Category Archives: Behavior

Boys Can Wear Dresses Too

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“Look, the woman is free now,” Leila describes an American Indian man in the animated film.

“That’s a man, Leila,” I say, knowing full well where this would go.

“But, but he has long hair, and…”

“Men can have long hair,” I was a little too stern with her about this, fed-up with all the stereotyping.

“But look at the hair bands in her hair.”

“Leila, men can wear hair bands.”

I would get nowhere with my attitude, and of course my two-year-old’s are only trying to make sense of the world and figure out how they fit in it. Their gender differences are a part of that. I relax, try something different. “OK, you remember our friend in Koh Samui? He has very long hair. Sometimes he used hair bands to tie it up. Remember?”

She laughed and agreed.

My daughter is going through a phase where she needs to define herself as a girl. Quite normal I suppose. It was after she repeatedly heard an older girl telling Rahul, “but that’s for girls,” as the doll and hair clips that he was playing with were snatched out of his hands, that it became as issue.

Since then, L often says similar things to her brother. I have a feeling that other than it being a gender identity thing, the issue is magnified because they are boy / girl twins who are almost always together. I am not yet sure how or if I even need to do something to help Leila with this question.

On a walk around the mall one day, Leila saw a shop full of pink things, she half stated, half asked if it’s only for girls. I disagreed. Rahul has often asked me the same question, “This is only for girls, mum?” He used to like pink. I doubt that it was a natural instinct; it was probably because his sister liked it. And then I’m not so sure that her obsession tendency for pink is natural either. More recently Rahul has constructed that “yellow” and “green” are his favorites. I see him consciously choosing those colors because he is a “boy”, and then also maybe a bit because it sets him apart from his twin sister.

“But I only want yellow nail polish,” he begged in their fight discussion this afternoon. He looks at me, almost in tears.
“NO, it’s only for girls,” she barks at him. A moment later she turns to me, “It’s only for girls mum?”
“Boys can also use nail polish guys, but neither of you can until you are older.”

A few days ago it was about toy make-up. “I want to play with this,” Rahul said as they were tugging and pulling on the toy eye-shadow. A man in the room, probably just trying to ease the tension, said, “Make-up is for girls Rahul.”

“Hey come on guys,” I couldn’t help myself, “some men use make-up.” I got some questioning looks from the men in that room. “Men who dance, act on stage or in movies use make-up.” I didn’t even touch those who might use it just because they enjoy it. Our home is a rather gender neutral space, the children have a range of toys, but we are immersed in a host of cultures all of which segregate gender roles and behaviour in the obvious, traditional sense.

An openly gay friend of mine in Lebanon, oriental-dance performing artist and teacher posted this little story on Facebook about a man who wears dresses in solidarity with his little boy. http://www.advocate.com/society/modern-families/2012/08/28/dad-wears-dress-solidarity-dress-loving-son
It reminded me of a conversation I overheard between my children and a couple of close Swedish friend. “Boys can wear dresses too,” my friend’s husband explained to them.

My children will have many influences in their lives and they’ll make their own choices. I still try to play my bit in keeping them open. I’ve always been grateful to the exposure I had growing up, to people of different cultures and way of thinking. My own parenting decisions and choices come from imitating those I respect and trust, as well as trying to realise my own mistakes.

A few weeks ago I saw a couple of sticker books that I thought my children would love. One was of an Indian girl, the other was an African girl. The idea is that the child plays designer. She can stick bags, and necklaces on the girl, colour in the clothes the way she wants. I bought both. For Leila. How was I to choose between an Indian and an African princess? And I had an inkling that Rahul might want to play with one at the same time. To be fair though, I bought Rahul a couple of finger puppets.

Rahul enjoyed his puppets, but luckily Leila agreed to share one of her princess design books with him. They both enjoyed sticking the bangles, bindhis, and chitenge prints on their models. In the sense of learning alone, he was doing well with focusing, sticking the handbags on the girl’s arm, and the flowers in her hair. So just because it’s a girl in the picture why can’t he play with the book? Maybe he’ll become a clothes designer one day. Why didn’t I just buy one princess book for each one of my children?

