were suffering withdrawals. They had a bit of a cold for a few days last week so maybe that’s the cause of the grumpiness. The old reliable excuse is teething, we like to trot that out whenever we run out of excuses for them because no-one likes to face up to the fact that they might just have cantankerous children. Maybe it was a combination of all of these things. All I know is that every evening last week I looked at my watch about a hundred times from 6.00 to 8.30 and wondered why it was taking such a long time to reach bedtime.
Everything we offered them for dinner was refused. Vociferously refused. Any attempt at interaction was rebuffed. Even when we gave up trying and just put on the TV they complained about our choice of programme.
It was a long week and after going out for a few drinks on Saturday night we were in no mood to face twins in the throes of the terrible twos. We went to my mother’s house so that she would cook us lunch and so someone would amuse the twins. We got there and the boys picked up where they left off and screamed abuse at us for the terrible crime of trying to feed them lunch. Our plan for a restful day was slowly evaporating so we settled for putting them down for a nap and getting lunch in peace. This is the point where they were switched back. When they woke up, they were back to their chirpy selves. They worked the room, sang songs, blew kisses and gave the full charm offensive. It was such a relief!
Their good humour continued on Monday night. The Huge Tumbler was over for a visit and they decided to acknowledge his existence for the first time. I think it was the juggling that won them over in the end. He did his best to ruin his good work by kicking over all the cones the boys had set up on the floor just to see what they’d do [he wasn’t at all encouraged by Hannah [!], and MB took offence and charged at the Huge Tumbler with his head]. Monkey Boy was certainly impressed with the juggling balls. I don’t know what he was thinking but after The Huge Tumbler finished and the boys cast the balls aside, MB took it upon himself to go and fetch them. Fetch is the only word for it too. He crawled around on his hands and knees and picked them up with his teeth. He seemed to be enjoying his little game so I threw the balls out again to see if he would continue. I was kind of glad when he gave me a “that game is SOOO five minutes ago” look and walked away.
After The Tumbler left, Hannah turned the stereo on so the boys could practise their dancing. On Saturday she had brought them down to a toddlers disco in the local scout hall. It didn’t start well, they refused to let go of their Nana’s legs when they first came in. By the end of the session they were swaggering around the dance floor like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. Their cousin Dusty went as well but his unique dancing style consisted of lying on the floor with little or no concern for his own safety. To each their own, I guess!
Hannah had selected Stevie Wonder’s greatest hits. The boys loved Sir Duke and Superstition but weren’t too keen on Isn’t She Lovely. I love the ways toddlers dance. They have a huge range of wiggle in them at that age. Their nappy clad bums swing from impossible angle to impossible angle with their little fists clenched and pumping the air. Best of all is the little pout, no point shaking your booty unless you are going to give it some attitude.
[Update: Thursday night was spent with their Nana. She has a video of Barney on the farm that finishes with a barn dance. It is some sight to see them gleefully kick their legs and shout “Yee-haw!”. My mother is a keen line dancer and is immensely proud without ever having seen it.]
So, who knows what version we get next week. Last week, I couldn’t wait to get out of the house to go training. This week, they put on a charm offensive and I don't want to put them to bed because they are so loveable. Fingers crossed for the latter!
Friday, October 22, 2010
Friday, October 15, 2010
The Birthday Party
It was supposed to be a quiet occasion. “We’ll have just the Grandparents and Godparents over and just have a cake to mark the day”. It sounded so straightforward, I mean, they are only two and have no idea what day their birthday is. Then you start to think about it and realise that Godparents includes partners and offspring, so we were quickly up to nineteen.
Nineteen people and only one other child their age to celebrate with them. Luckily, we have lots of friends with young children. Hannah’s brother has a daughter who will be three in December so we asked her over. We invited one of the girls from Hannah’s basketball team and her daughter that will be two in a few weeks. It would be rude not to invite since her mother has promised her hand in marriage to one of our boys. We haven’t decided which one, it seemed arranging her marriage when she was only a few months old was restrictive enough without narrowing it down further. While we were thinking marriage prospects we invited the girl next door. It only becomes a cliché if there is something to it. Then we invited a few others that don’t get mentioned specifically because we haven’t planned their wedding and before we knew it our quiet occasion had a guest list of about 40 men, women and children.
We had a cast of thousands, a miniature bouncy castle and enough junk food to get all of China on a sugar rush. Time to party like a toddler!!
It was a great day. The forecast was for unseasonable sunshine and it wasn’t as good as advertised but you can’t be unhappy with getting a dry day in October. I would hate to think what it would have been like if we weren’t able to open the back doors and let them play outside.
