Monthly Archives: October 2010

Maybe We're Twins

Posted on by
8

The fact that Tiny and Buba are twins is not something that we’ve spent a lot of time talking about with them. We certainly aren’t trying to keep this bit of information from them. Our neighbor is constantly calling them “the twins”, and whenever a stranger stops to ask “Are they twins?”, we always answer truthfully. But the concept of being twins has not been absorbed the way they’ve sponged up so many other words and phrases. And within the last few months, hubby (T) actually completely confused them to the point that I felt a tutorial was needed.

It started at dinner one night. Buba casually commented that both he and T had blue bowls for their ice cream. T responded by saying something like, “ Yes, we do! Mabye we’re twins!” and then gave a really goofy just kidding kind of laugh. But, of course, Tiny and Buba did not pick up on the silliness of it. And since then, they’ve been commenting, “Maybe we’re twins!” in all sorts of inaccurate situations (i.e. Tiny notices that both she and I have pony tails and giggles, “Maybe we’re twins!”).

T thought this was hilarious, but I was somewhat bothered by it. It just seemed like being twins was a concept that Buba and Tiny should be experts on. So I sat with them and explained it. I showed them our first sonogram, and explained that they both grew inside my belly at the same time before they were born. I told them that it was special that they shared the same birthday and were the same age, unlike their friends who have younger siblings. And I told them that those are the things that make two people twins, not the shirts they are wearing or the color of the cups they’re drinking from. It seemed so simple, and I had no doubt that they understood.

But this morning, Buba and Tiny both chose to wear their Iowa Hawkeye shirts. With a beaming smile, Tiny looked at me and exclaimed, “Look, he have a hawkeye and me have a hawkeye. Maybe we’re twins!” And it seemed there was nothing more I could say but, “Yes, my dear. You sure are!”

Sleeping arrangements for twins – the toddler update

Posted on by
18

A few weeks ago, with no preparation, I decided to move our girls from their cribs to beds. My sudden decision occurred because when I got them up from their naps, S had her leg caught between the crib bars for the third time in the last few weeks.  I decided that it would be safer for them to move to beds. So, we took down the cribs and set up the beds in their share bedroom that afternoon. So, without talking to the girls about “big girl beds” and without reading any stories about sleeping in beds or any other preparatory activities, we made the move. We moved the cribs out – one to go back to my sister-in-law, the other to go to a friend expecting in a few months. There was no turning back.

Obviously, we, as parents, had discussed this potential step before since we had single beds, mattresses, sheets, Bed Bug Bumpers and everything else we though we’d need already. But, we hadn’t quite intended to do it so soon or so suddenly.  Even at 20 months old, the girls were still happy in their cribs, so there hadn’t been any need to change their sleeping arrangements.  Besides, they’d had plenty of different sleeping arrangements in the early months of their lives but the 10 months or so everything had been stable.

Night 1: The girls wanted to climb and stand on their beds, so we talked about how beds are only for sitting and laying down. The girls both went to bed without any problems. They were probably exhausted from the excitement of moving furniture, cleaning their room, getting everything set up etc.

Day 2 Nap: S fell out of bed. I hurt the thump, then silence, then the scream.  She wasn’t hurt or too scared to go back to bed. I think she fell over the foot of the bed not the side. I kind of hoped this would discourage anymore standing up in bed. In hopes of keeping the from climbing, we told their big brother that he wasn’t allowed in their beds. We thought this would keep them from trying to climb in and out, especially since they are too short to get in by themselves.

Night 2: We repeated the talk about sitting and laying in bed. Again they settled to sleep fairly well… at least that’s what we thought.  When we checked later, R’s bed was covered with hand-me down clothes that had been in a box at the foot of her bed. I moved the box out the room immediately.

Day 3 Nap: The nanny settle the girls for nap time.  She was quite concerned about them falling out of bed, but everything went alright.

Night 3: R fell out of bed once but she wasn’t hurt. Both girls settled to sleep.  We started to think that maybe the transition period was over.  I hoped that I could relax and sleep a little more soundly without listening for anyone falling out of bed.

Night 4: 7 am – I rolled over and shook my husband awake.  We listened to the sound of little feet coming down the hallway to our room.  S had figured out how to get out of bed, and she was sure proud of herself!

Day 5 Nap: We set up the playpens to help our nanny feel more comfortable and to give us a chance to figure out what to do next.

