Twin Survival Tips - this one takes the cake

I am going to give you my top survival tip for having twins, hands down.

No question about it, there's no competition, and it's not what you think.

flashing gang signs at breakfast, never a dull moment :)

Are you ready?

Become a runner.

That's it.

That's all I got.

Either get faster or get some serious endurance power. And don't worry, if you, like me, weren't already a runner before you discovered you were pregnant with twins, there's still plenty of time to get in appropriate shape before they are mobile. But I cannot overstress this enough.

Appropriate shape in my "twin world" qualifies as being able to sprint a city block and still have some steam left once you catch a twin at the end of that city block. Because as you carry that one back, jogging, you will need to re-catch the other twin and then carry both back to the safety of your yard while they kick and scream and put on a lovely show for the neighbors.

Not that this happened to me tonight. Purely hypothetical. Lord have mercy.

We've started taking the boys for regular walks and using that time to train them to listen quickly and learn a few things about street safety. This process takes a lot of attention and intentionality from both of us. It cannot be done with only 1 parent.

But Tim was working late and the boys were begging all day to go for a walk. It was almost time to go inside, but since I needed to return something to our neighbor anyway, I thought, what the hey? I think that should be fine, we're just gonna pop over to his house, drop it off, pop back home, sure thing. Besides, they've been getting better at listening.

I must have been experiencing an exhaustion high b/c I have no idea I was thinking.

"Popping over" went great. "Popping back," not so great. As we're teaching them to learn to listen, we want to give them a little freedom to experience what it feels like to know they have a choice to make. Well, sometimes freedom backfires.

So when a twin started running away, I called him back sternly and gave him a moment to respond. His response was to run faster.

So what do you do when the other twin then takes off in the opposite directions down the street. Well, you go for the slowest twin, stick him in the yard and foolishly think he'll stay there (since he has figured out how to open the gate latch). Then you thank God in Heaven that you've been running 4 times a week as you sprint after the other twin. In flip-flops. And no sports bra. (Just being real.)

Perhaps my next tip will be to always wear running shoes, although that's one tip I'll never follow. As practical as that would be, I just can't do it. Guess I'll be running in flips :)