Well after a whole year of saying, month after month, that I can't believe how quickly 2017 is whizzing past....here we are at the end of it!
December is my absolute favorite month of all, despite all of the chaos and some of the anxiety that the winter brings about for me, because there is just so excitement around Christmas time - especially when you have young children. There's nothing quite like the constant chatter about Father Christmas, the buzz of excitement and festive days out to really make you enjoy the season!
We kicked off our December with our annual trip to the same photographer we've been to every year for Christmas photos since Tyne's first Christmas back in 2013 - she always comments on how the boys have grown and it's just become a lovely tradition of ours that makes us all feel as though Christmas is starting.
Of course, Christmas with not one but TWO toddlers in the Terrible Two phase (Sailor has hit it a little early!) is anything but stress-free...our poor Christmas tree looks completely bedraggled already and I'm having to keep all of the ornaments clustered together at the top while the bottom is completely bare because the pair of them refuse to leave it alone, its far worse than having cats!
And visits to Santa with the terrible twosome in tow are eventful too - if poor Santa's hair wasn't genuinely white when we walked in to his Grotto I'm sure it was by the time we left! Between the two of them they had the Grotto upside down and had stripped Santa's tree of candy canes almost entirely despite our best efforts to reign them in!
I often chuckle to myself when I hear people talk about how tough it is having two young children with the standard 2 year age gap because although I know that having Tyne and Noah (who have the 2 year gap between them) together is by no means easy, having Noah & Sailor together makes it seem like a bloody breeze! It's just a completely different ball game altogether and you really can't understand how hard it is until you experience it for yourself! There's just something about having two children less then a year apart that makes thing super chaotic - perhaps it's just at their current ages (I live in hope that it will get easier as they get older!) but they really are a whirlwind, a proper force of nature when they're together and a day with them is absolutely exhausting!
We were walking down the street today with the two of them in the pram, when a group of young girls walked past and exclaimed "Awwwww twins!"...it kind of reminded me of how unusually close in age they are, and of why life does seem so hectic so often! It's easy to forget because it's normal to us now. (Although I am still surprised when people assume they're twins, which they always do, because I don't think they look alike at all! I still think Noah looks like the milkmans baby!)
But despite the craziness of the pair of them together, there is also so much cuteness...they really do come as a pair, they're always playing together and always looking out for each other. They rarely bicker or fight over toys, and they have very similar personalities....although Noah is a little more flamboyant and keen to be the center of attention, Sailor seems happy for him to take center stage...always happy to be the Anna to his Elsa, quite literally! Infact Noah now refers to him as "My Anna brother"!...something I'll be sure to remind them off when they're 18!
As for Tyne's relationship with his baby brothers, he still loves to baby Sailor...last night the pair of them ended up in my bed and Tyne cuddled up to Sailor, cradling him in his arms. They fell asleep together and looked so alike...they have pretty much the perfect Big brother/Little brother relationship!
Unlike Tyne and Noah...who really do not!
I don't know what it is about Tyne and Noah...perhaps they're too similar, as they're both fiercely independent and headstrong and neither is ever prepared to back down and give the other an inch....but they seem to struggle to play together for longer than ten minutes without coming to blows over something!
It always ends in tears and tantrums, and they always need mediation - but on the rare occasions that they manage to enjoy a game together or cuddle up and watch something together on the ipad, I get a glimmer of hope that maybe in the not-too-distant future when Noah is a little older...maybe they'll start to get along more.
I think right now their interests are just too different...with Tyne every inch the stereotypical "boy" whose only interests are cops & robbers, cowboys, pirates and video games and Noah only interested in Princesses and anything glitzy and glam!
But hopefully one day they'll start to find some shared interests...until then, I'll be continuing to play referee!
Bring on 2018 - by the end of March we'll have a 2 year old, a 3 year old and a 5 year old - I'm interested to see how life will be and how their relationships will develop then!
Although that 6 weeks we'll spend between Sailor and Noah's birthdays having TWO two year olds at home...I'm not quite looking forward to that so much! ;)
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