Wow. Did the author of this sentence have Andie in the forefront of his/her mind when he/she wrote this? Because I tell you what, that describes her to a tee. Well, with the exception of the “aggressiveness” part.

Unfortunately for Andie, my depression six years ago sort of kicked her need for control into overdrive and it has shown no signs of abating. When I was so down that I could barely get myself out of bed, it was Andie who took over. Being the temporary mom fed her desire to run the show, a role that she has been fighting me for since she was able to talk.

While my illness soothed her desire to control everything in her environment, it also put her into a role that she neither needed nor understood at that young an age. She was the perfect candidate for the job and she did it admirably, especially for only being five years old, but I feel horribly guilty for putting that burden on her shoulders.

Even now, years later, I often overhear Andie slip into “Mom mode” when she thinks I’m not listening, but because she is so impatient and feeling that “unrealistic sense of urgency,” she is not only bossy, but mean in her desperation to get her siblings to do what she wants. This happens most often when we’re getting ready to go somewhere and are on a deadline. She cannot resist making sure everyone, including me, is getting ready and barking orders at Rachel and the boys. “Did you brush your hair yet? Go brush it! Boys, get in the bathroom and brush your teeth!”

I want to help Andie learn to relax and enjoy the small things, especially because I think my sickness helped push her over the edge. The tendencies that she had before my depression are no longer just tendencies and have manifested themselves as habits now. Sometimes I have to talk to her quite seriously to get her to back down in her now self-appointed role as mother’s helper. Giving up control and just being a kid is extremely difficult for Andie, especially now that she’s had the experience of being thrust into the partial role of parent. Even though that was long ago, it stayed with her, a part of the fabric that has woven her into the person she is today.

Andie is an unusual girl. Her weaknesses are also her strengths. I am incredibly blessed to have her as a daughter. She is strong, confident, thoughtful, kind, sensitive to others, helpful and loving. She cleans the house without my asking, takes care of her brothers without complaint, steps up to help whenever I need her to, practices her flute and piano without ever having to be reminded, does her homework with absolutely no prodding. She even tells me what a great mom I am, though I know that my Type-B ways drive her mad sometimes.

Though my depression may have strengthened some less-desirable characteristics in her, it also made her undeniably stronger. The trick now is to help her find a balance between taking too much weight, stress and responsibility on herself and meeting her need to control some aspects of her life.

Wish me luck.

Yeah, right, I’d think to myself. There is NO way I’m going to be best friends with these jerks!

Well, as moms often are, she was right. The two I once dubbed as geeks, tattle-talers and stupid pains-in-the-neck as I sat, punished, in one of many corners pondering the best means for their mutual demise, are definitely my best friends. I’m grateful on an almost daily basis for them. Though as kids we fought Every. Single. Day. (sorry, Mom!), now we’re all confidantes, sources of support and lookouts. We’re fiercely defensive of each other, happy to lend a listening and sympathetic ear and we share just about everything. My sisters are two of the few people in the world I know I can trust with anything, including my life. I don’t know what I’d do without them and often feel sorry for other women who aren’t lucky enough to have a sister, let alone two.

It strikes me as beautifully sweet when I hear my twin daughters say, “I love you” to each other, as they often do before bed. Andie says to Rachel, “You’re the best sister in the world,” and they hug. Just as my mom reminded us of our future relationships with each other, I tell my daughters that they will always be best friends, even more so than they are now, and that looking out for each other is of the utmost importance. When Andie’s friends choose to be mean to or ignore Rachel, Andie needs to stand up for her sister.

After all, they will be there for each other for the rest of their lives. Grade school classmates most likely won’t. Little do they know just how deep a bond they are forging for the future.

Do you have sisters? Daughters? What is the best part of the sister relationship, in your opinion?

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I picked up my friend and her daughter so we could go to the meeting together. As we sat with our girls and listened to the coach talk about rules, expectations, details, etc., I was thinking how this seemingly innocuous meeting was really the first page of a new chapter in our lives. For the foreseeable future, school days will be consumed with practices, new activities, homework, games and running here and there to said games.

