Monthly Archives: September 2011

Three is a Magic Number

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Remember the song, “Three is a magic number,” from School House Rock? Yes, I was a child of the 80’s. Well three is a magic number in our household…sometimes. This summer my 4 year old fraternal twin boys have achieved what my 7 year old daughter has been waiting for her entire life: the ability to pretend play. And while it has had moments of sheer mommy bliss–with all three playing together nicely–the majority of their time together has not been successful. Screams of “I’M NOT YOUR FRIEND ANYMORE!” abound.

Playing Polly Pockets Together

My daughter has learned that she can only really play well with one brother at a time–meaning someone is always left out. I have tried letting the three of them problem solve on their own, family meetings, and on-the-spot play intervention and facilitation with only  glimmers of success. We have tried separation where one twin gets special mommy or daddy time and my daughter gets one-on-one time with a brother. This works once we get it started but all three kids view the initial separation as punishment.

To top it off, my daughter H and one twin, A, are very similar in interests and athletics and play well together. Recently, my twin E had his tonsils out. My daughter H felt so bad about it that she wanted to play with him, and only him, for days–causing a crisis for A, because he is usually the preferred playmate. E basked in the glow of sisterly love but was dumped as soon as he started feeling better. Breaks my heart.

Both boys idolize their big sister and I know she adores them as well. She loves to help them when we are out and about, swimming with one at a time at the pool; helping them climb at the park. They get along better outside of the house than in.

School has started, and they desperately miss each other as constant summer companions. The boys NEED their playtime with their big sister in a way I have never seen before. Big sister loves to play with them, but after a day of school, also needs some time by herself to decompress, leading to hurt feelings and misunderstandings. So, three is not quite the magic number in our house. How are you handling issues with twins plus an older or younger sibling?

Leslie H. is a stay at home mom to an amazing seven year old girl and two adventurous 4 year old boys.

Hands-on Learning

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I am an unashamed nerd.

(My husband, looking over my shoulder as I write, claims that he is not a nerd, and is better described as “awesome.” His high school friends would probably go with nerd-jock, though. Oh, and band geek.)

We’re the kind of people who see science and math everywhere in our daily lives. Our kids told us, with poorly disguised ulterior motives, that treats at the school cafeteria cost a quarter. Hubby took this opportunity to teach them about coin values. The first time my daughters helped me weed the yard, we discussed the purpose of the roots at the end of our leafy trespassers before banishing them to the compost pile. I try to respond to questions by showing our daughters the answers, whenever possible, instead of telling them. It often slows us down, though, and M in particular tends to dawdle, so I am learning to curb my love of teachable moments in the interest of getting things done.

Today, I felt awful. I had a headache and, according to my husband, a fever.

The girls needed their bath, though, so I asked them to climb into the cool tub. Now that they’re 5, and capable of climbing in and out of the bath themselves but still bathing together, I’m comfortable with leaving the room while they’re in there. If they were to fall quiet, I’d panic, but that’s not a problem we deal with at our house.

While I retrieved clean uniforms from the laundry, they got increasingly loud. I went in to wash their hair, and caught sight of J pouring water into a washcloth bundled into a pouch in M’s hands. I asked what they were doing, and was told that it was “an experiment.” My headache tempted me to leave it at that, but I asked what they were trying to learn. M told me that they were attempting to catch water. I washed their hair, and debated between rushing them through their bath and providing them a control to their experiment. I decided to go with the latter, and gave M a scrap of plastic wrap from the kitchen. Their glee at successfully containing water in their plastic pouch didn’t help my headache any, but was well worth it. There’s something to be said for keeping alive the wonder that one-year-olds display by chucking sippy cups to the floor time after time. After all, what is a scientist but a very large one-year-old, trying to figure out cause and effect?

I’m glad I took the time to encourage both girls’ curiosity and their partnership in discovery, but I’ll admit to that I’m heading for a long warm bath of my own, now that our daughters are in bed for the night.

When you’re pulled every which way and under the weather, how do you decide between seizing a teachable moment and making it through the day?

Mommy Guilt x2

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When people ask, “How do you do it?” or anything similar while we are out and about chasing our twin toddlers, my husband and I have our general response: These are our only kids and we don’t know any different. Which is true, we have always had two kids. Two babies. Then two toddlers. We have our proverbial hands full.

