Conversations in my house continue to amaze me. This is a narrative of dinnertime tonight:

Chloe (wielding pink stuffed lamb): This. Is my boyfrenn.
Hannah: growls
Chloe (gasps and holds lamb over Hannah’s head): Don’t pee on her, Boyfrenn!
Hannah (with mouthful of pancakes): growls
Chloe: psssssssssssssss
Hannah (Guttural): Growls.
Me: Chloe, why is your boyfriend peeing on people?
Chloe: Because he’s from the city and people in the city pee in tha stuhreet. Mom.
Hannah: Growls.
Chloe (pretends to hold a phone against her shoulder with her ear): Um. Boyfrenn? Our baby is peeing on everybody. You need to come home and teach him to potty in the potty.
Me:
Chloe:
Hannah:
Hannah: Your boyfrenn. Is. RUDE. Chloe. Get a new one. The blue lamb is nicer.

Some kids have imaginary friends; Chloe and Hannah have imaginary houses. That’s right, entire houses filled with all the treasures their little hearts could possibly long for.

If Hannah is headed outside and her sister is wearing her favorite shoes, she simply says that she gets to wear her favorite shoes everywhere in her pink house. Whenever Chloe wants chocolate as a reward for cleaning her room, but we have no chocolate in the house (and trust me, it’s been awhile since we’ve had chocolate in this house….must remedy this…), Chloe exclaims that in her purple house, there is always chocolate for her to eat. And in her purple house, she does not have to clean her room to get the chocolate.

This morning, Chloe explained to me as I was putting on my makeup that her purple mom in her purple house always lets the purple Chloe use her mascara and “lip gobs”. After I gave her the side-eye from behind my kabuki brush, she raised an eyebrow and said, “My purple mom never has to wear a bra because she never has to go to work.”

I think I want to live in Chloe’s purple house, too.

The title says it all.

So a few weekends ago I attended a “Passion Party” with a friend and even though I declined the taste samples of flavored oils and lotions, I still kick ass at card games, so I won two sample-sized jars of flavored nipple stimulation cream. Because I am a dork, I know that the stimulating factors in the nipple cream is the same stuff makeup companies use in lip plumping glosses. Except, you know, the nipple cream tastes better, so my lips have been full and tasting like raspberries and oranges for the last like two weeks. It was a win-win.

Until yesterday, when the twins found my stash on top of my vanity. I am approached by an emblazoned Hannah, who is complaining, “Mommmmmy! My tongue is burneeeen! My tongue is burneeeen!” as she wiped frantically at her dry, stinging tongue. And then Chloe, obviously less affected because she didn’t ingest as much, approaches me with a glistening raspberry-colored face and smelling suspiciously like nipple stimulation cream.

So, there you have it. Not even my intentionally-erotic-turned-everyday-functional makeup products are immune to the two of them. I only hope that this time, Hannah has learned her lesson about eating my valuable stimulation cream.

You know that whole “If you say that again, I’m putting Tabasco sauce on your tongue” method? I’m thinking I’ve found a great alternative.

I love it when Chloe gets emotional during a rendition of some song.

This morning I was awoken by her belting out, “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”. I credit my latest redundant playing of Adele’s power ballad, “Someone Like You” and Chloe’s astute observation of the song. This morning, she was singing with such inflection that you’d think she was at the Grand Ol’ Opry.

“Twinkle, TWINNNNKKLLLLLE, Littuhuhuhuhl Staharrrrr, how I wonderrrrrrr what YOUUUUUU are!!!!”

Nevermind that her singing was so loud it woke me from a dead slumber and I nearly peed myself. (During which I was dreaming that I was pregnant and my friend’s husband was the sonogram technician, and she served me chocolate chip cookies while he did my ultrasound. Weird.) Her bravado and pitch were impressive, but her projection says more Pop than Folk.

I don’t know what’s up with today; it could be because I’m lying around being lazy, but I’ve got all kinds of writing inspiration. This little occurrence couldn’t go un-recorded.