Over the weekend we went to a toy shop. Rahul chose a baby doll. He likes to change dolls’ clothes, rock and kiss them goodnight. Of course, he was shown the transformer cars and the Lego, but he was adamant about the baby doll. Only at the very last minute did a laser sword change his mind. Regardless of the outcome, I was glad that I would have proudly walked out of that shop having bought both my children dolls.

Related links:
From TV to toys: What shapes boys into boys and girls into girls
http://www.babycenter.com/0_from-tv-to-toys-what-shapes-boys-into-boys-and-girls-into-gi_10310676.bc?page=1
Parenting the Enemy – blog post by Janice Lindegard of Snide Reply

http://multiculturalmothering.com/2012/04/02/parenting-the-enemy/

I live in Chengdu with my husband Maher and our two-year-old twins Leila and Rahul. I was an Ashtanga Yoga teacher until Our Little Yogis became the teachers. http://natashadevalia.com

Mommy Break

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When it comes to children and pets, I can be extremely patient, and I confess to being rather proud of this trait. A lot of people tire of my daughter M’s 5+ minute monologues, but I can stay tuned in. J and M’s father has declared the car a quiet zone when he’s driving, but I relished our 45-minute commute discussions when the girls were 3 and 4 years old. I’m glad that my friends consider me to be someone who can step in with their kids when they’re feeling overwhelmed by poor behaviour or neediness.

Still, I have my limits. Yesterday afternoon, after returning from school, M was in rare form. She was frustrated, it seemed, with everything. She whined about having to put her school bag away, about my choice of snack, about the heat of the day, and about our cats choosing to play with a toy other than the one she had selected. She forgot all her basic responsibilities: washing her hands; picking up her dishes after snack; putting her dirty clothes in the laundry hamper; clearing her desk after homework. Every time I reminded her, she had some excuse for not having done what she was supposed, and I was a “meanie mama” for asking her to do it.

She may very well have been mirroring my own general sense of annoyance; the previous evening had brought an extremely unpleasant obligation I had hoped to put off until the weekend. I tried to shield the kids from my mood, but they’re observant souls.

J loves to dance, so it’s not unusual to find her twirling around the living room. Today, though, M decided that J was no longer allowed to dance, simply because she found it irritating. When I reminded M of our mantra, “Not your body, not your business,” she turned on me, screaming that she just didn’t want J to dance. That earned M a time out, which she spent kicking the door to my bedroom. Once she was done with time out, I told M to take a rag and clean her shoe marks off the door.

It was when M insisted that she had not kicked the door and that the very visible shoe marks didn’t exist that I felt my face get hot and heart beat harder. I knew that anger was seconds away, so I placed the girls’ dinner on the dining table and told them I was taking a time out “to calm my body down.”

It’s been so long since I took a mommy time out that J and M were thoroughly confused. Why did they need to go to time out? I explained, quickly, that I was feeling very angry, so I was going to take some quiet time to calm down. I was going to lie down, drink some water, and take deep breaths, just as I’d taught them to do.

Fortunately, my daughters, at 6, are old enough to be left alone in the dining room at dinner time. When they were little, when the screaming and whining got to be too much, I would place them in their cribs and make myself a cup of peppermint tea, telling them that mommy needed a time out. When they were 4, I once asked a neighbour to sit with the girls while I went for a walk, because I knew I had reached the end of my rope, and my husband wasn’t expected back from Afghanistan for several months more.

I love my kids. We generally have a fantastic time together, and are usually excellent at negotiating solutions to high-stress problems. Still, there are moments where I need to be human for a moment before I return to being mommy. I’d much rather step away from the situation than give in to the urge to yell. I yelled at M once earlier in the week after she ignored repeated requests to pick her dirty panties off the floor, and I’ve felt horrible ever since. It was just one sentence: “I said, put your panties in the laundry!” There are, however, better ways to engage the children’s attention.

