Separation anxiety

I said yesterday that work were very understanding about this whole beingamother thing.  Well, second test today.  A is ill.

So this means two things:

1.  I am at home (again) on a day when I should be working; and (more importantly)
2.  A and S are spending a day apart.  For the first time ever.

They are nearly 11 months old and they've never spent more than half an hour apart in their lives.  B left with S and L about ten minutes ago and so far so fine.  A is pulling herself up on the DVD player (favourite trick) and babbling away to herself (she's not very ill, clearly); she doesn't seem to have noticed, or maybe doesn't care, that her sister isn't here.

But I do.  I feel like I've done something simultaneously unimportant and momentous.  One of them is ill, the other isn't so clearly one should go to nursery and the other should stay at home. I didn't even think about keeping L at home because A is poorly, so why should it be any different for S?  What's the fuss all about?

At the same time, this is a very important moment in their lives and as a result I am feeling very wobbly about it.  I try to avoid parenting books, but one of the twin mantras I've absorbed over the last 18 or so months since I discovered I was having identical twins is the importance of giving each of them their own identity.  And a  big part of that must be allowing them to realise that they can, and should, be able to spend time apart from each other.  This is the first hurdle on the road to independence from each other and, dare I say it, from me.

So it feels like a big deal.  It could go one of two ways.  They (or one of them) will be fine. Or they won't.  Watch this space...