Those two handsome tykes hanging out in the wagon are my fraternal twin nephews, Aydan and Brendan.  Mom, dad and I trekked down to Houston to meet them for the first time on Sunday.  And holy crap, it was awesome.

I’ve been trying to compose these words that I’m writing for two weeks, ever since my mom and dad found out that my older brother, David, was the father of two twin boys.  There’s not really any great way to tell the story of the how’s and the why’s and the when’s and the wtf’s of the past.  What I can tell you, however, is the story of now, the story of this Sunday past.

That’s Aydan with his mom, Jamie.  Jamie is an incredible person.  She juggles a full-time job and two almost-one year old babies on her own & she’s not just barely getting by.  During the 6 hours we spent with her in her home I was constantly blown away by what an amazing job she’s doing raising these two babies.  I mean, look at the way she’s looking at Aydan in that picture!  That smile–that full bore, 100%, to-the-max smile–is the same smile that spreads across her face every time she looks at those kids.  And it’s a contagious smile, too.  In fact, if that smile was any more permanent in her house, she’d have to label it.  I only say that because Jamie shares my affinity for obsessive organization.  Everything that takes up a semi-permanent presence in her house is labeled.  And I mean Everything.  Perhaps this is the secret to maintaining your sanity whilst raising twin boys on your own.  I’ll see if I can get a study group together for that.

This is Brendan.  He has blue eyes.  After both families spilled out a verbal Brief History of Eyecolor, my mom hit cloud 9 when it was decided that perhaps she was the person who donated to Brendan the Blue Eyes Gene.  Grandmothers are made happy quite easily, I’ve learned.

Here’s mom holding Aydan.  This picture was taken about 5 minutes after we saw the boys for the very first time.  I was proud of mom’s restraint.  In this photo I’ve captured her resisting the carnal urge to gobble some baby cheeks.  Her lack of gobbling didn’t stop the oogling, though.  Ooooh, baby cheeks are delicious.

Dad, as you can tell here, was equally as elated as my mom about the babies.  Dad tends to look pretty sober in pictures; he’s not a big ‘smile for the camera’ kind of a guy.  On Sunday I (easily) doubled the number of photos that exist on this planet of my father smiling.  It wasn’t hard–he didn’t stop smiling all day long.  Aydan’s pulling his hair in this one, and Brendan is looking at me to make sure I capture the greatness of his brother grabbing Grandpa’s hair with my camera.  He’s very advanced that way.  He knows that good tricks are made better by capturing them on film.

And that’s me and Aydan.  And we’re both really, really happy.