Happy 1st birthday, Ziv and Lev

October 14, 2009 - 9:57 PM by Jessica · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Life

Lev, Ziv and the rest of us

Hard to believe, but yesterday was my twin sons’ first birthday. I’m realizing that I probably didn’t write this yesterday because I was, in a sense, too overwhelmed to even think about contemplating the passage of this year. But now that they’re one year and one day, I can get sentimental. So, here goes:

Ziv and Lev are a year old, and 365 days have passed since they were born, at 2 and 1.2 kilos each, respectively. We’ve gone through learning about the Hadassah NICU, how to nurse (me and them), bath and feed. We’ve figured out the tag-teaming that is twin-care, from lifting two at at time and feeding with one spoon (it’s a lot simpler) to figuring out who really needs you when both are crying and not worrying so much about favoritism issues.

We’ve become friends with our Tipat Chalav nurse, Nira; have become accustomed to the grins, smiles, stares and well-meaning strangers who constantly stop to ask if the two similar-looking boys sitting side by side in the stroller are twins; and now know that in Israel, red is considered a color for baby girls, not boys. We’re into the park and playground circuit, and despite our ‘advanced’ age as parents (and grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins), it’s kinda fun to hang out with all sorts of people at the playground. Turns out that when you have kids, you have a lot in common with anyone else who is or has ever been a parent.

Which means that if you can hack it, there’s a lot of good advice out there, which I’ve been wise enough about taking so far, and hopefully will continue to do so. If it wasn’t for my sisters and a good friend, I never would have sleep trained my boys, and consequently, wouldn’t be getting good nights of sleep for the last four months. And almost everyone, when you’re the parent of twins, has something to tell you. It can be the guy at Aroma the other day, who showed me the video on his cellphone of his 15-month-old twin girls, and he also has an older daughter, similar to our blended family situation. Or the friend who’s also a mother of 19-year-old triplets, who gave us a photo album for each boy, with a designated page for each month of their first year. Better get working on that. (Thank god for Mac and iPhoto, which separates your pics into months.) Or the neighbor who has six-year-old twins and told me — when I’d had a particularly harrowing day around five months — that things get much easier after they’re six months old. She was right.

But all in all, it’s been a fantastic year. And we’re looking forward to many, many more. Happy birthday, Ziv and Lev.

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