When the coach began to warn the girls about drinking, smoking and doing drugs, I think I visibly blanched. Um, wasn’t it just very recently that my friend and I were taking our 4-year-old daughters to dance class in their pink ballerina outfits and tutus, no thoughts of alcohol, cigarettes or crack in our, much less their, heads? Now, granted, the audience included the high school girls as well, but I still felt a bit like I’d entered some weird upside-down world: Was the coach talking to me or my daughters? Because I’m a heckuva lot closer to high school than they are.

Ha. Riiiiiiight. Except that when I stop and do the math, I’m NOT. They’re only 3 years away. I, on the other hand, am a shade over a decade past.

OK, fine. I’m closer to two decades past. Who’s counting anyway???

I’d just give anything to see those little tap shoes and pink leotards again.

Name a time (or several) when you’ve definitively felt a new chapter of your life beginning.

So, because of this extreme closeness, when it comes to school, is it better to separate twins or keep them together? This question is one of the hottest ones among parents of twins, but I don’t believe there’s a right (or wrong) answer.

As I normally do with volatile issues, I decided to use my own judgment according to what would work best for my own kids. After all, just about every decision has its positive and negative aspects. I have to decide which balance of positive and negative works best for our family.

In kindergarten, we had no choice. There were only 5 kids in the class, so Rachel and Andie certainly weren’t going to be separated. When they finished kindergarten, the school closed (not enough students) and they had to merge with a different, bigger school.

It’s a bigger school, but it is by no means big. The girls are in the biggest class in the school, with 32 kids, 16 boys and 16 girls. Due to its large size, the class has been split into two from first grade on.

The first year, I wanted the girls separated. I told the teacher. I told the principal. No one seemed to think it was a big deal, so they argued with me a bit and kept them in the same class.

It was ugly. At this point, the girls were together 24/7. They shared a room, took baths together, rode the bus together, and on top of that, they had to be in the same class all day. Needless to say, they were incredibly tired of each other by the end of the day. By the end of the year, I think there may have been murder on the brain.

So, second grade rolled around. I insisted this time that they be separated, which, for some reason, was met with a little resistance. It was a much nicer and more pleasant school year. They stayed separated in third and fourth grade as well.

In fifth grade, last year, the school decided to split the girls and boys up since the main fifth grade teacher was male. My girls were thrilled about this prospect, and we had another good school year, even though they were in the same class. I think the peacefulness was mostly due to two factors: One, they each had their own room this time; and two, they developed their own interests a lot more, which made being in the same classroom much more tolerable.

This year, everything’s out the window because they will be in middle school. I anticipate them having most, if not all, their classes together, but they will start separating more and more each year from this point on.

My advice? Go with your gut, especially if it’s your twins’ first year of school. If they seem really co-dependent, they may not thrive without each other. If they love to be together, but have some independence, maybe being apart will be good for them. In either case, you can always make adjustments, if necessary.

And if you’re in a small enough school, the choice will be made for you anyway.

What are your thoughts and experiences on putting twins together (or not) in school, particularly if you are the parent of twins or have twins in your family?

A lot of what comes out of these people’s mouths is scientifically impossible. Myths about twins abound and I used to believe many of them myself, until I found out I was pregnant with twins close to 12 years ago and decided to do some research.

So, for those seemingly very few of you who don’t have twins in your family, and for those who do but are unclear about the ins and outs of twindom, here are a few basic myths debunked for you.

1. All twins look the same. This is one I always thought was true. To me, the word “twin” was synonomous with “look-alike” and I’d always look for similarities between the twins I knew, thinking they must look at least somewhat alike, if not exactly alike.

The truth is, fraternal twins may or may not look similar, no more so than regular siblings. What can throw people off is the fact that they’re both in the same stage at the same time, so if they do look even somewhat alike, it can be difficult to tell them apart if they’re the same gender.

This is true of my twin nephews, who by all hypotheses and evidence are fraternal twins. I can’t tell them apart very well at all and only people who are with them a lot can. There are differences if you stop to look, but they look pretty identical to me. Now that they’re 4-1/2, they like to play the “I’m-Twin-A-(But-I’m-really-Twin-B)” game.

