The big-boy bed disaster: can't they make bigger cribs?

We finally made the move and it's been horrible.
Matthew and Jonathan are in big boy beds.
I was hoping to keep them in cribs until they turned 18, but nothing was working anymore. We'd brought the crib mattresses down as low as they could go and we clothed them in big-kid sleep sacks, but still, they managed.
They managed so well that I found Jonathan perched on the highest wall of his crib the other day at nap time and I watched, unable to reach him on time, as he leaped into Matthew's crib.
It was terrifying.
So I bought beds and had them set up within five hours.
Trouble is that these two feed off each other.
Their similar temperaments mean they are similarly wild.
In their cribs, they jumped up and down simultaneously until they simply couldn't do it anymore and they crashed. In their beds, they do the same thing except now there are no crib rails to confine them.
Now, they jump off the bed, or from one bed to the other.
Now, they get out of bed, open dresser drawers, climb them and pull their lullaby CD from its player.
Now, they dump laundry out of the basket and scatter it all over the floor.
Now, they don't nap and it's draining to put them to bed at night.
We tried lying down with them. (We can spare only one person at a time because we do, after all, have two older kids.) They step on our tummies, our faces, our legs. When we are settling one, the other makes a beeline for the door.
We tried putting them down every time they got up without saying a word. That worked with our older kids. The older kids gave up after they realized they weren't going to get attention for their antics.
Not so with these guys.
They get giggles out of each other.
And that's enough attention for them.
So now we lock them in like prisoners.
We give them some toys, listen for any sounds of true disaster and pray that they will be okay.
When all is quiet, we go in and pick them up off the floor or straighten their little bodies on their beds, and change their diapers. Then we cover them up and lock the door again only to find them standing in those dresser drawers again as soon as we hear the first peep over the monitor in the morning.
Yes, the dresser is attached to the wall, but it might loosen. It might give way.
Yes, they eventually fall asleep at night, but they wake at the crack of dawn and, without naps, their personalities are not so pleasant anymore. My "good-natured terrors" are losing their good natures.
Yes, we should consider separate rooms for naps, but we don't have the space right now and we definitely don't have the childproofed space.
So, I guess all I can do right now is keep trying to get them to bed even earlier, duct-tape the dresser drawers every night and have patience. Have patience that the days will grow shorter again and they will sleep longer. Have patience that as they get older, they will need less sleep. Have patience that their good natures will once again take over.
Now I just have to figure out how to find that patience.

Sometimes it would be nice if they acted like twins

I had to laugh the other day when I thought about all those parents who fret about separating their identical twins in school, or who dress their twins in assigned colors only, or who enroll them in different activities regardless of their interests--all with the goal of promoting individuality.
I had to laugh because individuality is the reason I need a mother's helper one day a week this summer. Individuality is the reason I had to order two more yellow shirts from Children's Place last week. Individuality is the reason we have huge battles at bath time these days.
And I can't recall doing anything specific to promote it.
For instance, I can't take Matthew and Jonathan to any public place that is not fenced in by myself because as soon as I set them down, they run off in opposite directions.
They might nod at each other occasionally, but rarely do they interact at all. They are content in the knowledge that the other is there and for some reason, that contentment seems to give them confidence. And energy.
So, if I want to take the older kids to the zoo, the Museums Center or the splash park, I need another pair of hands.
My mother's helper is 14 years old. She is our neighbor's daughter. She was so excited when she accepted the job. She was so exhausted after our trip to the zoo on Wednesday.
I hope she has the strength to last another eight weeks.
I had to buy those yellow shirts (on sale, thank goodness) because that's all Matthew will wear lately. Jonathan will wear only orange, though both are willing to make an exception for red or green shirts once in a while as long as we are willing to endure an amazingly long and loud tantrum first.
Jonathan will wear only shorts no matter how cool it is outside.
Matthew will wear only pants no matter how hot it is outside.
And bath time.
Bath time has turned into a disaster.
Jonathan wants bubbles and toys.
Matthew wants clear water and no toys.
I'm finding I can ease the resulting aggression by grabbing a few cars from their toy bin and throwing those in the water. Matthew doesn't view the cars as "bath toys." Jonathan does. So, until the novelty wears off, I'm saved once again.
Here are photos of the boys.
Can you guess who is who?

Identical voices?

