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Some of you may know that our daughter, Mary Garrett, is a Nanny. The stories she has about these twin year and a half old girls are enormously entertaining. I see these tiny mites almost every day and always come away with a grin on my face because of something they have said or done. When I am done with this story about Katie and Maddy Hacker you will easily realize that we, Nanny Mary and I, are absolutely enamored of these pint sized femme fatales.

A little background on the twins; you may not know that they were preemies. They will be 2 years old this October. Katie is the oldest but the smallest. She is the most introspective (in my opinion) and Maddy is the adventurous one and the youngest ( by minutes) but the bigger of the two. They are fraternal twins not identical and as different in every way from skin tone to eye color and personality. They are both cute as buttons.

Nanny Mary began keeping them when they were just 3 months old and I began visiting them on the few days a week she kept them. It wasn’t long until their mom felt she needed to be back at her job and Mary began keeping them every day. They were raised with two huge dogs in the house and I never knew the dogs barking to scare or wake them.

Their house was and is overrun with two of everything, two parents, two babies, two dogs, two cats, two cribs, double stroller, two car seats, two feeding chairs; you get the picture, two of every thing. Just the cost of having twins is staggering and then there is the energy it takes to tend to two. Imagine feeding two little ones at the same time.

I’ll just skim over the first year and it will suffice to say that these babies were on a regimen and it has served them well. I am just amazed at how well they do and how good they are and I am guessing the scheduling had a lot to do with how pleasant these babies are. They are regulars with their mom, Carrie Hacker, every Sunday at the 1st United Methodist Church and were baptized there. I think most of the women in the church had a hand, literally, in helping with the babies during the service. They would sit quietly for the most part until somebody taught them to blow bubbles and make noises with their fingers on their mouth and then they began to spend time in the nursery.

It has been so much fun to watch them progress and learn things, and I have learned a lot too even though I haven’t had a baby grandchild in over 25 years now. Things have changed, I learned about bundling, Baby Yoga, no baby bottles in the crib, different sleeping and eating ways; just all kinds of things.

Most of the fun began to happen when the girls began to sit up and then motivate through the house, crawling and then standing up by holding on to something steady.

When they began to walk it was like watching two tiny clowns. Each had their own style and Maddy walked first. Katie continued to be content crawling for a little while and then finally got up her nerve and took off like her sister. Maddy goes full steam ahead and Katie is right behind her. They love to chase each other and get so tickled that they usually end up in a heap, one on top of the other and giggling the cutest baby girl belly laughs.

Neither of the girls can stand to be dirty and anytime they get something on their hands or clothes it has to be taken care of right away. Katie is especially fastidious and will set up a howl if not properly and quickly tended. They both pick up the most minute object they find on the floor and immediately go to Nanny to get rid of it. It goes right into Mary’s pocket and she says by the time she gets home she has a pocket full of debris they have gathered here and there.

When one of them cries if they have fallen or is just downright unhappy, one will come and comfort the other. Maddy’s favorite comfort object is her Blankie which is a small square of soft fabric edged with satin trim and one end of it is Eeyore the Donkey. She can’t sleep without Blankie and Katie has Ducky, a rather bedraggled, plush yellow duck. I just found what I thought was a replacement for old Ducky and bought it and brought it to Katie. She accepted it graciously but when it was nap time she set up a howl for old Ducky.

You might wonder how Maddy finds room to lie down in her crib as she takes so much to bed with her including a good book or two “to read”. Katie on the other hand only takes old ducky and one soft animal pillow, anything else gets thrown out. Different as daylight and dark they are.

They are so funny, Maddy is very outgoing and a real showoff and Katie is slower to befriend strangers and if you win a beguiling grin from Katie you have arrived. Whatever Maddy does Katie will mock and she thinks her sister is the funniest thing in the world. They have begun to say some words; or what her mother Carrie and daddy Jeremy and Nanny and I recognize as words. Since they were preemies, some of their activities and accomplishments are slower coming. They say, Momma, Daddy and Nan-nee most recently. Of course “we” understand many words they use although others probably would not.

Reading a book and pointing to everything therein is one of their favorite things to do and its amazing how much they know and even though the word they use mostly is “eh,” in conjunction with a lot of pointing, they follow the most complicated instructions or directions. Mary and I are convinced that the jabbering they do with each other is their own special language, maybe it’s even a primitive version of ‘twinish’ that twins often use to communicate between each other.

I have had the best time watching these girls grow and learn and because there are two of them, I have double the pleasure and double the fun. Hardly a day passes that I don’t spend time with these little ones, it’s the high point of my day. In this case two are definitely better than one.