For years people have asked us a question that drives my wife crazy, “are they twins?” This is of course the question that people use as a conversation starter. Having kids that look alike is like having the perfect coffee table conversation piece only better – they travel with you. Total strangers will talk to us in the mall, at the grocery store, everywhere. Almost everyone knows someone that knows someone that has twins or was a twin.
I think it is kind of fun to meet all kinds of people and kids have made that possible for us.
However, I have yet to get the courage to respond to the “are they twins?” question correctly. In this day the best of course is, “Nope, they be clones.”
In spite of the fact that my daughters look a lot a like and have been raised in a pretty much identical environments they have very unique and different personalities and interests which is good and I have to be sure to encourage that.
So I can’t really call them clones that would take away from what makes them unique.
I get home yesterday and have my nightly how was your day conversation with Callie. She tells me that she was scrapbooking and Aubrey came in to be with her. She was putting together pages from when they were little – with things like favorite foods etc. In this situation I would expect Aubrey to make a comment about how they like to do this or that when they were little. They often reflect on when they were ‘little’ – 5 is so old you know. Instead, Aubrey looks at my wife and says, “Alyssa’s name is cuter than mine.”
I am not sure if that moment means we have failed as parents of twins by entitling one child with a better name than the other – as defined by said child. Damn it, they turn into teenagers earlier than you would think.