What do you do to keep your cool when your kids are acting up? Are you a yeller?

Sadia’s identical twin daughters, M and J, turned 6 years old just last week.

Discipline and Love

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“Why are you acting like you love J and not me?” my 5-year-old M asked me this morning, her voice full of tears.

That was quite the knife through the heart. Within minutes of learning that there were two little people growing in my womb, I had promised myself two things: I would never play favourites, and I would treat our children as individuals.

I wasn’t playing favourites today, of course. M would be allowed to snuggle up against me with her blankie too, once she’d served her well-earned 5 minutes in time out.

Here’s what led up to this moment:

We had a small quantity of chocolate milk in the fridge, a spring break treat. I had split it evenly between two cups, and offered them to the girls to tide them over while I prepared breakfast. J took a cup from me and downed the milk in one swallow, while M tensed every muscle in her body before wailing, “But I wanted that cup!”

I offered her the other cup. I offered to pour her milk into the cup J had just emptied. She didn’t want milk at all, she informed me, because J had the cup she wanted. This sort of interaction was par for the course at age 3, but not now. Instead of having the milk go to waste, I offered it to J. That was when M started pummeling me with her fists. Instant orders to time out prompted her accusation of my not seeming to love her.

M has been having some major self control issues all week. It’s been a stressful time for the whole family. J is more in touch with her emotions than the majority of adults I know, including me, so she’s been weathering this period unbelievably well. M, on the other hand, is either unaware of what’s really bothering her or unwilling to talk about it. I sat her down with crayons and paper yesterday, and drawing seemed to help some, but she has a way to go.

While she has a legitimate reason to be generally upset, this doesn’t excuse rudeness or hitting. She’s a month shy of turning 6, and we’ve been working with both girls on a variety of tools to help them maintain their composure and handle their emotions since they were 2. Deep breathing, playing with water in the sink, and taking some alone time with a book or toy are standard ways that both J and M deal with overflowing anger to make their way to a productive solution.

She finally calmed down. I explained to M that it was because I loved her that I took the time to help her behave like a grownup. If I didn’t love her, I wouldn’t care how she behaved. Surprisingly enough, she accepted that response.

A little later, M asked to play a game on my iPad. I told her that I wanted to let her play, but the fact that she wasn’t controlling her body well made me worry that she would break the thing. That cued another tantrum and time out. Once she returned, I told her that if she went 3 hours without a tantrum, I would have enough confidence in her self-control to let her play a game. Classic bribery, I know, but we work with what we have.

She made it 45 minutes until the next tantrum hit. She begged me to lower the bar. A tantrum-free hour should be enough, she thought. I do not negotiate with tantrum-throwers, so I held my ground.

It was afternoon before she asked if it had been 3 hours; I’d been head down in work and hadn’t thought about her request for the iPad game. I realized that she’d been playing nicely with J for 5 hours, blowing bubbles in the yard and inhabiting up an elaborate make-believe world that involved pirates and restaurant owners.

It wasn’t until I sat down to write this post that I noticed how M had worded her pain to me. (I jotted the sentence down immediately for use in this post.) She had asked me why I was acting like I loved J more. She didn’t actually accuse me of not loving them equally. Even in her deepest frustration with me, she was confident in the content and equal partition of my love, even if she didn’t like how I expressed it.

I think M’s going to be all right. We’ll get through this. I just need to take my deep breaths, play in the water, and take some alone time every now and then.

What’s your approach to fairness in parenting? How do you balance the needs of multiple children?

Sadia telecommutes from El Paso, TX to her job in Austin and is thankful that her 5-year-old identical twins can entertain one another 8 hours a day.

Not Their Friend

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We’ve been having some discipline issues around here recently. The girls have been talking back to me in a way that is not appropriate for 5-year-olds. Both M and J have had emotional outbursts that can be described only as tantrums. Age 4 and the first half of age 5 were nearly tantrum-free, so this flashback to age 3 was unexpected and unpleasant. I’d say something innocuous, and see one child or the other go rigid, rise on her toes, and clench her jaw before letting out a shriek. Despite my efforts not to, I would feel my own muscles tense and my blood pressure rise in response.