I had such great intentions of taking notes and writing a really detailed and hilarious post but I got caught up in the mayhem and you are stuck with this drivel instead. It was a blur and I only remember bits of it.
I remember that the boys got over their fear of bouncy castles and I had to pull them out of a tangle of juvenile limbs. I remember that the boy from next door tried to channel the spirit of Evel Kenieval, on a toy motorbike belonging to Fat Chops, and thumped his head off the decking after overcooking a wheelie. I saw one of the girls fall off the decking and I have a great mental image of her little legs sticking out a bush and no other evidence that a child was in there. I remember that the Drama Queen asked where we got our sofa from and then disappeared off to Ikea leaving her four kids in our house, cheek! I remember sitting all the toddlers at a table, piling it high with sweets and watching them make it all disappear. Then it was a case of lighting the candles, letting the kids blow them out, lighting the candles, letting the kids blow them out, lighting the candles, letting the kids blow them out, lighting the candles, letting the kids blow them out and finally cutting the cake.
After that, people started trickling out – most of them had the decency to bring their kids with them [yes DQ, I’m holding a grudge!]. Slowly, the house became quieter, the kids came down off the sugar rush and we swept all the debris into a couple of black sacks. We put the boys to bed, ordered a takeaway, turned on the X-Factor and started drinking heavily.
It was only the next day that we were able to take stock of how generous people had been. We tried to use the “your presence is present enough” tactic but failed miserably. Everyone agrees with the theory that there is no point buying a lot of stuff for two year olds who don’t understand what a birthday is. It is always overridden by the fear of being the only person who turns up empty handed. Needless to say the boys acquired a new winter wardrobe and a whole bunch of new toys.
The pick of the bunch was a couple of personal stereo’s from my mother. I’ve written a couple of times about how the boys love to sing and dance. We went down to my mother-in-law’s on Sunday to avoid cleaning up our house. We went and got them a compilation CD of recent hits that they sing along to in the car and plugged them in. The stereo hangs on a belt over one shoulder, there are big, gaudy headphones and a silver microphone attached. Not being able to hear what the boys are listening to only enhances the experience. They strutted around, they struck poses, they danced and they sang their hearts out. Most of all, they completely overshadowed X-Factor. Great fun!
Nineteen people and only one other child their age to celebrate with them. Luckily, we have lots of friends with young children. Hannah’s brother has a daughter who will be three in December so we asked her over. We invited one of the girls from Hannah’s basketball team and her daughter that will be two in a few weeks. It would be rude not to invite since her mother has promised her hand in marriage to one of our boys. We haven’t decided which one, it seemed arranging her marriage when she was only a few months old was restrictive enough without narrowing it down further. While we were thinking marriage prospects we invited the girl next door. It only becomes a cliché if there is something to it. Then we invited a few others that don’t get mentioned specifically because we haven’t planned their wedding and before we knew it our quiet occasion had a guest list of about 40 men, women and children.
We had a cast of thousands, a miniature bouncy castle and enough junk food to get all of China on a sugar rush. Time to party like a toddler!!
It was a great day. The forecast was for unseasonable sunshine and it wasn’t as good as advertised but you can’t be unhappy with getting a dry day in October. I would hate to think what it would have been like if we weren’t able to open the back doors and let them play outside.
I had such great intentions of taking notes and writing a really detailed and hilarious post but I got caught up in the mayhem and you are stuck with this drivel instead. It was a blur and I only remember bits of it.
I remember that the boys got over their fear of bouncy castles and I had to pull them out of a tangle of juvenile limbs. I remember that the boy from next door tried to channel the spirit of Evel Kenieval, on a toy motorbike belonging to Fat Chops, and thumped his head off the decking after overcooking a wheelie. I saw one of the girls fall off the decking and I have a great mental image of her little legs sticking out a bush and no other evidence that a child was in there. I remember that the Drama Queen asked where we got our sofa from and then disappeared off to Ikea leaving her four kids in our house, cheek! I remember sitting all the toddlers at a table, piling it high with sweets and watching them make it all disappear. Then it was a case of lighting the candles, letting the kids blow them out, lighting the candles, letting the kids blow them out, lighting the candles, letting the kids blow them out, lighting the candles, letting the kids blow them out and finally cutting the cake.
After that, people started trickling out – most of them had the decency to bring their kids with them [yes DQ, I’m holding a grudge!]. Slowly, the house became quieter, the kids came down off the sugar rush and we swept all the debris into a couple of black sacks. We put the boys to bed, ordered a takeaway, turned on the X-Factor and started drinking heavily.