Matthew and Jonathan have the same cry.
When I hear them call out over the monitor at night, I can never tell whether the same toddler has awakened twice or whether both woke up at different times. It drives me crazy, especially when they are sick.
So, before they started speaking, I often wondered whether they would have the same voice.
I finally have my answer.
They do.
But they don't.
If both boys say the same thing with the same inflection (and they often do), their voices are indistinguishable from one another. They also have a similar vocabulary and are at the same stage of speech development.
They string words together, but they do not form complete sentences.
What distinguishes them in speech is not their voices, but their personalities.
Matthew likes to yell.
Sometimes, he'll just stand there and holler, "Mom! Mom!" in a flat, loud, determined tone even though I'm right there. Then he'll grin. He just really loves to yell. It seems to makes him feel good, strong, in control.
If he wants to go into the basement playroom, he commands me: "Mom! Basement!"
Jonathan doesn't do that.
When I hear a question asked in soprano, that's when I know it's Jonathan speaking. He is inquisitive and his voice often climbs almost unbearably high when he struggles with that first syllable of a question.
When Jonathan wants to play in the basement, I hear a high-pitched squeak that grows louder, stronger and fuller as it finally escapes: "Basement?"
He doesn't command me; he makes an appeal to me.
Over time, I'm sure experience will change their approaches. They will learn, like we all do, how people react to their attempts to manipulate with intonation and inflection, and their voices will be like their cries.
They will be indistinguishable.
But that's okay.
That's okay because, by then, I won't need to hear different voices to know who is speaking. Jonathan and Matthew will have different interests, different concerns, different questions, different life experiences.
Their personalities will override their biological similarities.
They will sound different simply because they are different.

Identical twins and heredity

The question came up again on an online forum. And, once again, folks hopped into the discussion with both feet, readily giving incomplete and misleading answers with confidence.
The question?
Can the tendency to have identical twins be inherited?
The most common answer and the prevailing theory is "no."
Most OBs will tell their patients that identical twins are fluke, an accident of nature, and that their chances of having another set are no greater than any other woman's chance of having identicals in the first place.
But how does that explain my neighbor's daughter and her family? She has three sets of identical twin boys who come trick-or-treating to our house every year.
And what about the woman whose daughter took dance lessons with my daughter? She is an identical twin and she has identical twin boys of her own.
Then there is the woman I met at a local bakery. She looked longingly at my boys (who were screaming at my attempt to get some coffee, unwilling to be pacified by cookies) and told me that her two daughters each have a set of identical twin girls.
It just doesn't make sense.
The reality is that scientists have no idea why some women have identical twins and some don't. Evidence does exist that many sets are flukes. For instance, there is no history in my family or in my husband's of identical twins as far as we know.
My side boasts a set of twins and a set of triplets way back in the olden days, but they were fraternal. My mother-in-law remembers a set of triplets birthed by a distant relative, but they also were fraternal.
So our boys probably were an accident of nature, an awesome accident.
But in other families, the frequency is too great for simple coincidence.
The journalist in me demanded that I do some research.
This is what I found:
A 2007 study, led by Dr. Dianna Payne, a visiting research fellow at the Mio Fertility Clinic in Japan, shows that identical twins form just after conception when an embryo collapses and splits in two. She discovered this by photographing growing embryos every two minutes in a lab using special computer software.
Her evidence negates previously held theories that the egg splits after it leaves its shell immediately before implantation and that, therefore, identicals either shared a placenta or had individual placentas that grew close together. The predominance of the previous theory explains why my OB insisted that our boys were fraternal until they were DNA tested.
Our boys each had their own placentas, which grew on polar opposite side of my uterus.
They were born in January of 2007, just before Dr. Payne and her colleagues went public with their research.
Dr, Payne's discovery has opened new paths for research into the potential genetic impact on identical twins. A study is currently underway that proposes that a male enzyme is involved. Scientist already know that the enzyme causes the embryo to collapse, but they are unsure who secretes it or why.
The study, as far as I know, is not yet public.
But I found this post-- written by a graduate bioengineering student who is helping to conduct the study at an unnamed university--on a Yahoo forum (http://www.twinslist.org/idfaq.htm). She says that the study also suggests some women carry a gene that prevents the enzyme from splitting the egg, and that men who produce the enzyme do not produce it every time:

"Thus far, the research shows that the enzyme is directly responsible for causing the splitting of the chromosomes, which results in the division of the cytoplasm which results in two eggs! There are a few (about 1%) that have alluded us so far and have shows no sign of the enzyme despite the fact that twins resulted. Thus, we have concluded that identical twinning can also be a random event. But in about 99% of the people tested, the enzyme is apparently the culprit. So, 99% is a darn good yield! So, according to our research, it is not a small percentage but almost the entire percentage."

This part of the post explains why we know so little:

"And yes, this study has been repeated already, but very, very little money is put into this research, so most of it is done on our own time. The reason for this is there is little to no medical advances that can come out of the research, just info and most of the money on medical and genetic research is for improving the outcome of diseases, etc. So, that is why it may be a while before this research is completed. We have to get about 5% of the public who have twins to complete our research (not all will go through tests, some will just answer questionnaires) before we can say that this represents the entire population, so you can see that this will take a while!"

