Last Halloween, my boys were 3 and 10 months, and for Halloween, they each wanted to be an animal - a tiger and a bat.  We cruised the Halloween superstores, and found the right styles and the right sizes, and brought our booty home.  They wore their costumes for weeks, ran around roaring and squeaking, and had a great time.



Flash forward one year.  A Halloween catalog arrived in September, and you would have thought that it was Toys R Us Christmas catalog.  They picked the catalog as their bedtime story, so we went through each page and talked about the different costumes.  I quickly realized that they were now absolutely over being anything that seemed remotely cute, and what they really wanted to be were superhero fighting guys (and possibly a princess - but that is another post).  Now, I have to admit that when they turned 4, I opened Pandora's Box, and started letting them watch Cartoon Network  non-PBS fare.  So I shouldn't be at all surprised that a fluffy dog costume now holds ZERO appeal over the possibility of Star Wars Storm Troopers or Transformers.

I started in on the negotiations.  "A" decided that he wanted to be Batman.  I looked at the costume and decided it was funny and fairly innocuous, and agreed.  "S", however, decided that he *must* be Wolverine or die.  For you parents of twin girls uninitiated, Wolverine is an X-man, and his appeal is that he has long daggers that extend from his knuckles.  I took one look, and thought of all the possible stabbing targets - the dogs, the brother, French toast - and nixed it.  But, one day of tears and pleading wore me down.  I told "S"  he could be Wolverine, but that he would not be able to play with the claws (except for the picture below!) Score Sam: 1, Mom: 1/2. Off to Affordable Treasures.  The boys were on their best behavior as I negotiated the screwy sizes and tried to discern the differences between the 3 Batmans.  As we continued our search, I noticed that even if I had managed to convince either of my boys to be some kind of animal - we wouldn't have been able to actually purchase anything, as you simply cannot find animal costumes for children over 4.  (Scooby-Doo doesn't really count).   I realized that, once again, I was not alone, and 4 years must be the turning point when most kids no longer want to be something as boring as a lion or tiger.  

We brought our treasures home, and the boys could not have happier.   I love their new costumes, but I'm just a little wistful on how quickly they grow up, and on how much one year can make a difference.   I try to remember what all the parenting books say, and to enjoy each stage as it arrives, because it will be gone in an instant.  So this year, we embrace their inner superhero, because who knows what next year will bring!

 

Original post to Mad About Multiples.

 My 3.5 year old twins and I are out and about all the time and like most toddlers, they LOVE to snack!  I never leave the house without all their favorites: berries, cheese, carrots, yogurt, crackers, cut up fruit, raisins, pasta, meats, etc., etc.  If I'm really pressed for time and we are heading to the park, I've been known to stop at McDonald's Subway for a quick lunch. 

My twins are great eaters but we are definitely stuck in a rut.  I pick up the usual stuff when I'm at Costco (where else can you buy loads of snacks for two hungry toddlers?!).  I usually throw in a few premade meals for dinner and if it's frozen, I'm all over it!  My kids aren't too picky and they love to try new things, but I just don't always have the time or energy creativity to try something new at home.  I go for fast and easy (and healthy!) and that usually means a rotisserie chicken, rice and broccoli.  They are also getting to the age where they really want to help in the kitchen and are interested in how food is prepared.  They want to stir, pour and chop.  Since I'm not much of a cook, the only exposure to cooking they've had is the occasional cookie decorating or stirring of pancake mix.  So my goal is to work some new foods into our somewhat bland dinner menu and find ways to involve the kids in preparing our family meals in hopes that it will also encourage them to try new and healthy foods.

Recently my twins and I attended a Funfoodle class on Friday co-founded and taught by our very own Toni Bloom: current Gemini Crickets Co-President and mom to 3 boys: a 4 year old and 2 year old twins.  I was looking forward to the class all week and I was anxious to see if and how my kids would participate.  The food of the day was wontons!  Toni did a wonderful lesson on how wontons are made and the different ways they can be folded.  She used pictures of wontons and of course the children got to hold an uncooked wonton and describe how it looked, felt and tasted.  Toni had carefully prepared ahead of time several different wontons for the children (and parents!) to touch, smell, lick and taste.  The children bit into a wonton with cream cheese, soy sauce and onion.  They tasted a veggie wonton stuffed with cabbage and tofu.  The children absolutely loved it!  Toni talked about each ingredient and encouraged the children to describe what they were tasting.  She passed around a head of cabbage (my two took off a leaf and started munching away - something I've never seen them do before!) and she passed around the tofu.  Last but not least, the sweet wonton - banana and chocolate chip.  Yummy!  They were given the ingredients to then create their own banana and chocolate chip wonton.  My 3.5 year olds were carefully slicing bananas, adding chocolate chips (and putting a few in their mouths along the way when they thought no one was looking) and then experimenting with the different folds - samosa style (triangle), ravioli style and envelope style. 

