Keeping Up With the Johnsons by Rainbow Johnson

Author:Rainbow Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Disney Book Group
Published: 2018-05-08T04:00:00+00:00

One thing that became abundantly clear with boy/girl twins is how different the sexes are.

We’d had a taste of the contrast while observing Zoey and Junior. When Junior became incredibly obsessed with the garbage truck, Dre thought something must be wrong with him. Zoey had never paid one second of attention to the truck. I finally had to explain, there’s nothing wrong with Junior; he’s just a boy!

However, the differences between boys and girls became even more pronounced when we were watching a boy and a girl grow simultaneously.

The most striking contrast was how much sooner Diane reached all her developmental milestones compared with Jack. Traditionally, girls mature and grow earlier than boys, but when you’re raising two separate-aged kids you can’t always remember exactly who did what and when. However, when Diane had already rolled over and gotten her first two teeth, it was obvious to see the contrast with toothless Jack, who lay on the blanket like a blob. (And good luck keeping records of everything. First child Zoey’s baby book is chock-full of adorable photos and handwritten notes and carefully placed stickers, which I added while she played or napped. Junior, on the other hand, has a messy drawer full of coffee-stained papers and the occasional snapshot sent to us by a grandparent. His baby book sits at the bottom of that drawer, untouched. For the twins, I never even purchased the baby books that I planned to ignore.)

Diane learned how to walk at ten months old. Jack continued to crawl like a hungover college kid until about fourteen months. When he finally took his first steps, the family gathered around like it was the moon landing and clapped like crazy. Diane, needing to one-up him, sauntered across the room on her tiptoes and knocked Jack on his ass.

Which brings me to another observation: Diane was always a crazy bitch—I mean, um, the more aggressive twin. If I sat their high chairs too close together, Diane would steal Jack’s food. When they played puppets, Diane would pretend her puppet was sick, and when Jack went over to console it, she would use the puppet to bop him on the head. Around the age of five, she reached peak villainy. Diane lured Jack into the front yard, promising, “Daddy has a surprise.” She told him to stare in the other direction and spread his feet apart. Then she took a running leap and kicked him squarely in the balls.

Much to Diane’s annoyance, Jack was always much more interested in being a twin than she was. First of all, he loved the constant company. Although I stopped having them sleep in the same crib around the time they turned one, Jack would crawl into Diane’s bed for years. If she got upset and refused to share, he would come sleep with Dre and me.

His affection for twinness also manifested itself in clothing choice. I obviously didn’t dress them exactly the same since they are different sexes, but for the first few years I bought them many similar outfits.

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