To The Mother of Twins

Or to any mother, for that matter.

I do not envy you.

I admire you, beyond a reasonable doubt, but I do not envy you. If your children are of the age to read, show them this letter so I can immediately instruct them to apologize to you, because holy mother of pearl dealing with them as infants/toddlers/teenagers/humans has to be MISERABLE. I don’t even understand. How do you do it? HOW? You are superwoman. You are a force of nature. You are the strongest humans alive, and I bow down to your superiority. Mom, I’m sorry. I don’t speak for my brothers, but personally, I’m sorry you had them too.

The reason I say this is because, I, Anna no-children Territo, have a set of twins. Lamb twins. And their mother rejected them, so we’ve been bottle feeding them, and taking care of them in the house since the day they were born. It’s only been three* weeks. They will only need us for about another month. Then, we won’t have to deal with their lamb mess in the house again. But you, mother of human twins, you get a good solid 18 years of dealing with their figurative and literal crap in your house. (Or in the case of my poor parents, a solid 25 years and still going strong.) THAT SOUNDS TERRIBLE. Because just in the past 3 days, I’ve had to bring the twins with me to work. Yes, to work. In an office. To have them sit in a dog crate. And poop in a dog crate, and on my floor, and in my car, and EVERYWHERE. All of the time. And to whine, oh God they whine. And if you don’t feed them IMMEDIATELY, the whining just gets louder. Yesterday, I was driving, and attempting to shove bottles in their mouths at a stop light, because they were literally just biting my fingers and screaming because my fingers produced exactly zero drops of milk. It was pretty comical, except no one was even there to video it and put it on YouTube, so really, what’s the point? Laughter that can’t be shared with my 10 followers and earn 3 likes? Did I even laugh? Was it even real? Does a bear sh*t in the woods? Idk, pics or it didn’t happen, but I can tell you for certain a lamb sh*ts in my car.

MAAAAAAA! MAAAAA, MAAAAA FEED ME MAAAAAA!

And while we are on the topic of pics. You mothers of your individual children, yes, I recognize that your plight is impossible. But I also recognize that at least you can take a selfie. I know this because I see 75 a day on my news feed. But you poor, depraved, mothers of twins barely get this luxury.

WHY IS IT SO HARD FOR BOTH OF YOU TO BE STILL AT ONCE?

I know this because DAMMIT LAMBS YOU ARE ONLY THIS CUTE FOR A FEW MONTHS JUST STAY STILL FOR FIVE SECONDS SO I CAN TAKE A PICTURE OF…WHY ARE YOU FACED THE WRONG DIRECTION?!…OH NO STOP POOPING ON ME, NOW I CAN’T EVEN HOLD THE CAMERA BECAUSE MY ONLY CLEAN HAND IS COVERED IN LAMB CRAP! Dammit. Can someone else take a photo? Oh wait, no one is around…crap. But we were so cute, you know holding one upside down with a bottle and the other in the crook of my arm attempting to force a bottle into its mouth, but I’m not left handed and it prefers to scream instead of SUCK THE OBVIOUS MILK PROVIDING NIPPLE I’M SHOVING IN YOUR FACE…IT’S REALLY NOT THAT DIFFICULT OLIVE.

The rare instance where someone was there to capture the bottle feeding

So to you superhuman Moms (and Dads) of the world, I salute you.

Thanks Mom for taking care of not only 3 disgusting human babies, but also the countless animal babies we’ve been blessed to raise. You’re a superhero.

I guess moments like this, where you have a passed out lamb in one arm and another one crawling all over you make it worth it. I also happen to look exactly like my mother here…

Love,
Anna “Mama Lamba” Territo

*It was three weeks when I wrote this article, but got too busy taking care of lambs to finish publishing it. It’s been five and a half weeks now.