The kids really enjoyed themselves and we all learned how to cook with some new and simple ingredients - something I never would have thought to do on my own.  Today wontons, tomorrow ratatouille! 

It's been one week since we've been to the class and I went out and bought Canola oil (no, we didn't even have that in the house) so we could cook up our own banana chocolate chip wontons.  The kids loved showing Dad how they made them all by themselves.  We plan on going to the Farmer's Market near our house to look for new and interesting ingredients to cook with this weekend.  You can even find a container of tofu in the frig which the kids love to cut up (we are working on getting them to actually eat it).  I have my two little helpers in the kitchen now and who knows - I might even crack open a cookbook soon!

For current Gemini Crickets club members, check out our giveaway opportunity from Funfoodle! Click here.

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Original Post to Mad About Multiples.

Visit www.funfoodle.com for upcoming classes and information on how to register for a unique and fun food experience with your children!

So, back to the terrible twos/threes... Up until about 18 months, babies can be expected to cry in order to have their every needs met. But at about the age of year and a half, there's a developmental change. Parents begin to set boundaries, which can be very confusing to toddlers, and as their world begins to change, routine become more important to them. At about the age of two, toddlers start to understand the concept of making choices. However, what is even harder to grasp, and sometimes unacceptable to a two year old, is that choosing one option means letting go of the other. This frustration can result in temper tantrums (and in the case of my 20 month old girls, lots of them). At this point in the meeting, Etsuko rhetorically asks, “So what can we do?” To which an enthusiastic audience member suggests, “DUCT TAPE!” Now this may seem like a brilliant solution, but only until Social Services comes a knockin'. Our trusty presenter suggests that instead of duct tape, that we realize that each of our children has the very inherent need to belong and to feel valuable, powerful, capable, understood, and loved. Redirection shows us how these needs can be met and here's a few key elements to help guide the way:

• Set clear boundaries – e.g. Hitting/biting/throwing carrots on the floor is NOT ok (consider what are priorities for YOU); don’t make everything unacceptable. Pick your battles!

• Try and find win/win solutions which both you and your child can live with – For example, is your three year old asking for cookies all day long? (Mama cookie! Mama cookie! MAMA COOKIE!!) Let them have some control20by letting them have 3 cookies a day, but they can decide when they get eaten.

• Think about the behavior behind the action – Are your tots asking for ice cream before dinner because they are testing boundaries or are they really hungry? If they are actually hungry, perhaps they can have a piece of fruit or the ubiquitous cheese stick to tide them over until those frozen chicken nuggets are out of the microwave...errr...I mean, organic chicken breasts are poached.

•  Ask them to do the behavior you WANT them to do – Rather than, “Stop jumping on the bed. Stop jumping on the bed. STOP JUMPING ON THE BED!”, try “Please jump on the sofa.” Just kidding, the correct answer is “Please jump on the FLOOR.” (Or outside, whatever the case may be).

• Not making any headway? Stop talking! - When it's apparent that=2 0you child is not taking “no” for an answer, try just nodding or shaking your head in response. The lack of engagement might deter your child from the continued pestering/attempts to negotiate further. They will also learn that when you say “NO”, it really means “NO” and no amount of talking will change that.

• Offer your child choices and consequences – remember that with younger kids, the consequences need to be immediate.

And now, a little more about choices (and consequences):

• Offer your child TWO choices and be as specific as possible. - Do you want to walk to the minivan holding my hand or do you want me to carry you? (This is code for HURRY HURRY we are late AGAIN!!

• Do not ask a question when “no” is not an acceptable answer. - For example, you should not ask “Are you ready to go to bed?” if you are not willing to have them stay up later than the usual bed time. Just say “It’s time to go to bed”.

• When you are presenting them the choices, it should be acceptable whichever they chose. For example, do you really want to say “Either you put on your shoes right now, or we stay home without going on the playdate!” ? (This is in reference to the GC playdate where YOUR friends are coming and you've been waiting all week to see them, Starbucks in-hand.) If, not going to the playdate, is not okay with you, don’t offer this option in the first place.

• Keep in mind that making choices is still hard at this age, because it means letting go of another desirable option. A good way to deal with the issue of indecision is to say, “If you don't decide, I'm going to decide for you.” (My husband uses th is all the time with me. Works great!)

• In terms of twins, it's important to be creative and find consequences that do not “punish” the non-offending child. For example, if you are at the park and one child is throwing sand in the face of said fellow-mom-of-twins' dear child, have them sit next to you for 10 minutes, rather than scooping up both kids and leaving the playdate immediately.

