The boys “wake up” at 7:45 – the owl clock turns green telling them they can get up. Usually they’re already awake and they yell out, “IT’S GREEN!” They can climb out of their cribs, but they don’t do it every day, and they don’t do it before we get to their room.
Breakfast is oatmeal (Trader Joe’s quick cook steel-cut oats) with smashed banana and blueberry sauce, sometimes with frozen blueberries on top. Also Cheerios, and sometimes raisins. Sometimes lately there will be a big tantrum if we don’t feed them fast enough, or in the order they prefer. (Usually it’s only one who does this, so that’s a small blessing, I guess?) After they eat, they play with stuff in their pajamas for awhile.
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I usually wake up with them and our nanny comes at 8:30, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Daddy wakes up with them and takes them to daycare. On nanny days, there is a long morning outing to somewhere like a musical performance at a kid-friendly café, or OMSI, or a park. Often there’s a parks & rec class (like sports, movement, preschool cooking) in there too, depending on the season.
When they’re at home, lunch is around 1230. There’s applesauce with chia seeds, yogurt (full-fat plain, mixed with homemade mango puree [from frozen store-bought mango pieces]), and then something like a frozen whole-grain waffle with jam, or a quesadilla, or a PBJ, or lately, a scrambled egg muffin.
They go down for nap between 1-130, and wake up between 330-4. Sometimes they stir, and sometimes they call out, “I’M AWAKE!”, and sometimes one will get out of his crib and stand at the top of the stairs until we notice them.
On nanny days, after our she leaves at 4:30, I usually take them to Swap & Play. (It’s a dedicated play space with three classrooms, open til 6pm seven days a week. It has been a GODSEND since we joined after Halloween!) Twice this month we’ve gone to the local library branch to select & check out books (like big kids!). Sometimes we might also go to the store.
On daycare days, I pick them up between 530/545. They always run and hug me and it’s the best thing ever. Usually one of them has to go potty (because they’re still reluctant to go as often as they need to at daycare), so I take them to the school bathroom. We drive home and listen to “songs” – all last year it was kid songs from the two children’s CDs, but this month it’s been ‘regular’ music. They are obsessed right now with Under Pressure (Freddie Mercury & David Bowie) and Blank Space from Taylor Swift. They also like Shake it Off, Ex’s and Oh’s, some Lion King songs, some Frozen songs (they have not seen either actual movie), and a couple other random pop-y songs.
Dinner is around 630. We rotate a number of “main dishes” like mac & cheese, crockpot chili, mini pizzas from Trader Joe’s. Side/second dishes include things like pumpkin soup, a sandwich, microwave meatballs, some pirate’s booty or veggie snacks, plus a homemade veggie pouch. Sometimes they remember to ask for dessert—chocolate cat cookies, or something special that we’ve made like banana “ice cream” or, the other day, a mini chocolate cake.
About three times a week we do bath after dinner, which is about 30 minutes of playing/splashing/shrieking, then protesting when it’s time to wash up. We wash their hair once a week or so. After that, they sit on the baby couch and watch TV. For all of 2015, it was sometimes an episode of Elmo, then Daniel Tiger overtook that, and then in December, they fell in love with Super Why.
Other nights, they just play. Blocks, beads (loose plastic beads–they are a big thing right now), books, running/chasing, groceries, puzzles, coloring with stamps or crayons, random toys they re-discover. (God, we have SO many toys in our house. It’s ridiculous.)
We try to get upstairs for bed around 820. We turn on the noise machine and projector, and Mister Turtle who projects the blue and green stars. We talk about our day, maybe sing a song (we used to do it every night consistently, but have been inconsistent lately), give cuddles, and say goodnight. Often there will be requests for more hugs after we’ve gone downstairs.
Weekend days are very similar. We try to do morning outings, but sometimes it’s hard to get them out the door. We’ll go to the Vancouver Library, or Costco, or a play cafe, or if it’s nice enough, we’ll go outside. (Only happened twice so far this month…but considering it’s January, that’s pretty awesome.)
And that’s our life right now!
Posted in Life with Toddlers | Tagged homelife, schedule, toddlers, twins | Leave a reply
Three!!
Posted on January 14, 2016
1
Dear sweet babies who are now most definitely not babies,
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You are THREE!! Three years old! I can’t believe it. You are self-described “big kids” now.
