Sunday, January 15, 2012

Whalesvagina

The other day my husband was trying to log onto an online account of mine, and ended up having to change the password. This is a copy of the email he sent me:

                   "I got you back up. had to change your password to "whalesvagina."

This is why after being together for 20 years, I still love him so.. he makes me laugh, and totally gets me, most of the time anyway! And before any of you think that he was referrring to me, with the whalesvagina comment, it's from one of our favorite movies "Anchorman" with Will Ferrell.. so settle down! ;)

The Odd's...

Have I shared my twin story with you? Well, if you want to catch yourself up, you can go here, or here..

I was referred to the current issue of National Geographic because it was all about twins. I found a genetic researcher who is trying to find a genetic link to identical twins. It has always been thought that identical twins were a fluke and that only fraternal twins (when hyper ovulation occurs) was genetic and passed down from mother to daughter.
I have been searching for years to find another set of identical twins, who have also given birth to identical twins. I emailed the genetic researcher, and he quickly responded with a photo of another set of identical twins, who each had identical twins in the UK.  The only difference was that they were male twins, so the mom's were not twins. As far as this researcher knows, and he knows A LOT, we are the only set of female identical twins, to have each given birth to identical twins. Not to mention, again, all of the mirror traits that my sister and I have shared...not only genetic things that are beyond our control, like her being a lefty and me being a righty, she's nearsighted, I'm farsighted. I have a widow's peak, and she can roll her r's.. which is in fact genetic (I was pretty surprised by that one!) when I try to roll my r's, I look like an idiot, and end up just spitting everywhere..it's not pretty.
We also share other mirror traits, that I don't believe have anything to do with genetics, and without sounding like a total flake, I can only just tell the facts: my sister had the most common type of id. pregnancies where her boys shared a placenta. I had the rarest id. pregnancy because my girls each had their own placenta, I was told there was a 20% chance that they were identical. However, because each of my girls were in their own sack, I had the safest type of twin pregnancy, where my sister had the riskier pregnancy because of the threat of twin to twin transfusion (which one of her boys suffered from slightly after birth, but he is totally fine). Her boys were due on Thanksgiving, mine were conceived on Thanksgiving..Her babies were all born in the fall and winter, mine were all born in the spring and summer. All of our twins were born on the 22nd day of different months.
It has this meant to be thing..ya know? it's hard to explain.. but it's exciting! We are going to participate in the study for the genetic researcher. I'm working on a pedigree (which I thought only applied to dogs..but a las, I have learned something new...not hard for a natural blonde!) I've actually discovered some pretty cool things about my fathers side. I'm not sure if I've mentioned here that my dad's family (on his mom's side) are direct descendants of Paul Revere. He's an uncle 20 or so times removed. And I'm instantly tugged to try and convince you (my one reader) that it's true..probably because anyone I ever told growing up, never believed me, which is pretty funny if you think about it..who would make up a story about being related to Paul Revere? If I wanted to be cool, I would have said Santa was my grandfather!  Anyway, my great grandmothers maiden name was Revere and with things like ancestry.com, there has been a confirmed link. And the cool part is that there are a bunch of twins on that side...
I have lots to do..another website is airing our story (my sister and I did a phone interview, I'll link it when it airs..) And there's another website- a twin website, that will be featuring our story as well. This one includes homework though (they sent me a list of questions and want pictures and so on), and even with my A.D.D. meds, I'm still procrastinating and having a hard time finishing it. But if it turns out cool, I'll put a link here also. Ok, I gotta go.. my husband is cleaning the girls room, after discovering one of the girls has been hiding food in her closet. Not because she is nurturing an eating disorder, but because if her plate is clean, then she can have dessert..unfortunately, no one happened to see her disappear into her room with her plate. sneaky little bugger!

Here's a twin picture we did last fall.. this was taken by the wonderfully talented Danielle, go check out her website, she's amazing.. http://www.dmacinnesphotography.com/