• If you child changes their mind after choosing, you can say something like, “You already made your decision. You can try again tomorrow.” This strategy also works in situations where they are trying to negotiate out of being disciplined.

If nothing else, remember this HOT TIP: Kids at this age tend to choose the second option provided, so word your question wisely: “Do you want Mommy to tuck you in, or do you want Daddy to do it?” Hee hee!
So maybe you have older kids with different issues now, like constant, ever-present, how-long-will-this-phase (please let it be just a phase) fighting. The General Meeting focused on the issue of sibling rivalry, sibling conflict, and why kids fight. In terms of sibling rivalry, it's important to know that how you handle this issue can carry well into adulthood because it can affect how your twins relate later in life (insert “Oh no, my kids' going to end up in therapy” fear here). “So why do your children fight?”, Etsuko asked. Boredom, attention, frustration, power, and “to drive me crazy” were all popular audience responses. She explained further that there are two common “mistaken goals” that children have which lead to the misbehavior; attention and power. The attention-craver, who will do anything for attention, thinks that “the more attention Mommy gives me, the more she loves me.” The power-seeker believes, “The more power I have, the more valuable I am to my parents.” Both of these are their inappropriate ways to get their needs met – which are to feel loved and valued.

To determine if you child is wanting attention or power, think of each of these examples:

Example #1 - Attention

Dad: “Please go wash your hands for dinner.”

Attention Seeker: “Daddy, watch this. Watch me jump! Daddy! Daddy! Watch, Daddy! Daddy, watch this! WATCH, DADDY”

Dad feels annoyed.

Example #2 - Power

Mom: “Please go wash your hands for dinner.”

Power Seeker: “NO! You're not the boss of me!”

Mom's inside-voice: “Oh YES I AM!” and she is now PO'ed.

The motive behind the child's behavior (attention or power) can help you understand how to better deal with the situation. However, some of the things you can do as a parent to minimize sibling rivalry include:

• Try not to compare or label your children, even when you think it's a positive comparison (example for the positive comparison would be "Wow! You got that math homework done in only 20 minutes. Your brother really struggles with math."

• Encourage, rather than praise 0 You want to ensure that your children are internally (rather than externally) driven. Etsuko tells a story of a little boy who went down the slide over and over, never seeming to tire. But in fact, he didn't enjoy the actual activity at all – he just wanted to see his mom jump up and down, clap her hand in glee and cheer “yay” whenever he got to the bottom of the slide! This also means, don't rely to heavily on rewards. Rewards, like stickers, could be effective for things like potty training or other specific, short-term task-based goals, but you don't want to train you kids to only do what you want if there's a treat involved.

•  How can you tell the difference between encouragement vs overpraising? Think about what you would say to a friend who made you a lovely dinner. Would you ecstatically exclaim in falsetto, “This is the most delicious salad ever! You are the best cook in the world! Good job!” Maybe a more likely response would be, “This salad tastes yummy! I appreciate you inviting me over to have a nice meal. What's your secret ingredient?” You get the idea...

• Focus on the effort (process), rather than the outcome – Etsuko described how a father who took RCB course put this strategy into practice: While taking his child out for a golf lesson, his son hit a most amazing shot. The proud father was so excited; he wanted to jump up and down, yelling, “My son's going to be the next Tiger Woods!” But having just completed the RCB course, he held back his exuberance and simply asked his son, “Wow! How did you do that?” His son replied in disbelief, “I have no idea, Dad.” The father's simple response took the pressure off his son to have a repeat the performance and allowed them both to relax and enjoy the rest of their round.

When handling the sibling rivalry, we should also allow our children to express their emotions – including “negative” feelings such as “I don’t like my sister”. Don’t deny what your child is expressing, because feelings are neither good nor bad – they just are. Children need a safe space where they can express their emotions. Be curious as for why they say what they do. Be sure and ask “How come?” w ith genuine curiosity – they might actually have a good reason! Obviously, if they are expressing their feelings in inappropriate ways such as hitting, biting, etc. we need to teach them what more appropriate ways to get their point across.

Etsuko also covered some techniques on how to handle sibling conflict. In managing your kids’ fighting, keep the following points in mind;

• Don’t take sides.
  

• Put them in the same boat; If they are fighting over a toy, neither of them get to play with it.

• Watch your tone of the voice. Be loving and accepting, not judgmental.

• Stay out of bickering

 Teach them to express their feelings appropriately. Have them state two things;“I feel……” & “I want……”.

After having both of them express these two things, ask them “How can we make it work for both of us?” Let them figure it out on their own as much as possible.