During the Reign of Tantrum Terror, also known as the Terrible Threes, I prided myself for being unflappable in the face of the girls’ outbursts, trying to show them how calm thought can work in one’s favour. I used to count slowly to 3, using both my speaking voice and my fingers, refusing the temptation to try to raise my voice over theirs. At 3, off the culprit went to time out, sitting on the floor facing a wall for a minute per year of their age. It didn’t matter if we were home or out in the world. If there wasn’t a wall available, a tree would serve just as well for a time out location.

I’ll confess that I had allowed the thick skin I developed during the Terrible Threes to melt away. At the same time, my children had learned to say, “No.” The first time that one of my daughters said “No,” when ordered to time out, I lost it. I yelled at her to go to time out, and this time she followed my instructions. I immediately knew that throwing a tantrum of my own wasn’t going to help things. All I was doing was validating the effectiveness of their unacceptable behaviour.

My relationships with both M and J became increasingly charged over a couple of months. My husband finally had to step in with some very constructive, but painful, criticism. He pointed out that the girls had learned that they could argue with me, and I was failing to rise above. I needed to remind them that “because Mom said so” carried weight.

He was right, of course.  I had been so enjoying the recent explosion of both girls’ critical thinking that I had been inviting them to offer their own opinions, and trying to show them, whenever I could, how I reached the conclusions and decisions that I did. In my attempts to encourage them to question the status quo, I had put myself in the position of their friend, not their mother.

I shed a few tears, and slept on it. Once I’d marshalled my thoughts, I sat M and J down at the dining table for a conversation. I told them that I appreciated their ideas, and loved our discussions, but I was the mother. When I asked them to do something, I meant that they should do it immediately. If they had questions about the why of things, they could ask them later, and I would decide whether or not they were open to discussion. I would also be the one to decide when they could be discussed. The girls would go to time out when I told them to, and they would listen to me. Period.

After a week of maintaining my icy calm, and an average of 3 time outs per child per day, we’ve settled back into solid mother-daughter relationships. Much as I hope to be a friend to M and J when they are grown, I am exclusively their mother in the here and now.

Do you find yourself becoming complacent and compromising your parental authority? How do you fix it?

Sadia is a Bangladeshi and British working mother of twins and American army wife living on the Texas-Mexico border. Her thoughts on matters of parenting, twins, and parenting twins can be found at Double the Fun.

Girls are NOT easier

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I was pretty sure that parenting girls would be easier than parenting boys.  I had my son Isaiah first, four years ago.  He was all boy, right off the bat.   He climbed everything, tried anything, and showed no signs of fear.  He started walking at 10 months, was running by 11 months.  Months 12-28 were exhausting.  My friends with girls seemed to have it easier than me.  Their daughters did things like sit and walk and play with their toys quietly.  Isaiah thought that sitting and time-out were the same thing.  He thought being told to “walk” was a punishment.  He was always moving  and didn’t start to slow down and listen to me until about 6 months ago, around the time my twins started walking. 

Since I have done this parenting thing before, I was pretty sure I’m smarter than a one year old.  I know all about child proofing and how to use distraction effectively.  Besides, they’re girls, so how hard could this toddler age be?

Twins

The picture that describes my life with one year old twins!

I can’t tell you how many things I have been wrong about this time around.  I thought Ky and Cadee would be late walkers, or at least wait until they were a year old.  Wrong.  They were both master walkers by their first birthday.  I thought Cadee and Ky would be less curious than their brother.  Wrong.  These girls have gotten into things that never crossed their brothers mind!  I thought they would be fearful of falling from high places.  Wrong.  I once found Cadee INSIDE of my top kitchen cabinet eating cookies.  Who would have thought to put a cabinet lock on the ones ABOVE the counter top?

