Birthday Girls - Photo Album

As I watch Kate and Caroline together, I often try to imagine what it would be like to spend every minute of your life with your very best friend. We rarely separate them, but when it happens, they are clearly distressed, and even I feel the urgency to bring them back together again. They slept side by side for the first six months of their life- until they could roll around. But as soon as they could climb in and out of their cribs, they would make their way back to each other during the night. They still do it often. We find them blissfully sprawled all over each other.

Caroline continues to go about life with a twinkle in her eye and mischief in her smile. She has a very strong will that makes us choose carefully when to cross her, but at the same time, she is playful and gleeful and quite a little lady. She wears a princess dress 24/7 these days, and loves to skip and frolick her way through life.

Kate is still all girl in the drama department, but has transformed into a peaceful, easy-going and even sweetly silly little soul. She still loves to imitate everything I do. I often find her pulling out dirty underwear from hampers and folding them into perfect little piles. She clearly enjoys being able to talk now and makes a great effort to learn to express herself. She's still very cuddly, and despite her growing independence, comes to me often to be held or rocked like a baby until her love tank is full again.

While they are definitely different personalities, so much about them is the same and it comes out in their sweet conversations with each other. They have a vocabulary all their own and speak with the exact same intonations and inflections. I love to listen to them chatter in a distant room, or overhear the combined laughter echo from their bedroom at night. I try to imagine how their friendship will develop over the years, and I am envious, in a happy way, of the gift they have in each other.

Here are a few pictures taken this past year that reflect a little bit of that unique relationship that perhaps only twins can ever know: