Perpetual Pregnancy (Momma to Twins)

I want to make a note of something on this ye blog about being a twin mom.  I'll say it just in case another twin mom can assure me she feels it too or maybe so I can look back on things later and see that things were "challenging" enough that I felt compelled to say this.

For me, being a mom to twins feels like perpetual pregnancy.  Women will tell their pregnant friend about all the things up ahead: Just you wait. You think you're tired now? Hahaha....Oh my gosh, just wait. You are going to just be so crazy about your baby. You are going to fall in love.....You'll figure it out. It will all work itself out. Just wait.... 

In a lot of ways, pregnancy is a long exercise in patience. As much as a pregnant momma wants to be a mom to a baby in her arms, most of the time she is just focusing on getting through the day, not throwing up, and generally eating and drinking things that won't hurt baby.  Sometimes she doesn't want to think or read or talk of what's ahead because honestly pregnancy is enough and C'mon people, I'm doing a freaking amazing job just carrying this little person around, OKAY???!!!

Yeah, that's pretty much how I feel since I heard that I was carrying twins--that sense of being laser focused on the present so much that the future was far from my thoughts.  I prayed that I would carry one more week and then one more week and then one more week.  Then I eeked my way through the newborn phase, and I refused to think of crawling twins.  Then they crawled and I was okay with that, but I couldn't imagine walking. Then they were walking, but I couldn't imagine climbing..... You get the point.

Last night at the park, I walked past a pair of moms as Thomas pushed the twins' stroller up the hill.  She spilled out with enthusiasm that just a few years ago she had the exact same set up (welcoming twin boys with a 3 year old boy at home already) and encouraged and encouraged me that things would just get easier and easier. And that was without me saying one word about things being tough unless my eyes were doing the speaking for me--or the state of the stroller--or that it was taking us a month to walk up a hill I could jog up in 30 seconds--or....

As a mom of twins (or maybe it's because I have 3?), I'm so focused on what we're all doing right now, that I can't see ten feet in front of us (and in kid time translation, that's about 3 months).  It feels very intense to me a lot of the time. It's like this-- I feel immense joy watching my kids, like crazy, my heart is going to turn into sun beams and shoot out of my skin joy, but I rarely, rarely have fun thoughts about the twins at 3 or the twins at 5 or the twins at 10.  When I'm out in public and I see a set of twins (and especially identical boys), my brain short circuits and shuts down because it can't connect the dots from point A (which at this point is toddlers who I can sorta kinda take out in public if I strategically plan things) to point B (civil human beings).

If it takes having twins (or once again, maybe that mini-herd of kids) to be shocked and awed by simple things unfolding before my eyes, things I didn't have the time or energy to think much about happening because I am so intensely focused on the present, then I'll embrace it. Last week I was all like, "Holy cow, you guys are using forks, like really using them...you are actually using those forks...HOW DID YOU GUYS LEARN HOW TO USE FORKS?!"  And Alistair & Emerick were all, yeah, mom. C'mon, we're almost one and half. 

And then I probably went right back to wiping someone's butt or telling Thomas I liked his artwork.

Maybe things are getting a teensy, teensy, tiny bit easier here. Yes, I think that's what it is. Maybe. Whatever the cause, I can finally share something along the lines of twin mom guilt: I'm super excited in the moment, but not so much for the future.  I figure the future will take care of itself if I take care of today.  "Today" looks like disciplining not to bite & teaching how to talk & reading, reading, reading & feeding & diapering & so forth. "Today" is also watching & observing & noting little, simple things to consider maybe not for 3 months from now but for tonight or tomorrow or maybe next week.  That just has to be how things are right now for me & at almost a year and half into being a mom to twins/three kids, I'm finally okay with that truth.

Good times. Good times. :)