Oh. My. Gosh.

Oh my gosh. This one. Owen. Seriously? This one drives me absolutely crazy. He is enough to push me over the edge. Every.Single.Day. He is non-stop. His level of energy is through the roof. I can’t do it justice on this blog. No matter how hard I try to explain it, there is no way you could possibly understand unless you directly witness it. The boy is non-stop. I mean, non-stop. He has only two speeds: BLASTING-FULL-BLOWN-ACTIVITY or sleeping. He is a jumping, climbing, running, pounding, flipping, cartwheeling, sprinting non-stop bundle of pure energy. He is loud. His ‘regular voice’ is like other peoples’ shouting at the tops of their lungs. He is strong. Every muscle in his body ripples at rest. He is crazy. Always (and I mean, always) the life of the party. And oh how he pushes the boundaries. It is like a non-stop test of the limits all day long every single day. He is a bottomless pit of energy and boundary-testing (seriously— a truly intense combination). He exhausts me mentally, physically, emotionally, and in every possible otherwise way. Seriously… he is a handful. And then there is this one:

Oh my gosh. Kyle. Don’t let his look of innocence fool you. He is mischief. Pure mischief. He is clever and cunning. He knows how to mix in enough sugar to off-set his spice just enough to fly under the radar. But he’s the one to watch out for. Seriously. He is not to be trusted. He has no fear. NO FEAR. And his little mind –and mouth– is going going going 24×7. He wakes up talking a verbal stream of consciousness. You can’t get a word in edgewise. Half the time nothing he says even makes sense. But he demands that you listen. And he has about two million questions (pondering God, nature, the purpose of the universe, and why ice is cold). Heaven help you if you try to cut corners and give a too-quick or too-easy answer… he will correct you… or it will come back to haunt you some other time when he quotes you on it (and then it ends up taking you three times longer to explain some other thing). This one drives me crazy. With his little quirks and ticks and strange perfectionist-Type-A-tendencies. He can’t pee straight into the potty to save his life (thus the need for Clorox wipes by the caseload around here), but he closes the toilet seat 100 times a day for everyone else in the house who forgets. He is a strange one. An odd one. And he’s not at all bashful about it. That, combined with his raw fearlessness… seriously— it is a crazy combination.

And those two together? Oh my gosh. The energy and crazy is not just times two. It is tenfold. It is exponential. They feed off of each other (and not always in a good way). It is non-stop. NON-STOP I tell you. Five minutes in their presence makes you feel a strong urge to lie down for a nap. Twin boys. Just talk to anyone who has raised a pair. They are more than two handfuls.

But then, then they do stuff like this:

For no apparent reason they decided to “tidy up” the laundry room the other day. Our shoes were all over the place in there. And they –for whatever reason– came up with this shoe-organization-scheme to “help us out.” When they called me in to see what they had done the two of them were standing in the center, holding hands, and jumping up and down with uncontainable glee and delirious pride with themselves. And right then, in an instant, for just a moment, all of my angst and frayed nerves and ceaseless worry (‘will we be able to keep them out of trouble until they reach adulthood?’) evaporated and my heart melted. There is no explaining it. It just is what it is.

And then there is this one:

Oh my gosh. Meera Grace. She has a mind of her own– and a personality to match. Her energy is totally different from her brothers’ (thank God!!!!!!!!!!), but her spunk is no lesser. She is all sugar, but she has not forgotten the spice. Oh no no no! She is a spicy little number. She is an interesting, peculiar, eccentric little person. Oh, and when she doesn’t get her way… she puts on quite a show. And the girl knows what she wants. Always. Whether it is her style, her cuisine, or her choice in music– do not mess with her. And, for better or for worse, we (all four of us) pretty much don’t. We’ve learned the hard way that it is much, much, much easier to just give her what she wants. So she wants to sleep with bunny, kitty, little kitty, baby, chick, and coco (all stuffed animals she’s been insisting on sleeping with for every single nap and bedtime for about a month), well then, so be it. If she wants to wear her brother’s ski mask, her red rain boots, and a gorgeous hand-made-Indian-skirt-with-gold-trim-and-gold-embroidery with her shirt (the shirt = the only thing originally put on her that day)… well then, so be it. The rest of us would rather roll our eyes and suffer in silence than deal with her wrath. And so it goes. She is a 22 month old (as of yesterday!) spunky little thing (and… like all toddlers… she is a lot of work; a lot of work).

Her brothers were quite enough all on their own. Add her to the mix and it is enough to make you feel like you’re living right on the edge.

But then, after dinner, you find yourself in the midst of scenes like this:

Oh my gosh! It is enough to make your heart sing out loud. And it makes you feel like maybe, just maybe, we’ll get through all of this still smiling, and somehow in tact…

…and with a lifetime of stories to boot!