Have any of you ever been tempted to say something less than fully supportive to your chatty, communicative 5-year-old? Something along the lines of “Shut up, shut UP, SHUT UPPPPPPPPPPP!” Just me, then?

I feel like my mind is a bucket, and it can only hold so much before it starts spilling all over the place, causing flooding and water damage and insurance claims that never get settled satisfactorily. I have so many things I’m thinking about and keeping track of, it’s like I’m balancing on a high wire. Any additional input is like a little shove. A constant stream of chatter is like getting poked with a stick again and again and again and again.

I try to stop what I’m doing and FOCUS. I know I should be engaging in careful, loving listening. I should be giving my whole attention. I know I should be valuing these conversations, setting them aside for the days when I’m begging my sullen, silent teenager to say even a single word to me other than a grunt.

I can’t, though. I can’t. It’s one thing if it’s one of those cute things you can write down in the journal: William to Robert, in a superior tone of voice, “Things that live in the water aren’t animals. They’re INSECTS.” It’s another thing entirely when it’s a relentless monologue: “Mommy, I’m up here. I see an ant down there! Look at this piece of paper, it’s so paper! Paper paper paper paper paper. POW! Pow pow pow, I got you, baby Edward! Look, Mommy, I got baby Edward. Mommy, can you get this knot out? Can you make a new knot, EXACTLY in the middle? I want it in the middle. Middle middle middle, a knot in the middle. There’s that ant! A, B, C, one, two, three! Ding, dong, baby! Ding, dong, baby! Ding, baby, dong, baby! Ding dong ding dong ding dong ding dong! My teeth are chilly! Nyuh nyuh nyuh nyuh. Mommy. Mommy. Mommy! I see another ant.”

And so on. Let’s say this has gone on for half an hour. Let’s say I’ve asked him nicely to go find something to do, to give me a minute to rest my ears, to hang on for a second while I finish this one thing I’m trying to remember to put on the shopping list….oh no, I’ve forgotten it. NOW may I use “shut up”? DANG IT. Can I get earplugs, then? NO? You are so strict.

You know what I love? It’s when a baby is working up to a real pisser of a fit, avoiding eye contact and resisting being held and generally communicating that nothing you could ever say or do would make up for the wild injustice that has been done here today–and then you offer the baby something fairly basic, like a piece of cardboard that came in a package of shirts, and the tantrum shuts off like a switch. The baby is riveted, full rapt attention snap-focused on the item in a way that would only happen to me if you handed me a check for a million dollars. In fact, it couldn’t even be you handing me the check, it would have to be John Cusack, handing me the check while holding a boom box over his head–I guess the check would be in his teeth, which is even better. Also, it would have to be cash, not a check.

I had a dream the other night (I’ll make this brief: other people’s dreams are deadly boring) that I was in the waiting room of the OB/GYN. I was there to find out if I was pregnant. It doesn’t take a dream interpretation book to figure this out. I’ve weaned the twins, so this is the last month before I’m back on the Pill. My period is due any day now. I’ve been thinking of how funny it would be to get to the month before going back on the Pill–and then be pregnant that month. Not so much funny-ha-ha as funny-oh-my-god, but still.

I think I am in real trouble: I have four children–FOUR–and I still want another baby. I keep thinking about pregnancy and baby names and finding out what the new child is like. This does not bode well for future happiness. I hope I’m not going to be like my mom: in her 50s, through menopause, married to a man who’s been snipped for over 30 years, and STILL hoping every month that she’s pregnant. I’m doomed, aren’t I? Genetically doomed.

I’ve even thought, “Well, maybe we should have another.” It really hardly seems to matter at this point: one more baby? We’re already inundated with them, we’d hardly notice the difference. There’s room in the minivan for another car seat. I still have time before I turn Scary 35. But then where does it end? I always thought my mom’s problem was that she had only two children when she wanted to have three, but if she’d had three or even four I’ll bet she’d still have wanted more. Evidently we’re hardwired for endless baby production.

About the population explosion–I know, I know, don’t even tell me. Tell my ESTROGEN.

Elizabeth has been Little Miss Tantrum McFusserton. She pitches fits about EVERYTHING, and we rarely know what her current problem is. Edward took something away from her? She got stuck momentarily? She doesn’t like her outfit?

I don’t think any of our babies have pitched fits in this classical style: the arched back, the slammed-back head, the squeezed-shut eyes, the entire tiny body contributing to the roars of rage. Right now, as we enter the stage, it seems so comical, it just makes me want to squeeze and smooch her more: Who does this child think she IS, to have such loud opinions when she is only as big as two atoms? I’m sure in time this urge to squeeze and kiss and laugh will fade, to be replaced with the urge to muzzle and sequester.

