This is National Twins Weekend

​Though my husband is a life-long Twins fan, this weekend isn’t about baseball. This is the weekend that twins from all over the country venture to Twinsburg, Ohio, to meet with other twins to celebrate being multiples.

Twinsburg has hosted the festival since 1976 and is now the largest annual gathering of twins in the world, attracting about 2,000 sets of twins, triplets, and quadruplets each year.
 
We had our own quadruplet group when the kids were young, and we didn’t even need to go all the way to Ohio. My kids were the third set of quadruplets born in the city of Colorado Springs. The set born before ours, the Bakers, was two years older, and the fourth set, the Vyvleckas, was born almost three years after ours. All twelve of the birthdays (three birth dates) were within six weeks of each other. Besides us moms getting together for dinners out on rare evenings, or snatched coffee breaks when we could, our whole families sometimes had extravagant get-togethers for picnics and parties, giving everyone the opportunity to enjoy others who experienced the unique aspects of being part of quadruplet families.
 
The photograph is all the kids corralled for a short minute on the couch at the Baker's during a September potluck and play date. In the picture, the Bakers are 5 years old, my kids are 3, and the Vyvleckas, who are only 9 months old, are being held by the Bakers. We figured there was less chance of the babies being dropped off the couch if we let the older kids try to hold on to them. It was quite a triumph to get the photo, considering all the possible wills that could have been exerted in that moment the camera took aim. I’d say, everyone did quite well!

If you know a twin, send them a “hello” and let them know you know it’s twins weekend. If you are a twin, have an extra scoop of ice cream. And if you want to be a twin, well you’re out of luck on that one. It can’t be ordered up retroactively. I tried. I always wanted to be a twin. So I had to do the next best thing and have some of my own. But mine are Twins-squared.