My triplet boys are identical twins. And something cool is that they’re mirror identicals: where B has a dimple on one side of his face, K has one on the opposite side; where K has a freckle on one side, B has it on the other; etc. Fortunately, both of them have their internal organs in the correct places. Sometimes with mirror identicals, one of the twins has his or her organs on the wrong side, which can be life-threatening in a medical emergency. (Imagine being opened up for surgery on the wrong side of your tummy!) I’m glad neither of my boys will have to worry about that. Anyway, they look and think a lot alike, and they enjoy the same kinds of play.

I think in sets and organization (the typical condition of my house notwithstanding). I want all of the Duplos to be in one bin together, all of the wooden building blocks to be in one bin together, all of the Brio train parts to be in the Brio bin together, and so on. If they’re scattered all over, you can’t really play with them, right? My boys, on the other hand, are free-thinkers who like to collect things in disorganized randomness. Case in point: Here is a list of the contents of a small, worn-out Thomas the Tank Engine backpack that I found tonight in a corner of our family room. Note that, with a few exceptions, these are sad, lonely parts from bigger sets, many of which sets haven’t really been able to be enjoyed as intended due to some of these individual parts being hidden away for who knows how long in this backpack. In the order in which I pulled them out, the backpack contained:

• A small pink Crocs-style shoe (just one)
• An odd bowl-shaped piece of blue plastic (no idea what it is…maybe a lid from something?)
• A toy screwdriver
• A very small book about time capsules, from a Chick-fil-A kids’ meal (I don’t buy kid’s meals at Chick-fil-A)
• Minnie Mouse’s little pink car (no Minnie Mouse)
• An orange letter S (made out of closed-cell foam)
• A yellow plastic top part of a toy watering can (and now I know what the blue thing is…it’s the bottom half of the toy watering can, lol)
• An open-top truck or golf cart or something for a Fischer-Price person to drive (no Fischer-Price person)
• A tiny dog with a “Build-A-Bear” tag on it (my guess is that it was actually out of a kids’ meal from somewhere)
• An odd, hard, round yellow thing (no clue what it is…)
• The letter P, also made out of closed-cell foam, but this one’s a different type of foam and much thinner than the first
• A yellow “C”-shaped toy from a set of link things that snap onto each other, but there’s only one
• A flash card with the letter f and the word, “fox” on one side and a cartoon picture of a fox on the other
• An Arthur (the PBS cartoon character) action figure, dressed for summer camp
• An empty sandwich-sized Ziplock bag
• A toy four-wheeler with no back wheels
• A Paw Patrol action figure (I’m so lame, I don’t know who it is…it’s a police dog wearing a pirate hat; maybe someone can fill me in on that one)
• A 2×2 Duplo block wrapped tightly in cling wrap and decorated with Easter egg stickers
• A flat yellow wooden random shape with one side that’s magnetic
• Ben Elf (from Ben and Holly’s Little Kingdom, a favorite of ours from the U.K.), flying a wheeled helicopter
• An X-wing fighter
• A wooden “right triangle” building block
• A wooden letter block with the letters X, B, C, and Y plus pictures of a xylophone and two candles in a candle holder on it
• One soft, teal-colored doll shoe
• A yellow letter R, this one is wood with a thin layer of magnet on the back side
• A Brio-style train car (this one’s a passenger car)
• A tiny drag racer
• A Christmas-stocking-shaped red plastic cookie cutter
• A red play “nut” from a tool set
• A green 2×4 Duplo block
• A clear rubber spider
• A blue letter N, this one is plastic with a hollow back with one rectangular magnet in the middle
• A blue wooden person figure from a Brio train set
• A flat blue wooden random shape with one side that’s magnetic
• A blue Hot Wheels race car with fancy decorations and the number “6” on the sides and the front hood (but it’s a four-door…not sure how that works out on the race track)

(That was a lot of blue!!)

• A flat cutout of a brown bear, mounted on a magnetic back
• A Ninja figure, ready to throw a grappling hook with a rope tied to it
• A bit of thread/string that’s half apple green and half yellow with an ombre fade in the middle
• Three pieces of tan-colored dog or cat food
• A silver, uninflated balloon
• One square white sticky note, decorated on one side with an abstract crayon picture and decorated on the other side with fake letters in ball-point pen ink
• Another flat blue wooden random shape with one side that’s magnetic
• A small rectangle of paper that seems to be one corner of a page from a toy catalog
• A blue oval plastic “toy link” (the kind that can be part of a chain to keep toys from falling off of a stroller and onto the ground)
• An uncolored extra-small-format Minion coloring page
• A green wooden random shape with one side that’s magnetic
• Yet another flat blue wooden shape with one side that’s magnetic, except that this one is a trapezoid
• Some toy figure’s missing in-line skate
• A blue wooden number three with a magnetic coating on the back side
• A blue plastic letter S with a hollow back side and magnet in the middle
• A blue wooden number six with a magnetic coating on the back side
• A green wooden number seven with a magnetic coating on the back side
• A flat cutout of a turtle, mounted on a magnetic back

On a smaller scale, we find “groups” of objects like this all over the house. Sometimes they’re in a paper lunch bag, sometimes in a box sealed with duct tape, sometimes in a plastic bin or other container with a lid, and so on. On multiple occasions I’ve come close to throwing away some part or another of a nice toy set, thinking that I had picked up some trash the boys had left behind but then having it occur to me to open it and finding the object(s) hidden inside. Sometimes I’ll open a discarded envelope that’s thicker than it should be and find two or three unrelated toys from different sets. And on a larger scale, the boys make what we call “midden piles;” piles of similarly random toys except that these piles include big items like stuffed animals and (single) gloves and (real) kitchen utensils and books and things, tucked under the piano or in a corner of their closet or behind a chair. It’s hilarious and cute and frustrating and endearing.

And that, my friends, is how my little boys roll.