While I don’t know what it is like to have just one kid, I do know that there are days that I have double the guilt to go with double the kids. My boys were born at the beginning of November in last nice week for months. When they were newborn it was such an ordeal to go places, we often didn’t go unless we really needed something. We would go as a family, one parent would wait in the car and the other would run in and complete the errand. We ate lots of meals in parking lots because it was easier to go pick up a sandwich and sit in the car lot than unload everyone. With the cold weather, the every-two-hours feeding schedule, the baby support items, it was easier to just stay home. So we did. Other moms with their one baby could pop him into the carrier, stroll peacefully around the mall, in and out of the bank, sit quietly in a restaurant. Our outings were logistical operations that make me tired just thinking about them. So we went out when truly necessary. We usually didn’t go to more than one place, since the load and unload was such a fiasco. They were infants, they didn’t notice.

When a brand new mom in my mothers of twins club recently asked what to do when her 4-day-olds were both crying, I remembered those blurry early days and told her, “sometimes you just have to let one cry.” It was tough on me remembering that, and made me feel callused and uncaring. But it is the truth. One person only has two hands and when you are outnumbered by needy infants, you do the best you can. I just kept telling myself they would learn to be patient, to take turns. And they did. But not before my heart broke over and over while I could only tend to one at a time.

Multitasking

My husband, the BEST DAD EVER, just before the boys were a month old, multitasking a middle-of-the-night feeding.

Now our boys are almost two and there are lots of things we do even though it is hard. We go out to dinner. We take the boys to the zoo, to museums, to parks. Even still, we sometimes pass on things that might be fun for them because it’s just too much to work with two toddlers. Last month we went to the Day out with Thomas where we saw and had the opportunity to ride trains. The railway museum was large and crowded so we took the stroller. The couple of times we let them out of the stroller it was a fight getting them back in, so it was easier to just skip anything that was indoors where strollers needed to be left outside. Did they notice they missed a second train ride or a visit to the switch tower? No, they did not. But I did.

I regularly take them to parks or even the splash pad on my own, which is exhausting and often stressful, but I want them to experience those things. However, for their safety, I can’t just load them up and take them to the beach or a crowded indoor play place. To make it fair to other families, we can’t go to parent/tot classes just me and them. We do go to story time at the library and they just started tot gymnastics, but we do both of those when my husband can join too and we each take a kid.

Since they were born, I have wanted to spend one-on-one time with each of them. And nearing their 2nd birthday I think I have taken one kid once on an errand once and the other kid by himself to the doctor once and that’s it. When my husband is home we want to be together as a family so we do things with the four of us. All this is to say that having two babies at once is hard, but not always for the reasons I expected. I expected the exhaustion. I expected the expenses. I expected to be pulled in two directions. I didn’t expect that I would feel so guilty about dividing my time, about skipping out on things after weighing the pros/cons of the logistics, about not being able to meet both of their needs all the time. Hopefully, like our parenting experience, our boys don’t know any different.

Keep up with our efforts to raise well-adjusted kiddos as guilt-free as possible at goteamwood.com.

Saving Money with Multiples Theme Week Round Up

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Thanks to all the bloggers for sharing their posts on our theme of saving money with multiples.

Here’s a summary of what’s been posted over the theme weeks:

Every Little Bit Helps by Leslie H.

Avoid Throwing Money Away in the Diaper Pail by Jen Wood

The New-to-Us Shopping Method by Rean Bean

Cloth Diapers for Two, Please by Bonza

Homemade Baby Food by Sadia

Pimp My Ride! by Jamie

DIY Haircuts by Jenna

Practice at home with your little yogis by Natasha

I hope you enjoyed the Theme Week. We’re planning to do more, so please let us know what you’d like to read about it.

The Sounds of Imagination

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Growing up my childhood hero was Anne of Green Gables. Her emphasis of imagination influenced my own twin sister and me to conjure up whole afternoons, whole summers, of endless games to play. It’s been important to me that my boys (who are granted only nearing 2) are encouraged to do the same. Sometimes this seems harder than it sounds- does anyone else fear that imagination seems a little by the wayside in a world of toys that practically play for you?  After getting the boys pretend cell phones (as they aren’t allowed to play with real ones) I had initial buyers remorse as the phone had one sided conversations with itself and the boys listened, silently mesmerized. Then I realized they enjoyed the phone’s counting and number games, but still used their play kitchen’s bananas, musical maracas, and often just their hands to have “telephone” conversations constantly.

