Was this really the plan?

The stomach flu continues to ravage the Frozen North household, with She Who Puts Up With Me and Skeeter still down today. Thursdays are usually Scooter's Special Night, so I decided to take him and Scamper to Chuck E. Cheese.

Scooter is five, and the twins Skeeter and Scamper are two. When we planned our second child, of course we didn't expect to have twins. In fact, I don't think the idea even crossed our minds until the routine ultrasound at 22 weeks gestational age, when the technician remarked that there were two heads inside mommy's tummy. We captured this moment on videotape, and Her reaction is one to treasure forever.

So this evening, I was sitting at the table scarfing pizza with Scooter and Scamper. Eating dinner was oddly....calm. Later, when the kids were running around the video games, it was surreal how easily I could keep track of just one toddler. Then it really struck me.

This odd calm, this surreal ease of parenting: This had been the plan.

We never planned to have twins. If we decided to have a third child at all, it would have been a goodly interval after the first two. If everything had gone according to plan, what I experienced this evening would have been completely normal.

How simple things would have been.

How much easier.

How....sad.

Not that these alternate-reality versions of ourselves would have known what they were missing. Had things gone according to plan, two children would have been nothing more or less than reality, exactly as we had wanted it.

Had things gone according to plan, we never would have known the richness of the twins discovering the world together, but each in his own way. We never would have the pleasure of reading bedtime stories with one child in each arm. We never would have had the joy of being so utterly saturated in the special kind of love only a child can offer.

Not to minimize the hard work, frustration, and suffering we went through trying to care for two infants. For a while, our marriage had been truly suffering. Scooter (no longer the only child by a long shot) went through eighteen months of making our lives a living hell. And I still think that people who wish for twins have absolutely no clue what they're asking for.

Love is always additive. Having an extra person to love only adds to the total, it does not diminish the love for the others in any way. Even though we never planned for our family to turn out this way, and never would have chosen to have twins, I can't imagine life any other way.