16 Months Old

When you're not looking they're heading in opposite directions these days

The monthly post is a little late due to the boys’ first bout of a stomach virus. Colin started things off Wednesday last week when he woke up vomiting and finally began to feel better by Friday afternoon. Jake picked up right after that and proceeded to throw up a day’s worth of food (conveniently for Age, he did all five times on me!).

In what will be the first of many lessons learned on dealing with their sickness, instead of having both of them sick for three days, they were sick back-to-back for six total days. Obviously purposely making one child sick is not something I’m willing to go on record endorsing, but there is something to be said for not trying so hard to limit their exposure to each other! We spent a lot of time watching what bottle Colin was drinking out of, washing his hands, cleaning pacifiers and in the end Jake ended up getting sick anyway. I think it’s almost inevitable that the other twin will end up getting the same sickness, so why delay? Three days of them both sick at the same time will be tough, but in the end is it better than having the entire ordeal stretched over six days?

With all of that, we are happy to announce that they are back to being themselves. There have been some minor lingering affects, but for the most part they are recovering nicely. It was a very hard ordeal seeing their personalities disappear for a few days and watch them go through this. We sure missed them and it’s great to have them back.

It’s those personalities that have made this past month so fun to watch. Besides this end-of-the-month setback, things had been going great. We have mentioned this many times before, but it’s amazing what a sweet, little boy Colin is. He loves giving hugs to anyone he can. Sometimes he’ll stop playing and just walk over and give you a big hug, then go right back to what he was doing. And of course, the beneficiary of so many of these hugs is Scout! That dog puts up with so much and at the same time he wouldn’t have it any other way. He is very protective of his two little guys and has more than once assumed some “baby sitting” duties when we’ve turned our backs.

Most of the time turning your back means that Jake has scooted off to a new task. The kid is a bundle of energy. In addition to his non-stop movement, he has added a verbal aspect to his repertoire. He is definitely the more vocal of the two and enjoys jabbering away with a constant dialog on life as he sees it. Most of it is his own brand of language, but he floats in the right word as well. You just have to be able to decipher if the “Ba” happens to apply to bottle, ball, brother or some other word beginning with a B. If he points to something and says his word and you don’t understand what he’s saying, he’ll say it again and this time with a little more inflection in his voice. It’s as if he’s saying, “No, I said Ball dummy, not bottle!” Then if you say what he thinks he said, he’ll give you this big grin and be so happy that he just communicated with you and it was understood.

In some of these monthly posts, including this one, we tend to focus on one aspect of their personality and a lot of the same things are repeated. Jake is high-energy, Colin is quiet and serene and we don’t know what we’re doing!

It’s easy to pigeonhole a label on someone, but I think it becomes even easier with twins. The inevitable question always comes up from strangers at the grocery store or friends and family, “Which one is he, the troublemaker or the good one?” Or like we have done here in this blog (see Jake = high-energy, Colin = quiet and kind). There is something to be said for patterns of behavior – hopefully not the “we don’t know what we’re doing” part – but as their personalities take shape as toddlers we’re shown it’s more than that. Just like their adult counterparts there are multiple levels of to their behavior and personality.

When you see Jake pick up a pacifier and offer it to his crying brother with a soft pat on the back or Colin running laps around the living room screaming like a banshee, you know their differences are not that far apart and their similarities are closer than we think.

It’s like we are watching and living in this fascinating human development experiment. Everyday you recognize something new and different to each of them that you didn’t see before. The speed at which these changes and wrinkles in their personalities come at is astounding. It’s as if who they were when they went to bed the night before isn’t reason enough to be excited for the next day with them, but they make each new day a joy watching them grow into who they will eventually become.