MyTwintopia

And THIS, people is why Santa's bag will be almost empty this Christmas.



A playroom full of oft-ignored toys
A tote that can't close due to the abundance of 4T clothes that are waiting for the girls to grow
A cupboard or two filled with "not yet ready for them" toys

More than I hate clutter, I hate for my girls to have so much that they lose the joy of enjoying "just enough".

We're blessed. God has been very good to us this year. The girls have more than enough toys and clothes to take them into next Christmas. So we're making things real easy for Santa this year. He can come down that chimney with an empty bag and it'll be all good. It works for us. We'll still have a very merry Christmas once we get around to cleaning the playroom!

They're 3!

Yes indeed! Am I excited? Yes I am!
Is this belated birthday post going to be chock full of exclamation marks? Yes it is! :)


Having 3 year olds is amazing! They're playing together, having coherent conversations with us and each other and yes, fighting like cat and dog.

So what do their stats look like these days? I'm happy to respond that they've maintained the trend of their first and second years beautifully.

The adorable Ms Spice
Weighs a little over 27lbs and is just under 25th percentile for weight. Height-wise she's 36.5 inches which puts her squarely in the 25th percentile range for height as well. At age two she was around 23rd percentile on the CDC chart and I expected her to gain 3-6lbs over the year which she did. (Y'all know I'm anal about my charts and numbers, right?!)

Communication: This girl puts together some very advanced sentences. The most shocking was on their birthday when I told her it was time to go to the rec center for our spo…

This time 3 years ago, I picked up my hospital bag and headed to Methodist Hospital Houston to deliver my fraternal twin girls. I was 39 weeks pregnant. I didn't know what to expect and I didn't have a birth plan. I was going to wing it on hope and prayer because in my wildest dreams, I did not imagine an ending as surreal and ordinary as me walking into labor and delivery to have twin babies on just another Tuesday. 

I'm sharing my birth story today on the HDYDI blog.  I hope you'll stop over to read it and the many other stories from twin moms.

My girls will be turning 3 in a few days and I've spent the last couple of months researching and buying the "best toys" for their age. However, the realization hit me recently that the things that make my girls giddily happy most of the time are actually low-cost and I could totally give them a great birthday experience without breaking the bank. 

Here's my list of cheap and thrilling potential gifts for my 3 year olds (and maybe yours too)

A letter addressed to them in the mailbox. Spice has be walking around with an envelope with her name on it for 3 days now. She slept with it under her pillow. She knows I pick up the mail every evening and now recognizes that her name written down. Imagine her joy if I actually bring out an envelope with HER name on it from the mailboxA flashlight - any generic one from a dollar store would do. The girls beg and plead to play with the ones we have at home almost dailyStickersOld gadgets - like an old computer keyboard or camera. I…

It has finally happened. Today my Sugar slept in her big girl undies all night and woke up DRY! That's right people. Approximately
569 days after they first sat on a potty
293 days after I actively started the potty training
I have potty-trained twins!

Night Potty Training Twins: The final Chapter - How it happened.
Part 1: Spice was the first to become night trained. One night after she had conquered the daytime part of using the potty, she woke up screaming and frantic. I thought she had a nightmare but also notice she seemed fidgety. I took her to the potty and she peed and went back to sleep. That was the last time she needed to sleep in a diaper. She's been dry overnight and diaper-free ever since.
Time to fully potty train? Around 100 days

Part 2: Sugar also had a screaming fidgeting episode overnight and I followed the same formula I used with Spice. She stayed dry for 2 nights and on the third her bed was soaked so I put her back in diapers. She continued to use and soak her …

Thanksgiving is a big holiday both in Canada and USA. Some would say it's the biggest, most widely accepted holiday of the year. Coming from Nigeria however, Thanksgiving has never held a lot of meaning for me. The same cannot be said for my kids. For all intents and purposes, my kids are more Canadian than Nigerian and they are at the age of being conscious of national holidays and wanting to celebrate those holidays at home like typical Canadians.

