Amy and I took the twins Christmas shopping for several hours today. I noticed a pattern today with every place we went. Our twins are total chick** magnets! My advice for all my single male friends is to get a pair of twins (not ours), dress them up cute (you probably need a woman to help with this part), and take them shopping (pretty much anywhere there are women will do).
When the four of us would walk into a store, Amy would run off to find whatever we were looking for while I would try to not break anything as I maneuvered the kids around in their massive stroller. At every single store, it only took a handful of seconds before I had company. Some strange woman would come right up to me and talk to me and the twins. At two stores today, one of the store's staff called over multiple other people to come check out our babies! And at one of those two places, five members of the staff were talking to me and the twins while Amy noticed an annoyed customer looking for some help.
Some of the ladies would stay and talk to me for ten minutes while Amy was shopping. I heard about their kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews, cousins, or just some other children they know. You could tell most of the ladies wanted to pick up our kids so they could hug and kiss them. Thankfully, everyone restrained themselves. (Well, almost everyone...one woman did grab a hold of Caden's feet. :) But I guess that isn't really big of a deal.)
One thing all these women had in common was they all loved the hats Caden and Caroline were wearing. When we go out in public, we normally have the twins wear their special twins hats that Grammy gave us. The hats are pink and blue and say "1 of 2" and "2 of 2." (These hats nicely prevent the problem of someone thinking a child is of the opposite sex even if they are mostly covered up in their stroller.) Today was no exception and our twins were sporting these hats. Here is a picture from a couple weeks ago of the twins in their special twin hats.
I'm wondering how long all this extra attention is going to last. It actually makes shopping take longer. :) Amy has told me about this phenomenon with her trips to Target and HEB. Despite her warning, I was shocked at just how many people (and by people, I almost exclusively mean women) would come talk to us. If I had to take an honest guess at how many people came and talked to us today, I'd say thirty!
** By "chick magnet", I mainly mean "grandma magnet", "mother with kids there magnet", and in one case, "great-grandma magnet."