I find it so hard to look at these faces and yet so compelling.

With hair done and make-up on it’s like a sudden glimpse into the future.

I’m transported forward eight or so years to a time when perhaps the make-up won’t just be for concerts. To a time when there won’t be any buzzy bee antennas to soften the blow of how quickly my girls are growing up.

Did you know they can read now? They can read, you know… books.
OK so they still need some help with words here and there but they can read.
That freaks me out just as much as it makes me smile.

There’s even been a recent shift in thinking… something clicks on every now and then and they can both actually think ahead, judge consequences, think about how others might feel and act accordingly. Sure there is still whining and tantrums, but there is also putting away of shoes without being asked, helping and loving on their brother despite the punches he throws.

It feels like there is some momentous change in the air… just lingering around, waiting to really settle. It feels fabulous and scary all at the same time.

Lucky for me, along with the scary ‘is this what you will be like when you are 14?’ faces they throw in quite a few of these faces to keep me sane and happy.

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So they are in ‘red house’ in case you couldn’t guess from the above photo… Which necessitated a grumpy trip over the hill yesterday to buy two red shirts for them to wear in House Cross Country today.

And who’d have thunk it, but I have one that can run! Run a whole kilometre at that.

Izzy came fourth out of all the prep grade girls which I think is rather impressive… considering she has half my non-running genes.

Apparently Zoe had to stop and walk towards the end because she ‘really needed to pee’…. and considering she also has half my genes I think it’s impressive she made it to the end without wetting her pants!

In other happy news…. I’m flogging my blog today over at Mummy Time – head on over and join in!

Anyone got some happy news to share before the weekend?

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Zoe met me in the courtyard after school yesterday, bursting with news.

“I’m reading green dots now Mum!!!”
She’d gone up a level in reading and was practically oozing pride and joy at the prospect.

Izzy was already close to tears when she told me she was still reading ‘orange dots’. “Miss B said I am almost ready but not quite” she whined and I was waiting for the inevitable words that would come next…
“It’s not fair mum!”

Part of me wanted to march into the classroom and tell Miss B to just put Izzy up to the next level so we could avoid all the tears and whining and disappointment that was about to be heaped upon us…. but that wouldn’t be doing anyone any favours.

“It’s not fair” rang in my ears several times that afternoon and evening. It’s a tune I know very, very well. I hear it a lot.

Life according to Zoe and Izzy must be fair, and to be fair it must be equal. What one gets or does, the other must get or do. I’m sure they learnt this from me in the early days when I was so paranoid about making sure one didn’t get more of me, or of anything, than the other did. It was part of the whole ‘twin angst thing’.

Stupidly I didn’t wise up to this mistake, this impossibility, until it was well and truly entrenched in the girls’ minds.

Now days I know better. Now I know that being fair is not always being equal. Now we are working on the concept together.

Being ‘fair’ means that everyone gets what they need when they need it.

Zoe and Izzy may be twins, they may be 98% genetically identical but they are not exactly the same. They don’t like the same things, they don’t learn the same, they don’t even look the same (to me and others who know them). Yes, they are very similar (very, very similar in some ways), but that doesn’t mean they will always do or get the same things at the same time.

We will celebrate Zoe’s reading success because she deserves to feel proud of herself. This is what she needs. This is ‘fair’.

Izzy will read ‘green dots’ when she is ready to read green dots, and not before. Because this is what she needs. This is ‘fair’.

We are still working on this bizarre concept and this has been a hard lesson to learn this week.

*** In other news I’m playing along with Mummy Time’s FlogYoBlog Friday for the first time today – head on over and join in! ***

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The teeth are falling out in rapid succession around here and it’s gross!

I’m not sure what it is about these tiny white wobbly bits of child that I find so off putting. There is just something about the constant ‘look my tooth is wobbly’ and the insistent wiggling and jiggling until the darn thing finally falls out and is presented to me like a small, slightly bloody trophy. It’s gross.

I’m normally very stoic and practical when it comes to less than pleasant bodily functions. Vomit, blood, poop… none of that phases me at all. So it’s more than a little unsettling to be so hee-bee-jeebied by the girls loosing teeth.

I don’t like being the tooth fairy either.

Give me the job of Santa or the Toy Fairy or even the mightily annoying Magic Mermaid (who has a magic knack of finding every lost thing and returning it no matter how impossible – thanks Mum!) over the Tooth Fairy any day. Having to remember to exchange the tooth for some cash after the girls are dead to the world is not easy, let me tell you. Twice now I have been sprung creeping in to make the transfer when someone was not quite asleep, but it’s that or forget to do it all together!

