When I met my friend Christian way back in the fall of 1993, neither of us had any idea how entwined our lives would become. We were in two plays together freshman year. Sophomore year, we were roommates. We lived together again senior year. In the summer of 1998, we just happened to run into one another in the Van Gogh room of the British Muesum in London, even though neither one of us had any idea that the other was in England at the time. In 2004, Christian attended my wedding and, on the night before Robbi and I were married, met Robbi’s good friend Emily and promptly fell in love. A few years later, they moved to Baltimore (Robbi and I lived in Baltimore at the time), and not long after, they got married. Within a year, Robbi and I had Alden. Six weeks later, Christian and Emily had Iris. Two years later, we had Kato and fully expected Christian and Emily to follow suit. Alas, it did not happen. The cycle of parallelisms was broken.
Until last week.
A mere 11 days after August’s arrival, Christian and Emily restored the balance of the universe by welcoming not one but two baby boys, who just happen to be identical twins.
Here they are, Milo Victor Vainieri and Emmett George Vainieri. They came home from the hospital on Christmas day.
As Christian and I were recapping our excitement over the recent proliferation of babies in our lives, we were struck by the sobering realization that when his family and mine get together in the future, there will now be ten people present (enough to field two horrible basketball teams). It seems impossible, thinking back to those simple sophomore days, that we have so liberally expanded our domains.
All for the better, I say. Here’s to you, Christian and Emily, Milo and Emmett. Here’s to good times ahead.
In the spirit of this post, let’s hop on board the WABAC machine and revisit Father’s Day 2009.
http://www.thebarnstorming.com/archives/2009/06/fathers_day.html
It’s incredible how parallel our tracks have been! Here’s to many, many, many, many more years of the same!
Mazal tov! I love the names…especially Milo’s middle name.
(Oh, and Matthew, I’m pretty sure your wedding was in 2003.)
Victor: Yeah, you’re right. Oops.
The pants! I’m am CRYING (and disturbing Beth with my not-well-concealed laugh/sobs).
I know. Those are the most fantastic pants in the history of pants. For the rest of you, I’m referring to the link in Ko-ri-su-chan’s comment above. It is, in my humble opinion, well worth a read.
Those pants were one thing, the size of her head, quite another.
Lovin all the babies! Big congrats to all, and wishing you occasional sleep in 2012. ;-)
I love reading about the parallel lives you all lead–and congrats on all the babies that have popped out in the past few weeks!
I check out your blog every once in a while – it always makes me smile! It was particularly cool today, as I got an update on one of my Williams “frosh” as well. Please give congrats to Christian on his growing family, from his old JA, and congrats to you & Robbi on your growing family and business as well. Cheers to all!