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I have two kids. Carbon copies of Hubby and me. It’s uncanny actually. It’s like looking at 3-D pictures of yourself walking around from thirty years ago (more like twenty in my case, really).

It never ceases to solicit comments from strangers when they notice it. But it can lead to a little awkwardness when someone says, “She/he is so cute! She/he looks exactly like you!”

In all modesty (really, this time), Hubby and I run into this often. What do you say when someone points out in one observance that your kid is darling and looks exactly like you?

Hubby sees it that he has just gotten a stroke for his extreme handsomeness and the great fortune of his child to have inherited his superior genes.

I take it as a delightful validation that someone else also sees what I see and a nice little unintended compliment that I still got it.

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Hubby likes to point out our daughter not only looks exactly like me, but she’s got my hard head and stubbornness too.

I counter that he has afflicted our son with an inability to sit still and an extreme aversion to change. Plus, he can’t discount his own healthy dose of stubbornness passed to each child.

It should probably be noted that neither of us have ever left the marital bed in a huff because both of us refuse to concede the bed. We’ve had the Great Wall of Animosity in between us, but neither has ever surrendered the soft and cozy castle. And in the end, we lay down our arms, join forces (hubba hubba) and all is well in the kingdom again. (As long as he remembers it is the Queen who runs the castle).

 But, I digress.

So, if I were to tell you a little about my seven year old daughter, I could probably use one of two aliases. I could call her Little Carbon Copy (LCC) or I could call her Teenager in Training (TNT) which I think is self-explanatory. Unfortunately, I think the second is a more accurate description of her and a perfectly symbolic acronym.

Don’t get me wrong, she is extremely sweet, smart, creative, athletic, and talented, I could go on. But as I used to tell my popular 5^th graders when I was teaching: You can use your talents for good or for evil. It’s your choice, but everyone likes a hero. Stay away from the Dark Side.

I can also think of a couple varied aliases for my first born eight year old son (not Irish twins, just seventeen months apart). Many times we call him Two Cent (TC) because he is always interjecting what he feels is his superior eight years of wisdom, plus he’s constantly popping off some jabbing comment to everything his sister says. Now that I think about it, he could be TNT version 1.0.

Actually though, my son’s favorite T-shirts are pretty good descriptions for him. One says I do all my own stunts and the other This is what talent looks like. He’s got lots of little dude friends who admire that he is an incredibly gifted and natural athlete. He’s got a lot of little girl friends because he is sweet and a cutie-patootie. And just like his daddy, he seems totally unaffected by it all. He’s Popular and Cool, but Modest and Natural – he’s PAC MAN.

So, I have plenty of cute, funny, aggravating, interesting, relatable TNT and PAC MAN stories I am eager to share (much to my children’s future embarrassment). We all do, right? Because that’s one of the many joys of parenthood -- the collection of wonderful life stories you live out simply because one day you rolled across the cozy, comfy castle and said to Hubby, “Let’s make this more interesting…”