Extreme Twins?

Day 114
Originally uploaded by Road2Chaos

Twins aren’t the norm. We go out and people stare, people point, people talk, people ask us questions – “how do you tell them apart?”, “do they have really different personalities?”, “how do you cope?” “are they identical?”...the list goes on.
Anyways, I’m watching a programme on TV at the moment on twins, “Extreme Twins” even. It’s slightly disturbing. Maybe more than slightly disturbing. Obviously they have interviewed the more extreme sets of twins, but still. Many of these sets of adult twins have never spent any time apart, they don’t expect people to attempt to tell them apart – and they are perfectly comfortable with that.
Sure, Kason and Cohen are twins. They are identical twins. When people see them, I’m sure they see them as a set. And I guess they *are* a set. But they are two boys. Two separate boys. Cohen loves to splash when we go swimming, he likes to sit in corners, he takes a little while to warm up to new places and situations, he is a fussy eater but likes finger food. Kason likes to move a lot, he is into exploring and rarely sits still, he will eat pretty much anything except finger food, he is outgoing but still needs to check in occasionally if we are somewhere unfamiliar. While they do have identical DNA, they are not the same person.
I desperately hope that they are always close, that they are always best friends. But I also want them to feel comfortable as individuals. I don’t want them to have to rely so heavily on each other that they are driven to the lengths some of these twins on TV are going to – cosmetic surgery to maintain their twinness, not spending a minute apart, feeling as though they are only half a person. Being twin is special, but it is not what makes them special. I hope they always know that.

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Kason woke up crazy early this morning and flatly refused to go back to sleep. He, once again, fell asleep while eating breakfast, but woke up when I attempted to transfer him to his cot. I went in to see what he was doing after 10mins or so of listening to him talk away...this is what I discovered: one boy sitting in the middle of his cot, talking to his elephant (which is really just a 3D elephant face on a blanket) and looking very smug - "I don't need to sleep, Mummy! I'm a big boy!"

In other news, we booked the venue for their birthday party this morning - SCARY!

xxx