Night 5: We put the baby gate across the door to keep S in her room.  We also left the playpens set up as a back up.  When S climbed out of bed, we put them both in playpens for the night.

Nights 6, 7: we were away visiting family for the weekend so the girls were their playpens.

Week 2: When S climbed out of bed, we’d respond by putting both girls in their playpens for the rest of the night.  At nap time, I’d use the same approach and the nanny would use the playpens. By the end of the week R had figured out how to get out of bed too. The first thing they would do when the got out was take the laundry out of their laundry basket.  I tried hiding it under the bed, but they could drag it out.

Week 3: Bedtime was going better. They knew they were supposed to stay in bed.  If they got out, then they were in the playpens. But now mornings were the issue.  At  6:30 am I would hear little feet hit the ground. So, I had to get up and put them in their playpens until we ready to get up.

Week 4: They now know what’s coming when we open the door.  If they are out of bed, they head to their beds in hopes that we won’t put them in their playpens. I’m looking forward to the day when we can take the playpens out of their room because it is crowded with two beds and two playpens.  I’m not looking forward to the day they discover they can take clothes out of the dresser, too.

When did you make the transition from cribs to beds? What worked for you?

The Narc

Posted on by
7

I’ve got one in my pair, do you?

Rebecca

My daughter, Rebecca, has always been more of the goody-two-shoes than her brother.  Which is not to say that she isn’t clever and sneaky and a challenge in her own way, of course. But for the most part, she’s a rule-follower.  In fact, I would go so far as to say she loves rules.  In part, she loves following rules simply because she likes to be able to point out how well-behaved she is.  But just as much, she loves enforcing the rules on others.  In particular, her brother.

If the two of them are playing together in the other room, you will frequently hear her bossing him around, telling him exactly what to do and how to do it.  And boy, if he gets out of line…

“DAN! Stop jumping!”

“DAN! NO! NO JUMPING!”

“MOM! DAN’S JUMPING ON THE COUCH!”

Rebecca

On the one hand, I won’t lie, it’s kind of handy to have a tattle-tale in the bunch.  Oh sure, she sometimes gets caught red-handed at something nefarious, too.  But the truth is that her brother is more likely to attempt something dangerous, or do whatever it is I’ve told him not to do 100 times before. So I don’t really mind having her be an extra pair of eyes to make sure nothing valuable gets dropped into the floor vents.

On the other hand, the tattling is getting a little annoying.  Sometimes, when she whines “Mom, Daniel just ….,” I want to shout back, “work it out!”  And there are times when I doubt the complete truth of what she says.  Believe me, she will not hesitate to throw him under the bus at the slightest provocation. While he may have done whatever it is she has accused him of, it’s quite possible she had a hand in the wrongdoing as well. An interesting sibling dynamic at work, to be sure.

And yet, I’m not sure I want to squash the tattling. Yes, it can be annoying. But do I really want to have her STOP telling me when something is going wrong, even if right now it’s awfully minor? What about the day when it’s something big, and I absolutely DO want her to say something?

How do you handle tattling in your house?

a double-edged sword

Posted on by
15

For the first time in a long time, I have a lot of twin-related things to say. My boys are two months into their kindergarten year, and they are growing up before my eyes. But this is a post about my older singleton daughter.

She was not yet 2 when we dragged her to our ultrasound appointment and discovered we were expecting twins. Over the next three months our daughter went from having an active mother who played with her and didn’t allow TV, to a mother who lay exhausted on the sofa all day and expected her to entertain herself watching Caillou.

When the babies were born it got worse. We couldn’t afford for me to quit my job, but we also couldn’t afford daycare. My employer allowed me to work from home most of the time, so we all huddled in my office: boys in their bouncy seats, Miss A in front of Caillou, and me on my laptop, working. They cried a lot – we all cried a lot. And if all three kids were crying, the one who was fed last and whose diaper was changed last was the oldest one.

This summer Miss A started acting out quite a bit. She has just turned 8. She began to lose her temper and physically go after her siblings. She would claw at her own thighs or chest, and scream, “You’re lucky I’m not doing this to you!” She’d hit herself, kick the walls, stomp on the floor, slam doors, break things… She’d lose her temper over requests that she wear sunscreen, or a reminder that it was almost bedtime – and she could scream for hours. One night she carried on until well after midnight, screaming and drumming her heels against the wall.

The other kids told us they were afraid of her. We were afraid to leave them alone with her.