More recently they have a developed a new fascination that has inspired their creativity. We are usually the first ones to reach the playground in the morning and often the park crew is there getting the things ready for the day. This means the boys have met their new childhood hero: the man with the leaf blower.

Hurricane Irene upped the ante when the park crews were constantly using wood chippers, cherry pickers, and those ubiquitous leaf blowers to clear paths and downed trees in the park. The boys were happy viewers of all the excitement and then decided to join in.

While I was sweeping away one day in the kitchen the boys figured out how to remove the handles on the kiddie brooms I had given them. Ren took his handle and started patrolling the living room with the loudest sound I’ve ever heard him emit. Rrrrrreeeeehhhhhhhhhhhhh! Rrrrrrrrehhhrrreeeehhhhhhhhhhh! Sam stood in shock for a few seconds then quickly followed suit. RRRRRRREEEHHHHHHHH times 2. I worried the neighbors might complain, I worried child services might show up to investigate the outrageous sounds coming from our apartment. Were they crying? Was this some kind of whining on steroids? Then I realized they were doing spot on imitations of those men with leaf blowers. Wow.

This game doesn’t seem to get old either. They run for those broom handles right away when they wake up. At 6AM. RRRRRReehhhheeeehhheeehhh. We have put a moratorium on early morning toddler landscaping for obvious reasons. On our recent family trip there were no broom handles around. Sam grabbed our dog’s tennis ball launcher and set in clearing those pesky imaginary leaves off the furniture. Ren found a swiffer mop in a closet that apparently fit the bill, and blew away imaginary debris out from under the coffee table (here is link to my blog with a video of the boys leaf blowing).

I could relax, as imagination is clearly alive and well around here. What have you discovered that sparks your twins’ imaginations?

Multiple Perspectives: Interview with a MoM-to-Be

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I’m excited, of course, when friends tell me that they are expecting, but I’m quadruply so when they tell me they are expecting multiples. My co-worker and friend Rachel has met my twin daughters only three or four times, but she became an instant favourite with them because of her warmth and humour. You can imagine my excitement when she showed me an ultrasound image with two separate sacs on display. I talked to her about her impending mother-of-multiples status.

1. What was your reaction when you found out you were pregnant with two babies? [Your husband] Scott’s?

People ask me a lot if I was surprised by the fact that I was pregnant with twins. I’m fairly sure the subtext of that question is, “Were they spontaneous twins?”  Generally, I reply, “I think everybody is surprised by twins!”

In my case, my twins weren’t spontaneous; I’d undergone an ovulation induction cycle, and I knew that the risk of multiples was higher. However, I was also under close observation, and we never had any reason to believe more than one egg had been released.  My hormone levels rose higher than I was expecting them to, so I did wonder if something was up, but at around 5 weeks, 3 days, when I had my first ultrasound, the doctor only saw one gestational sac at first.  The second little peekaboo sac was definitely a surprise!

Scott wasn’t able to make it to that first ultrasound, so I called him at work afterward to let him know.  I told him, “Everything looks good… but we may need to think of some more names.”  He knew what I meant immediately.  He’s a low-key guy, but he was excited, and I’m sure a little bit nervous, when he found out.

2. How did your expectations of parenthood change when you discovered that you would be a mother of multiples.

I was always fairly sure that, despite not having a ton of experience with babies and small children, Scott and I could probably figure out how to raise a child on our own. Raising twins, I’ll admit, still sounds like a much more formidable task than raising one.  You can check with me again in a year to see if I’ve broken them yet.

On the other hand, especially since we struggled with conceiving, I had developed a lot of ideas and theories about how we were going to raise our hypothetical only child. In some ways, finding out that we were expecting twins was freeing. Even in my naivete, I know that there will be times when I can’t meet both babies’ needs at the moment those needs arise. I feel like I’ve been able to give up my expectation of being Super Mom before the kids have even arrived.

3. Can you tell me a little about your experience with doctors specializing in multiple pregnancies? How did you find them, and how do you think working with specialists has benefited you?