So the question becomes; how do you celebrate a holiday that is foreign to you? Here are my tips:

Decorate for the holiday. It doesn't have to be anything elaborate. A fireplace or dining table is always a good spot for simple seasonal decorations like wreaths, table runners, candles and centerpieces. For this thanksgiving, I had a simple fall-themed runner on the table as well as a pumpkin centerpiece. These two items cost me less than $20 in total but contributed immensely to the celebratory vibe.Celebrate the day and make it speci…

Day 29 of my series on Work-Life Balance

It would be a travesty for me to get so close to the end of this not-so31-days series without talking about style and fashion in the workplace. A simple google search will show you that this is an evergreen topic of discussion. There are plenty of guides telling women what to wear, what not to wear and most of them always feature women in some form of suit. Doesn't work for me and probably everyone who works in casual or business casual settings.

Not every workplace style guide is applicable to individual situations but there are some general rules for working out your workplace style

Dress for your environment: Believe it or not, I spent the first year of my career as an associate in an accounting firm. Heels and powers suits were the norm. Then I switched to working a field engineering job and lived in the same 3 pairs of jeans for like forever. THEN I moved to an office job and even though I could still wear my jeans, I had to ditched the h…

Day 21 of my series on Work-Life Balance

Work-Life Balance = Being happy and content at home and at work
  = looking well put together + other things

One of the things I did just before having the twins was go to Macys and buy loungewear - that's a fancy name for pajamas with a zip in front. I had read stories online from other twin moms who confessed to being so tired and stretched thin that they couldn't find time for showers and even meals some days. Since they were speaking from experience, I got ready to walk down the same path.

Cue a few weeks later, the twins were born and I was puttering round the house unshowered, in my "lounge wear" with my hair looking like a hot mess. My sister, who had come to help me with the kids, took one look at me and asked "why are you looking like this?" I explained how tiring it was all supposed to be and putting some of my needs in the back burner blablabla. She fairly kindly assured me that if I tried to get up earlier, t…

Day 17 of my series on Work-Life Balance

poi·son noun noun: poison; plural noun: poisons a person, idea, action, or situation that is considered to have a destructive or corrupting effect or influence.
So what's the whole idea about poison and the working mom? Life is stressful and everyone needs a break sometimes. Most people find their poison of choice in shopping, gambling, alcohol, drugs, coffee bla bla bla. In the context of this post, your poison is that thing that helps you relax but if uncontrolled can also be destructive.

For me, it's shopping. I love to shop and I shop to relax. I can jump off the couch at 9pm determined to go buy some milk immediately. Can it wait? Probably. It's not really the milk, it's my desire to just unwind/relax/decompress by being in a store. That's not a bad thing. The worst thing you can do to yourself is refuse to find something that helps you relax - one day you're gonna blow and it won't be pretty. 
That's what I tell m…

Interrupting my series on Work-Life Balance to bring you a big announcement. 

MY BABIES ARE 35 MONTHS OLD TODAY

You heard right. 30 more days to the big 3. Perhaps I am a tad bit excited about this.

I don't know what we're going to do for their birthday which is on a Saturday yet. Party at home? Party in a play area? Or just a special family only day around time? 

No matter what, I have to tell you that the girls have been giving me glimpses of that the happy 3s and teenage years will be like. Their bonding, laughing, have an incredible sense of humour and have grown taller, bigger and "lippier"



Yeah, dem girls grew some lip this past month or so. With Sugar, when I say or do something she doesn't agree with, she makes a "tcha" sound with her lips. Similar to an adult hissing.
Spice on the other hand now has the habit of saying "what?!!". I don't mean a curious "what's that mom?", I mean an obnoxious "whatchu talkin bout girl?…

Day 14 of my series on Work-Life Balance

There's a group of service providers that every mom needs to have in their contacts. For me as a mother working outside the home, these are the people that make up my team

A contractor you trust to be alone in your home - for renovationsA good handyman who's willing to work weekends (plumbers and electricians are critical)A babysitter who familiar with the kids and willing to work evenings and/or weekends - for the occasional date nights, Christmas parties etc. An auto service that either allows overnight drop-offs or offer a shuttle service - without this, you'll end up spending precious weekend hours waiting for an oil changeA list of grocery stores with shopping cart accommodations for 2 kids OR a grocery delivery serviceDoctors that work weekends or late hours - this is a bonus that's not always possible
I'll be writing about being a working mother throughout October and sharing my personal experiences. Emphasis on personal…