Seems like a lot of people we know, or at least know their relatives, have recently, or are going to have twins. I read somewhere that between 1980 and 2009, twins birth rates rose 76 percent. I was going to do some extensive research into that, but I decided that it wasn’t something that I wanted to spend a lot of time researching. One article that I browsed over indicated that the increase might possibly be due to the fact more women over the age of 30 are having babies (apparently older women are more likely to have twins — who knew?) Another theory chalked it up to the use of fertility drugs that also supposedly contribute to the birth of twins.
In case you’re wondering how/why I decided on this particular topic today, I guess it’s now ok to say that we are going to be grandparents again. In fact, the number of grandchildren we’ll have is about to double. Dave and Chassie are expecting twins — they’re both girls and they are identical. That’s absolutely all I know about it, so don’t bother calling or e-mailing me for additional details.
I read the other day that the new iPhone X won’t have a fingerprint sensor, it’ll use “face recognition to unlock the phone. A question was asked (and never answered to my satisfaction) if identical twins could unlock each other’s iPhones…I’ll let you know the answer to that in a few months. Accessing the phone with the fingerprint sensor doesn’t pose a problem, because identical twins don’t have identical fingerprints — fun fact number one.
More twins are born in Massachusetts than any other state. Connecticut and New Jersey round out the top three. New Mexico has the fewest twin birth rate. Fun fact number two.
About 25 percent of identical twins develop directly facing each other — in other words, they become exact reflections of one another. They may be right and left handed, have birthmarks on opposite sides of their bodies, etc. Fun Fact number three.
Mothers of twins may live longer (or maybe it just seems longer) — the theory being that women who gave birth to twins were very strong and healthy to begin with, so were likely to live long lives. Fun fact number four.
Forty percent of twins invent their own language.What sounds like babbling may actually be cryptophasia, a language developed between twins that only they can understand. Fun fact number five.
But whether any of these “fun facts” are true or not, we’re super excited to be getting two new grand babies. There’s all sorts of joke and rhymes about twins, like double the giggles and double the grins, or two to argue, two to cry and other “two” analogies along with things like “double the trouble,” but in reality there’s two to love. Obviously Dave and Chassie will have their hands full, but that doesn’t compare to what will fill their hearts.
As I said, we’re super excited to have twins in the family and while they may look alike, we won’t lose sight of the fact that they’ll both be one of a kind…..
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