Identical but Distinct

My babies are three and a half. I miss the days of infancy, but I adore the little people they are becoming. While their personalities are not "totally different" each is a very distinct person.

Amelia gets a little more excited about the rock songs that come on the radio--she gets more excited about recognizing a song period. But when I look in the rear-view mirror, it is precious to see them turn to each other and smile in recognition of a song and then start feeding each others excitement about it.

Anastasia is a storyteller. She has a fantastic memory. She will talk to people for--as long as they will listen--and tell them about characters from a movie she recently watched--and she has an exceptional grasp of character motivation and the meaning of actions. She will tell memories of time she spent with her cousins or anything you want to know about her dog, brothers, sisters, how she dunked her head under water when she went swimming last summer, about her best friends (who are actually Claire's best friends) and she will even make stuff up about them.

She talks so much because she is a super attentive listener. Words and sounds are her world. She will name things according to the sound they make. Sunday shoes have harder soles and make more noise. The rest of us have learned to call that sound clicking or clunking. She calls her Sunday shoes her kirk shoes. I can't think of any other sound words she has made up, but she regularly does that if she has not learned the right word for what she is trying to describe.

Amelia loves movement. While it has taken a long time to get Anastasia to stop freaking out on the swings, Amelia has loved it and always wants to go higher. She loves to do puzzles and is good at seeing the little picture parts in the pieces to know where they go. She has also decided lately that she does not want to wear dresses all the time like Anastasia does. I think Amelia is a little more averse to change. We put the castle bed up a couple of months ago and she says she wants to unscrew it and have her little bed back.

So, I can't help but wonder how those differences come about. One hypothesis I have is that in the womb, Anastasia was smashed against my pelvis and had limited movement, where Amelia hogged up the space and kicked all the time. With more limited movement, but more access to sound (her head being closest to the surface) Anastasia became auditory while Amelia became more kinetic.

I also wonder if the primary distinguishing trait of identical twins is that the younger ones have a more rounded face. I adore them. They have been absolute pills lately because I have not taken daily focused time to be with them. I say that because it is my opinion that behavior problems are parental attentiveness problems. That is not about guilt and blame. That is about the power of a few minutes of focused love and attention, followed by independent play. We can do so much more if we do the right things.