I bought Dr. Barbara Luke’s “When You’re Expecting Twins, Triplets, or Quads,” not long after seeing the babies’ heartbeats at 6 weeks gestation.  I found the information in the book helpful but general, and I wanted advice more closely tailored to me.  I spent a lot of time searching the Internet for resources on twins, especially locally.  While I didn’t find a whole lot locally (aside from the Moms of Multiples group), I did find the Texas Children’s Hospital Program for Multiples in Houston.  I was most interested in the nutritional assessment they offer, to see how it compared to the one in Luke’s book.  Generally, it was fairly similar, but with a stronger emphasis on lower-fat foods. They also follow similar 20 pounds by 20 weeks guidelines.

My twins are dichorionic and diamniotic, and I’ve really had a fairly uncomplicated pregnancy throughout, so I think the program was less helpful for me as it would have been for, say, parents of identical twins with a higher risk of TTTS. But I learned a lot about my babies and was very relieved to have a clean bill of health as we finished up the first trimester. It’s a great program, for those who are able to get to Houston, and it was completely covered by my insurance.

4. What personality traits do you predict for your babies, based on feeling them move?

Even before I could feel them move, I could see the differences in my babies on each ultrasound.  Starting at 8 or 9 weeks gestation, it became apparent that our little boy, Baby B, is quite a wiggler.  Our girl, Baby A, does her share of moving as well, but she’s never been nearly as active as her brother.  I anticipate we’re going to need to get Baby B involved in lots of physical activity to burn off all that extra energy.  On the other hand, our girl really likes to kick her mama in the bladder, so I’m predicting a typically complicated mother/daughter relationship with her!

5. What reactions do you get from people when they learn that you are expecting twins?

The most common reaction I get is, “Do you know what you’re having?” And when I tell them we’re expecting a boy and a girl, they almost always reply, “Oh, wow, that’s perfect! You can be done!”  As though we would have been required to keep trying for the opposite sex if we’d had two boys or two girls.  Or an only child, for that matter.  I’m learning a bit of zen, when it comes to responding to curious comments.  People generally mean well, and I don’t think they really think through their response. It’s as much small talk as anything.  (I’m sure I’ll be less patient when we can’t walk down an aisle at the grocery store without being interrupted, but people generally can’t tell I’m carrying twins, so I feel like I’m undercover for the time being.)

6. You are 33 weeks into your pregnancy right now. How do you feel, physically?

I’m definitely starting to feel tired and uncomfortable!  I anticipated that I would feel progressively worse as the pregnancy went on.  In actuality, it seems a little more cyclical than that. I hit a wall every couple of weeks, then I adapt and feel better for a while.  My quarter-mile walk to the office is definitely starting to feel like a long way, though!

7. What do you know now about multiple pregnancy, or pregnancy in general, that you wish you’d known earlier?

I spent the first two-thirds of my pregnancy mentally preparing myself for the possibility that I might be on bed rest or out of work for a long time.  I didn’t expect that I’d actually be pretty good at carrying twins, and still working at 33 weeks.  Knowing that would’ve saved me a lot of worrying early on!

8. You and Scott will both be returning to work after parental leave. What will your childcare arrangements be? How are you going about choosing?

This July, we spent our fifth wedding anniversary shopping for infant childcare, three months in advance of the anticipated arrival of our twins, and six months in advance of when we’d expect them to start daycare. It felt really unfair that we had to choose a childcare provider to care for our kids when we haven’t even had a chance to meet them or get to know them yet.  We visited four childcare providers and finally chose a Montessori school with an infant program in our neighborhood.   The rates were comparable to most of the other infant daycares in town, but we were impressed with the age-based Montessori classrooms, and we had a great rapport with the teacher in the infant room.  She lives in our neighborhood, as do many of the kids in the school, and she has twin grandsons.  We felt that our babies would be in good hands in her care.  Picking a place close to home means it’ll be equally convenient for Scott or me to drop them off and pick them up, and we hope we’ll be able to get to know other parents and kids in our area.

9. What have you already done to prepare for your twins’ arrival? What do you have left to do?

I feel as well prepared as a naive almost-mom can be. Our nursery is packed full of onesies, diapers, and random plastic baby accoutrements. We have places for the babies to sleep (though they may have to share for a little while). We’ve got a double stroller.  We’ve got infant car seats, and we’ve installed them into one of our two cars.  We’ve gone to all the classes we plan to go to in advance of their birth, and we’re trying to enjoy some nights out together before the nuclear bomb that is parenthood drops on us both.