I have been known to complain to my girlfriends in great detail about Paul. He doesn’t clean enough, and when he does clean he does such a crappy job I suspect him of being deliberately incompetent in the hopes that I’ll say “PLEASE don’t help.” He can be inconsiderate, grabbing my towel when he forgot to get a fresh one for himself, and then leaving mine wet on the floor next to the toilet. He can appear to listen to me for ten minutes or so, when actually he is doing a physics problem in his head and hasn’t heard a single word. He’ll put a huge load of laundry on the low, hot cycle, because he doesn’t think to set the cycle, and then he’ll leave it in the dryer to get cold and crinkled–and moldy, because he didn’t set the cycle for a large load. He’ll step over cat barf to let me find it later. Spiders? My job.

But in many, many ways he SAVES us, he saves our family. He comes home from work in a good mood, and he plays actively with the children. He doesn’t expect to have time to relax right away, and he knows he has only a short time per day with the kids and so he takes all of it, waiting to do his own things until after the kids are in bed. When I’m falling apart, he makes a funny remark that puts everything back in perspective. He never says “Oh, you must be PMSing.” When I’m cranky, he doesn’t escalate it by cranking back at me; in fact, he acts extra affectionate, like he thinks I’m being cute when I am actually being a total bitch. He doesn’t give me a hard time about the messiness of the house. He doesn’t go out partying with his friends. He doesn’t spend all our money, leaving me wondering how we’re going to pay the bills.

Things like “doing a good job cleaning the toilet” pale in comparison. (Though I still would really, really like it if he could do a good job cleaning the toilet. I mean, it’s not rocket science.)

It is difficult to shop with twins. Aside from problems with fussing, crying, grabbing things off shelves, etc., there is the problem of where to put them.

A shopping cart has only one child seat. I’d read on twin sites that it was possible to put the twins in that seat together, one leg of each twin bent and the other leg of each twin through a leg hole. That did work, but only in the window of time after they were old enough to sit alone and before the shoving and hair-pulling began (about one month; your results may vary). Also, the seatbelt isn’t big enough to go around both of them, which is nerve-wracking if you depend on the seatbelt to be Officer Safety.

The other twin can ride in the back of the cart, but not if he keeps pulling himself to standing, threatening to plunge his top-heavy little self right down to the hard polished floor. Even if he stays sitting, he has access to everything you put into the cart.

Some places have enormous, heavy, awkward carts with an attached 2-seater section. The sticker on these carts says that only children older than a certain age, usually 2 years, may ride there, but I’ve used it with my 1-year-old twins. The primary problem is that the two seats seem to be arranged to give the children maximum kicking and hair-pulling access. Edward will grab enthusiastically for Elizabeth’s hair time and time again, pulling her head down nearly to the floor as she yells, or he’ll cheerfully kick her again and again.

The best solution for keeping the babies restrained and comfortable is their double stroller: two seatbelts, low access to each other (I put Elizabeth in the back seat because she is unlikely to pull Edward’s hair or kick the back of his seat; and from the front seat he can’t reach her), comfortable seats. But then I have only a stroller basket for whatever I’m buying. It’s a nice big basket as strollers go, but it’s not big enough for much more than a 12-pack of toilet paper.

I read (again, on a twin site) the idea of getting two carts, and putting one twin in the child seat of each. You can push one cart ahead of you, and pull the other cart behind you. This also gives you double the carrying space for purchases, which is great for minimizing trips to the store. I’ve tried this in times of desperation (we need toilet paper AND diapers AND paper towels AND laundry detergent AND cat litter AND cat food AND…), but it leaves me a wrung-out wreck. It’s hard to keep track of both babies when they’re spread out like that, it’s hard to steer around corners, and there’s the social discomfort of taking up ALL the room in every aisle you go down.

The only solution we’ve come up with is to wait to go shopping until the twins are in elementary school. (Actually, I wait for Paul to get home from work, and then I run to the store with only one twin.)

My mother-in-law sent me one of those dumb email forwards. This one was one of her very favorite sort: it lamented the passing of Mr. Common Sense, going on to say all the things old people believe: that children don’t respect their elders anymore, that nobody spends within their means anymore, that no one dresses properly anymore, that no one bothers to learn their sums anymore, that no one knows the meaning of hard work anymore, and so on. Also, everything’s so expensive, the portions in restaurants are huge, and you kids get off my lawn.

I’ll say this: Mr. Common Sense’s passing must not have been recent, because GENERATIONS of old people have been talking about it. It is astonishing that anyone who isn’t elderly manages to raise children or keep to a budget or hold down a job, or that the human race manages to continue on at all, considering how the elderly are the last of the people with any common sense.