Chloe is a singer at heart. She puts on a solid performance almost every day. Today she is feeling a lil’ frisky, because she’s been traipsing around for the last thirty minutes sing-screaming the “Baby Signing Time” theme song. She’s put her own little Godsmack twist on things. What’s even more bizarre is the fact that no family member present has batted an eyelash. Maybe it’s because we don’t really view her artful re-mix as noise pollution; at least that’s what we tell ourselves about why this type of noise doesn’t affect us negatively.

Hannah, in conversely quirky twin discussion, is sitting on a stool by the trash can, having retrieved the Nutella jar out of the trash. She was perched there for I don’t know how long, forearm-deep in Nutella remains. When I discovered her discretionary foraging of the trash can, I naturally retrieved the jar, put it back into the trash, and attempted to carry Hannah to the sink to wash her chocolatey-hazelnut hands. She protested rather fiendishly at my seeming waste of good Nutella, so I put her back on the stool to allow her to continue to lick the Nutella from her fingers. Call me a bad mom, but I choose my battles wisely. I just hope I can feed her enough cabbage, mushroom, and pepper stir-fry for dinner to counteract the sugary goodness of the ingested Nutella.

To clarify the title of this entry: Being outnumbered and being out-twinned are not the same. Being outnumbered depicts that the ratio of regular people to other regular people (most likely larger in stature and older in age) is higher, in favor of other, smaller regular people.

Being out-twinned encompasses a much broader spectrum of debauchery.

1. Twin energy. Like Tom and Jerry (or in more team-spirited endeavors, Starsky and Hutch? Cheech and Chong?), their energy is contagious and, naturally, most communicable between each other.

2. Twin sync. They lived in womb together. Fed off the same placenta (or in the case of fraternal twins, two separate placentas that inevitably fuse together), felt each other’s every movement. Born on the same day, under the same sign, with literal inbred knowledge of each other’s isms, schisms, mannerisms….inside knowledge of each other’s every possible personality trait, enabling them to act as dynamic duo of intelligence and ambition.

Or, as is the case in toddler-hood (we blame their tiny stature for their ability to crawl into small spaces) a hurricane force of sheer destruction that will exact its punishment on any item (person, pet) in its path.

Crayons, colored pencils, and permanent markers will meet walls and your house will become a highway underpass.

Makeup, hair products, lotion, and toothpaste will be introduced to faces, clothes, walls, toilets, the dog, the cat, siblings, and bedsheets, and your entire bedroom will transform from The Only Tranquil Place in the House into a body art museum sponsored by Bozo the Clown / an alternate universe where kitten whiskers are paintbrushes. Brought to you by Dr. Seuss Chloe and Hannah.

Scissors : hair = mullet : 1986

The inside of your vehicle is also at the mercy of The Force. Your beautiful Prada sunglasses? Fodder for wiping lip gloss on. That entire bottle of Aleve? Either ingested by a twin, or a cat; neither of which you are sure of and thus, you are on the phone with Poison Control for the fifth time in a year and begging them not to take your info and call Child Protective Services on you and ohmygodhowdidIgethere???

Ah, the cute little princess potty chair. The one that is cued by a sensor to play pleasant music upon detection of impact. That cute little princess potty chair that doesn’t flush. That you have to dump the excrement out of. You thought it’d be a great idea to buy two of the pink-and-purple plastic thrones for your twins to poop and pee on side-by-side. How cute is that? And then, since they don’t’ flush, they will attempt to dump their waste into the big toilet on their own. And there is spillage. Followed by slippage. And twins are covered in substances unmentionable. And why is it not time for wine? And how is it that are we out of Swiffer pads, for the Love of God? We should really buy stock in Clorox wipes, except they get mistaken for baby wipes by twins and their hands and faces break out in mysterious rashes. And the wipes just get flushed down the toilet with abovementioned excrement. Then you’ve got raw sewage + twins soaked in slippage-caused-by-spillage + a clogged toilet. And wouldn’t you know, the damn princess potty chair won’t stop singing its royal tune because it is half full of….more excrement.

I realize that right now you are thinking, “Holy Hell! Is she for real?” I am. So, so, sadly, very much for real. And I’m not done yet.

