Friday, March 2, 2012

More Fun Reveals

The next day there was a UT football game on TV, so we headed out to Craig’s to watch the game. He had Matt and Casey (Glenn and Craig’s friends who had four year old fraternal boy/girl twins) were at the game. Ben and Connie, their twins who inspired Glenn to hope for twins before we even met were also there. I tried valiantly to watch the game, but was so exhausted I fell asleep. I didn’t think this was ALL that telling, since Casey took the twins up to watch a movie when they got bored and fell asleep herself. And I knew she wasn’t pregnant, but apparently it set off some warning bells. Later in the day, Casey asked Glenn if he was getting a baby for his birthday. He elegantly side-stepped this issue by saying no. After all, he was getting TWO babies!


After the game, when it was just Glenn, Craig and me, Glenn pulled out a gift for Craig. He had discussed different methods of telling his brother and eventually decided to utilize those onesies I had gotten him. He was giving Craig two of his shirts that were slightly too small. Rolled up inside each shirt was a onesie. The plan was that Craig would open the first, we would say “Surprise, we are pregnant!” and get all the excitement out, then he would open the second, find another onesie and we could say “Surprise! It’s twins!” Glenn had asked me why I deviated from the plan to give my parents time to digest the one fact before springing the other. I told him that I just panicked when my Mom cried. He admitted that her reaction surprised him too, but that my immediate revelation hadn’t helped the situation, but it was already done. So, we resolved to do it right with Craig.

He opened the first shirt and exclaimed how much he liked it as the onesie rolled onto the floor. He looked down at it, and promptly ignored it and took to admiring the shirt. Neither Glenn nor I knew how to respond to this. This was not how this was supposed to play out. We just kind of sat there in shock as Craig proceeded to pull out the other shirt and admire it. He scooped up the onesies and put them in his lap and set about totally ignoring them. Glenn finally said something to him about well, did you see what else was in there. Craig finally acknowledged the white rolls and with some prompting opened the first one. He didn’t seem horribly shocked or surprised. And of course, he asked immediately if there were two since there were two onesies. We were batting zero for 2 on letting the idea sink in. Oh well! Craig said later that when he first saw the rolled up onesie, he thought Glenn had given him tighty whities and didn’t want to open them. What a goof. He seemed genuinely pleased about the idea of twin nieces or nephews. We talked for a while about it all and showed him the ultrasound pics. He told us he was happy for us and seemed to take it all in stride.

On Sunday, we drove out to Bertram to visit Gaylon and Jean. We hung around the house and talked for quite a while. I kept expecting Glenn to say something about it and I was on pins and needles the whole time, but Glenn chit-chatted about this and that with not a care in the world it seemed. As it neared dinner time, I nudged Glenn and told him that if he didn’t say something soon, we wouldn’t have any time to talk about it before having to leave to eat. Finally he brought the gift bag with the onesies in and gave them to his father.

After much thought about what went wrong with the reveal to Craig, Glenn decided that a bag with JUST the rolled up onesies was the best plan. He rolled them and unrolled them and rolled them even tighter several times during the drive there. Gaylon reached in the bag and pulled out the first. The little UT longhorn was clearly visible, but it wasn’t clear what it was. As Gaylon unrolled them, he said, “Are they socks?” and both Glenn and I said no. He got the onesie opened up and plainly had no idea what it was, but it was clear from the squeal from Jean that knew PRECISELY what it was. There were maybe a minute or two of excited talk before Gaylon reached in the bag and said “Another one?” and the twins were out of the bag….literally. At least they got SOME time to absorb. Jean was overjoyed at the thought of children in the family and Gaylon seemed quite pleased at the thought himself. As we discussed it more though, there were times that Gaylon would get a blank expression on his face. You could almost see the Excel spreadsheet in his head tallying up the expenses of two babies at once. He would say something like “Wow! Twins!” and then snap back to the present. We explained the mo-mo possibility to them as well, but it was easier to reassure them that although it wasn’t good, it also wasn’t for sure and to pray for a good outcome. Not being medically trained, or having heard of it, they were smart enough not to Google it.

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