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.