I do still have a rigorous nap schedule to try to maintain for the next three to five weeks.  And a lot of work to wrap up.

10. What questions do you have for other parents of multiples?

I feel like I’ve heard the answers to most of my questions, and they all seem to vary from family to family. (How long did it take to feel like you had everything under control?  Were you able to breastfeed two babies at once?  How do you handle the financial burden of two infants at once, especially when you add in the huge expense of childcare?)

I’d rather hear words of reassurance.  Tell me when multiples get to be fun!

Third Wheel?

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Our twins were our first kids, unplanned for and unexpected. On days when I cannot meet my work deadlines and haven’t showered in three days and the girls are refusing to eat and my house smells suspiciously like something has died in the heating ducts, the idea of getting pregnant again seems quite laughable. But on other days, it seems a little less terrifying than it used to. And some days, when my 20 month-old girls are giggling hysterically and keeping themselves entertained, the idea of getting pregnant again is actually kind of enticing.

I know a lot of people who had one child and then had twins. Or they had several children and then had twins. And in those families, the non-twins all seem completely level-headed and happy. But I wonder if a younger child growing up in the shadow of older twins might feel, well, like a third wheel. And then I think, well, if we have a third, we should probably have a fourth, so that he/she doesn’t feel that way…and it feels sort of funny to be thinking so far ahead about bearing a child just so another one won’t feel left out.

I’m curious about the experiences of other MOMS who have had another child after having multiples, especially if the multiples were your first children. Obviously you can try to ensure that your youngest child is included and doesn’t feel left out, but I imagine that having older identical twin sisters, as would be the case for any new child that I might have, would at times feel lonely, what with having no twin of your own. Have any of you found that be true? What have you done to help the non-multiples in your family not feel left out?

To be sure, the idea of having a singleton after having twins is very attractive. When the girls were young I used to day dream about breastfeeding only one baby and hearing the cries of only one baby. Did you all find raising singletons to be that much easier than your multiples? What was different about having one baby at a time versus two or three (or four?)

Introducing Your Twins

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I’m always puzzled as to how to introduce my twins. I already consciously say “These are my twins…” because I try to head off that ever annoying question “are they twins?” but I’m always torn with which order to introduce them. Growing up my parents always introduced us in age order, oldest to youngest, and that made sense to me. Yes, I know one of my children was technically born first but only by a minute. Should that minute make such a difference? Then we could get into the gender issue but I’m not sure I’m clear on that. Should it be ladies first or like when you meet a couple it is usually the guy first?

Most of the time I end up saying “David and Elizabeth” because I like the way it flows better. Just when I think I’m comfortable with that order, then I have to sign a greeting card and I run into the same issue. I try to be random in the order I list them hoping that it works out to half the time naming Elizabeth first and the other half naming David first. I’m not sure I have even come close to making it 50/50.

Which order do you introduce your twins or sign their names on greeting cards? How did you decide that was going to be the order?

Meredith is a mother of b/g twins, age 17 months old.

can i make my twins wear Thing 1 and Thing 2 shirts?

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Nearly everyone has an opinion about dressing twins alike. (Mine? It’s adorable when they’re little, but a luxury people who dress mostly in hand-me-downs can rarely afford!) My boys have a handful of matched shirts — gifts from their grandma, or the fruit of a Target clearance rack. Every so often they like to dress alike, and cackle together about their plans to confuse people. For the most part, though, they dress in totally different things.

It has not helped people tell them apart, except that once a person asks, “Are you G or P?” he or she can keep track more easily for the rest of the day.

All last school year they had different haircuts, but still very few of their classmates and teachers could remember who was who.

This year they have a wonderful teacher I trust. I know he cares about them as individuals, and is working hard to learn to tell them apart. They have the same haircut now, and it obscures the two easiest “tells” — their different hairlines, and a fading scar on one boy’s forehead.

As I said last year in one of my many *upset* posts [that got me crying again reading it now],

…my little boys …are actual peoplewho deserve to be recognized and called by name and valued as individuals. How can you love or even like a person if you don’t recognize him, or can’t differentiate him from another?

So I’m trying to help their teacher (and them) out, by color-coding them. G in green or grey, and P in blue.