It was only the next day that we were able to take stock of how generous people had been. We tried to use the “your presence is present enough” tactic but failed miserably. Everyone agrees with the theory that there is no point buying a lot of stuff for two year olds who don’t understand what a birthday is. It is always overridden by the fear of being the only person who turns up empty handed. Needless to say the boys acquired a new winter wardrobe and a whole bunch of new toys.
The pick of the bunch was a couple of personal stereo’s from my mother. I’ve written a couple of times about how the boys love to sing and dance. We went down to my mother-in-law’s on Sunday to avoid cleaning up our house. We went and got them a compilation CD of recent hits that they sing along to in the car and plugged them in. The stereo hangs on a belt over one shoulder, there are big, gaudy headphones and a silver microphone attached. Not being able to hear what the boys are listening to only enhances the experience. They strutted around, they struck poses, they danced and they sang their hearts out. Most of all, they completely overshadowed X-Factor. Great fun!
Friday, October 8, 2010
Change is Inevitable..
..except from a vending machine.
I know I’m not breaking news when I say that having kids changes your life. It’s just funny how much it changes it and how it very often creeps up on you.
Sleeping habits take a big hit straight away. In fact, if sleeping can still be described as a habit when you have a new-born baby or babies in the house, then you are doing pretty well. This doesn’t sneak up on you. It walks straight up to you, announces itself loudly while wearing day glo yellow and slaps you in the face. I never used to get up in the middle of the night unless I’d had too much coffee and needed to empty my bladder. As soon as the boys were born I quickly got into the habit of waking up to change nappies and help with the night feed without complaint. Well, I complained a lot but I got on with it all the same. The more subtle change is that one day, you realise that you are ok with the lack of sleep. There used to be a time when early on a Saturday morning meant dragging myself out of bed at 10am. A lie in could stretch well into the afternoon. A few months back the boys slept until after nine in the morning. It was cause for celebration. It became my facebook status for a week. My friends with children congratulated me on this happy occasion [while suppressing their jealousy].
It doesn’t stop there. I have been cultivating a reputation for being grumpy in the mornings before I have my coffee for years. Something strange happened the other morning. I was in the kitchen getting the boys breakfast when the Black Eyed Peas came on the radio. I’m not a huge fan but you have to give them credit for knowing how to write a good party tune. Monkey Boy, being the music lover he is, started shaking his little booty. He doesn’t know what coffee is or what it does yet but he does know how to make his dad smile. I got the idea for this post when I found myself dancing with my son just after seven am. When Hannah came down the stairs with Fat Chops she thought that someone had broken in and was impersonating the curmudgeon she was used to dealing with.
Hannah has changed too. It’s a long held Irish tradition that, as a nation, we aren’t touchy feely and we don’t talk about our emotions unless our blood alcohol level is dangerously high. Anything other than a drunken “you’re my best friend, I love you” can put you in danger of having your passport revoked. Having children has broken down some of those barriers for Hannah. We were watching X-Factor the other night. Every year, I rant on about how it is manipulating the contestants and the viewers and how it is killing music. Every year, I end up watching it and arguing about who should be kicked out and hating myself a little bit for it. I always try to put on a brave face and maintain a respectable cynicism. I turned to Hannah the other night after one of the contestants had blown her audition and was about to make a cutting [and incredibly witty] comment. I stopped when I saw the tears in her eyes. Simon Cowell, how dare you make my wife cry!
I know I’m not breaking news when I say that having kids changes your life. It’s just funny how much it changes it and how it very often creeps up on you.
Sleeping habits take a big hit straight away. In fact, if sleeping can still be described as a habit when you have a new-born baby or babies in the house, then you are doing pretty well. This doesn’t sneak up on you. It walks straight up to you, announces itself loudly while wearing day glo yellow and slaps you in the face. I never used to get up in the middle of the night unless I’d had too much coffee and needed to empty my bladder. As soon as the boys were born I quickly got into the habit of waking up to change nappies and help with the night feed without complaint. Well, I complained a lot but I got on with it all the same. The more subtle change is that one day, you realise that you are ok with the lack of sleep. There used to be a time when early on a Saturday morning meant dragging myself out of bed at 10am. A lie in could stretch well into the afternoon. A few months back the boys slept until after nine in the morning. It was cause for celebration. It became my facebook status for a week. My friends with children congratulated me on this happy occasion [while suppressing their jealousy].
