Twin little monkeys out about the town

A few days ago, a Facebook group/blog I follow, The Mighty, posed a question for parents of kids with Special Needs - "What is one thing you wish your family and friends knew about your life?"  A lot of people said things like "we want to be asked to do the things" or "even though we have xxx limitation, we still yyy."  Overarching responses were looking at the bright side of our lives in the Special Needs world.  But despite my normal positive outlook, none of this really rang true for me, and this topic had been in the forefront of my mind recently.   Despite Captain Chaos' cognitive limitations, we have always tried to keep our life as "normal" as possible.  I tolerate a lot of his "isms" and "quirks" publicly, in large part to model how to interact with him and accept these sometimes unusual behaviors.  But the more and more he closes the developmental gap, the more and more these quirks become more obvious.  And he...

The fact that I am writing a post with this title is still somewhat amazing to me.  And while it has been a really long time since I've posted, I've had this topic on my mind for so long and I finally needed to get pen to paper, so to speak. First things first, a little catch-up since my post nearly 3 years ago (here:   http://twinlittlemonkeys.blogspot.com/2014/01/which-of-these-things-is-not-like-other.html ) Right toward the end of 1st grade, a whole lot of things happened really fast, including Baby A's Gen Ed teacher looping to 2nd grade, Baby B making huge academic and language strides with a lot of one on one aide support (but no GenEd kids acknowledging him at his school's field day) and Baby B's SpEd teacher calling me with these shocking words "I think he is ready for inclusion with resource support".  After hyperventilating, talking to all the people who could guide and support our decision, and a lot of prayerful consideration, we decided t...

When I was pregnant, I worried that the boys would look so much alike that I wouldn't be able to tell who was who.  We knew they were fraternal, but still...what if all I had to go on was that one had darker hair - and they started out bald?!  Lucky us, they came out looking like brothers, but other than when totally sleep deprived, easy to tell apart. When the boys were tiny (like 3-4 months old), I was part of a local twins club.  Now and then, I'd read about twin moms fighting schools, school districts, their states about whether twins should be allowed to be in the same classroom, or should be automatically separated.  So now, I could worry on that a little.  Should I fight to keep them together?  Encourage their individuality and independence?  At what age?  Then one day, I met an adult who was a twin.  He told me that he and his brother had grown up "not as close as twins usually are" because they were in different grades.  So ...