Things I never dealt with before I am now having to deal with now.  My childproofing has gone to an all new level.  There is a lock on the fridge, after my 13 month old Ky got into the leftovers and painted my floor with chicken stir fry.  There is a lock on the oven, because Ky is obsessed with pulling herself up on any horizontal bar, and once she figured out she could open the oven, it became her new obsession.  There is a lock on the dryer, because Ky and Cadee both think it’s the best seat in the house.  We have no dining room chairs in our house, they stay in the garage and only get brought in for dinner.  After the top cabinet incident, having a place to sit just isn’t worth the risk.

I remember laying down, looking at the ultrasound screen, seeing my beautiful twin girls for the first time.  I was scared out of my mind, but I comforted myself with the thought “They are girls, they will be easier to handle.”  Boy, was I wrong.  At 17 months old my twin girls are giving me a run for my money.  And so far, there is nothing easy about this climbing toddler stage, even if they ARE girls.

Dollimama is the mother of three, a four year old son and 17 month old twin daughters.  She spends her days chasing children and doing laundry, while trying to keep her children out of the dryer.  She writes about the chaos of her Life Not Finished whenever she gets the chance.

What about your toddlers?  Have they entered the climbing stage? 

Have you found a difference between raising boys and girls?  Do you think raising girls is easier than raising boys?

 

Annoying

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Technical difficulties prevented this post from being published on Sunday, October 10.

M and J are five years old. In all those years, neither of them has ever asked for time away from her sister. From time to time, they have chosen to pursue different activities with one parent or the other, but my husband and I have had to work hard to pry them away from one another. We didn’t give them the option of being in the same kindergarten class (a discussion for another day), and they made it abundantly clear that being split up was not their preference.

M is a talker, and always has been. She narrates the world around her, and has ever since she mastered the sign for “more” and the word “uh-oh”. I’m as extroverted as anyone I know, but even I tire of the constant avalanche of words and ideas. J doesn’t. J listens, and listens, and listens, and if she absolutely must make herself heard, she does. Don’t get me wrong. J is a huge talker too. She’s just better able to pick and choose between her thoughts to identify what she wants to share.

This afternoon, M told we that she was feeling strange. She couldn’t describe exactly how, but I suspected that she was coming down with the ugly cough that’s been plaguing J and my husband. Since he reported that a nap had helped him significantly earlier, I suggested that we have a mommy-daughter read-and-snuggle session. J picked up Enid Blyton’s Melody and the Enchanted Harp and M grabbed Dr. Seuss’s Oh, The Places You’ll Go. I grabbed the P.D. James novel I’d been snacking on, since I knew that any other of my current reads would have me reaching for a notebook and pen.

We curled up under our covers and settled down to reading. M elected to read out loud. She has a tendency to skip over unfamiliar multi-syllable words, so I haven’t done much with her to encourage silent reading. On practically every page, she had an editorial comment, on witty rhymes, silly words, or interesting ideas. She wished we could have towed our old neighbourhood to our current location so she wouldn’t have to miss our neighbouts. Were Hakken-Craks real? Having years of practice as mother of the terribly talkative twins under my belt, I am adept at carrying on a conversation with one or both of them while reading (or cooking or cleaning).

Halfway through the Dr. Seuss, J had had enough. “May you please read in your head?” she asked her sister. When M ignored her, she repeated her request, adding, “It’s annoying.” M read silently for a couple of pages before picking up her chatter again. J elected to let her be.

Perhaps I should have scolded J for calling her sister annoying. All I could think, though, was that this was a milestone. For the first time, one sister had expressed annoyance with the other. It wasn’t enough for J to want alone time, but I feel like we’re on the path there. It’s bittersweet. I’ve loved this extraordinary acceptance our daughters have of one other, knowing full well that the closer they are, the harder it’s going to be for them as they develop their distinctive interests and lives.

How old were your kids the first time they got on each other’s nerves? Did you/do you think it’s healthy?

