My friends Allison and Megan have done it again. Book #2 in the Multiples Illuminated series. If you have twins and want to feel all the feels of sharing and commiserating their stories, be sure to check out their book!
Below is an excerpt, to give you a little preview.
This is an excerpt of He Got More: The Epic Battle on the Twinship by Pamela Alma Weymouth from Multiples Illuminated: Life with Twins and Triplets, the Toddler to Tween Years. The recipient has permission from the publishers to republish this on their website for the purpose of a blog review.
When Quinn and Aidan begin issuing their countless demands (which began straight out of the womb in the form of tiny howls and morphed into complete sentences which now at age nine sound a bit like this: I need water! Where’s my Giants cap? Who took my shoes? Make him stop! I need new sneakers! I wanna to watch a movie! There’s dog hair on my shirt! Whaddya mean dinner’s not ready? What’ve you been doin’ all day?), sometimes I retort, “Gimme me a break, guys – I’m not an octopus!”
I have a brand new appreciation for bitches, goats, rabbits and, really, all female creatures fated to birth more than one offspring at a time. Although, I will say that having four arms or eight nipples would have helped a great deal.
The fact remains that, for twins, life will always be inherently unjust, because they burst into this crazy world together: first one, then the other, each with the same needs, demands, and desires as singletons. While parents of singletons tend to think that rearing one baby is hard, parents of multiples (or at least this one) feel generally superior, superhuman, and secretly envious of these mortals.
As extraordinary, thrilling, and cool the whole ‘twin’ thing is (and yes, for at least six minutes a day it’s a love-fest)—it is also inherently unfair, exhausting, and maddening. Human beings were born with only one set of arms and one set of legs, and in truth there is only so much a middle-aged, over-educated, over-therapized, over-achieving twin mother can do.
It’s 7:00 p.m. and dinner is an hour late. This means double meltdowns, a harried bedtime, less sleep, and another day of eternal crankiness for all of us. Add to that the fact that I’m single now (going on five years) because as nice as it was to have an extra set of arms around, I also brazenly thought it would be easier to do it myself rather than deal with an extra grumbler, who always needed a kick start and a list.
In some ways, I was right. Divorce eliminated the adult fighting, the snoring in the bedroom, and the extra clutter in the garage. But I am now constantly outnumbered by people smaller than myself, which usually feels akin to herding gophers. True, I was blessed with two boys, which the Asian women who pass me on the street tell me is so lucky! But according to the white ladies at the knitting store it also means I am doubly screwed. “Twin boys?” said one graying knitter with purple glasses taking in my voluminous belly, “Have a drink!”
Aidan is leaning his lanky body across the dining room table, past the Buddha sculpture that is supposed to remind everyone to be calm and kind, ha, ha, ha. He has grabbed the spoon from Quinn’s hand, and if history has anything to say about it, an all-out wrestling match is about to ensue. I’m in the kitchen attempting to take the kale chips out of the oven so that my boys might ingest something green. For once in my life I’d like to sit down and eat at the same time as my children – like they do on T.V. – rather than rushing around like a maidservant fetching forgotten forks, spoons, cheese graters, and napkins.
Inevitably, each time I sit my tired ass down, someone will ask me to get something, and by the time I’m finished fetching it (just as I’m lifting the fork to my mouth), another request will come hurtling toward me like a heat-seeking-missile. This would explain why I’m constantly starving, cranky, on-the-verge-of-fainting, and how I lost all the baby weight.
Some days, I’m tempted to ask my sons, “Are your legs broken?” That’s the kind of sarcastic quip my older sister would have issued. She has a live-in maid, two nannies, and a powerhouse of a career that lands her in the glamour pages of glossy magazines. I don’t want to sound envious or materialistic or ungrateful, so I try to recall that there was a time when I feared I’d never be able to have kids. It’s just that sometimes the insults, the dishwashing pile-up, the peanut butter on the ceiling, and the early deafness make it hard to recall what made me think that children would complete me.
Description:
Multiples Illuminated: Life with Twins and Triplets, the Toddler to Tween Years will give you a glimpse into the amazing lives of families with multiples between the age of two to 12. Told from the perspective of 21 parents from all walks of life and at different stages of parenting, you will find yourself feeling less alone on this incredible journey parenting multiples.
In this book, you will read fun and enlightening stories about:
*Encouraging individuality in multiples
*The dynamic relationship between multiples
*The complicated and often delicate relationship between multiples and their siblings
*What it’s like when twins and triplets start school
There is nothing quite like this second book in the Multiples Illuminated series. You will read poems, take a hilarious multiple-choice quiz, and experience the joys and challenges of raising multiples through the 21 beautifully written stories. We promise that your experience parenting multiples will be more enriched after reading this anthology.
With the Multiples Illuminated books and its accompanying website filled with stories and advice from parents who have been there, we aim to create a welcoming and safe space for families of multiples who are faced with the reality that raising twins, triplets, and more, brings unique experiences in comparison to raising singletons. Our community welcomes everyone who want to know more about multiples.