We took her to see a family counselor, and she’s also meeting with her school counselor. In both settings, all she wants to talk about is twins. She wishes we’d never had them. She wishes she was one of them. She worries about them. She hates them. She loves them.

Our family isn’t very twintastic. We have rarely done matching outfits, and because they are the same gender our twins are verbally grouped as “the boys,” rather than “the twins.” We don’t belong to twins’ clubs. This summer’s trip to Twinsburg was the most twinnish thing we’ve done. At first I thought that might have sparked Miss A’s rage, but then I traced her outbursts to a month or so before the Twins’ Days Festival. I love my little boys – each one of them, individually – as I love my little girls. She doesn’t understand that for all of the emphasis society places on twins, our family had been hoping for a singleton. She believes it’s the opposite – that everyone is secretly hoping for twins, and secretly disappointed to get just one baby at a time. She believes a parent’s love grows exponentially with each additional baby, like the work does.

When she is older I can tell her how we felt at that ultrasound; how overwhelmed and terrified we were, and how terribly hard it was for the next couple years. But for now, she’s hurting and longing for the other half she never had.

Jen is a work-from-home mom of 6-year-old twin boys, and two girls ages 3 and 8. She also blogs at Diagnosis: Urine, where she examines the finer points of potty training failure.

A first… rudeness to one twin?

Posted on by
10

Oh hello HDYDI readers! It’s me again LauraC.

Remember how I stopped writing for HDYDI when my twin boys turned 3 because we didn’t have much twinny stuff? Well do I have a story for you!

Saturday I took my boys (almost 4.5) to a local park. As we were walking along a greenway, a woman came up behind us and asked the boys how old they were. They both said four and her eyes sparkled with that familiar gleam when she realized they were twins. She started remarking on their differences. One brown hair and one blond hair! One brown eyes and one blue eyes! How different the twins are!

Then she said right to Nate, “You are so beautiful, the face of an angel!” and she rubbed his hair.

Then she kept right on going.

Mama BearC wanted to claw at her back and yell, “WTF lady, you’re going to compliment one twin IN FRONT OF THE OTHER twin and then walk on by? Did you even you see Alex’s sad, hurt little face?”

Instead I just told the boys it was so nice this lady thought they were both such beautiful little angels.

Have you guys encountered this and what did you do?

Very Nearly a Soccer Mom

Posted on by
6

I’ve already got the house in the suburbs, the dog, the swingset in the yard, and the minivan.  I figured it was time for some soccer in our lives.

Actually, it was my son. For a kid that doesn’t always seem to have a lot of body awareness, he has a real love for trying out different sports.  When we were up in Wisconsin over the summer, he got my aunt to try and teach him badminton.  Not to mention beach tennis, fishing, sailing, and swimming in the middle of the lake.

badminton

I told him he had to be able to swim with his face under water before he could try skiing.

skiing

But most recently, he has developed something of a fixation on soccer.  Neither my husband nor I are remotely athletic, and we both skipped that suburban childhood rite of passage that was the kids’ soccer team.  But wherever it came from, Daniel has decided that soccer is the thing to do.

Our local YMCA does an Introduction to Soccer class for three-to-five-year-olds.  I don’t hold any illusions that my son will learn much more than where the goal is, but it’s not too expensive, and I figure he’ll get a kick out of it.  The sheer mention of the class is enough to get him bouncing with excitement.

Here’s the thing.

My daughter? Not so interested in the soccer.  What she has latched on to is the idea of dance class.  She mentions it nearly every day.  “Mom, can I take a dancing class?”  I think it has as much to do with the outfit as the actual dancing. (She’s also Little Miss Arts-and-Crafts, and no, I don’t know exactly how I ended up with such gender stereotypes for children.)  But again, there’s a class at the Y, the price is reasonable, and I’m happy to let her explore her interests.

madame butterfly

Two kids. Different classes. They aren’t even at the same time, nor on the same day.  And this is where it begins, apparently, shuttling my kids to and from school and activities.  Mark it: age three years, three months.

This is the first time I have ever even considered signing my kids up for different classes.  For the last three years, it has been all three of us doing the same things.  I sign them up for music or gymnastics, and we ALL go.  I already started to be cut out of the equation when they started solo swimming classes in the summer, not to mention once they started preschool.  But at least they both go to swimming at the same time, they both attend the same school.

While their separate activities are on different days, they’re both weekend days. I’m hoping this can turn into not only a fun class, but an opportunity for weekend one-on-one time.  I’m a little concerned about feeling over-scheduled, but the class is only two months long, so it’s not forever.  But it seems worth the experiment, both in terms of the kids’ interests and in terms of our own time management.