"Afu ge ge", "Leila mei mei"

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“Which twin is older?” The question is absurd. In China, I get it all the time. And it works me up.
“They are twins. They are the same age.” I reply, irritated.
“Yes, but they didn’t both come out at the same time, did they? One had to have been born first.”
They insist, “Is she the older sister or is he the older brother?”
“But they were born minutes apart. What’s the big deal?!”

In Chinese there are no words for sister or brother; only for older brother “ge ge”, younger brother “di di”, older sister “jie jie”, and younger sister “mei mei.”

I don’t want to impose birth-order stereotypes on L and R; they are born 7 minutes apart. When L joined us at home, 3 weeks after R, Maher and I both unintentionally spoke to Rahul referring to Leila as his little sister. It was more in the sense of endearment and physical size than of age. But we quickly realized that it was untrue, and imagined implications of such labeling. We stopped.

When we returned to Chengdu from Hong Kong 5 months after the birth, our ayi (nanny) would tell R, “Look, Leila mei mei is sleeping. Why don’t you sleep as well?” I was upset. Drop the comparison, that issue is for another post. I firmly asked the people close to us – ayi’s (nannies), Chinese friends – not to use ge ge and mei mei; but to refer to Rahul and Leila as Rahul and Leila. Initially, they considered my request strange. I was interfering with cultural norms and habits. I insisted. They complied, at first with an uncomfortable smile, and probably a thought of how the lao wai (foreigners) always do things strangely. Now, they don’t hesitate. I’ve heard our ayi herself telling people in the street – “How can one be older? They are twins.” And if pushed she says, “I don’t know who was born first,” and then she looks at me to save her from the situation!

From what I remember of my Social Psychology 101 class, and various family talks, the oldest child is more responsible, self-motivated, and more dutiful, the middle child struggles for attention, and the youngest child is light-hearted, sometimes babied. It’s not as “straightforward” as that in reality, and certainly not in our household. I hope R doesn’t turn around one day and say a silly thing like, “That’s the way it goes because I am your older brother,” or someone guilt trips him with, “but she’s your little sister.”

When we go downstairs to play with the other kids in the complex, mums often tell their children, “You are her older brother. Let her play with your toy.” In China today, it’s rare that a child has a brother or a sister; so mum is usually referring to her child’s playmate. L and R may not know any of their friend’s names, but they know who is older and who is younger than them.

About half a year ago, R surprised me when he pointed at himself and said, “Afu, ge ge”. (R calls himself Afu. It’s his Sichuanese name.)  In another incident, a mum of a two year old girl asked me if L is a jie jie or a mei mei. Before I could say anything, L pointed at herself and replied proudly, “Leila, mei mei.”

L and R were obviously beginning to understand what people say. I realized that unless they use the words describing their relationships, they won’t be able to refer to their friends or themselves in an understandable, and respectable manner.

I am impressed that they know the words, and maybe the meaning. I don’t think they understand what the words imply in relation to each other, but they know that’s who they are.

A few weeks ago, a pair of 22 year old identical Chinese twin girls automatically introduced themselves to me as older sister and younger sister. When I dug deeper, probed them on whether they actually feel like one is older and if they live by that, “not really,” older sister replied, “At home we call each other by name. It is just for others that we use mei mei and jie jie.”

Other than it being a naming issue, it is a cultural one. We live in China, L and R were born in HK, and speak Chinese, so it only makes sense that they follow the social and cultural norms when engaging in society here. Now, when people in the street ask me the question, I answer straight up, R ge ge and L mei mei. Still some days, when I am in a feisty mood, I refuse to answer.

At home, with ayi’s and friends, we stick to L and R.

How do you answer the question, “Which twin is older?” If you have older twins or multiples, what are their thoughts on this?

 

Natasha, mum of Leila and Rahul was an Ashtanga Yoga teacher until her little yogis became the teachers. You can find more of her thoughts and stories at Our Little Yogis.