It doesn’t stop there. I have been cultivating a reputation for being grumpy in the mornings before I have my coffee for years. Something strange happened the other morning. I was in the kitchen getting the boys breakfast when the Black Eyed Peas came on the radio. I’m not a huge fan but you have to give them credit for knowing how to write a good party tune. Monkey Boy, being the music lover he is, started shaking his little booty. He doesn’t know what coffee is or what it does yet but he does know how to make his dad smile. I got the idea for this post when I found myself dancing with my son just after seven am. When Hannah came down the stairs with Fat Chops she thought that someone had broken in and was impersonating the curmudgeon she was used to dealing with.
Hannah has changed too. It’s a long held Irish tradition that, as a nation, we aren’t touchy feely and we don’t talk about our emotions unless our blood alcohol level is dangerously high. Anything other than a drunken “you’re my best friend, I love you” can put you in danger of having your passport revoked. Having children has broken down some of those barriers for Hannah. We were watching X-Factor the other night. Every year, I rant on about how it is manipulating the contestants and the viewers and how it is killing music. Every year, I end up watching it and arguing about who should be kicked out and hating myself a little bit for it. I always try to put on a brave face and maintain a respectable cynicism. I turned to Hannah the other night after one of the contestants had blown her audition and was about to make a cutting [and incredibly witty] comment. I stopped when I saw the tears in her eyes. Simon Cowell, how dare you make my wife cry!
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Terrible Two's
The terrible two's officially started today and so far they are not living up to the reputation.
I have some leave left so I took the day off to spend with the boys. We have no food in the house so I went to the supermarket. Yes, they shouted at the top of their voices all the way around the supermarket but it was all in good humour. You wouldn't want to be shy. Cute twins draw their fair share of looks but they made sure that anyone with functioning ears within half a mile would notice them. As an encore, Monkey Boy sat in the trolley laughing loudly for no good reason while I put the shopping in the car. They ate their lunch with no great fuss and willingly went up for their nap. Their only act of rebellion was that instead of sleeping they talked, sang and laughed for half an hour.
If that is as stressful as their quest to establish independence gets then it should be a fun year.
Happy birthday to my beautiful sons!
I have some leave left so I took the day off to spend with the boys. We have no food in the house so I went to the supermarket. Yes, they shouted at the top of their voices all the way around the supermarket but it was all in good humour. You wouldn't want to be shy. Cute twins draw their fair share of looks but they made sure that anyone with functioning ears within half a mile would notice them. As an encore, Monkey Boy sat in the trolley laughing loudly for no good reason while I put the shopping in the car. They ate their lunch with no great fuss and willingly went up for their nap. Their only act of rebellion was that instead of sleeping they talked, sang and laughed for half an hour.
If that is as stressful as their quest to establish independence gets then it should be a fun year.
Happy birthday to my beautiful sons!
Friday, October 1, 2010
Top Five
I was asked the other day if the twins are boring me. The basis for the question was that I am posting far less often lately. The twins are far from boring but we have entered basketball season again. This means that I am normally out playing two nights a week and coaching on a third. I could try post twice a week like I did during the summer but I would have to lock myself in a room away from the boys to manage. I am only barely clinging to the pretence that this blog is about them not me. If I did lock myself away to write on the nights that I am home I would never see them. Maybe I could just rename the blog, Diary of a Narcissist??
I decided that I needed to remind myself why I write the blog so I started to write a top five of the things that are great about twins. In no particular order;
1. They will always have a companion. I had a lengthy internal argument about including this one. The reason for the argument is that it is a double edged sword; the counter argument it that they will always find it difficult to establish themselves as an individual. On balance, the fact that they will always have someone to play with outweighs losing the odd clump of hair and an occasional bite-mark. The other night Monkey Boy fell and hurt himself [on my watch again!!]. I was on my way over to pick him up and comfort him when Fat Chops beat me to the punch. It was a proud and heart -warming moment to see one of my sons rub the other on the head and tell him he was ok.
2. Twice the cuddles. On one of my few nights at home last week I found myself sitting and watching Bear in the Big Blue House with the boys. It really is a superior children’s programme. I never find myself plotting the torture and death of Bear the way that I do when watching Barney or Special Agent Oso. Most of the time, the boys will watch TV standing up with their hands leaning on the TV table. Close enough that they can bask in the radiation and too close to see anything except a blur of bright colours. On this evening, they decided that they wanted to be more comfortable so they climbed up on the couch, one on each side of me, and cuddled in. I think I had what alcoholics call a moment of clarity. The tantrums, the demands of a hectic lifestyle, the fighting all melted away and I just enjoyed a brief moment of closeness with my children.