So, what about you, moms (and dads)? Have you done separate activities with each child, or are you holding out? If you have, how old were your kids? What was that experience like?

Multiples, Speech Delays and Mommy Guilt

Posted on by
12

I’ve heard that multiples are more likely to have speech delays from various sources: books, web resources, paediatricians, and other parents of multiples. There doesn’t seem to be a definite explanation for these delays, but there seem to be two main theories: (1) multiples develop their own ways of communicating with each other so they don’t need to learn to talk, or (2) multiples don’t get as much one-on-one time with parents/caregivers. Here’s our real-life experience to add to what I’ve learned from others.

Our girls seem to have some speech delays. They were tested when they were 19 months old. S was measured at 14 months for expressive language and 16 months for receptive language. (R wouldn’t cooperate with the testing, but she’s probably pretty close to her sister). They are both usually able to make it clear to us what they want through sounds, pointing, and signs, but they use very few recognizable spoken words. The next step here is for the parent(s) to go to a workshop with a speech pathologist who shows us techniques to support our children’s speech development. Our babysitting plans didn’t work out, so I ended up going alone. There were about 15-20 parents at the workshop, and it sounded like their children had a variety of speech delays. I’m quite sure I was the only parent with twins at the meeting, and I didn’t have my husband along to provide an alternate perspective on the experience.

I responded to the workshop on two levels. From one perspective, it made sense to take this approach. Parents are (usually) the people who spend the most time with their children and they know them best. They are best suited to integrate activities to work on speech in to their family’s daily activities. And, it made sense to work with parents alone because it is much easier to share information and answer questions without toddlers. My rational mind was able to take in the information provided and consider how I could use it to help my daughters. I felt more confident that this would be a short-term concern and that there steps we could take to support them over the next few months.

However, from another perspective, the recurring message of the workshop seemed to be that parents need to spend time one-on-one with their children. As a result, I left the workshop feeling very guilty and discouraged. My mind quickly made the connection that if the solution to the problem is more individual attention than the cause must be lack of individual attention. I felt that I had let my children down by not focusing enough on each of them and not making time to talk with each of them to support their language development. I compounded my guilt by worrying that choosing a childcare provider who does not have English as a first language contributed to my daughters’ delays. Though I specifically asked about applying these techniques with multiples, the speech pathologist didn’t have any concrete suggestions. I was left trying to figure out how I could fit 15 to 30 minutes/child/day of more focused individual attention.

We’ve only had a few days to consider what to do next, but we are looking at changing our bedtime routine so we can each spend time with one daughter. We are also trying to include more one-on-one time on the weekends. I’m also implementing the techniques I learned with both girls when we play together. This is the best I can do during the day when I have two toddlers and their older brother to take care for. I remind myself that I provide them with a safe, stimulating and fun place to play and learn. They are clearly happy little girls, which helps to dissipate the mommy guilt.

I’m sure everyone has experience mommy guilt. How do you deal with it? (If you have advice on dealing with speech delays, I’d love to hear them too.)

Hers, His, Theirs

Posted on by
9

So, I’ve been thinking about Christmas presents.

I know.

But before you think I’m one of those organized, plan-ahead people, let me be clear that the only reason my mind started taking that jog was because a friend of mine, fully aware of my son’s obsession with Thomas The Train and his knockoff brand trains and accessories, sent me a link on Monday to a Thomas & Friends Wooden Railway Roadhouse on Kids.Woot! It was $35.00.

Sidebar: internet, if you don’t know about Kids.Woot! yet, consider yourselves now educated. Once a day, they list something for an insanely low price. And they sell ‘em till they’re gone, so you gotta move fast. Most of the time, those something’s are things that we don’t want or need or aren’t age-appropriate. But sometimes there’s a gem. Like that Railway Roadhouse.

Except that I had already bought one. A Deluxe one. Got suckered into it at a Thomas & Friend’s playdate at the local BRU. And even with a coupon, it was $87.00. I swear, that place is Stockholm Syndrome, but with inanimate objects.

Anywoot. At that price, I went ahead and bought it for my nephew for HIS Christmas present. Which brings me back to where I started: I’ve been thinking about Christmas presents.

All our focus on them being treated as independent individuals, but I can barely count on one hand those items that are exclusively one child’s or the other’s. Those things being as significant, but as unentertaining as their own rooms, his Raffy, and her woobie. Thomas and Gordon are his. Those little bobble-heady cats and dogs from grandma are most definitely hers. But beyond that? Theirs.

