There’s a car, parked in a driveway on our way to school, that looks exactly like mine. It’s the same make, model and colour. Its absence is rare enough that it’s a point of discussion for me and my 7-year-old identical twin daughters, J and M.

Me: Our matching car is missing.
M: Yup.
J: It’s the same car on the outside just like me and M are the same kid on the outside, but with different names. It has everything the same except the license plate.
M: It’s like the license plate is a name tag.
J: We have different hair but we used to have the same hair. The cars are the same on the outside but I bet they’re completely different on the inside like me and M is different on the inside.
What metaphors do you children find to describe their multiple reality?
Sadia (rhymes with Nadia) has been coordinating How Do You Do It? since late 2012. She is the divorced mother of 7-year-old monozygotic twins, M and J. She lives with them and their 3 cats in the Austin, TX suburbs and works full time as a business analyst. She retired her personal blog, Double the Fun, when the girls entered elementary school and also blogs at Adoption.com and Multicultural Mothering.