Bedfellows

This morning twin one was wailing in his cot, most put out at the slow delivery of breakfast and parental attention, though not necessarily in that order. Unfortunately as he is at the bottom of our litter of little boys I knew he would have to wait until the older boys were dressed and breakfasted in time to rush out to school and nursery.

As a mum of four I am pretty immune to baby wails, but I took pity on him and decided to try an experiment to see if I could calm him down while I wrangled his brothers. I popped him out of his cot an in next to his twin. The silence was instant, as he wriggled up next to his brother and began to play with the unfamiliar cot toys that lived next door he was as contented as he had so recently been choleric.

It struck me once again how nice it must be to have a twin. With my single babies there was no such simple route to serenity. They required the full capacities of mummy to soothe their woes, and even she got pretty boring at times as there is no substitute for a playmate of your own age. The twins, though hard work in the practical sense are proving to be quite a bit easier in the entertainment stakes as they find each other so endlessly fascinating.

A good natured game of tug-o-war over a toy, or just staring at one another's antics, is so much more diverting than the incessant re-runs of Tellytubbies that I used to quiet the older boys. In fact the twins aren't in the slightest bit interested in the charms of CBeebies, so perhaps this time round I can earn my good mummy badge and not resort to the remote every time the going gets tough, at least not with the twins.

The only thing is that I do wonder if they are holding each other back, as each is so content to roll about on his tummy watching his brother at play, that there is still no sign of sitting up, let alone crawling, and they are now the grand old age of 8 months. Not I hasten to add that I am bothered, son number one failed to crawl until he was 14 months or walk until he was 18 months, and I must admit that twins who can only get around on their tummies are far easier to keep track of than ones who can get around on their hands and knees, so long may it last.