And what am I… ahem… I mean what is the Tooth Fairy supposed to do with all those teeth anyway? Keep them? Fashion them into some kind of bizarre craft? I am at a loss.

Perhaps my way too early run in with this Tooth Fairy gig has put me off for life…

Whatever it is, I wish the girls would stop loosing their teeth for bit, or that someone would volunteer come to my house and take on the roll of the Tooth Fairy for the next um… 16 or so years?

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I have only one child at the moment.

One getting-closer-to-three-than two-year old boy and that is it.

So this is what it’s like to only have one child?

Dinner and bed time are over and done with so quickly. And it’s quiet… really quiet.

Tonight I think I finally, really really, understand when people say it is harder to go from one child to two, than from two to three… or more.

Sitting eating dinner with a little chatting in between bouts of silence was odd to say the least. It is never silent at our dinner table… it hasn’t been since the moment the girls were old enough to be awake at that time of day. That’s almost six years of dinner table noise, which is, for the most part, lovely, but very very noticeable when it’s gone.

With one there has been more choices and options. Two adults to read bed time stories, two available to brush teeth and tuck into bed. There is no one else to take turns choosing the car music, no one to knock down your block construction or tell you ‘you can’t play’.

There is also less laughter, and less cuddles and no big sisters to tell you they love you ‘more than any other boy they know’. There is no older child to fill up drinks for me, and no excuse to begin the next chapter of the Fairy Realm book.

I can’t imagine how odd it would be to suddenly go from one child to two. I just can’t fathom it…. It must be almost as odd as going from three to one has been for me.

The girl’s have been at their grandparent’s for two nights now. This is possibly the last time I will experience the only child thing for a long… long… long time. We are enjoying it, Muski and me, but I think we’ll also be glad when the girls come home on Wednesday.

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The school holidays are upon us, and while my girls are still trying to wrap their heads around the idea that they don’t go to school for two whole weeks… they have been quick to start making plans and begin filling up their days!

The first big school holiday event was a ‘sleep out’.

The girls have been keen on the idea of sleeping on the floor in the lounge room for a long long time. (Don’t ask me why, I have no idea!) So when I suggested that perhaps, to celebrate the start of the holidays, we could hire a few DVDs and have a sleep out, they were well pleased. Add to the excitement, some junk food for dinner, ice cream for dessert and a very bestest, beloved, friend to join them and they were in heaven!

I must say it was a really lovely night for everyone, even me!

Listening to Zoe and ‘Tannah-banana’ chatting quietly at 11:30pm while Izzy snored next to them was just lovely. I know it was late… but the fact that these three girls are still so close and still adore each other’s company despite some major changes in their lives this year brings, me such joy.

Once they went to sleep all three slept like logs till 7:30 the next morning. I snuck in to see if everyone was ok at about 5am (since I was up to pee anyway – ah the joys of pregnancy). I found Zoe sleeping entirely on the floor next to her bed, Izzy curled up side ways across her bed where her pillow should have been and Tan laying perfectly in the centre of her bed, nice and neatly, but with her head to one side, resting on the soles of Izzy’s feet.

Ah friends…. it’s ace to have friends.

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I remember when Zoe was in hospital with chronic asthma. Muski was around 6 weeks old and the three of us stayed for a few days… and nights.

I’m willing to bet that ever parent who brings a sick child to hospital is already tired. I bet they’ve already had a sleepless night or two, not to mention a nice helping of stress to add to that. And sleeping in a hospital is hard.

Being crammed into a small room, with people you don’t know, with just a thin curtain separating us all (sometimes one that doesn’t even reach the whole way around), listening to them sleep, or snore, or toss and turn, it’s a new kind of hell. The worry is palpable, and then there are machines and night nurses and strange noises. Sleep is not easy to come by for anyone.

Add to that the fold out beds are not exactly comfortable. They are usually old and battered. The bottom sheet never seems to stay on. The springs squeak. They are tiny, with torn vinyl and strange smells.

Don’t get me wrong… I know most of us would sleep standing up if we had to, just to be near our children when they need us. I also know that the hospitals that we’ve stayed in do a fabulous job of not only looking after our kids, but caring for us too. But funding falls short and beds for parents are at the bottom of a long long list of much more important hospital equipment.

So why am I rambling on about this?

Well I know someone, a hero, though I know she’ll hate me calling her that… Someone who has slept on many a fold out hospital bed. Someone who has seen first hand how much hospital staff care about our sick kids. Sometime who knows much more about this than any parent would ever want to…. and someone who is making a difference.

