Trouble with having twins is that everything comes in two's, it was bad enough when they were babies, 2 lots of nappies, 2 lots of clothes, 2 lots of food, double this, double that...But when they're older it's even worse, the bigger they get the more expensive the things they need are, and they always have a knack of needing the same things at the same time. Birthdays hadn't been too much of a problem when they were smaller, I just used to bake one cake and cut it in two. That's cheating, I know, but they never noticed. So the big day arrived, and we were rudely awoken by two eager little birthday beavers at 6am. I told them to go back to bed for another hour, I wished! They bounced and bounced on the bed until the mattress had indented foot marks all over and we fell out of bed. They then ran to uncles bedroom and did the same thing, which we ignored...if we had to get up early everyone should suffer the same consequences. They ran downstairs hoping to find two bikes waiting for them, instead was a small parcel for each on the table. They looked at each other with that "twin look" as if to say; Too small for bikes! I had wrapped up some fruit for them both for a joke, but it soon turned sour when I saw the disappointment on their faces. Time to get the real presents out, and with that dad was quick to produce 2 shiny new bikes, one red and one blue. They were thrilled, my purse wasn't.
They were having a party that afternoon and I had made 2 cakes, one with pink icing and one with blue icing. But as my twins are boy & girl that also meant there would have to be 2 sets of friends, boys and girls. I had set a limit a few years ago that they each invite one friend for the amount of years their birthday was, ex. 4 years old = 4 friends. BIG MISTAKE!!! I hadn't thought that through properly and was trying to add up on my fingers just how many friends altogether there would be when they reached 18!! We should have had 17 children there that year, 7 friends each, the twins and our eldest son. We ended up with about 25 because the eldest felt left out so invited his own friends, (unbeknownst to us), so and so couldn't come without her sister, other so and so couldn't come without his brother, etc...But then as my daughter put it, rubbing her hands together, "It's OK mum, that means we get more presents!".
I had to lie down for about a week after that party. Apart from the noise of all those kids running riot in our house, it took me about 2 hours, and alot of patience, to teach the French how to play "pass the parcel" and explain what all the party food was about. We have since discovered that at French birthday parties the kids sit quietly and do good old fashioned colouring in, and the only hint of food is a packet of sweeties to share, and don't even mention party bags! I then had to spend another hour trying to get the mud off the new bedroom carpets where nobody had taken their shoes off coming in from the garden. Still, the kids enjoyed it and guess what...I didn't have to cook that night with all that party food left over!!!
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