BOGO Baby

I wanted to alert readers of this blog that we've started up a somewhat less whimsical blog called "BOGO Baby" at savings.twinpanic.com. It's going to be (mostly Christina) posting about saving money with twins (although we hope it will be more generally applicable).

What Do You Do with All Your Free Time?

This post begins a new emphasis for twinpanic.com. Looking at my hit statistics, I see that readership is close to non-existent for my collection of fun facts about twins. (Unless I mention the twins from "Raising Hope" -- oh look, see what I did there?) So from now on, I'm going to make this blog more about personal stories of life with twins. That way, even if I don't expand this blog's reach, I will connect more directly with its readers.

One of the running jokes Christina and I have is to ask parents with one child, "What do you do with all your free time?" They always laugh, because compared to being kid-free, having one child seems like a lot of work.

On Monday of last week, Salem was admitted to Children's Hospital with a diagnosis of Kawasaki disease. Christina stayed with him in the hospital, so for the next two days my primary responsibility was taking care of Jack at home. (Except for the visits to the hospital.)

Now, Kawasaki disease itself is an excellent reason for panic and will undoubtedly be the topic for future posts. (Spoiler alert: Salem's recovering, and it looks like he'll be fine.) But it also gave me the opportunity to contemplate life with a singleton.

The first thing that I noticed is that, yes, it really is a lot easier. When Jack needed my attention, I could give it to him undivided, without having to keep one eye on Salem to make sure he didn't get into bigger trouble. When I undid the baby gate and picked up Jack, I didn't have to figure out how to close it again immediately while keeping a firm hold on a wiggling child. As a bonus, we have twice as much gear as we need. If one high chair was dirty, there was a chance the other one was still clean.

Want to take Jack out to the swing set in the back yard? Pick him up and go. No struggling with a double stroller or waiting until a second pair of hands was available. Tuesday morning, I desperately needed to re-stock the groceries (even before the hospitalization, taking care of what had been diagnosed as an ear infection in Salem was chewing up a lot of our spare time). So I put Jack in the car and drove to the store.

If you have one kid, that may not seem exceptional to you. If you have two kids of varied ages, you probably do this all the time. If you have twins, here are your options:

A good two-seater. (Photo by Christina)

• Push a double stroller and shove as many groceries as you can into the basket underneath. (Hope you remember to check out before you get arrested for shoplifting.)
• Take two adults to the grocery store.
• Alternate pushing a cart and a double stroller. (I haven't tried this technique; I get a headache just thinking about it.)
• Find a store with a "two-seater" shopping cart. But not just any "two-seater" -- Christina is now aware of the subtle differences in shopping cart models between ones that will hold two toddlers and ones that are only suitable for older children.
• I don't know, maybe you have twins you can put in a carrier without inhibiting your ability to shop. Ours are too squirmy to do so.
• Grocery delivery.

It was also easier to move about this store without shoppers gawking at the twins. Jack did receive some attention -- he is a cutie, after all -- but not nearly the level (or even half that) he would have gotten accompanied by his brother.

So other than grocery shopping, what did I do with my free time? Laundry. Lots of it. Along with moving, the change in seasons and other factors caused clothes to pile up in diverse locations of the house. I finally had time to sort through it and do most of it. I even got to wash the kimono I had picked up in Japan in December 2009.

When I bought the kimono, I thought of it as good "dad" clothing -- something only mildly embarrassing to your kid if you tromp around in it in the morning. I bought it in the handful of days between finding out that we were going to have a kid and finding out that we were going to have two, so it seemed appropriate to wear while taking care of Jack.

Salem's been home almost a week now, and the experience of taking care of one kid at a time is being replaced by, "Why are you taking your brother's food? It's exactly the same as the food in front of you." And the laundry is piling up again. Thank goodness.

Twin Criminals

Time presents the "Top 10 Weirdest Twin-Crime Stories."

Your Twins Are Not Interchangeable

Way to have confidence in your sons, dad.

"It didn't even dawn on me he [Nate] was going to make it," Smith told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

So let's say you've entered one of your twins in a raffle for the chance to take a really difficult hockey shot, and he'll win $50,000 if he actually makes it. Now let's say your son doesn't feel like taking the shot -- what do you do, say, "Now son, you'll never make it if you don't try?" If you're this guy, you say, "We'll have your identical twin impersonate you." Of course, he made the shot. This happened in Minnesota, which means that the dad and twins felt bad about it and 'fessed up the next day. The insurance company refused to pay, because the rules say you can't have somebody else take the shot for you. They generously offered to donate $20,000 to charity in the twins' names. I've seen some Internet commentary criticizing the insurance company, but not enough criticizing the dad.

•  Not cool to cheat. It's like having your 18-year-old play the slots. Sure, he probably won't win the jackpot, but what's the point, since he won't be able to collect if he does. The chance to win is the whole reason you play.
• From a parenting standpoint, not cool to treat your identical twins as interchangeable. It might be OK in other sibling situations, but identical twins have enough trouble establishing their own identity without being asked to impersonate each other.
• Not cool to teach your kids to cheat, or to impersonate each other for pranks. OK, if it was a funny prank, it would be cool, but this doesn't fall into that category.

Rise of the Twins!

Twinpanic.com readers might be interested in the "special issue" on twins published by Slate.com. I was amused that even though they are talking about the increased incidence of twins, which is almost entirely driven by a rise in fraternal twins, they've chosen to illustrate the issue with a cartoon picturing six pairs of identical-looking children.

Talk about a niche market...

While we are grateful for all of the well-wishes on the boys' first birthday (in card and other form), we couldn't help but notice a pattern...

The IRS is not prepared for your twins

We got our federal tax refund earlier this month. Why so late, and what does it have to do with twins?

Well, having an extra social security number into which I could introduce a typo is partly to blame. You'd think twins would get consecutive social security numbers, but in our case, you'd be wrong. Their cards arrived 3 months apart -- even the 3-digit prefix is different.

Second, the IRS is not very good at telling you what is wrong with your return. They only told us that there was a name/number mismatch. When I finally called them, the (very nice) guy on the phone explained that they were unable to give me any information about the person whose social security number is wrong. (At first I thought this was some sort of privacy protection, but they could have said, "Here's what you wrote, and that's wrong," without giving away any information.)

But apparently they can give you information in the form of a riddle. "It's the dependent whose birthday is not..." "Um, that's the birthday for both of my dependents. They're twins." "Oh, then it's the one you listed second." We were eventually able to clear it up, but I thought it was funny that the IRS guy thought I could identify one of my kids if he told me the birthday.