You know what? This isn’t even about Christmas gifts. Because as I write this, I’m realizing that we I think about the whole his, hers, theirs thing every time we introduce anything new into the toy or activity mix. And 99% of the time, it’s easier if it’s just theirs. Even when that 99% contributes to a good 50% of the tussles and meltdowns.

DSC_9111 (1).jpg

We have the play kitchen and play food and two doll strollers and hand puppets and puzzles and duplos and flash cards and books and art supplies and dinosaurs and cars and trains and stuffed animals and watering cans and two tricycles and one shared barn for the farm animals and two pair of wings. At their birthday, they each opened a couple gifts, but ultimately those gifts ended up being both of theirs. For Christmas, their sibling gift will be a gender-neutral dollhouse, or something to that effect.

And yet, isn’t part of individuation having something you can call your own?

The boy loves trains, so that is his thing. The girl’s interest in the trains or train table extends only to the amount of anxiety she can produce in him after snatching Gordon’s tender or knocking over a bridge and then running away.

Quite by accident, (I was searching the Craigslist posts for a Thomas Halloween costume), we found the boy’s Christmas gift when a family decided to off their entire collection of Thomas stuff. When I saw the listing, I went to the internet to start pricing the retail value of the SIXTY-TWO items included in their post and I had reached their asking price by item number eight. NUMBER EIGHT. It was a gold mine, I tell you. And now we’re covered for Christmas, the next birthday, part of NEXT Christmas, and as many potty training incentives as we might need in between. Unless he decides he doesn’t like trains.

But the girl? I have NO IDEA.

I know, I know. They’re not even two-and-a-half. They won’t remember it. They’ll really have opinions of what they each like and don’t like as they get older, so enjoy this while it lasts. All that.

As of now? I’m just hoping we can come up with some ideas that can she can find in her stocking that will be hers alone.

Any ideas?

**********

Rachel is the author of the blog Motherhood.Squared where she tells tales of boy/girl twins and their two mommies.

why having twins is different from having two kids

Posted on by
10

My boys are in all-day kindergarten. When my daughter started all-day kindergarten two years ago, I was shocked to discover that there is a substantial amount of homework for all-day kindergarteners.

Now I’m even more overwhelmed, because:

  • I have a 2nd grader and TWO kindergarteners
  • My husband works 2nd shift and isn’t around to help with homework/dinner/bedtime
  • My kindergarteners have regular homework, remedial letter recognition homework (parenting FAIL) and speech therapy homework
  • I also have a 3-year-old bopping around

You can find an example of how this works out for me here.

In my real life I’m getting this “totally baffled” vibe from people who are puzzled by my difficulties in helping my three older kids with their homework. Because they have three kids, but their kids manage to do their homework and know their letters, etc. So what’s the difference?

I’m probably preaching to the choir here.

When the boys were babies, their twinniness was a liability. Then for a while it was an asset — they entertained each other and didn’t fight much. They were wild, but I have a great appreciation for the built-in playmate factor. Where school is concerned, we’re moving back into the “liability” area.

They are in the same class because they feel more secure and confident when they’re within eye shot of one another, but I thought this would also make it easier for me to help with homework. WRONG. We can’t do homework at the same time because they shout out their answers, so the one who is slower to answer doesn’t have to think about it. Also, one of our boys (G) is insecure about his knowledge and performance compared with his brother’s, so he’ll often get upset and cry, insisting he doesn’t know how to do the work. I’m not sure where this dynamic has come from, although it’s not the first time we’ve seen it — but G requires careful handling to keep his confidence up. P is quick to answer, and enthusiastic about schoolwork. G knows just as much, but has some warped view where he doesn’t know anything, and P and their other classmates know everything already.

So, each boy’s assignments — reading, letter recognition, and speech — have to be completed at different times, and mostly out of the sight and hearing of the other. And my 2nd grader requires quite a bit of hand-holding for her work, as well. My dreams of the children all quietly ensconced at the table, with me working on dinner and coming in to help here or there, have been dashed for now. This is one way in which having twins continues to be a little more complicated than having two kids of different ages, and I really hadn’t anticipated this one.

Jen is a work-from-home mom of 6-year-old twin boys, and two girls ages 3 and 8. She also blogs at Diagnosis: Urine, where she examines the finer points of potty training failure.