"Are they twins?"

One of my favorite questions to be asked when I'm out with the kids is, "Are they twins?" (in reference to Reuben and Krassimir, who are still essentially the same size.) I love this question because it opens up so many opportunities for interesting conversations with strangers about real topics that matter to me. There's the obvious topic of adoption - it's so neat to be able to introduce them as brothers, yes, but far from being twins, one of them is half the age of the other, and they're not even genetically related. But there are other topics, too. Although Krassimir's handicap is pretty obvious visually, Reuben's differences are usually pretty apparent as well by the time we've gotten this far into a conversation. ;) Sometimes I wonder if it's because the boys are both "different" that people assume they're twins, and less that they look particularly alike.  But to be able to speak in a positive light about the challenges of raising these boys - after all, one of them we didn't get a choice on, but the other we did! - opens the opportunity to talk about the value of all human life, and the richness that these two boys - and not just these, too, but all of our children, because I usually have at least some of the others with me - add to the world around them. The obvious small stature of Krassimir in comparison to his half-his-age brother provides the chance to talk about the injustices that exist in the world today - this isn't just happening "somewhere" to "someone" but it happened to real live person sitting with us at this very moment. And it's not okay.

No, they're not twins, but I'm so glad you asked.