So Adorable; So Much Work

When you view a photo like the one above, you have to admit the twins have the adorable factor in spades. Which is good because they need to be super adorable to keep us blinded to the amount of extra work it takes to care for twin toddlers.

Some people think twins are twice the work of a single baby. Au contraire--they are four times the work, at least some of the time.

There's the escape factor. Let's say it's nap time and you are trying to convince two toddlers to climb the stairs. On good days they scamper up and life is easy. On difficult days they double team you. One distracts you while the other escapes back down the stairs. When you go after the miscreant, the other toddler changes direction, too. Unless you have enough energy to carry both toddlers at once, you are forced to carry one while dragging the other one up the stairs. It's not an easy feat.

Then there's the fact that every toddler has one or two annoying habits that you can't get them to abandon. Jake loves to turn off and on the lights. He drags chairs over to access the light switches. Because he spends so much time at this hobby, Viva has acquired a liking for it, too. In fact, she's now worse than he is. She loves to turn on the living room fan, too. Grrr!

Viva has her own annoying habit. She loves shoes. She sneaks into the mudroom whenever she can and grabs shoes and hats. Jake follows her example. He really likes his mother's shoes. (Kara has the nicest shoes in the house so he has good taste.)

Instead of one toddler with one annoying habit we have two toddlers both doing two annoying habits which equals four times the trouble. Twins can be exhausting. Like I said, it's a good thing they are so adorable. It keeps us in thralldom to them.