Who's Who???

Are your twins identical or fraternal?  With fraternal twins, a lot of the time they look like siblings, but they not completely a like.  Mine girls are identical, but there are some features that are different about them.  That being said, when they were newborns, I had heard stories about parents painting toe nails different colors, or using permanent marker on the bottom of their twins feet to tell them about.  I didn't do that, but they each had a color that we used for OTHER people to tell them apart.  (We were around them so much that we could do it easily.  That doesn't mean that we don't slip up and pull a roll call on them sometimes!!)

I have friends that are twins, and I asked for their opinions about things before the girls were born, and I got some great feedback.  There are also some awesome books out there, so get to reading!  Ultimately, their advice was to use different colors so that looking back on pictures you could tell them apart.  Lana was pink and Keira was purple, and we used clothes, hair accessories, anything we could do, especially out in public.  Another bit of advice was to not use rhyming names or names that started with the same letter.  My girls names don't rhyme, but they do have the same amount of syllables.  I love their names and will be forever thankful for the advice from my friends and books that I read.  I think that it helps them to make sure they know that they are individuals.  So many people will only refer to them as "the twins", so having their own interests and cultivating that is important.  

If you are having twins and are still pregnant while reading this, I'd love to hear your feedback, but take it from a mom of twins already, this works!  My girls like different colors (and now that they are old enough to decide what they like, I go with it!!!), and I let them pick out clothes and what they want to wear.  I know what you're thinking though, twins are soooo cute when they are dressed alike!  People are always getting them the same outfits, which is fine, I just try to dress them in those clothes at different times.  I often get them the same clothes, just in different colors or patterns, that way they look similar, but not completely a like.  

Besides the clothes, make sure that you take the time to let their personalities shine!!  They may look exactly alike, but they really aren't!  They will like similar activities and shows and foods, but if one shows an interest in dance and one in softball, don't stifle that.  Let them be themselves just like you would if you had two single children!  Here's a picture of my girls this past Halloween, they both wanted to be princess sheriff's, so I made sure that their colors were different, and they got to pick them out!  

And here they are when they were just starting to pull up on the couch!  They look so much alike, but can you tell the differences in them?  Look closely!!!