Tiny Despots

The babies parade about the living room on their adult chariots. For pre-verbal creatures, they're pretty effective communicators. If one of their minions stops walking, stops bouncing, or - god help us - sits down, the commanding baby screeches until full service resumes. From their perches draped on our shoulders, or sitting up on an adult arm, they survey the wreckage of our adult lives, and finally,imperiously, they smile.

And goddamn them, the smile gets us every time. Our indentured state is assured.

I feel wholly bullied, and there's not a soul I can complain to. Last night, I passed an important milestone. At 6AM, wrestling with Felix while trying to keep a dummy in Max's mouth, I finally and utterly dropped the analysis. No more spinning rationalisations: they slept less than usual today/ perhaps if I hadn't drunk 2 coffees/ Felix is teething/ if I had picked Max up first maybe I'd have got him down before Felix woke... There is no logic, no system, no cause and effect. They are just unpredictable, adorable bullies. And all the bedtime routines, early weaning, dietary adjustments, baby massage courses and special songs I throw at them won't make them quiet placid babies who sleep through the night. But it won't always be like this.

Some day, when they're willful pig headed toddlers who won't do a thing we tell them, we'll look back at this time longingly. Strangely, that knowledge doesn't quite help.

Dispatch from Dingle

We have moved to Kerry for 2 months, to avail of a loving grandmother, a bigger house, and less rubbish-strewn streets. The babies are having their first encounters with nature: with beaches, cows and hedges. And though I love Dublin 8, it would be churlish not to seize the opportunity to move to the country when we can, while I'm on paid maternity leave (and I do know how fortunate I am to have this), and Simon can work from a little broom cupboard downstairs.

But let's be honest here. A baby is a lot of work, and two babies is a lot of baby. I miss the support and solidarity of other mums I know in Dublin. It's all a bit of a gilded palace: I look out at the magical light, hard and clear on the hills climbing behind the house - but I can never leave the babies, so I can't get beyond town.

Both babies are teething. Felix lies on his playmat, a menagerie of jungle animals suspended just above him; Max wails helplessly in my arms. Felix is remonstrating loudly with a favourite toy, the one we call Colonel Giraffey. Pacing the kitchen, I interpret his crescendoing acks.

"Your time is up, Giraffey! We will institute a no fly zone!" (Felix has been mandated to negotiate with the Colonel by Nelson Mandelephant).
"Screw you baby!" replies the Colonel. " Our plan is to live and die in Libya. You will never secure a UN resolution in time."
"Well at the very least I'll have you indicted by the International Criminal Court" insists Felix, whose grunts are growing more urgent.
"Ahahahahahaha!" The giraffe laughs evilly. "But Libya does not recognise the jurisdiction of the ICC!"
Felix responds with a shriek of pain. "We'll get you... in Switzerland!" he protests weakly. By now though he is crying uncontrollably, and can't be left any longer.

I put Max down, to continue the negotiations, and pick Felix up.

Simon appears to make coffee. "I suppose if you're going to go stir crazy" he says, "you might as well do it somewhere with a view."

Nothing to say...

I promised myself I'd blog weekly, but I find I have so little to say. I sit on the sofa feeding. I eat an indecent amount of cake. I marvel at their solid, doll-like bodies.

This is close to happiness. I'll try to come up with something worth writing about though.

The X-Men

And yet, in spite of this, you want to know what they're like. And surely I must know, I spend 24 hours a day with them. There is a paradox here: how can we possibly love two creatures so profoundly, and yet be incapable even of telling them apart? It's a fair question.

The x men were 9 weeks old yesterday; not quite 6 weeks if you correct for the fact that they were premature (and you do, apparently). They are infants, and infants, unless they're you're own, are essentially guts with faces. Profoundly beautiful faces in this case, but hopelessly inefficient, ineffective guts. Since ingestion and digestion are all that babies do, it seems reasonable to expect they'd be able to do these things quite well. But no: pooing causes immense physical pain; burping and farting are impossible without adult assistance. For their first few weeks, to know them was to burp them.

9 weeks on, they are becoming more face and less gut. Mostly eyes. Both boys have deep indigo eyes, almond shaped, huge in their small silky heads. Perhaps Max's gaze is deeper, more thoughtful-seeming; perhaps Felix is cheerier. These comparisons seem inane. Their personalities are inchoate, flickering in brief glances out of those faces before they crumple again into wails brought on by basic wind or hunger.

I am incapable of describing them with any greater sophistication - although I feel like we have a more sophisticated relationship with each of them. We do know them individually, and yet it's indescribable how. I have a sense of each boy, yet when I try to put my finger on it, it dissipates: I know it best when I mistake one twin for the other, and then correct myself: the individual personality is there fleetingly in the moment of realisation of my mistake.

Between them we see a collection of traits, a bag of possibilities from which will eventually emerge two personalities. Among these are stubborn, miserable (the little-boy-devastated face just before it explodes in a wail of despair), pensive, tenacious (clutching at the giraffe above their cot; grasping for my breast), sweet, adoring (gazing up at either parent -this not nearly often enough), jealous, impatient.... They are in a process of becoming. They are becoming people. For now, still guts with faces, but less so every day.

Identical

I've been wanting to blog for a very long time, but it's hard to get to it, you know? Simon's better than I am at typing with two hands while holding a crying baby. Babies are less likely to stop crying if you're typing anyway, that's what I've found.

People always want to know how we tell the babies apart. I met a twin mum before the x men were born, who glanced down at her 3 month old identical twin boys (they looked like adorable little frogs - but then, most babies do) and said "I don't think they look that alike, really". They were the graven image of one another.

I assumed that I would be similar, that there would be countless subtle signs, invisible to all but me, the Mother, to distinguish them. There were, initially: a burn mark from the suction that brought Felix into the world; replaced by a small bump on the side of his head. We began to panic when the bump started to subside: how would we ever tell them apart? I waited for the maternal intuition, the innate certainty of who-was-who that would come from spending 24 hours a day unseparated from the little creatures. It didn't come.

Now we dress them differently, according to a rough code: Felix in colours, Max in white and cream. I have no idea whether I'm able to tell them apart on sight or not, since I never need to.

Other people are terribly interested in the individual nature of the boys: who is bigger, who is bolder, who is sweeter? But their looks - and their characters - are ever-changing. Nothing is fixed, nothing is certain. I have a subtle sense of who my boys are, but I can't define it, certainly not one in opposition to the other.