Twin Terrible Twos

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Miriam on horseback

Our twins have started their terrible twos with a vengeance though they’re only 22 months old. Miriam has decided to transition from two naps to no naps a day. Or maybe she’s transitioning from two naps to one but with a hiatus in which she’s been angling for no naps. No matter how many hours we wait between daytime naps, she objects when I tell her it’s time to gey shluffen (“go to sleep”). Thankfully, though she objects strenuously and cries sometimes for 30-45 minutes before retiring, she does sleep around two hours in the daytime. She has no nighttime sleep issues (usually 10 hours).

And my gorgeous, charming, unflappable, utterly winning girl has turned into a harridan (well, not full-time thank God since much of the time she’s still lovely). Before, hardly anything fazed her. Now, everything does. And every time anything fazes her (and things often do) she lets out this hideous, grating shriek that is somewhere between an old truck engine sputtering as it tries to turn over and a cat in heat. She’s letting you know she’s unhappy. Though she has a lot of words, she only uses in them in these situations when you coax her to. It’s like she’s trying to revert to infancy (she screamed like a banshee nonstop for the first 75 minutes out of the womb).

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Adin at Bubble Festival

And she’s discovered a baby addiction to videos. She calls them “moobahs.” Moobahs in the morning, moobahs in the evening if she had her way. I know from previous experience with my older son that these addictive phases always pass. I’m just wondering when this one will. No, I’m desperate for this one to pass. We have great videos for the kids. But still how many times can you watch one without losing your mind?

I used to find my son a holy terror. He often seemed out of sorts and difficult. My wife always found him charming (and he is a mama’s boy). But as Miriam turns into a mini-horror (not all the time though), Adin is turning into a boy pixie. He’s still got a lot of moxie and gets into a ton of trouble. But he does it in ways you just can’t find fault with and which make you love him all the more.

Last week, our nanny brought Miriam down from her nap to the family room off which Adin had been napping. She looked at the bedroom French doors and could see a little face peering out from behind the curtains. She thought that was odd since he should’ve been in his crib sleeping. She opened the door and found him stark naked and beaming broadly at her as if he’d just won the lottery. He’d not only escaped for the first time from the porta-crib in which he’d been napping. He’d ripped off his shirt, pants AND diaper in the process. And he was bouncing up and down and laughing about it. How can you not love a kid like that?