Just the other day I caught Oliver doing something that I now realize I do all the time. He wanted something out of the refrigerator and when I said no, he pretended that he didn’t hear me and opened the door anyway. Then he very seriously put an index finger to his chin and said, “Hmm. Let’s see….” And then I couldn’t escape it – every time I opened a door or a drawer to select anything, I’d catch myself saying, “Hmm. Let’s see…” He definitely got that one from me. He’s also taken up a quirk of mine that goes back to my college days. In my junior year, I lived across the hall from a group of lacrosse players. They were pretty friendly even though I didn’t know them well. A few weeks after moving in, I noticed that whenever I would see one of them, they’d always say, “Oh, HI Kate.” I’d just return the pleasantry – but after a while, I realized that they were making fun of me. When I finally asked what this “oh hi” business was about, they explained that I never just said “hi” or “hey” – it was always, “Oh, HI.” Since I’ve never much enjoyed being the butt of a joke, I made a concerted effort to stop saying that. Apparently it didn’t work. Whenever someone of note enters a room, Oliver will look up and say, “Oh, HI!”

All of these connections that I find between Oliver and me have been a pleasant surprise since before the twins were born we all thought he was exactly like his father. But that just goes to show how young personalities develop and change over time. I’m sure that in a few years, when he’s more of a little boy playing on sports teams and doing guy stuff, we’ll think he’s more like Chris again. And that can continue to change – it’s impossible to get everything from one parent. This is the reason that it drives me absolutely crazy when people insist that one of my twins is more like me and the other is more like Chris. George and Eleanor are still three months away from their second birthday and they have already changed so many times. I just let people say whatever they want and agree with them. It’s not worth the effort to correct them, but whenever possible I say that my children are going to try out a lot of different roles as they grow up and I’m always going to support them in that. Especially if they resemble me.

And I love now seeing the circularity of this in how I resemble my own parents. I swear that when I hear my never ending voiceover in the hours of video footage we take of our children not doing the adorable thing they were doing five seconds ago, I sound EXACTLY like my mother. In fact, while growing up I always identified more with my mother. I was more artistic and less athletic, I was a little reserved, I tended to think a lot about what I was wearing and I was creative with my accessories (I’ll have to post some embarrassing photos of that sometime). But Dad had to get more than just his genes in there.

Now that I’m older I see SO many behaviors that make me Terry Coveny’s clone. Just like my Dad, I must provide a solution for any given problem I hear. If you told him that you felt like you may have missed out on some opportunities in life, Answers Man will ask you a few questions and then take you through a step-by-step plan for how to think positively, take some risks and get more out of your future than you did in your past. There’s no venting with us – we are a strictly problem-solving operation. I also make it my mission in life to carry every shopping bag into the house in one trip. If I have a pile of ten items to transport from one room to another, I will engineer a construction that I can carry all at one time. I may not be able to see where I’m going, but damn it, I won’t waste precious minutes running back and forth. I need that time to clean up the mess when I inevitably drop everything. And of course, as implied above, I take myself VERY seriously . I will not be mocked (I’m getting a little better about that one – it’s all about growth).