2. Twins show up “every-other generation” and can come from the father’s side of the family. I never heard this until I had twins myself, but I can’t tell you how many family members told me that I was probably having twins because they were in my husband’s family two generations ago. This was an even more popular theory when people found out that I have no twins in my family at all. “Twins skip a generation,” I heard over and over.

Nope, this is simply not the case, unless it’s purely coincidental. First of all, identical twins don’t “run” in families at all. They are simply a miracle of nature, somehow splitting early on from one baby into two. Identicals are much more rare, completely random and extremely fascinating. Fraternal twins do tend to be genetic, but only on the mother’s side. Why? Because fraternals are the result of two different fertilized eggs, rather than just one egg and one sperm that has split into two, so the tendency to produce more than one egg at a time run in the family. The reason why it may seem that twins skip a generation could be because moms pass on the gene to “hyperovulate” to their sons, who then pass it on to their daughters, resulting in twins in the third generation rather than the second.

3. You can tell just by looking whether or not twins are identical or fraternal. While identical twins do generally look very similar, as mentioned before, so can fraternal twins. Other factors such as environment, development and personal preferences can cause even identical twins to look different or fraternal twins to look more similar. There are plenty of twins out there who don’t know for sure whether or not they are fraternal or identical, so being able to judge this simply by looking is impossible.

The only time you can know for sure that a set of twins is fraternal just by looking is if they are boy-girl twins. Because they are different genders, they have to come from two separate eggs.

4. In terms of personality, twins are either completely opposite or exactly alike. I know, this seems like a “duh!” one to me too, but stories and legends throughout history have perpetuated this myth of one “good” twin and one “bad” twin, or one leader and one follower. As with any other child, this completely depends on personality. Obviously parents of twins should take great care to let each one develop into her own person with no expectations or relegated roles, whether the two end up having similar personalities and interests or not.

My twins are very different personality-wise, for the most part. I wouldn’t categorize them as a leader and a follower, but one of them is very outgoing and extroverted, while the other is more reserved and introverted. They do share similar traits in terms of their scholastic abilities (both get nearly identical grades ), musical and artistic abilities and their overall character traits (kind, sweet, thoughtful, loving), but except for the fact that they were born within 5 minutes of each other, they could be just regular sisters.

There are other myths out there in terms of raising and caring for twins too, everything from “you can’t breastfeed twins” to “twins must be separated in school.” I’ll be going into those more another time.

Have you believed any of these myths? What is the most surprising thing you have learned about twins, either in the past or from this post?
Sources:

Baby Zone

About.com

iVillage

Having the boys gone also gives me a small glimpse into what life would be like had the kids’ dad and I stuck with our original plan of having only two kids. After having twins sort of disrupted those plans (I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it, having twins is a lot like having one really complicated child), we debated heavily on whether or not we should have any more little ones.

Times were simpler when there were just the two of them and sometimes I miss those days very much. Hanging out with my girls has been quite enjoyable and oddly nostalgic. It makes me miss what seems like a much easier era, when my little girls and I would sit in the yard and pick “flowers” (actually dandelions), I’d push them on the swings, take them on daily walks, read them as many books as their hearts desired, watch their delight at the circus and buy little girl clothes and shoes. It was just us for four years and I got to know them well, probably much better than I’ll ever know my boys.

There are definitely advantages to having just two children, the biggest one being that a parent has far more opportunity for one-on-one time and really getting to understand a child. It’s just plain harder with more kids. Everything has been practically effortless with the boys gone, both because the girls are very independent and because there are just two of them. Less mess, less food to make, less laundry to do, less people to get out the door…it has been blissfully easy.

Still, I would never give any of my kids up (most days, anyway). As chaotic as it can get with four of them, I can’t imagine life without any of them. Yes, the craziness can sometimes make me want to run away screaming and crying, but I actually feel more at ease in the noise and disorder than I do when everything’s unnaturally clean and quiet.

Chaos = life, and I want to always have a house full of life and laughter.

How does the dynamic change in your family when someone is gone?

The other day Logan and I were driving to town, singing along to “High School Musical 2.” All of a sudden from behind me came an angry voice. “Why do we have to do stuff for kings? It’s not fair!”

I tried to explain to Logan that we don’t have kings in this country and we don’t have to “do stuff” for them, but he would not be convinced.

