Last night, the Gay Uncle talked to a close friend who recently had twins, bringing the number of children-under-three in his household to three. This means that he and his wife are outnumbered, which, as anyone who has taken a course on military strategy or colonial history knows, means one or more of the following: 1) you need to have superior strength and firepower 2) you need to recruit some of the opposition onto your team 3) you need to bring in reinforcements. It seems that they’re pretty much winning right now. They’re great parents (the mom was an early childhood educator in the past, which helps.) Their older daughter has been enlisted in helping out with the little boys, when she’s not trying to kill them. And they have a balletic parade of child-care assistants coming through their house, including a full time nanny and a rotating crew of evening and weekend sitters–plus their toddler is in preschool. (They’re both doctors and each work more than full time.) But the one area they’re struggling with is sleep. Big surprise with two seven-month olds, right? But it’s not their own nocturnal schedules with which they’re grappling–they had a kid before, they know the deprivation/sonambulary drill. It’s the boys’. Apparently, when one has twins, it’s easier to feed them both at once, rather than run an all-night Dairy Bar. But, ever since these two were in-utero, they’ve had very different personalities–during a get-together last summer, the G.U.’s boyfriend Tal nicknamed them Swimmy and Lazy–which have translated into varied needs in terms of the nighttime lacto-craving. So while active squirmy Swimmy gets hungry ever two hours, and is becoming quite the bruiser, his brother Lazy is a bit more laconic and disinterested. Their solution? They make the scrawny, sated one eat whenever his bigger bro does. “Swimmy gulps it down,” Gunc’s friend told him. “But Lazy? He sort of gets force fed.” The Gay Uncle thought of veal calves, chained up in a pen, and intubated with a giant milk straw, on which they guzzle until their muscles atrophy. (Mmmm. Tender.) But his friend had a different food metaphor. “It’s like those geese they use to make Foie Gras. Open wide!” And you wonder why the G.U. never had kids?