5 Funny Memories from the First 6 Months: Raising Twins in Bangkok

I’ve spent a couple days trolling through emails from 2004, the year our twins were born. We lived in Bangkok at the time, and email was the way we communicated with people from home. What is interesting is how little the base personalities of William and Vivian have changed in the five years that have now passed. I find this comforting and a right-bit scary.

Here are five excerpts from emails I wrote in the opening six months:

Memory One: June 17, 2004 (Age: 19 days)

Greetings on Day 19 of our new one-day-at-a-time worldview. My short and long term memories seem to have gone the way of the placentas. We are in the process of applying for Canadian citizenship for our babies, a “formality” that involves four pages of questions such as “are you married?” and “eye colour.” Apparently it takes six months to process these applications, which begs the question: are they currently citizens of nowhere?

Memory Two: July 23, 2004 (Age: 2 months)

We are amused daily. Vivian has more facial expressions than Andre Gagnon. William, when he’s sleeping in the crib he and Vivi share, does this interesting break-dancing move: he uses one of his eyebrows as a pivot point while he hurls both legs in one direction. Eventually he ends up rotated ninety degrees and sometimes even kicks Vivian in the head. Then we see (and especially hear) more expressions from Vivi. We continue to swaddle Vivian because she sleeps better (not because it makes her defenseless against her brother). She does attempt a nightly David Copperfield escape routine, but she usually conks out before she succeeds. She is energetic and fearful of missing anything, so that if her arms and legs are free, she flails and wakes herself up. We used to swaddle Will, but with his big head arched back from his body (his favourite position), he looked like a human Pez dispenser.

Memory Three: September 10, 2004 (Age: 3+ months)

The troops are getting more and more interesting. Will has decided that humans might, after all, be worth smiling at, though he still prefers grinning at inanimate objects such as ceiling fans and the plastic basket on the change table. Vivian, with her intensely competitive personality, has learned that when in her rocking-lounger-chair she can kick the roller balls with her feet at about 90 mph, providing her fists are clenched and her tongue is sticking out. Yes, Vivian has unfortunately inherited the stick-your-tongue-out-while-you-concentrate habit from me (I am still scarred by the memory of my organ recital when I was nine-years-old. Some old bird came up to me afterwards and pointed out how it was “cute” the way I stuck out my tongue while I played).

Memory Four: Oct 16, 2004 (Age: 4.5 months)

William is doing his own trial version “crawling,” as is evident by the blisters on the ends of his toes. He doesn’t quite have the arm thing down, but he can cover some ground. Vivi isn’t quite doing the crawling thing but does hoist her butt so high in the air that she topples over. She has rapid mood swings that range from happy to “assertive”. My favourite is the scream-really-loud, turn your head, then fall into a deep sleep (all in under 10 seconds).

Memory Five: Nov 18, 2004 (Age: 5.5 months)

Vivian is very close to crawling. She rocks in the crawling position for hours, it seems, and has recently began to extend her legs so that it looks like she’s in the starting blocks for the 100 meters. (Bad news, Vivi: poor genes means that it’s unlikely you’ll ever run the 100 in less than a minute. Try the big thigh sports: speed skating and sprint cycling). William spends hours in the free-fall position (also reminiscent of Superman flying). Will prefers to roll, especially when we’re not looking, prompting comments such as “How did you get over there?” He loves babbling and, unlike his sister, he actually has an inside voice.

Since my memory – like my placentas – is long gone, I say thank you to email’s “sent” file, the dinosaur’s version of a blog.

(cc) Brandon Fick, used under a Creative Commons ShareAlike License