Sam Wallace with his twin girls, Sienna and Cosette. Photo / Emily Chalk
“Do you hear that?” asks Sam Wallace, welcoming the Weekly team into his North Shore home just after lunch.
Amongst the chirp of cicadas, he’s talking about the glorious sound that many parents will attest to after the long summer holidays – the sound of serenity.
“Day three of all the kids being at school – oh, mate, we were dying for them to start,” grins the Coast FM Breakfast co-host, who is always refreshingly candid when it comes to the reality of having young children.
As his radio listeners and social media followers will know, Sam and his wife Sarah’s twin girls, Sienna and Cosette, with older brother Brando, seven, have always been full of personality.
In those early days of survival-mode – laying two sleepy heads in bassinets and training tiny mouths to be on the same feeding schedule – the couple just couldn’t comprehend getting more than three hours of sleep a night.
The girls’ fifth birthday on January 21 (which was also Sarah’s 43rd birthday) felt like a date they’d marked on their mental calendar since they were born.
“It’s a real full stop on that phase of our life,” Sam, 45, reflects. “We spent the last year thinking about them starting school – and how much more time we’d have – but we also didn’t want to wish it away.
“But there’s no denying it’s a bit of respite from how hectic life has been with them doing everything at the same time.”
The anticipation of the twins’ first day at primary school was all going well until the night before.
Sam’s father Barry got rushed to the hospital with pneumonia, brought on by catching influenza A on holiday in America (but more on that later). Then barefoot Brando stood on a piece of wood on the driveway that ploughed 1cm deep into his heel.
While Sam was trying unsuccessfully to get it out of his foot, no one was paying attention to Sienna, who decided it’d be a great time to draw a moustache on her face using a red permanent marker. That became the least of their worries.
“We raced off to A&E, where a doctor had to use a scalpel to dig into Brando’s heel and cut the wood out. And my son was having more fun on laughing gas than anyone should have,” shares Sam, showing us videos on his phone of Brando breathing in the nitrous oxide for pain relief before laughing hysterically. “He was like, ‘Dad, I’m floating on a cloud!’”
Meanwhile, Sarah scrubbed Sienna’s moustache off until there was just a light remnant of it left.
“She didn’t care about starting school with a red moustache – she thought it was hilarious!” Sarah says.
When Sam returned home with Brando, he also tried to give his daughters a heartfelt pep talk.
“I took them aside individually, saying, ‘Right, it’s a big day tomorrow. You’re going to be great, you’re so good at your letters and your numbers. You are prepped and ready to go!’
“However, Cossie spent the whole time under a chair building a hut and wouldn’t look at me at all. Whereas Sienna looked me in the eye and talked for 25 minutes, telling me how it was from her point of view and was the one really giving me the team talk.”
The next morning, Sam and Sarah walked the kids to school, where the twins “were a little bit quiet” before going into their different classes.
“It was a big deliberation for us to separate them,” tells Sarah, a content creator. “We talked to our friends with twins. Some kept their kids together the whole way through, some did until year three, while others split them from the beginning. What do you do?
“Of course, when we asked the girls what they wanted, one twin wanted to be separate and one wanted to stay together. So we thought we’d let them thrive on their own as opposed to becoming too dependent on each other.
Adds Sam, “When I sat down with Cossie on the mat, she wouldn’t let go of my hand when I tried to leave. But she sat with the teacher and 10 minutes later, the teacher texted us to say she was absolutely fine.”
The devoted parents went across the road for a coffee and to process the enormity of the milestone.
“I had a moment,” smiles Sarah, conveying the emotion of the day. “When I came home by myself to work, I realised the house was so quiet and how fast the years had gone.
“Then to see them walk out of their classrooms at the end of the day, absolutely fizzing, you feel proud of the milestone.”
When Brando and his sisters arrive home for our photoshoot, they are indeed beaming.
Munching on a bun and still wearing her school cap, Cossie says the best thing about school is playing with friends, before listing off their names. Sienna is happy to report that there are “no naughty kids” in her class and everyone listens to the teacher.
Although identical, their different personalities shine through.
“Sienna is in the land of imagination and Cossie is just in the land of love,” Sam grins.
With more time to devote to other ventures, Sam and Sarah are launching a new business, Body Blueprint.
Together with fitness coaches Tyrone Bell and his fiancee Stacie Garland, they’ve been building an app over the past year to help others with science-based training methods.
Sam explains, “We believe less is more when it comes to training and that you have to fuel yourself as opposed to starving yourself. The body responds very differently in midlife than it did in your twenties.”
Sam has documented his own fitness journey from “Dadbod to Jacked Bod” on his social media. But today, he’s buzzing about another transformation – a recent hair transplant surgery – as he waves around a brush he’s just bought for his mane attraction.
“Today is the first time I’ve styled my hair with a brush in 15 years!” he exclaims. “Normally, I just pushed hair around to cover holes!
“I went to Sydney for the transplant, which sounds like you’re waiting for someone to die, but they just take the follicles from the back of your head. I’m sure they only took the grey ones.”
The popular broadcaster is also passionate about documenting his family’s travels on film and sharing them on social media.
After Sam’s grandparents, Len and Bodil Wallace, died and left his parents, Barry, 74, and Judi, 72, some money, it was their dream to show their family the world.
So 11 of them – including Sam’s sister Amy, her husband and their two children – set off for a white Christmas in New York, followed by a cruise around North America. Except that everyone getting sick with influenza A was not so magical.
Thankfully, Sarah, who was hospitalised in 2023 with the illness when it turned into pneumonia, was the least hit this time round.
She admits, “I did get a bit scared and told myself I can’t go down again. But I only had a weird throat for a day and managed to shake it.”
Sam, however, felt crook for three weeks.
“I got absolutely smashed,” he tells. “There was one point in Puerto Rico I was walking while having to carry Brando, who was fevering. But we saw some amazing places and had some good days too.
“Mum and Dad don’t use wheelchairs here at home, but with Dad feeling unwell and needing to be mobile in New York, we got one.”
When asked what was harder, navigating tired kids through the streets of New York or his parents, Sam doesn’t miss a beat – “Oh, the pensioners!”
For the fun-loving family, there was also a new revelation that Brando is an absolute adrenaline-junkie after a visit to a theme park.
“I took the kids on Expedition Everest [where you race through the Himalayas on a speeding train] and it scared everyone except for Brando.
“So I made it my personal mission to wreck him on these rides,” Sam recalls. “We went on everything and he was happy as, even on the Tower of Terror.
“Sarah and I were holding on for grim death, but he had his arms up with a big smile on his face. I couldn’t wreck him!
“I think he was so delighted that he’s become really tall to go on most rides. But also, as the oldest, he’s at the mercy of his younger sisters. So on a lot of the scary rides, the twins didn’t go, and it was just me and Brando time. He was like, ‘Yes, finally, it’s on!’”
Listen to Toni, Jase and Sam weekdays from 6-10am on Coast’s Feel Good Breakfast.
For more on Body Blueprint go to bodyblueprinttraining.co.nz