MyTwintopia

Since the girls have been successfully counting from 1 to 10 for a while now, I decided to tackle the alphabet next. Just like when learning numbers, what works best for us is making this fun and part of everyday life. Here's a short list of tools / educational toys that have really helped the girls learn their letters.
The Alphaberry: Santa brought this over for Christmas. Basically, with this toy the child pushes a letter and the alphaberry says what the letter is out loud. It also has a button that when pushed sings the alphabet song. This toy gets bonus points for having an adjustable volume control. I take the bonus points back because the battery compartment was screwed on so thigh that I am now unable to change the dead batteries on one of themSchylling magnetic letters: I bought a magnetic whiteboard (available from Costco and Walmart for less that $10) and mounted it on the wall. On it I have wooden magnetic letter blocks and the girls love this. They pick up a letter and…

My last potty training update was Tuesday of the first week. What has happened since then?

Ms Spice:
Will sit on the potty but won't do anything. I've concluded that she's physically and mentally able to use the potty but emotionally has decided it's going to be a power struggle between the two of us. I think this will be counterproductive and a lose-lose situation so starting this week, I have her back in diapers. We'll try again in a few months

Ms Sugar:
Had a couple of accidents in that first one week and quickly figured out that going to potty is the solution. Both in school and at home she will say "potty" when she wants to go. She successfully went for the whole of last week without an accident. 

Right now she's capable of going to the bathroom by herself and taking care of business without adult supervision (she'll even bring the potty to where TwinDad and I are so we can "admire" her work). She's not ready to poop in the potty yet…

This is the week where we break the tabs on the first of our size 3T clothes. 
Sugar in pic above checked out all the labels on the clothes and then ripped them all off and threw in the trash. Spice in pic below put on her "Princess Ariel" costume and checked out the fit of the clothes just as she's seen mommy do.

The girls and I spent Saturday morning checking out which 3Tclothes would fit and which ones were still too big; plus weeding out the too short 2T clothes. It was a lot of fun for me and made me realize that the girls had too many size 2T clothes. I'm currently stocking their 4T clothes box and will definitely be focusing more on quality than quantity now that the clothes are supposed to last a year. 

These photos are for week 2 of my Project 52 for 2013. My goal is to take at least one picture every week and write a note to the girls on it. Some weeks will have pictures of the girls together and some weeks will be individual pictures of each girl.

*   Samanth…

A boppy pillow was one of those items a lot of moms raved about and I had on my wishlist while pregnant with the twins. Since I already had a brand new twin breastfeeding pillow, I decided to buy a used boppy pillow from one of my colleagues. H was selling it for $10 and for an additional $5 he offered to throw in a digital baby scale. For 5 bucks, I got my most under-appreciated baby item - the Redmon Weight to Grow digital baby scale.

Apart from when we were in transition and our things were in storage, I've used this scale every month to monitor the girls' growth. I've found the scale to be very accurate and it gives their weigh to the nearest half ounce i.e it gives weight readings like 24lbs 9.5oz.

Does every baby need to be measured monthly? No.
Do twins need to be measured monthly? Probably not.
Do twins born to a mother with a vivid imagination need to be measured monthly? Absolutely

How does having a digital weight scale help me?
It makes it easier to track the effec…

Day 2 Sunday:
*  We went to church. I had the girls in pull-ups

*  It was my birthday and I had a surprise lunch/dinner date without the girls

*  My only contribution to potty training was to go buy the Walmart branded training pants (cause you know I can't resist doing a comparison with the popular brand names plus it costs half as much!)

Day 3 Monday:
*  Once the girls woke up, I put them on the potty for a few minutes but nothing was deposited. I think I need to catch them earlier but I don't want to interrupt those first few minutes of cuddling every morning

*  The girls wore pull-ups to daycare AND Spice made a peepee in the toilet one time. I celebrate all progress. 


*  Once we got home in the evening and had dinner, I tried the "hallway confinement" style again. This time Spice was the one to dash to the potty and deposit a small peepee. As reward, she got to flush. (I did wonder why the volume was really small. I got my answer the next morning). Sugar held it in til…

So I've survived my first weekend of potty training twins (Mr Jack Daniels was not so lucky) and here's the report card on what I'm hopeful will be a very short and successful process. 

Supplies on hand for the weekend of potty training at home:  
Two pottys (1 Baby Bjorn and 1 Arm & Hammer) in the girl's bathroom.
12 big girl panties
Toddler wipes (Kandoo brand)
Teeshirts, capris and leggings

Day 1 Summary:
*  We had several clothing changes and underwear changes due to around 7 accidents
*  The girls napped in their diapers. I'm not ready to cross that bridge yet
*  I stayed home all day and did the laundry at the end of the day

Obstacles to success:
Watching TV. The girls get so absorbed that they ignore their body cues. It's better to have them involved in play that's less engrossing

What didn't work:
*  Taking them to the potty every 30 minutes. With kids that are able to communicate and fairly aware of their bodies, they just found my behaviour aggravating
…

It's finally time to bite the bullet and start actively potty training the twins. The process has been a while in the making and now I think we're ready to take the plunge as all the preparation steps have been taken. What steps?

Buy 2 potty seats. We own 1 Baby Bjorn, 1 Arm & Hammer and 2 Bambino Mio pottys - 2 pottys for each level of the house. My favorite is the Baby Bjorn and I would recommend that for younger toddlers like mine. It's important to have at least 1 potty per child. If I had to do it again, I wouldn't go with the rule of having potty stations on each level of the house because we spend most of our active waking hours on one level.Get babies used to sitting on the pottys: The girls have been sitting on their pottys right before bedtime since they were 16 months old. I've only had Spice pee in the potty a couple of times but the objective here was to get them used to sitting on the potty for at least 5 minutes at a timeGet them to understand wha…