“Are they identical or fraternal?” is one of the most common questions parents of twins are asked. (“Did you use fertility drugs?,” “Are they boys or girls?,” and “How much did they weigh when they were born?” are others.)

If one twin is a boy and the other is a girl, the twins are always, always, always fraternal. They can’t be identical. As my mother says when anyone asks her if her grandtwins are identical, “Take a peek in their diapers and see.”

If there are two boy twins, or two girl twins, the situation is more complicated. Fraternal twins can look very similar, and identical twins can have some differences. When I was pregnant and didn’t yet know I was having a boy and a girl, I looked into the subject and found that DNA testing is the only accurate way to determine if same-sex twins are identical or fraternal. There are lots of casual ways for guessing, but it’s the DNA that tells you for sure.

Of course, if you have one red-haired blue-eyed boy twin and one brown-haired brown-eyed boy twin, you may want to save your money for their college education instead.

When my firstborn was little, we didn’t have enough space for a playpen unless we wanted to jettison the couch–which was actually a loveseat, because there wasn’t room for an actual couch, either. When my secondborn was little, I didn’t think of a playpen: I was on auto-pilot, using whatever equipment we already had.

As soon as the first twin started crawling, I knew we were in an entirely unfamiliar world. Here is a glimpse into the world of twins, free of charge: unless you can unhinge your eyes so that they’ll move independently of each other, it is very, very, very difficult to keep track of two babies at the same time. Childproofing helps, and we ramped that up to previously unachieved levels. But what really helped was something that goes beyond the word “playpen” and on to the word “corral.”

It is the North State Superyard XT Gate. Ohhhh, yeahhh. Eighteen-and-a-half square feet of toddler patrol. There’s enough room in there for two toddlers and a heap of toys, and if you have triplets or an extra-big living room you can get the extension kit that doubles the inside area. We bought the extension because my grasp of spacial relations is tenuous at best. We’ve never used it, because my grasp of spacial relations instantly improved when I saw how the original gate without the extension used up nearly all the floor space in our living room.

It is such a relief to have a safe place to put the babies down if I’m bringing in groceries or folding laundry. Or, you know, finishing just one more chapter. It’s big enough that they can crawl around, and they don’t have the pitiful look of a babies in a cramped prison cell. An adult can easily sit in the pen with the babies, if an adult feels like having babies crawling all over her.

The whole thing is plastic, so you can hose it down if the need arises. It folds down accordian-style to the size of one panel (but thicker, of course), and can be brought outdoors or to the beach if you’re ever feeling brave enough to attempt such a thing. My aunt says she has seen the same play yard advertised in her pet catalog, for use with dogs and puppies. It can also be used to keep children (or dogs) OUT of a place: I read online that one mother said she used hers to surround the Christmas tree, protecting it from all those little curious grabby hands. I’ll keep that in mind for next Christmas: this Christmas, it’s still more needed as a corral.

Paul and I split the dishes, as I’ve mentioned. I end up with more, because I’m home during the day with the kids, and so I’m responsible for all the dishes they generate during that time, which I believe is fair; I also do my own dishes, of course, and any that I use making meals for the children. He is responsible for his own dishes, and for the dishes he uses when he makes dinner for the older kids. Whichever one of us makes dinner for the grown-ups, the other one does those dishes. We treat this as an agreement that, while not actually carved in stone, is at least written on stone in Sharpie marker.

When I do my share, I don’t mention it. When he does his share, he mentions it. “I did the dishes!,” he announces, leaving me in a quandary. If he did MY share for me, of course I would thank him–but that’s not what’s happening here. If he routinely thanked ME for doing MY dishes, then I guess I would thank him for doing his, too–but that’s not what’s happening here, either.

What IS happening here, I think, is that he’s revealing what he doesn’t realize he believes: that I’m only doing what I should be doing anyway, whereas he is doing something special, something that isn’t really his job to do.

It has been suggested to me that I should be grateful for what he does do, since other men do less: look at our fathers’ generation! our grandfathers’ generation! They did SO MUCH LESS. I think that’s like saying I should be grateful to a stranger for not mugging me, since there are other strangers who would. People should be compared not to people who are in flagrant disregard of what is fair and right, but to people who are in compliance with what is fair and right.

I may have gotten a little beyond the dishes problem here. This is what can happen with household matters: they seem like small things on paper, but they can represent larger issues. The problem comes when one partner sees them as symbolic of a larger issue, and the other partner sees it as a small thing. Paul: “I did the dishes!” Me: “Why not just MUG me while you’re at it, ‘Grandpa’?”