Please pop over to Tiffs blog – Three Ring Circus and read more about her efforts to raise money to buy parent beds and a fridge for the ward nurses at John Hunter Children’s Hospital.

Sure, the likelihood me ever sleeping on a fold out bed in NSW is slim to none (since we live in another state!), but I know what it’s like. I’ve been there. I can imagine how horrible it must be for those parents with longer or recurrent hospital stays. So if I can donate a few dollars to make just one parent’s hospital stay a little easier… I’m up for it!

When all of us bloggers and blog readers get together we can do amazing things.. so donate a dollar or two and make someone’s hard night a little bit easier!

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Every now and then I get to thinking about the whole ‘twin thing’.

Out of the blue it struck me the other day… our girls are very rarely alone.

They spend probably 90% or more of their time together. They share a bedroom. They are in the same class at school. They play together. Often they even bath or shower together.

We work at making time for them to do things ‘apart’…. but even then they are not usually alone. They are with their brother or me or their father.

This is their choice. When given the chance to do something on their own they usually choose not to, though I admit they don’t often get the opportunity to be alone, even if they wanted to.

Is this normal for a six year old?
Is this just how it is when you are part of a family of five (soon to be six)?

I really quite like to spend time on my own. I relish an evening when The Baldy Boy is on night shift and the kids are all asleep and I can just be alone and do whatever. As a child I remember relishing the sanctuary of my bedroom, somewhere that was just mine, somewhere to be alone.

But I am not my children and my childhood is not their childhood, and most importantly, I am not a twin. I have no idea what it is like to be a twin. To have someone who is so much like you, who has always been there, who you know so well and who knows you back. I only have one sibling and I can’t say my brother and I have ever been close….

Maybe not being alone is normal for my girls?
Maybe being alone is not something they feel they need to do?
Maybe being alone is a completely alien concept to my girls?
When I broach the subject of them no longer sharing a room they burst into tears.

Of course this is just another version of the ‘together/apart’ debate which seems to constantly haunt me. There are ‘professionals’, not to mention a heap of books, that all push the line that they need to spend time apart. That we have to really encourage them to be individuals and to separate, that they have to be able to cope ‘on their own’.

While I think that learning to cope in the world on their own is important, I am not convinced that it is the be all and end all. I don’t feel that we have the right to choose when, where or how they separate, or to push them into doing it if they don’t want to. Sure, there are times when they have no choice but to be apart, and we are working on helping them deal with that, but I am not sure they need to be apart to be ‘normal’ or to be ‘happy’.

But is having some ‘alone’ time the same thing?
Do they need time alone to unwind? de-stress?

I find all of this so tricky. I have no idea what it’s like to be a twin and most books and professionals who spout advice about this don’t either. Child development and parenting books and theories are based on your average singleton child. Being a twin, an identical twin, is different. It stands to reasons that twins would be different in some ways, especially socially and emotionally, but are those differences bad? Or is it reasonable and healthy to expect children who are genetically the same (98.9 % the same in our case) and have had pretty much the same life experiences to be pretty much the same and to not need the same ‘apart/alone time’ that others do?

As usual I come up with way more questions than answers.
Why oh why isn’t there some magical book that will tell me how to figure out this tricky stuff, because really I have no darn idea!

(Image above is of the girls their first week at home – they were 11 weeks)

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Izzy loves him so, despite the fact that this duck is well and truly insane.

Infected with a mental duck illness that makes him attack and nip at exposed flesh. He grabs on and just won’t let go. Despite some really nasty bruises Izzy still loves him… and he still loves her, letting her cuddle and hold and carry him about without a single nip… till she puts him down.

She was at ballet the other night when her teacher asked her how she got the nasty black green bruise on her arm, and the one of her leg.

“The duck bit me” Izzy replied.

Her teacher looked over in my direction with a puzzled look on her face.

I could feel myself turning red. What if her teacher, or worse, the rest of the mothers watching and listening, think that I am the one inflicting these terrible bruises on my child. Because, after all… a duck doesn’t have teeth, it can’t bite.

After class her teacher came over…. uhoh… time to explain.

“Izzy tells me the duck ‘bit’ her” her teacher says, thankfully with a slight giggle.

I relax and say that in fact yes the duck did bite her and despite the fact that he has no teeth he is a slightly insane boy duck who is constantly looking for a fight and/or a girlfriend and inflicts some nasty bruises along to way.

“But I love him.” Izzy says very seriously…..”except one day he’ll be dinner”.

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