Twins from a Twin

Within the last twelve hours, Faith lost the distinction of being the only female born on both sides of the family. In fact, she lost the distinction twice.

Abigail Rose and Grace Olivet were born on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean to my youngest brother and his wife. The happy couple decided that they were not going to find out the sex of the babies until they were born. So we had to wait an entire pregnancy to know if Faith will continue being the only girl in the family or if she'd have girl cousins.

There is an amazing amount of information considering that it was relayed between three men. My brother called my dad, who called my husband. In this transaction, we know that we have twin girls, the water broke "sometime last night" and the girls were delivered by C-section. We know the girl's names, first and middle, they were about five pounds each and everyone is doing well.

In my experience with men relaying baby information this is an incredible amount of information. And I applaud them! It is enough information that I can live for a few days without knowing the other important pieces of information like:

1) Were they born on the 18th or the 19th? Because "last night" when there is an ocean and several time zones between the two families does make a difference.
2) Which one of the girls was "born first." I don't know in the grand scheme of things it makes a difference since they are twins and they were delivered by C-section. But it is an interesting piece of family trivia. By the way, the proud father, my brother is a twin himself. He was born "naturally" six minutes after his brother.
3) Speaking of twin father and uncle, are the girls fraternal or paternal...meaning are they from the same egg and sperm which split and identical? Or where they two separate eggs and not identical? (The daddy is an identical twin.)
4) Basic physical characteristics would be nice...how long where they? Exactly how much did they way? Did they come with hair? What color? What color are their eyes? Do they look like mom or dad or a combination?
5) Most importantly, how is their "big brother" taking this? He's ruled the roost for nearly seven years now. How is he taking being dethroned?

Surprisingly Faith was happy to give up the title of being the only girl in the family. She's excited about having girl cousins, even though we'll probably rarely see them. My brother decided to marry an English girl and will probably never come back to the United States. We do at least see him on occasion when he visits my parents. Since we live twenty minutes away, we get to see them too.

Jonathan is not happy about having two girl cousins. He thinks having more than one girl in the family is like being surrounded by Martians...girls are so alien to him.

Joshua has no feeling one way or the other. "We'll never see them, so Faith is still effectively the only girl on both sides of the family."

While I'm a little forlorn about Faith losing her distinction of being the only girl in her generation, I guess she can become the "Oldest Granddaughter." I held the "Youngest Granddaughter" title in my generation...after me came seven boys and then seven boys preceded Faith.

But I do have my credit card in my hand as I'm eager to go buy adorable baby girl things for my parents to take with them across the ocean. My nieces may actually wear all those cute clothes since my sister-in-law is more girlie than me. And the girls will out number the boys in their family. Faith just isn't that into "girlie" things.