Problem is, they don’t always want to wear their assigned colors. They understand why we’re doing this, but sometimes P wants to wear the grey shirt. Or they both want to wear blue shirts. I’m only comfortable pushing this up to a point.

What are your thoughts on this? My boys are 7. How hard should I push them to wear color-coded clothes to school? I feel like I am crossing some sort of civil rights line in the sand when I tell P he has to save his grey shirt for the weekend and wear the blue one like I asked.
Jen is a work-from-home mom of 7-year-old twin boys, and two girls ages 4.5 and 9. She also blogs at Minivan MacGyver, where she teaches readers how to survive various life crises with materials commonly found in a 5-door family vehicle with seating for 7.

Yet An Other 'Secret' Language

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When I was expecting our first child I didn’t really read that many books about expecting and giving birth but one thing I was interested in was language development in children, especially when they were raised in a multilingual home. You see, I was born and raised in Finland, the winner of Newsweek’s 2010 best country to live in. I was going to be speaking Finnish to our children and my wonderfully totally American husband, who after 6 years of marriage knows about 10 words in Finnish, was going to use English.

I was not surprised to read that multilingual boys were the slowest to develop speech. Nor was I surprised when I read that the major cause of baby/toddler frustration, manifested in tantrums that are now way too familiar to me, is the inability to make their thoughts and desires known. I was hoping that somehow there was a way to bypass all this.

I had heard of ‘baby signs’ and properly ordered a book before our first was born. I read it but wasn’t that thrilled. The book was full of signs but it was dry to read and I had no time to study the signs well enough so pretty soon it found its permanent place in a box ‘somewhere out of sight’. Then my SIL let me borrow couple of their Signing Time DVD’s. What a great concept! (You should totally check them out, if you haven’t already.) Suddenly I was exposed to this wonderful new language in a way that was so much fun to learn, both for me and the kids.

Nathan was 10 months when we started watching the DVD’s. It was fascinating to watch him pick up signs so excitedly and effortlessly and then to see him use those signs. I’d offer him a banana and instead of throwing a fit he’d sign ‘grapes’, at the end of the meal, instead of sending his plate and cup flying through the room and adding several minutes to my clean up job, he’d sign ‘all done’. Beth and Joshua got an early start at the precious age of 2 months. When making dinner I’d place them in their bouncy seats in front of TV and all kids happily watched while I cooked.

Out of everyone in the family I believe that Joshua has benefited most from learning American Sign Language (ASL). Ever since being the reason why I ended up with unexpectedly early c-section he’s been our ‘special’ child. He would throw tantrums over anything and everything. He couldn’t figure out sequences (like, first you need to get dressed then you can go outside), he wanted to be held at all times, loud noise would send him over the edge and he didn’t seem to register what we said unless it was signed as well. So sign we did. I borrowed all available ST DVD’s from library, requested them to order the ones they didn’t have, kept them over due and paid enough in fees that it would’ve been cheaper to buy them to our selves from the beginning. But as we all learned more signs, there were fewer tantrums from Joshua and the flow of our days changed from ‘very challenging’ to ‘almost normal’. Quickly signing became his first line of understandable communication and he was rather proficient in it. (He has since learned how to speak clearly and is more than able to make his needs and opinions and desires know .. all too well!)

I noticed that the children started to sign when playing together. First very simple signs but then adding them together to form sentences ‘like pink shoes’, ‘train goes fast’, ‘let’s pretend we’re animals’. They were very good at identifying their feelings and communicating them with us early on, I believe because they associated the signs with (otherwise rather abstract concept of) emotions.

Beth and Joshua turned 3 end of last month. We still sign. I realized at one point that it would be a disservice not to continue with ASL since they already know so many signs. I signed them up for deaf/hearing children’s playgroup and I am taking classes as well. I hope that as they grow and realize that not everyone in the playground uses their hands to communicate they continue to use ASL, because you never know where life leads you and how many opportunities for friendships they might find in the deaf community in years to come. And one day, it could be their other ‘secret’ language. That is if they ever start speaking Finnish. Right now they seem content with understanding Finnish, speaking English and signing back to me. But I won’t loose hope. They just might prove to be more gifted in the area of language than their otherwise pretty awesome Daddy.

So dear HDYDI readers, are you raising your brood in a multilingual home? What challenges have you faced? What benefits are you seeing?  Have you thought about signing?  How are you dealing with potential speech delays/behavior issues with your children?