3. Less pregnancy and labour. I can only write this from a male point of view and I fully accept that I will never understand what it is like. I will still argue that if you plan on having more than one child it’s better to have them in litters! I have a theory that, somewhere in amongst the cocktail of hormones that make women emotionally volatile and increasingly flexible, there is some kind of magic potion that limits your memory of pregnancy. It highlights the ever so brief period where you feel good and the only way to describe your appearance is blooming. From my memory, this lasts about five minutes. It is sandwiched between the early horrors [coming to terms with being pregnant, constant nausea, hypersensitivity to smells, tiredness bordering on narcolepsy] and the later horrors [feeling like a beached whale, being too uncomfortable to sleep no matter how you contort yourself and of course the torture of labour and pain of childbirth]. This potion is probably more important to the preservation of the human race than everything except maybe opposable thumbs.
4. The interactions can be hilarious. They love to roll around on our bed, wrestling teddy bears and each other. I’m sure that most children will do fun stuff like this awith their siblings but it just seems funnier when they are atthe same development stage. Looking back through previous posts, very few of the stories would work as well if it was a solo act instead of a duo.
5. They will get more attention. I did a lot of research for this one. I conducted extensive interviews with my wife and, eh, well, I used my own experiences. It is a very small sample group but you can’t convince me if we only had one child instead of the boys, we would be stopped in the supermarket to comment on their cuteness quite as often. Like the first point, this is a double edged sword. Attention is like a drug and no one likes the kid that shows off incessantly to feed his attention habit. We will have to use liberal helpings of slagging and good, old fashioned, Irish begrudgery to keep them grounded!
I decided that I needed to remind myself why I write the blog so I started to write a top five of the things that are great about twins. In no particular order;
1. They will always have a companion. I had a lengthy internal argument about including this one. The reason for the argument is that it is a double edged sword; the counter argument it that they will always find it difficult to establish themselves as an individual. On balance, the fact that they will always have someone to play with outweighs losing the odd clump of hair and an occasional bite-mark. The other night Monkey Boy fell and hurt himself [on my watch again!!]. I was on my way over to pick him up and comfort him when Fat Chops beat me to the punch. It was a proud and heart -warming moment to see one of my sons rub the other on the head and tell him he was ok.
2. Twice the cuddles. On one of my few nights at home last week I found myself sitting and watching Bear in the Big Blue House with the boys. It really is a superior children’s programme. I never find myself plotting the torture and death of Bear the way that I do when watching Barney or Special Agent Oso. Most of the time, the boys will watch TV standing up with their hands leaning on the TV table. Close enough that they can bask in the radiation and too close to see anything except a blur of bright colours. On this evening, they decided that they wanted to be more comfortable so they climbed up on the couch, one on each side of me, and cuddled in. I think I had what alcoholics call a moment of clarity. The tantrums, the demands of a hectic lifestyle, the fighting all melted away and I just enjoyed a brief moment of closeness with my children.
3. Less pregnancy and labour. I can only write this from a male point of view and I fully accept that I will never understand what it is like. I will still argue that if you plan on having more than one child it’s better to have them in litters! I have a theory that, somewhere in amongst the cocktail of hormones that make women emotionally volatile and increasingly flexible, there is some kind of magic potion that limits your memory of pregnancy. It highlights the ever so brief period where you feel good and the only way to describe your appearance is blooming. From my memory, this lasts about five minutes. It is sandwiched between the early horrors [coming to terms with being pregnant, constant nausea, hypersensitivity to smells, tiredness bordering on narcolepsy] and the later horrors [feeling like a beached whale, being too uncomfortable to sleep no matter how you contort yourself and of course the torture of labour and pain of childbirth]. This potion is probably more important to the preservation of the human race than everything except maybe opposable thumbs.
4. The interactions can be hilarious. They love to roll around on our bed, wrestling teddy bears and each other. I’m sure that most children will do fun stuff like this awith their siblings but it just seems funnier when they are atthe same development stage. Looking back through previous posts, very few of the stories would work as well if it was a solo act instead of a duo.
5. They will get more attention. I did a lot of research for this one. I conducted extensive interviews with my wife and, eh, well, I used my own experiences. It is a very small sample group but you can’t convince me if we only had one child instead of the boys, we would be stopped in the supermarket to comment on their cuteness quite as often. Like the first point, this is a double edged sword. Attention is like a drug and no one likes the kid that shows off incessantly to feed his attention habit. We will have to use liberal helpings of slagging and good, old fashioned, Irish begrudgery to keep them grounded!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)