 

He Will If She Will

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My daughter, Tiny, has oozed with confidence since the moment her personality started to emerge. In her mind, there is nothing she can’t do, and she fearlessly tries new things without even a second thought. She is a joiner, and will often seek out other kids to play with whether she knows them or not.

My son, Buba, is more reserved. He often hangs back in a new situation, watching to see what everyone else is doing before he decides whether to join in or not. He is more hesitant to try new things, and when faced with a group of kids, often prefers to play alone.

But here’s the thing- If Tiny tries something new first, Buba will almost always follow her lead. Even if she has tried to do something really hard and wasn’t successful, he will try too. I both love this, and despise it. I love that Tiny’s confidence can somehow be transferred to Buba and give him the courage to try things that he otherwise would not. But I so wish that he had some of that confidence on his own.

Given all of this, I wasn’t at all surprised a few weeks back when Tiny had no trouble at all going to a 3.5 hour day of gymnastics camp all by herself when her brother was home sick with a stomach bug. She didn’t know a single other kid in her group, and yet, she walked into that gym as if she owned the place.

But the following week, when Tiny was sick, Buba did not want to go to the first day of dance camp (something he had really been looking forward to) without his sister. His exact words were, “I can’t go, because if I do then Tiny will be so sad and she will be saying ‘Where’s my Buba?’” It took a lot of convincing, but I finally got him out the door and willing to give it a try. Fortunately the class was small (just two other sets of twin girls!), but he still was very tentative about the whole thing. He cried when I tried to leave (it was a drop off program), but agreed to participate if I sat in the corner of the room. So I did.

I could tell that, at first, he wasn’t really comfortable or enjoying the class at all. I think it didn’t help that everyone had a twin sister but him. But by the end of the session, he had really warmed up to one of the teacher’s helpers, and he allowed me to go to the waiting room for the last 10 minutes. This seemed HUGE and I was sure to tell him how very proud I was that he had finished dance class all by himself.

When Buba went back for day two, again without his sister, he was nervous about going by himself, but didn’t cry when I said I was going to run an errand or two. When I came back at the end of the class, the teacher said he had done really well, and Buba beamed from ear to ear as he eavesdropped on our conversation.

For the rest of the day, he told anyone who would listen about how he went to dance camp “ALL. BY. MY. SELF!” And when Tiny was finally well enough to go with him for the third and final day, it was clear to him that she was joining his dance class.

Now that everyone is healthy again, things are pretty much back to the way they used to be with Tiny always taking the lead and Buba following willingly. But I’m so glad that we had that experience- that he had that experience. Because now we know that he does have some of that confidence in there, and that Buba can experience new things successfully without his sister. The sky’s the limit now.

Do your multiples always do activities together? And does their confidence seem to feed off each other (in good or bad ways)?

 

 

Who's In Charge Here?

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The other night, during one of our now typical epic bedtime failures, I started laughing so hard at the scene in front of me, thinking about Super Nanny – I think, at least, it’s her that says this — looking at me and my husband and asking with great disdain, “Who’s in charge here?” The girls were running wild, jumping on their floor beds, throwing themselves against the wall, tossing their Mr. Potato Head parts down the stairs, strangling each other and frantically rocking the large rocking chair while yelling, “Rock! Rock! Rock!!!” It was 9pm and nobody was going to sleep any time soon.

You see, I am a little overwhelmed. Lots of traveling + moving into a new house + a new clingy phase = absolute mayhem around here most days and nights. My girls refuse to sit in their new high chairs or sit down in the bath. They demand me and my lap constantly. They have suddenly begun waking every four hours screaming for bottles that just a month ago were almost completely eliminated from our routine. And as of two weeks ago, the only way I can get them to go sleep is to lie down with one on either side of me and let them flop around for an hour while they slowly settle themselves. I won’t even discuss naps, which occur only while wasting endless gallons of gas in the car.

How did I get here?