So that's it.
The answer is that there is no definitive answer because the people in medical community, or rather the folks who fund their research, are just not not all that interested.
For now, identical twins remain a mystery.

Summer Fun

Here are a few photos of the boys playing in their pool in the back yard. They are now two years and four months old.

Jon is holding Elmo. Matt is "swimming."

Jon (with back facing camera) gives his twin a kiss.

Matt "swimming."

I must admit that in this photo, I have no idea which twin is jumping off the picnic table.

A closer look

It's strange and, maybe, it's just a phase, but I find that I rarely think of Matthew and Jonathan as identical twins these days.
All I can figure is that I am so focused on the intimate, complex achievements that come with this age, that I am unable to step back and see them from any kind of distance anymore. Their recent developments have given me the opportunity to see the minutia and, in the minutia, I see two little people who are so very different from each other.
For instance, language has given them the tools to verbally express their individuality, like Jonathan and his obsession with Swiper the Fox, an obsession that Matthew does not share:
"Swiper?"
"Fox?"
"Sneaky?"
"Naughty?"
"Oh man!"
(Repeat ten times and insist that mom repeat each word as affirmation that she is listening.)
Or Matthew with his bathing preferences, preferences that Jonathan clearly does not share:
"No toys!" Matthew shrieks as a small zebra, a cup and a teething ring come flying out of the bathtub. Jonathan stands, reaches in vain for the discarded playthings and then throws his hands up and cries.
"Toys done," Matthew says triumphantly. "No toys!"
Improved mobility and agility has given them the skills to individually test their physical limits while also applying the techniques of observation and manipulation.
For instance, Matthew has learned to appear fully absorbed in play in their fenced-in area out back, leaving me with a sense of security as I try to sneak inside for a moment to unload the dishwasher. As soon as my back is turned, he is over the fence and around the front of the house. Jonathan remains fenced in, too awed to throw a leg over and follow.
Jonathan, meanwhile, is focused on his jumping skills. He arranges bean bag chairs a few feet away from the sofa and then, calculating the distance just perfectly, he leaps from the sofa into the bean bag chairs face-first.
Greater reasoning ability, empathy and perspective has given them both the skills to manipulate their environment and the people in it to their liking.
A few examples:
Matthew will turn my head in his direction with his tiny hands, cock his own head in the cutest little way, scrunch his eyes just right and say, "Cars? Watch Cars?" He knows he makes my heart melt. He knows I can't resist. In goes the Cars DVD.
Jonathan keeps one eye on his brother and waits for that moment when Matthew wants to cuddle with me. Then he runs over, pushes his twin brother aside, climbs into my arms and declares, "Mine! Mine!" As soon as Matthew loses interest in the battle for attention, Jonathan slips off my lap and resumes play.
Matthew climbs onto the sofa, lays his head on a pillow and covers himself with a blanket, just like his older brother does each morning when he first wakes up. And then, in his desire to complete the charade, he says, "Ovaltine? Ovaltine?" requesting his idol's favorite drink and hoping it gets his attention.
Sometimes, when I am crouched down, picking raisins off the floor, scrubbing milk out of the carpet or scooping up bits of crushed crackers, I'll feel two perfect hands tickle my neck and Jonathan will be standing right in front of me. He'll say "love!" and then kiss me right on the lips. Just as he predicts, I stop what I'm doing and cradle this amazing human being.
It was a lot easier when the twins were more like a unit, when I could step back and say this is who "they" are, this is what "they" do, how "they" behave. Still, I wouldn't ever want to be positioned so far away again.
This new phase is exhausting, but it's also exhilarating.
I am finally getting the chance to know them, to know them as individuals.
As Matthew and Jonathan, brothers who just happen to both be two.

Anger management

When Matthew and Jonathan are angry with each other, they do what many siblings their age do: they hit each other.
So what do they do when they are angry with me?
They hit each other.
I haven't quite figured this one out.
I've talked to other twin moms, assuming this must be a common issue.
It's not.
No one had answers for me.
All I can figure is that jealousy plays a role; Matthew and Jonathan are so accustomed to each other that, somehow, whenever they are angry with me, they figure it must be the other twin's fault.
This phase has convinced us of one thing: it is time to work harder at separating them now and then. They need to learn to handle their emotions as individuals, not as a team.
Since it seems that we're at the grocery store just about every day, that's where we'll start.
A trip for Jonathan today.
A trip for Matthew tomorrow.
And maybe, just maybe it will work.
Maybe, next time I evoke their fury, they'll channel their emotions appropriately.
They'll hit me instead of each other.
Wait a minute ...
What the heck are we doing?