Theories on Housekeeping with Twins

Sweeping: if you wait long enough, the dust forms itself into a dust bunny and then you can just pick it up and throw it away.

Buttermilk Oatmeal Pancakes - toddler friendly!

These were a big hit with the girls. They're adapted from a recipe in the original Laurel's Kitchen cookbook - one that I grew up with.

Buttermilk Oatmeal Pancakes
1-1/4 cups buttermilk
1 cup quick oats

1 tablespoon canola oil
2 eggs, beaten
2 teaspoons vanilla

1/2 cup flour (can use whole wheat)
1 heaping tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt

Combine the buttermilk and oats in a bowl and let stand at least 5 minutes.

Add the oil and beaten eggs and vanilla, mixing well. Stir in the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. mix just until the dry ingredients are moistened.

Bake on a hot, buttered griddle, using 1/4 - 1/3 cup of batter for each pancake. Turn them when the top is bubbly and the edges are slightly dry.

YUM! We broke them into pieces for the girls but I'm looking forward to the day when we can make the pancakes a little smaller and then just hand the girls a whole one.

A great gift... without leaving the house!

You know those Target ads on TV (at least I think it's Target) where gifts keep giving way to other gifts in a creative, continuous chain? This program is kind of like that, but crunchy. A San Francisco based organization named Kiva allows individuals to give microloans to individuals who are seeking them around the world. So in $25 increments you can give support in someone's name to a dairy farmer in Peru, a food bodega in Lebannon, a clothes seller in Kenya, a bike repairman in Ghana... lots of people and businesses and places to choose from. And then your loan is repaid. At which point you (or in the case of a gift, the gifted) can loan the money to someone else or just withdraw the funds.

My husband's family has a system set up where you only buy one gift for everyone in the extended family and the recipient rotates every year. This year I drew the impossible to buy for relative... you know, the wealthy minimalist. He doesn't want anything, and what he does want he can buy a much nicer version of than we ever could anyway. So we got him two loans on Kiva to individuals whose businesses are in his lines of interest.

And you get updates on the recipient's business and the progress their making (or not making) with their loan, too.

For the duration of the holidays, I'm going to post a banner about their work on this blog.

Four Ears

We had our first brush with an ear infection this weekend. It was unfolding over the past week, but I was oblivious and didn't realize what was going on until our one daughter running a low fever suddenly spiked a 104.5 temp. We had to go to the emergency room and everything.

The thing was she was so calm and playful and didn't show any typical symptoms of an ear ache. I just gave her Tylenol like the nurse at our doctor's office said and didn't think too much of her 100-101 fever. Probably a mild bug. At the hospital, though, they said she actually had one perforated ear drum that had already begun to heal on its own, but the other ear was still infected.

I feel like there was one take-away lesson for other twin parents here. Apparently it should have been a bit of a clue that our other daughter had NO symptoms or fever at all. If it was a bug the girls probably would have shared it, like they do their saliva all over their toys. Next time one has a low fever for 2 days and the other is perfectly healthy, we're going in to see the doc stat!

International Moola, or Hannukah Gelt Cookies my way

This isn’t really about staying green and certainly not about staying sane, but we had a Hannukah party this weekend. It was great fun.


The night before the party I stayed up later than I have in a long time because I actually found myself absorbed in a project that I was enjoying for my own sake. Hannukah Gelt (when I was little for a long time I thought the word was Guilt) sugar cookies decorated with currencies of the world. And here we have the Money Picture…


Currencies above include (clockwise from top): Serbia, dinar; Poland, zlwotych; US (and many other countries), dollar; Uzbekistan and Kazakstan, som; European Union (select countries), euro; South Korea and North Korea, won; Thailand, baht; Afghanistan, afghanis; India, Pakistan (and others), rupees.

For any other money anthropologists out there, here’s the website where I got the symbols.

And finally on the subject of Hannukah Gelt: why does the metal wrapped chocolate stuff always taste like wax? And why do I still eat it??

Sweater swap

Thought this is a cool program:

Banana Republic and Goodwill Industries are giving customers a chance to ‘share the warmth’ while shopping. Holiday shoppers can trade in their gently-worn sweaters at any Banana Republic store in exchange for a 30 percent discount on a regular-priced sweater between December 6 through 12. Donated sweaters will be sold in Goodwill retail stores across the country, and the proceeds will fund Goodwill job training programs that benefit hundreds of thousands of people each year.

But not sure if sweaters that have made it through a year with twins count as just "gently" worn. Forget the spit-up and snot, there's the pilling from baby carrier wearing, too. I realize I've lost all perspective on cleanliness in outerwear after MY mom sent me back in to change what she called a dirty sweater this weekend. I thought it was perfectly fine. Oh well.

Dreaming of a Green Christmas

I just got to do a story about a fun and green holiday topic. There's an organization in San Francisco that will rent families a living tree for the holidays. For $90, Friends of the Urban Forest (FUF) will deliver a living tree to your house and then pick it up after the holidays. You just have to water it and decorate it for about a month. Once it's back in the hands of FUF, they'll grow it a little bigger in their nursery and then plant it somewhere on the streets of an under served neighborhood in San Francisco.

There's more info here:
http://www2.sfenvironment.org/greenchristmas/

The folks at FUF says it's a program that's unique to SF right now, but there's lots of room for other cities to tackle a program like this. And some could probably offer the more traditional looking Christmas trees in their program.

Toy-less play

Sometimes when it's time to entertain my two little babies it just feels easy and appropriate to thrust an educational toy their way. But inevitably I notice how much joy they get from a simple spoon and kitchen scoop and wonder how much the toys really teach them above and beyond these everyday objects.

A friend recommended these books, Your Child at Play. It talks about the theory behind the development at each stage and the best games for each age (the series goes until 8 years). By understanding this, it makes it easier to just create appropriate play with everyday objects. Before I was able to get my hands on a copy, my mom found this online site. It has PDF guides to playing with your child, month by month. It covers a lot of the same issues to help ensure age-appropriate, toy-less learning with your infants.

Battery Recycling

Baby equipment takes an army of batteries. We have all the used ones right now sitting around for recycling. I found a couple options for recycling. One great online tool was this site where you can plug in your zip code and get the nearest site:

http://earth911.org/recycling/battery-recycling/

And two retailers that seem to be participating in alkaline battery recycling programs are Walgreen's and IKEA. I think at Walgreen's you may have to ask what do with used batteries at the photo department and at IKEA the recycling bins are supposedly at the exit of the store.

We've been trying to get away from batteries altogether now that the swing is no longer a key tool in our baby arsenal. And sure enough they're pretty happy just pushing all the buttons without the sounds and lights. Hurrah!

This Mom and her kids / Sittin' in the car...

A little while back I wondered about what to do with two sleeping babes in the car. Now I've had even more practice with that, so my list of useful things to do is growing:

• If the gas tank is less than 1/3 full I go and gas up. The tank is always empty at the least convenient times.
• I've tried to figure out the most picturesque places I can go and write in the little journal I keep about their latest achievements. Pictured is the Berkeley Marina where I ended up the other day. Other possibilities are local parks, cemeteries, just going somewhere different than usual feels like a break.
• I also have found it's a great time to go through and clean out the photos from my digital camera. When I can remember to take pictures I do. I never seem to clear them off. So this has been a great time for that.