Oh Yes We've Got Trouble

Right here in River City, with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for pool. The Music Man

Whoever (or is it whomever?) coined the phrase "Terrible Twos" most certainly didn't have 3 1/2 year old TWINS. There is just something so different about having two children going through the same experiences at the same time. 

Three is hard. Three is the time where boundaries are tested, where the word "no" is used to its fullest 2,308908l,09890 times a day. Three is where letting them be independent MUST go hand in hand with being on Code Red at all points in time (case in point~the girls locked themselves in their room and colored every available wall space blue and yellow recently. I thought they were playing nicely. Lesson learned). Three means really getting down and listening when they are talking ninety miles a second about who knows what but it must be important to them or they wouldn't be telling you all about it.

Three is just plain different with twins. The girls feed off each other and get into so much more mischief than I ever anticipated (see above). We had to remove the doorknob from their bedroom door to keep them from locking themselves in their room and taking all the clothes out of their closet. The gigantic bucket of crayons had to be put in the garage because Isabelle kept coloring Annabelle's shirt and not her paper. They hit each other, pull each others' hair, take each others' toys and run away with them. They are, in short, completely and totally exhausting.

But as much as they make me (and their older brother and sister) crazy, they have their moments of total sweetness too. They'll sit nicely and play a game together, or gather up their stuffed animals and have a picnic with them.  There are days when it seems that the bad behavior outweighs the good behavior and I wonder how exactly I'm going to manage to make it to bedtime without a massive tantrum on my part. Hugs from them certainly help and they both give great, all encompassing hugs. It's when they hug each other (and I'll admit, it's usually something forced upon them by me) that I feel like they'll grow up to love each other and take care of each other down the road.

But for now, they're 3 1/2 and have torn apart something in their closet and taken down all their hangers and they need me to go back to being on Code Red. Maybe 4 will be better?