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Many parents of twins spend at least the early portion of Year One sleepwalking through the house with “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor playing in their heads―perhaps more in an effort to convince themselves that they will than because they believe it. But look at you now; you did it! You’ve survived the sleepless nights, the inconsolable crying (yours and the babies’), the erratic schedules, the ever-growing mountain of laundry, and the cereal dinners night after night. You’ve washed more bottles and changed more diapers than you ever imagined you would. You’ve proven yourself. You’re perfectly primed to enter Phase Two: The Toddler Years.
I once read, “It takes faith to step on nothing and believe something is there.” This quote hit me like the giant block that is so often hurled across the room since Jack—the older of my twins by twenty-eight minutes—has yet to accept that when he wants to play catch, he needs to inform me that the chosen object is coming before it lands square between my eyes. It’s too bad that the boys were almost four when I first came across this most profound saying. It was quite a blessing, albeit a bit late, because it can be applied to the vast majority of life challenges: parenting, marriage, careers, illnesses, and the unknown nature of the future in general.
There will be many times during the next few years with your toddler twins when you’ll wonder how on earth to proceed. People will tell you to just keep putting one foot in front of the other (duh!) but sometimes you’ll argue that it’s just not that simple. Might it be a wiser strategy to step in a more northwesterly direction, a more southeasterly direction, straight ahead3⁄4heel to toe3⁄4balance-beam style, or with the longest stride possible? You’ll potentially question, among other things, whether or not the experts of the moment who profess precisely the perfect way to coax your children into sharing are “right,” whether there’s something wrong with your approach given that your neighbor recently declared with the confidence of Donald Trump that babies can be potty trained by the time they are eighteen months old, and whether or not it might just be possible that pigs (not to mention two-year-olds) really can fly.
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