MyTwintopia

Every working mother is in the unending race to find work life balance and I am not exempt from this. With time,  I've found some tips and strategies that work for me. Over the next month, I'd love to share those tips in the hope that it can be a blessing to some other mother in my situation. An added bonus is that my blogging has been so sporadic, hopefully this will give me the much needed jolt to go back to a more regular posting schedule.

I'll also be sharing here at the nester's annual 31 days of change linkup. I know I swore I would never do this again after I did it in 2011. Still I did it in 2012 and vowed to NEVER try this again; but here I am in 2013 planning to post for 31 days consecutively. What can I say? I'm a sucker for self-punishment.

Regardless of how much I freak out in disbelief, I can no longer hide from the fact that I have a third birthday party to plan for my princesses. Yep, third birthday. Do you remember back in the day when they couldn't even crawl?

I've been feeling pretty nostalgic these days but apart from that, I've also been working on a gift list for the girls that will cover their birthdays in November and Christmas in December. I'm very happy to be using my "Body, Mind, Soul and Spirit" gift buying policy as a guide. Thankfully, the list is taking shape. I like to start buying early so I can space out all the purchases leading up to the big day. Here are the options I'm looking at right now based on the girls' interests and my pocket book


Something for the body Doctor and fireman dress up costumes. So far, the Fisher Price doctor kit is my front contenderAn indoor trampoline to help us survive the long indoor days of Calgary winters. Not likely because I don't …

"All good things come to an end" must be a saying that someone came up with in September when the cold started creeping in. Summer is officially over and the temperatures in Calgary are already dropping. This was the first time ever that I would make a summer list and I didn't expect to meet most of my objectives but boy was I wrong. There's something about writing lists that just makes things happen, and happen they did mostly spontenously! Well not everything but some of it - the veggies were an epic fail as was the cycling class. 

Main lesson for Summer activities with 2 year old twins? 
KEEP IT SIMPLE
GO WITH THE FLOW 
LAUGH WHEN YOU GET IT RIGHT & LAUGH HARDER WHEN YOU DON'T
THE NEXT SUMMER IS JUST 250 DAYS AWAY!


Visit the Calgary zoo: The horrendous flood in June has the Calgary Zoo shut down for quite some time BUT we ended up visiting the London Zoo. Bonus points for going with cousins. Find ducks to feed in Calgary: Did not find one quacker. Maybe there ar…

Two years ago, I used to carry a backup diaper bag in my car with food, diapers, wipes, change of clothing and the kitchen sink. With infant twins, it was sorta unavoidable. Now that I have preschoolers *adjusts tie*, the diaper bag has been replaced by a car basket filled with "essentials" for the almost-3 year olds.



This is what it usually looks like, stocked with plenty of snacks that can be neatly eaten, disposable toilet seat covers and wipes. The snacks are a must have for our commutes and when a trip lasts longer than expected. That one time I ran out of food in the car basket.... it was not pretty.

Life with 2 year old twins lesson number 10: A hungry baby is a mightily angry baby.

As the girls approach the age where they are officially preschoolers, I'm also trying to be more intentional with what I'm teaching them at home and preparing them for kindergarten.

READING:
The first part of teaching the girls to read came with having them learn the letters of the alphabet and I shared the most useful tools for this in an earlier post. 

What comes next after learning all the letters of the alphabet  Learning the sounds they make. I downloaded the LeapFrog Letter Factory "movie" from iTunes and its one of the twins' favorite shows to watch. It's got amazing ratings from parents both on itunes and on Amazon and I can see why. Since they started watching it, they now know the sounds all the letters make and we practice regularly with street signs. Next step will be to start pronouncing actual words

wRITING:
The girls favorite activities is still having me hold their hands to write letters. I'm still trying to figure out alternative ways to teac…