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It was the first time they were taking the twins to the natural science museum. Iris thought 2 years and 7 months was a little too soon, especially because they would have to control two toddlers running around things that could not be knocked over, like dinosaurs bones, but Barry insisted, saying that they had to start somewhere, and Dawn, who could be very sneaky, was pretending to be asleep on the back seat of the car when they were discussing it so she overheard them and suddenly got really excited about the dinosaurs, so there they were.
Thankfully the pair of them was well behaved for the day. Don was finding the brick wall more interesting than the bones though, studying it with big eyes and then curious little fingers, and Dawn was a little disappointed that the dinosaurs weren’t alive (why they don’t move?), or at least skinned (I wanna see the green ones, mommy!).
But Barry and Iris managed to time the visit to not warrant any tantrums and, after their lunch on the museum’s restaurant, the pair of them was running around the museum’s gardens — Barry and Iris watching them a few steps behind — and hopefully tiring themselves out for the night.
“See?” Barry asked her, smug smile on his face; “no knocked over dinosaurs, no bones-related accidents.”
“Yet,” Iris pointed out; “I haven’t fully ruled out a potential bone injury — DON! Not like that, please!”
At that her son ran to her, holding a flower he nicked from his sister (he destroyed the petals of the ones he picked up, lacking his sister’s delicacy), which was the reason for Iris’s scold in the first place, telling his mother he picked the flower for her. He was going to grow up to be such a terror.
He jumped up and down by her side until Iris picked him up from the ground and he took her shades off of her face to try them on himself, sticking his sticky little fingers in the middle of the lenses and telling her;
“Look, mommy, I’m a big boy.”
Telling him he was a big boy was how her and Barry got Don potty-trained, which Dawn didn’t really needed to; she was one year old when she stopped needing diapers during the day, and she told Iris, when she was one year and five months old, she didn’t need to wear her diapers to bed any longer because they made her hot and she would call if she wanted to pee.
Iris still laughed remembering the way Barry looked at her with big, impressed, eyes — she suspected that was the moment when it dawned on him how they were raising two real life humans — from the opposite changing table, where he was getting Don into his dippers for the night, and he still needed his for a good few months after that.
Dawn did everything earlier; she was the first to kick on Iris’s belly (she was also the one always moving whereas Don was so quiet that Iris panic a couple of times during the pregnancy absolutely sure there was something wrong with him), she was the first born, the first to speak and walk and tell Iris what exactly she wanted to wear and eat — she didn’t like broccoli or spinach, and sometimes it was really cold but she still didn’t want to put her coat on, and Iris blamed that on Barry since he was the one from whom Dawn inherited her warm blood. She was much more independent than Don, less needy.
But she was a toddler still, so on seeing her brother being carried by her mom made her ran to Iris, wanting to be picked up as well.
Barry grabbed his daughter by the legs, turning her upside down and pretend to bite her in her little round belly, making roaring sounds. The two of them called that “the bear” — daddy, do the bear, do the bear — which alongside “spaceship”, which was when Barry would throw them on air, saying he was launching them into space, was their favourite game. So obviously Don wanted the bear as well. That was the most exhausting part of having two toddlers, the one wanted exactly what the other had at all times.
After switching children so Barry could do the bear to Don they put both of them on the ground, at the same time, and they ran off again, playing catch, and Iris told Barry, sitting on the grass, eyes on her kids;
“The down side of exhausting them for the night is that I get exhausted as well.”
“No, no!” Barry said, sitting by her side and placing a little kiss on her neck; “you better save some of that energy for tonight.”
Iris turned to face her husband, noticing how the second her eyes focused on him, Barry focused on the twins.
“Fine,” she said, sliding into his lap, brushing his hair with her fingers; “but you get to be on top for once.”