• Separate them if the situation becomes physical or dangerous.

Sibling rivalry and conflict can be hard on kids, but even more frustrating for parents who may feel stuck in the middle. With mutiples, fighting is probably inevitable (and if your kids don't, please volunteer to be a speaker for a future meeting!), so try the above strategies, because surely it can't make things worse, right? RIGHT?
In terms of dealing with the terrible twos and sibling rivalry, there's no denying that these can be trying times. But take comfort in knowing that there are effective redirection techniques available to parents. By utilizing the strategies and tips covered in the meeting, maybe not every meltdown or fight results in Mommy or Daddy needing a timeout.

August is a strange time for me.  This is the month that I celebrate the life of my beautiful daughter, who just turned five.  I also mourn the loss of her twin, Peyton, who died at birth.  From outward appearances, my involvement in Gemini Crickets stems from my being the mom of my crazy three-and-a-half year old twin boys.  But, I was a twin mom even before that when I got pregnant with my identical twin girls.

Mine is a somewhat confusing tale to outsiders.  They ask if my twin boys were born premature and I shake my head as I remember the birth of the boys, one who weighed just over seven pounds; the other, just under seven pounds.  The doctor and nurses exclaimed as they pulled the boys out, “Wow, those are BIG twins!”  If I happen to mention that my daughter was 13 weeks premature, inevitably the next question is, “Do they know why?”  The answer to this is unfortunately somewhat complicated and too tragic for public consumption so I usually respond with something vague.

The situation is that Nicole and Peyton were in a precarious physiological state when they were in my womb.  Being identical twins, they shared a placenta and were at risk for a condition called “twin-to-twin-transfusion-syndrome” or TTTS.  Single babies actually reside in two sacs.  The outer sac is the amniotic sac; the inner is the chorionic sac.  When twins share a chorionic sac, they also share a placenta and there is a danger that their blood supplies can become connected.  This results in one twin literally giving the other a transfusion.  As a result, one twin gets too much blood/nutrients (the recipient); the other not enough (the donor).   This places a lot of strain on both babies and the mortality rate is 60-100%.  Strangely, it is often the recipient who has the harder time due to the stress of all the extra fluids on the baby’s organs, but this wasn't the case with us.  Nicole was the recipient and Peyton was the donor.

In my 27^th week of pregnancy, I wasn’t feeling the babies kicking as much.  I went to the ER and they monitored for an evening, and then sent me home.  The next night, I was back again with the same symptoms.  The following afternoon, I went to a perinatologist who diagnosed TTTS.  Via ultrasound, they could see the disproportion in the size of each babies sacs.  The reason I couldn't feel the babies' movement was because Nicole was swimming around in tons of amniotic fluid and Peyton's was nearly depleted so she was "stuck."  They scheduled me for an amniocentesis, in which they would drain the excess fluid from Nicole's amniotic sac.  If caught early enough, this procedure seems to balance out the inequalities and often women with TTTS go back repeatedly for this procedure throughout the remainder of the pregnancy.

They ended up draining a gallon of excess fluid from Nicole’s sac and it weighed eight pounds.  Not moments later, both babies were in severe distress and they rushed me in to the OR for an emergency c-section.  The chaos of two perinatologists, two neonatologists and probably six nurses was intense.  So focused on saving the babies were the staff that they didn’t notice that I had thrown up and was almost choking.

Several minutes later, one of the neonatologists came in to say that Peyton didn’t make it.  She had taken a few breaths, but weighed only 1-1/2 pounds and was just too fragile.  Minutes later, they came in to say that Nicole was alive, but fighting for her life.  They brought me a baby to hold in my arms and it took me a few moments to realize that this was my precious Peyton, an angel who only had a few moments on this earth.  As you can imagine, the whole experience was surreal and overwhelming.

Nicole struggled significantly with a host of medical problems due to her prematurity and the TTTS.  Every major organ was either underdeveloped and/or traumatized.  She had a GRADE 3 brain bleed that was particularly worrisome.  Now if you don’t believe in miracles, hear this.  After eleven arduous weeks in the NICU, Nicole emerged completely healthy.  The brain bleed had completely disappeared and she came home at a whopping six pounds!  Once home, Nicole thrived.  She was monitored closely by Early Start and hit her developmental marks every time.  My little miracle just started kindergarten and if you adjust the age, that means she’s more than three months younger than the very youngest child in her grade.  I feel I can brag a little because I’m just so darned proud of her!

Now’s the time where I wipe away my tears and hope that I’ve left my reader with some hope and not too much sadness.  We all live with some degree of loss and it makes what we have all that much more precious.

Original post to Mad About Multiples. Lisa can be found at the Curious Georges.