How to stop your sister from ever having children

I distinctly remember visiting a friend with a 4 weeks old baby and thinking that being a parent cannot be that hard. The baby was perfect. He didn’t sleep much (which at the time I thought it was great as I was there to see him), drank all his milk, looked around while we were having lunch and then fall asleep on our pleasant walk along the seaside. Who wouldn’t want to spend a day like that? Who would think that parenting could be hard after such an example? My friends did warn me that he had never behaved so well before, but I clearly must have ignored them, because a few months later my husband and I started trying for a baby.

Today, more than two years later, my mother and I took the twins to my sister. If my mother wanted to take the boys to convince her she should have kids, she was wrong! The encounter couldn’t have gone much worse.

You need to know that my sister has no intentions of becoming a parent, but she is also 30 and married (and probably our mother asks her about kids once a week!). She has met the twins a handful of times and strongly believe that all children hate her. It all started when we told her that B can now “high five” people. She tried and he gave a high five to everyone in the room but her. My mother tried to convince her that it can happen and that it wasn’t personal. No harm done… yet.

The boys behaved well till lunchtime and then sat nicely in their highchairs while we ate some pasta. By the end of our meal it was time for their lunch, my mother was waiting for this moment has her ace of spade. The twins eat really well for their age, they are not messy, they eat everything and they are very patient. We had a meal that they really like, large bibs to avoid food stains (just in case) and two highchairs despite being away from home. Nothing could have gone wrong! If you have a baby or two, you know that they never respect your plans. T intercepted one of the spoonfuls and spread the food all over his head. At the same time B decided to eat only some of the ingredients in his food, spitting out everything else. He had never done that before, what a time to start!

After a good clean up and a long walk, we came back home to find out that B had a fever! We didn’t have any infant paracetamol and it was too hot to put him in a car seat for an hour journey. To cool him down we decided to put him under a cold shower. You can imagine the amount of screams! It worked, but it also scared my poor sister, who thought saw the worse of it at lunch time.

They didn’t play with each other nicely, they didn’t make all those cute noises that babies do, but they almost definitely convinced my sister that having children is the last thing she wants to do! From B and T: sorry nonna but it looks like we will be your only grandsons!