One big family party

By Jeannie Nuss, Globe Correspondent

Anna Alicenne and Emily -- all 2 1/2 -- plunked down by a banquet table next to their mother and more than 400 other twins, triplets, siblings, and parents at the holiday party.

“We hear the comment, ‘You have your hands full,’ all the time,” said their mother, Sarah Gay, of Mannsfield.

The party, thrown for families with twins and triplets at the Shaw's Center in Brockton, gave families to pose for photos with Santa.

“You’ve got two screaming, one happy, one sleeping, one not, one ‘I got to pee,’” said Caitlin Buron, a volunteer with the group that threw the party, Keeping Pace with Multiple Miracles, and the mother of a 3, 5, and 7-year-old -- but no twins or triplets.

Moms and dads said the annual event provides a much-needed chance to relax -- in a room with hundreds of screaming children.

“It’s a place where I know my kids are safe,” said 30-year-old Kathleen Mann, of Quincy. “I don’t have to be looking over my shoulder the whole time.”

Mann’s two sets of twins, 2-year-olds Caroline and Taylor and 3-year-olds Cameron and Paige bounced on stuffed rocking horses. The three girls, dressed in matching black and white flowery dresses, took bathroom breaks in shifts with their aunt.

Youngsters flocked to a dance floor to boogie to tunes like K.C. & the Sunshine Band’s “That's the Way I Like It” and “Funkytown” by the Lipps, Inc. A DJ set off a bubble machine as dozens of kids squealed and jumped to catch the shiniest ones.

The party provided refuge from the questions parents of twins and triplets often get.

“No one’s gonna say, ‘Oh my God. How do you do it?’ It’s like you’re anonymous,” said Donna Baker, co-founder of Keeping Pace with Multiple Miracles and mother of 15-year-old triplets and a 19-year-old.