Multiple Round Robin - August Question

If your babes are identical - how similar do you think they are vs what other people think? If they are fraternal - are they very different or do you find it difficult to differentiate?

This question is made up of a mix of comments that I'm sure all parents to multiples fend off on a daily basis. My favourite is when a complete stranger walks up to my 2 beautiful and obviously same aged children and asks if they are twins. I always want to reply with, 'No, I just have an unusually short gestation' but of course I don't having learnt the stiff upper lip thing from the locals :-)

Anyway onto the answer... Firstly, my boys are identical twins but though there definately is a strong resemblance to one another, we don't notice as much. Nate has a heart shaped face with a bum chin and Tom has a round face with much chubbier cheeks and no bum chin. BUT we do foten get caught out when we look back at pictures and have to do some serious looking to figure out who is who :-)

The big differences are in the personalities. There couldn't be 2 more different boys and my hubby has pointed out that out of the twins that we know the younger always seems to be the more outgoing/adventurous one.

Nate is very introspective and in many ways takes after his dad. The only real trait he gets from me is that we're both restless sleepers and we don't like being cuddled while we sleep. In contrast, when awake, he will mull things over and sit and watch his brother before methodically taking over the mischief making. As part of this Nate also gets more frustrated when things don't work the way he thinks that they should. Stacking toys cause all manner of drama when he can't get them to stack the way he wants them to and he has been known to throw the odd object out of sheer frustration. He is also far more physical, as if he has to compensate for being the smaller of the two and when he is ill he retreats into himself making his ailments much easier to notice. As a rule Nathan looks the most mischevious and I suspect that he will be the heartbreaker in the family.

Tom is the gentle 'giant'. Like me, he is enthusiastic and will almost always leap before he looks. As a result he is forever getting into scrapes and bumping his head/shoulder/knee and is guaranteed to be the boy responsible for knocking a drink over or tipping the bin out. So far he has been the first to reach each milestone even though his brother follows with a more perfected version. Tom is extremely loveable and adores physical attention. He likes to hug and will cuddled up with anyone or anything (he has an assortment of teddies but books and cars are also elligible). He is also the more sensitive child so sometimes it is hard to tell if he is crying for crying sake or if there is something else causing it. Out of the two boys, Tom is the bigger and the stronger but he isn't as tenacious as Nate so he often finds himself at the bottom of the wrestle, much to his dismay. All being told, Tommy is the lover and in my head I see him growing up picking up the pieces of the broken hearts that his brother has unknowingly discarded.

There has recently been one small role switch that makes me wonder how much of these things we project onto them (maybe they're exact copies of each other taking turns and we choose to only see certain traits?). The boys adopted their very own puppy recently, a little border collie named Bella. She is very sweet and quite gentle for a puppy and yet Nate is quite scared of her (she is about a third of his size). Tom on the other hand has no problem playing with her and showing her who is boss. So maybe I've got it all wrong, I don't know :-) but it is fun to think about what the future may hold!

As per usual feel free (PLEASE!) to answer the question on your blog anytime during August and please link back here or leave a comment so that I can share in the love.

A