A father’s ponderings on twins and their devious ways
From Lauren at tea-time tonight:
Imagine if you had two rabbits, yeah, and they were both called Penny, and you were dropping one of them off at the train station, right, and then her owner said, “Let’s go and pick up Penny,” but you thought she meant Penny the pasta!!
It turns out she was referring to penne. Hannah laughed so hard she almost choked.
Hannah and Lauren established a revolutionary Pregnancy Post Office in our living room today. It’s like a normal Post Office, but where the postmistress (Hannah) is also a trained midwife. It’s the kind of diversity I feel all Britain’s post offices have been crying out for.
Two conversations overheard this morning. First, Before:
Lauren (on toy mobile phone): Hi, is that Hannah?
Hannah (also on toy mobile phone, about 1 foot away): Yes
Lauren: Are you a nurse as well?
Hannah: Yeah, I am actually.
Lauren: Good, ’cause I need your help. I’m having a baby!
Hannah: OK. When’s it due?
[Thud of Lauren hitting the floor]
Lauren: RIGHT NOW!!
And then, After:
Hannah: There you go, there’s your little baby.
Lauren: Is it a boy or a girl?
Hannah: Er… well, it’s just a baby really.
I’m beginning to doubt this postmistress’s obstetric qualifications.
The girls got recorders for Christmas. They’re both downstairs abusing them now.
So far they have only learnt one note: that piercing one you get when you blow too hard with all holes uncovered.
Shriek! Shriek! Shriek-shriek-shriek!
Mike Oldfield this ain’t. I am approaching the point of despair.
A word from the wise: if your children ever come into posession of recorders, buy ear muffs or leave home.
Another overheard conversation from this morning. I’m ashamed to admit I’m not 100% sure who was taking which part, but anyway, here it is.
“One elephant, two elephant, three elephant…”
“No, that’s seconds. Minutes is like, one……… two……… three………”
“Oh yeah, that’s right.”
They were clocking roughly 3 seconds per minute.
I’ve overheard two superb bits of chit-chat from the girls today. The first was this morning as they were in the bathroom supposed to be getting washed. I have no idea what the context was and I don’t want to know. Context would only spoil it. All Nicola and I heard was a small voice pondering, “What if a baby calls the rat Alan?”
The second was in the car on our way home from school via the park. It’s a lovely hot day and Hannah and Lauren had been running rings round me playing tag. From the back seat, Hannah’s voice piped up: “When I’m hot, this booby hurts… but when I’m cold, this booby hurts.” They both cackled about it for ages, and Hannah now refers to the left and right sides of her chest as “hot booby” and “cold booby” respectively.
Today, obviously, it’s hot booby that’s causing her the most discomfort.
At the age of five and a half, Hannah and Lauren’s grasp of “square words” is still not quite there. A conversation from earlier today:
Hannah: “Daddy, Lauren just said ‘pupils’!”
Lauren (in protest): Hannah started it!!
We recently went to visit my brother’s family, including our niece Beti. Beti is nine, and Hannah and Lauren idolise her. She’s a wonderful girl - funny and sensible in just the right proportions - but sadly, in the company of Hannah and Lauren, she occasionally deteriorates into a third cackling loony.
We were driving out somewhere, and for reasons that were never fully explained to me I was taking the three girls while the other adults all got to go in a separate car. En route, we drove past one of those dinky little Smart cars.
“Look at that car!” said a voice from the back seat. “It’s smaller than a person!”
There followed a good minute of helpless cackling.
“Yeah,” said another voice, “it’s smaller than a dog!”
More cackling. Now Beti chipped in.
“It’s smaller than a rabbit!”
And so on. The smaller it got, the funnier it got - mouse, grasshopper, ladybird, drop of blood (!), until eventually we got to “smaller than a mouse’s whisker”. At that point the back seat finally fell quiet as three little brains tried to think of something even smaller than a mouse’s whisker. I began to wonder if Beti had encountered any microsocopic life forms in her science lessons yet, but I needn’t have bothered. One of the twins happily provided the answer to the conundrum.
“It’s smaller than Daddy’s winky!”
My attempts to stop the game at this point were ignored.
It was only later that the paradox occurred to me: that my “winky” is alleged to be not only smaller than a mouse’s whisker, but also (if we re-examine the original premise) larger than a car. This is hardly the blog to discuss such things in detail, suffice to say I would happily settle for somewhere in between.
A conversation I overheard yesterday from the next room:
Hannah: Mummy? Do you know what porcupines are?
Nicola: Yes.
Hannah: What are they then?
Nicola: Well, they’re animals with lots of spikes, a bit like hedgehogs.
[Confused pause.]
Hannah: So why do people say “Don’t tell porcu-pines”?
Nicola: No, sweetheart, that’s porky pies. It means lies: don’t tell lies.
Hannah [penny dropping]: Ohhh!
Aside: Friends and family will know that porcupines (or one porcupine in particular) will have a special significance for Hannah one day. She just doesn’t know that yet. 
Like all other parents of small children, we’re usually woken up by either (a) arguing, (b) a series of loud, alarming bumps and bangs or (c) chirpy nonsense. The preferred option is (c) - it just doesn’t get your hackles up like the other two do. Sure, it’s far from ideal to be woken up before dawn to answer how many sleeps it is until Beti’s party1, or whether owls have willies2. But with practice it’s the kind of thing you can respond to whilst still asleep, rather than leaping into fully-awake conflict resolution mode from which there is no return.
Yesterday started with Lauren hurtling into the room some time around half past six. “Mummy!” she chimed. “Is today my real birthday or did I dream it?”
“No,” came a groggy reply from the pillow next to me, “you dreamt it.”
“OK!” And off she skipped.
1 “Lots, and I was just enjoying one of them. Her birthday’s not until December. Go back to bed.”
2 [Long pause.] “Good question. I’ll get back to you on that one.”
Hannah and Lauren have each got a pair of plastic high-heeled shoes for dressing up. Despite our best efforts, Hannah insists on calling them her “hee highls”, conjuring up the image of some kind of regimental Nazi footwear. The effect is particularly vivid when combined with Hannah’s unique style of staccato shouting, such as, earlier this evening: “LAUREN! DON’T! GO! UPSTAIRS! WITH! YOUR! HEE-HIGHLS! ON!”
I’m not a big believer in twins creating their own languages. There’s been no evidence of it in our family anyway. They do, however, make up the odd nonsense word just like any other children. Hannah and Lauren’s favourite and most hard-wearing such word is “googy”.
Googy covers a whole range of bases. It’s a nickname! It’s a substitute for any other noun! It’s a fast-acting catalyst to monkeying about! For example:
Hannah: Googy!
Lauren: Yes, Googy?
Me/Nicola (through gritted teeth): Open… wide…
Lauren: What is it, Googy?
Hannah: Er… Googy! (helpless mirth ensues)
Me/Nicola (curiously unaffected by helpless mirth): Come here NOW and BRUSH YOUR TEETH!!
Googy has become one of those mixed blessings of parenthood. On the one hand, the girls just wouldn’t be their cheeky selves without it. On the other hand, they wouldn’t be such a pain in the arse without it either. Every now and then there’s an incident that swings the pendulum very much one way or the other. One such incident happened a couple of days ago, as I was still in bed. There was a little conversation going on just outside the bedroom door which I had the good luck to overhear:
Lauren: Googy?
Hannah: Yes, Googy?
Lauren: What’s the French for Googy?
Hannah: Er, it’s… (pause to adopt correct accent)… Gaugisse.
Praise be to Googy. Where would we be without it?
