My Twins Just Turned 18. What a Wild Ride.

My dear Boysiboys, we are not seriously celebrating 18 years of twins right now?! I was keyed up before your big birthday, and I still am today, on the day itself. The day you just... become adults! You were born in the afternoon, so we're celebrating mostly in the afternoon, too. Partly because of your eight hours of school today (hello, senior year!), but also because that's when we kick off the weekend around here. YOUR weekend.

And I have to tell you, or actually I did tell you: I went and scheduled the C-section so you'd turn 18 on a FRIDAY (spoiler: no, of course that was a coincidence, the C-section wasn't planned)… and now you're not celebrating that day at all. Or at least not with the big party I'd been expecting, because: nope, nope, you have practice, and a big soccer game the next day. So that doesn't work. Excuse me, WHAT?!

So the giant party in the backyard cabin (eek!) gets pushed back a few weeks, to a Saturday when you have an early home game, so there's still time to shower afterward and energy left to celebrate. You and your soccer. And lately, you and the gym. I was worried I'd just be paying for a membership nobody used, but nope. You race over there like crazy, disciplined as hell. And you surprise us with it. The way you've surprised us with so much in life.

It's as if that totally unexpected moment at the ultrasound, when the doctor said "It's twins!", has echoed through your whole lives and ours! First I was surprised that you didn't cry nearly as much as your big sister did when she was new. For the first four months I thought: Wow, we're pulling this off really well. I think I was still running on extra adrenaline.

After that, though, it got really rough, and between your 6th and 18th month you were admitted to the hospital five times in total, as if three little ones in diapers weren't demanding enough when everybody's healthy.

We spent two nights in a clinic in Mallorca with suspected diphtheria (the healthy twin had to come along because I was still nursing, hallelujah, sleep was out of the question). We spent a week with suspected meningitis in a hospital on Amsterdamer Straße in Cologne, and we were in Berlin's Westend neighborhood for surgery for urinary reflux. Good grief, we were wrecks with worry during that time.

You gentlemen didn't skip a thing. And then it just kept going with daycare infections, to the point that one day at the pediatrician's office by the Schönhauser Allee station (we still lived in Berlin then) I said: My kids don't have a weak immune system, they have NO immune system at all…  

Then came the move to the Bergisches Land, the rolling countryside outside Cologne: new neighborhood, new kids around, new experiences. From the city to the country, and that's when we started this site! And as you got older, the fierce competition between the two of you grew, too…

I can almost say this with a laugh now, but from your 5th to your 14th birthday it was so wild at our house that some kids came over once and never again 😉 I shudder to think what it would've been like without all that constant running around on the soccer field.

Then came your way-too-early start at school at just 5 (most kids in Germany start first grade at 6), then middle school with a class that was so tough we decided to let you repeat the year voluntarily, just to come up for air and catch our breath.

Two years later came Covid and the realization that this school works so differently from your big sister's. Do you want to switch? And again, new kids, but from day one the feeling: This is the right place. We belong here. How wonderful was that, and is that?! We get to tell positive stories about schools, too, and we're so happy to do it this time!

The big turning point out here in the country: your microcar (a tiny, 28-mph car that German teens can drive at 15). Until then, I'd spent so many afternoons driving you from A to B, from here to there, from the orthodontist to tutoring to sports to friends' houses. A full-blown mom-taxi operation. And then suddenly: freedom. You could get yourselves to school, to practice, and strangers took photos of you: two identical-looking 5'11" giants in a mint-green toy car. What a sight!  

You spent your time with your crew, part of a great circle of friends. Always hugging, warm, and full of humor, you hit the town together and still do. How many evenings did we parents practically put on slapstick and stand-up comedy for our own friends with stories about you and your antics!

18 Years of Twins! HAPPY BIRTHDAY

How funny can you be, how present, how addicted to your phones, how tolerant, how chatty, how quiet, how athletic, how scatterbrained, how reasonable, how all-consuming, how surprising, how understanding ("Need a hug?") and how clueless ("I know better how to drive, you don't need to say anything").

You write the most beautiful birthday cards, you have the biggest appetites, you're as wild as your curls, and I somehow just can't believe we got you all the way to 18, and that you're about to graduate from high school.

You two have put us through the emotional wringer, you've sent our family on wild emotional roller coasters, and now THIS?!? I think I know why I've been tearing up nonstop for two weeks. It's just absolutely unbelievable.

Happy birthday, my wild superboys!

Off into adult life!

And even though technically I don't have kids anymore (they're adults now),

I'll always be your mom