After losing a key piece of one crib during our recent move, I took it as a sign (brilliant!) and made a rash decision to abandon the cribs entirely (my girls are 19 months old) and transition to floor beds. Yes, yes, I know: all the HDYDI ladies have strongly recommended against beginning this transition too early. But I liked the Montessori-inspired floor bed idea, and I figured that having the beds to play on during the day would be a treat.

I also figured that giving them a bottle of milk at 6am when they woke would yield two additional hours of sleep for them and me in the morning. Though it worked for two days, my excellent idea has since backfired royally, with the 6am bottle slowly creeping back toward 2am, and a new round of screams/demands for “Babas” occurring at 6:30am. Of course, full wakefulness follows, and I’m now getting far less sleep than I got five months ago. As for their complete refusal to sit in the bath or high chairs and their propensity to hurt/attempt to murder each other every 15 minutes, I am blaming my 18-months-is-the-new-terrible-twos theory.

I know we need to institute some order and calm in our family. I know because I have cried three nights in a row and have poured myself increasingly larger glasses of wine each night after their long protracted bedtime. I know because my husband and I are sniping at each other like we did in those first sleep-deprived weeks/months of their infancy.

I know I need to wean them from their bottles and get them to stop demanding milk meals during the night. I know I need to re-Ferberize them (we did it with great success at 14 months). I know I need to figure out what in the hell I’m doing about their sleeping situation, and commit to these floor beds or find/buy the missing crib part and revert back to cribs.

I pride myself on being a laid-back mom, but somehow in the last few months my relaxed attitude has not served me well. I need to pick my battles and fix something, because many things in this situation are broken.

I think I’m going to start by working on reducing the amount of milk they drink during the night. Baby steps! And I’ll continue to enjoy liberal pours of red wine in the evening and that really great chocolate and tell myself that this, too shall pass. One day I’ll be in charge again!

So how do you all right the ship when it’s gone off course? How do you control the chaos and prevent it from controlling you?

Double Trouble

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8

I first heard someone refer to my twins as “double trouble” when I was still pregnant with Tiny and Buba. And it seemed that every time I pushed my sweet, little babies in the double stroller through the grocery store (yes, pulling the cart behind me) I’d hear that comment, “You’ve got double trouble!” at least two or three times.

But even when I was getting up many, many times a night to attend to my newborns’ cries, I never thought that they were double trouble. They were just babies, after all. And when Buba and Tiny started crawling and walking and getting into anything and everything they could, they still weren’t double trouble in my mind. Just curious little babies reminding me of the areas that I still needed to babyproof. At age two, the tantrums began, but my kids were kind enough to take turns tantruming, so I only ever dealt with one temper tantrum at a time. Frustrating and annoying? Yes. But still not quite double trouble.

Age three, however, has been a whole different ballgame. When Buba and Tiny are playing together, there is a lot of calculated toy snatching going on- often resulting in pushing and hitting from both sides and lots and lots of screaming and crying. We were once at a point where Tiny or Buba would do something naughty, but would stop the behavior when told to do so (A “That’s one” from 1-2-3 Magic was pretty much all it took). Now, not only does the offender often not stop, but the other one usually joins in using the excuse, “But s/he’s doing it!” as they both laugh their heads off (making my blood boil). And when I hear Buba call out, “Hey, Tiny! Want to go be naughty?” I know that nothing good is about to happen.

This time last year, my kids were tough as nails. But now, every little fall, every little scraped brings on major tears and dramatic crying. And to make matters worse, the kid who didn’t get a scrape, pretends to fall and get one so s/he can cry and get kisses for his/her pretend owie too. And then there’s the whining. Oh, the whining! It’s just non-stop!

From talking with other moms, I know that this is just what age three seems to be all about. Hubby and I are firm and consistent with our disciple approach (meaning some days there are lots, and lots of time outs and double time outs), and that seems to be just about all we can do until this not-so-fun stage passes. And don’t get me wrong, we do have some good days moments that remind me what sweet, funny, and caring children we have. But there are now plenty of moments where I look at my kids and think, “Uh-oh. I’ve got double trouble.”

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