Reading the Minds of Eight-Month-Old Twins
A grandmother’s interpretation
Since the day they arrived, Ava has been working towards her next gold star, while Olivia (Oli) has played more the scrappy upstart, despite being the elder by two minutes. While Ava sits quietly in her bouncer, Oli zooms around the house on all fours. At eight months, Oli is technically old enough to crawl, she just doesn’t seem big enough. The parents call her their house-mouse.
Both girls are small, as twins often are, but Oli is a feather-weight that could blow away in a light breeze. Still, she climbs, she falls, she face-plants. She’s never still. When she’s finished exploring, her attention might turn to her sister.
What’s Ava doing?
Still happily bobbing up and down in her bouncer, favourite glow-in-the-dark soother securely in her mouth, Ava doesn’t suspect what’s coming. But it’s occurred to Oli that, at this moment, a soother wouldn’t be half-bad. The pint-sized opportunist beetles over to Ava, pulls herself up on the side of the bouncer and, like popping a champagne cork, plucks the soother from Ava’s mouth, puts it in her own, and makes her escape. Ava takes a moment to process what’s happened, then yells out in protest. But the thief is long gone and Ava remains stranded in the bouncer.
But despite this, they have a bond. I imagine the rap song they create to celebrate their differences. It only has two lines, but it tells their story:
Who’s a good baby?
Who’s a bad-bad baby?
They repeat it endlessly in their minds, soothers bobbing rhythmically to the beat of the music.
Ava is clearly a Good Girl and her life’s goal is to be called a Good Girl as often as possible. She telepathically pleads with Oli not to cry when they wake from their naps.
Just lie still in your cot, Oli, and be a good girl because then they’ll call you a Good Girl.
Who cares about that? thinks Oli, as she issues a loud demand to be picked up.
Ava is such an exemplary baby that she is given her own imaginary cable television show called Being Good with Ava. As host, Ava is strapped securely into her moulded plastic seat, spine erect and chubby hands just meeting to grasp the microphone.
In the background (and filmed in black and white), Oli is seen crashing into walls and knocking things off the coffee table.
The voice-over says,
Is this you? Are you tired of being a bad-bad baby? Join me at “Being Good with Ava.”
Cue theme music (gentle piano sonata — calming and optimistic).
‘Welcome back,’ says Ava to her loyal followers (she has six but is hopeful of ten.)
The die seems cast.
That is until the twins’ cots are moved from the parental bedroom into the nursery. To everyone’s surprise, Ava goes ballistic. And ballistic she remains. She is simply not having this demotion. Meanwhile Oli is sleeping like a baby, so to speak. The parents wander around bleary-eyed after yet another overnight battle of wills with their freshly-minted terrorist.
Ava’s cable television show is not expected to be picked up for another season.