After all, a 5-year-old who has watched “Shrek” multiple times understands these matters much better than an adult.

What sorts of fantasies have your kids confused with reality? Did they believe you when you told them what was what?

Then there were kids to take care of and put to bed and some quick turnaround proofreading work that had to be done tonight.

BUT . . .

I have some exciting news that I will be sharing tomorrow. I’ll give you all the juicy details then.

See you back here on Wednesday!

For example, Cody, who was named for his dad’s best friend, who died in a vehicle accident shortly after high school graduation, was only 952nd on the list back in 1951, the first year the name appeared on the list. It peaked in 1993 and 1994 and last year it was 122nd.

Rachel, of course, is a fairly common name. 100 years ago, it was 154th in popularity. It stayed in that range up until about 1967, when it jumped up to 105th. It peaked in 1996, two years before her birth, at 9th on the list. Last year, it was 75th.

Andrea didn’t really become popular until around 1938. 100 years ago, it was 774th on the list. It peaked in 1978 at 23rd and last year, it was 71st. Her nickname, Andie, is not even in the top 1000 names for any year, which is hardly surprising. I wanted to name her Andrea specifically so we could call her Andie.

I was surprised to find that Logan was 646th on the list 100 years ago, but didn’t even make the top 1000 for 21 of the past 100 years. It peaked in 2007 at number 17, and last year it was 19th. I didn’t realize it was that common of a name.

Unbeknown to my parents, who tried to pick unique names for my sisters and me, my name’s popularity began to peak around the year I was born. The lowest rank it received in the past 100 years was 119th in 1959 and it was in the top 10 from 1978 to 2002.

My parents fared better in their quest for originality with my sisters’ names. Gretchen hasn’t ranked above 191 and last year, it was the lowest-ranking it has been in 100 years at 945th. Trina didn’t make the top 1000 until 1941, then went missing from the list from 1947-1951. It peaked in 1970 and 1971 at 172nd.

Check it out. It’s fun to see the various histories of names.

How did the names in your family rank? Were you surprised at any of the results?

By the time school is over, tempers are running shorter, certain younger folks fall apart at the smallest provocation and everyone is just crabby. If we have to drive somewhere, generally everybody falls asleep.

All this seems to indicate to me that my kids aren’t getting enough sleep.

Which made me wonder: How much sleep do they need anyway? Once upon a time, I was well-educated as far as how much sleep babies need, but I haven’t ever paid much attention to the requirements for school-age kids. Since sleep is so important for kids’ growth, development, behavior and success in school, I want to make sure they’re getting what they need.

I put the boys to bed around 8:00 p.m. and they get up a little bit before 7:00 a.m. Of course, they don’t exactly go right to sleep, especially since they share a room now and keep each other up, so they’re often awake until 9:00 p.m. or later. The girls usually go down around 8:30 p.m., but I let them read for awhile. They also get up a little before 7:00 a.m.

So the boys probably average 10 hours of sleep and the girls between 9-1/2 and 10. I’m guessing that’s not enough.

According to an article on WebMD.com, they may not be getting quite enough shut-eye time in. The site states that 3-6 year-olds need between 10-3/4 and 12 hours per day, while 7-12 year-olds need 10-11 hours per day.

However, an information sheet from The National Sleep Foundation says that kids ages 5-12 need 10-11 hours in dreamland. If that’s the case, then my kids are getting close to what they need.

As with most everything, the amount of sleep a kid needs probably boils down to the individual. Still, I like to see hard and fast figures so I have a number to start with. Most likely, my kids got unlucky and inherited my “needs-more-sleep-than-the-average-person” gene and that’s why it seems like they are often tired.

I’m not sure how to solve this problem. I’ve tried putting the boys to bed at 7:30 instead of 8:00, but it’s very difficult to cram everything into only 3 hours every evening.

Sleep deprivation is an ugly thing. It brings out the worst in kids and thereby the worst in parents as well. For the sake of family harmony, it’s imperative that everyone gets all the zzzzs they need.

Maybe I can get the kids to take a daily nap this summer. Then I can take one too.

Ha. I wish.

Do your kids have any sleep issues? Do they get enough sleep? If the little darlings share a room, do they keep each other awake? If not, tell me how you’re doing that!