The six months between 2.5 and 3 were the most fun yet, I think. You love learning and doing things, and it’s making life a lot more interesting and fun. (There have definitely been frustrating and difficult things, too, don’t worry.) {Since this post is so late, I’m including the rest of 2015, so a month or so after you actually turned three.}
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You basically talk like big kids now. You know tons of words and you put together very long and fairly complex sentences, but you thankfully still have your toddler dialect. It’s so cute listening to you talk. Like, lately when going potty, sometimes you say you want some privacy, but you pronounce it “probacy.” You are still good about saying Excuse Me and Thank You. When you’re mad at us, you shout and stomp, “No Thank You!!” and, “Dat’s not nice!” and sometimes, “You need to go to timeout!” and often, “Don’t talk to me!” (I swear we don’t say that to them.)
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You have grown so much! Each of you grew an inch and a half between June and December, and are both right around 36 inches tall (Malcolm, you’re still between 1/2 and 1 inch taller). Malcolm, you also feel a lot heavier, but according to our scale, you weigh 32 pounds and Emmett, you’ve been 30-31 pounds.
Your manual dexterity has dramatically increased and improved. You want to do pretty much everything we do. I love seeing you concentrate doing these kind of fine-motor skills activities. You practice writing, you use stamps and paints.
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Potty training!! This is a big one. We’d been dreading dealing with this, and we knew at least that we wanted to wait after our big trip in September. So we both read a potty training book and scheduled our first no-diapers weekend for the long Columbus Day weekend in October. It definitely took more three days for things to ‘click’, and we felt like we would never be able to leave our kitchen, let alone our house, ever again. Thankfully that wasn’t the case–by the following week you were making clear progress. And a month later you were doing well enough to get you in big-boy undies. One of you can make it through nap with no pullup, and one of you can sometimes. We haven’t tackled night-time potty training at all yet, partly because it sounds like a ton of work and energy, and partly because you’re still sleeping in your cribs.
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Speaking of cribs, you finally learned to climb out of them. Gulp! However, because you are awesome and we are so lucky, you don’t climb out very often. So we haven’t pulled the trigger about going to big-kid beds yet. We’re crossing our fingers that the transition will go smoothly whenever we do that this year. You’re also still using pacifiers for nap and bedtime. We will definitely transition away from those soon!
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You’ll not only willingly hold hands when we ask, but you also sometimes want all of us to hold hands, and ask for it. <3 <3 You’re getting even better at hugs too (when you deign to give them, that is; sometimes you say, “I already gave you one before” or “Not right now, I’m too busy.”)–Malcolm, you like to actually put your arms around us, and you do a little hand pat. It feels magical and I swear it cures all ills. :) You will also say things like, “I missed you,” and “I’m so happy to see you.” (That’s what I always say when I pick you up at daycare or come back after being gone for awhile.)
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Your third birthday party was fantastic! We rented the toddler gym at a community center, and a bunch of friends enjoyed playing, doing crafts, and eating snacks and cake!
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Now that you aren’t babies, we gave ourselves the gift of de-babying the house (or starting to, at least). We gave away the changing table!!! Here’s what our living room (which is also the playroom and your ‘dressing room’) now looks like. IMG_6587_WEB
We also stopped using sippy cups and baby dishes. Instead, we use baby utensils and Corelle bowls and small plates (they are shatterproof). The dishwasher has to run every day now, but it’s such a relief to not deal with the soak bin that had lived in the sink for three whole years. You still drink a bit of milk in the evenings, and we use either plastic cups or mugs. :)
Things you eat: as many snacks as we will allow you. You would probably eat crackers all day every day if we let you. And you’d probably want ‘cheesy pasta’ (mac & cheese) every night for dinner. But we rotate things and limit the snacks…which of course you protest. You love frozen peas and corn and blueberries, you adore “smoolies” (smoothies). Malcolm, you’re still more open-minded to trying new things, and Emmett, you’re still a bit picky about new things or certain elements (like if you see “green things” or tomato bits in something, you want us to take it out or you won’t eat it). IMG_6599_WEB
Your creativity has blossomed even more. You create toys and ideas and play situations. You pretend to be teachers and if we try to do something or say something, they say, “No! We the teachers!” Awhile ago, you watched an episode of Daniel Tiger that featured ballet, ice skating, and the Nutcracker, and once it was over, you both popped up and created ‘ice skates’ out of empty oatmeal canisters.
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You still love music, and playing your baby guitar and ukelele, and now sometimes you make up your own songs to the tunes of existing ones. Here’s a moment captured from October:
“There was only time to watch half an episode of Daniel Tiger before bedtime. Not surprisingly, M and E got pretty upset when we turned off the TV in the middle of the show. M eventually picked up the ukulele, took it over to baby couch, sat down and improvised the following song (roughly to the tune of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”):
I was trying to play with Mama and Daddy /
But they wasn’t listening /
I wanted to watch the whole thing /
With Katerina and O the Owl and Daniel Tiger on the playground /
I wanted to watch it all day”