Dirty laundry, meet havarti cheese. Any given corner in the house, meet spit-out apple peels and pistachio shells. Dishwasher, meet Finn the cat. Bathtub, meet my suede leather high heels. Oh, and all other beautiful shoes in the house, meet mud, Crayola markers, Bosley’s mouth, and Tinkerbell ATV tracks. Any kind of expensive, rare, very seldomly worn perfume, meet Chloe…she loves you so much that she bathes in all of your unmentionable worth. Washes her hair with it, too. Albuterol and Advair inhalers, meet Hannah, who likes the noise you make when you push the medicine release button x40. She also appears to enjoy the noise her mother makes while dying of lack of oxygen, as well. (Read: Scene from The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.)

Carpets, meet everything.

Bra straps, meet scissors. And nail clippers. And…hair gel? Snot? Not sure.

Someone today suggested that I provide the twins with some distractions. For example, their own little makeup palette consisting of my actual abused previous palettes that no rational adult would wear because the lip gloss is mixed with the eyeshadow and the blush has been written on with black fluid eyeliner. The problem therein is that any item that I call my own invariably becomes Chloe and Hannah’s. It’s as if they realize the position of power I am taking by owning my own health and beauty items. Anything that I have in my possession is of immediate interest. They could be holding a Christian Dior eyeshadow palette each and they will still covet — and seek out, then destroy — anything that I call my own. Right down to my underwear. That most times must be thrown out after they’ve donned them for an hour.

I give up. This phase will pass, just like sleepless nights and spending umpteen bajillion dollars on diapers and formula. We will get through this, minus a few valuable belongings and maybe a couple shreds of sanity.

This is how I know I’ve been out-twinned. Because through all of this chaos, the only thing that ever makes me blink — the only thing that brings me fear — is every time I ponder which phase is next?

It seems the twins move in and out of destructive phases. In the last few days, they have tagged just about every wall in the house, plus the kitchen table, with a hot pink permanent marker. Hannah has been swiping the scissors at every opportunity and is gradually giving herself a mullet. The next time she gets her hands on a pair of scissors, I am afraid she will give herself the official Billy Ray Cyrus. Last night I found my beautiful sea foam green silk gauze bra with its straps cut into dozens of tiny pieces. When confronted, Chloe muttered apologetically, “Sorry foh cutteen up you nippols.” The scary part is that she used a pair of fingernail clippers to do her deed….Upon examination, I’m between assuming they are pretending to live either in an underpass or as inmates at a minimum security prison.

Side note: I get the weirdest search hits on this blog. It seems about ten hours ago, I had a hit from Bangalore, Kamataka under search terms, “heavy boobs shucking”. If that is a spam generator, I am very curious about the nature of their advertising….

I caught Hannah in the corner earlier this afternoon sipping on a miniature sized bottle of Disaronno. I think she retrieved it from its home in the fridge, liked the bottle, and decided she would give it a try. She seriously knocked back about two sips; thankfully I caught her before she was able to down the whole bottle.

The issue of humor was not curbed by the fact that she was wearing her best Crazy Lady Hobo costume: a pink sparkly tutu, layered on top of emerald green bedazzled leggings, a purple Cookie Monster t-shirt, hot-pink-and-white-polka-dotted-skull-and-crossbones socks, every piece of plastic jewelry she owns, and a purple headband adorned with a ginormous red flower. The only thing she was missing was a paper sack wrapped around that Disaronno bottle.

The first sign that Hannah had retrieved the Crayola (thank God for washable) markers from their hiding place in the office was the streak of hot pink that trailed down the hallway walls leading to the master bathroom, across the full-length mirror mounted on my bedroom wall, wound a pattern across the carpet and ended in a scribble on the freshly-laundered sheets of my bed.

The second sign came when Hannah untangled herself from her hiding place of newly-decorated sheets. She was one giant, deep purple stain. Hannah’s cheeks, lips, eyelids, ears, and teeth were adorned with what looked like blueberry juice.

Her piece des resistance was unveiled when I decided to put her on the toilet while I washed the marker from her face. Two tiny, neon-orange-and-purple striped labia greeted me like a kaleidoscope as I pulled up her lilac tutu and placed her on her potty chair.

Yeah.