Interesting post about separating twins for Kindergarten

Silicon Valley Mom's Blog has a piece about one twin mom's experience separating her twins in school. I found it illuminating. And I'm glad we don't have to face those issue in preschool!

Great food for teaching your babies to spoon feed themsleves

With twins it's especially important to get kids learning to do stuff for themselves early. When you have to spoon feed two, for example, it's a real chore. But then I decided to let the girls have at the spoons themselves... I quickly discovered the MESS that two can make when learning to feed themselves with a spoon often takes more effort to clean than just sucking it up and holding the spoons for them.

I discovered the best learner food for using a spoon was mixing whole plain yogurt with a natural food thickener like granola. Initially I mixed a few big spoons of yogurt with a scant 1/4 cup of nut-free granola in a small container. I'd mix it up the night before, let it soften and thicken in the fridge and then give it to the girls to feed themselves in the morning for breakfast or their snack. I found that there's often a nut-free blueberry flavor granola in the bulk food section of many grocery stores. Also Trader Joe's has the Granola and the Three Berries which is nut free. (You could probably make your own too. I don't have my act together for that, but if I did I'd do a nut-free variation on this recipe which is delish).

This is a great paste like concoction that is hard for the toddlers to splatter everywhere. And if it falls of their spoon you can just pick up the little clump and put it back in their bowl. Since they've gotten a little more proficient we've moved on to yogurt mixed with fruit compote (as in pic above). The yogurt's consistency is more liquidy with chunks of cooked dried fruit.

My recipe for compote is basically throwing mixed dried fruits in a pot, say dried cherries, raisins, apricots and nectarines, and then adding 2 cups orange juice, 2 cinnamon sticks and a sprinkle of cloves. I simmer it until it's really soft, but watch to make sure all the liquid hasn't evaporated. Before stirring it into the yogurt I chop it to the appropriate size for their chewing ability.

On a related note: I've been doing this with my girls for months now and it's a still a very messy proposition. So I heartily recommend this piece of equipment: Bumkins junior bibs (see left). Somehow the pocket at the bottom catches almost everything they can throw down and the full shoulder protection is mighty helpful.

We are getting somewhere, though. When they eat things like peas now they insist on spoons and while they put them on the spoons with their fingers, it's still a step in the right direction.

Twinsight #8: Weaning twins

Gimmee your ear!

After all the work to get the girls breastfeeding together, I hardly believed there would come a day when I would be trying to figure out how and when they might stop. But sure enough that day came. And since mine recently weaned themselves, thought I'd share how it came about...

It happened somewhat gradually. They went from nursing 6 times a day at one year (morning, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, before bed) down to 5 times by 13 months (I dropped out the before bed feeding).

During that month they were getting used to drinking cows milk so in the following month (month 13) that we just dropped out their nursing snacks (the morning one first and then 2 weeks later the afternoon snack).

Then in month 14 I dropped their lunch time nursing until we were reliably down to twice a day by the end of the month.

So at 15 months they were nursing twice a day - when they woke up and then before their solid food dinner. I was pretty OK with doing that... especially because I knew that on the rare days my work kept my away until after their bedtime they were fine without that nurse and it wasn't the end of the world. (I work part time and usually from home).

I was fully prepared to keep nursing until they decided they were done. It didn't look like the end was in sight at all - one of my daughters was especially attached to nursing the other seemed to enjoy the company more than anything. But then when they were about 17.5 months I had to work late two nights in a row and they skipped their evening feed and it so happened the following two mornings I slept in and my husband got up with the girls and I was too tired to nurse them and they didn't clamor for it and after those 2 days of no nursing morning or evening passed, they just seemed to forget about it! I was shocked.

I kept pumping at night in case they wanted to do it again and one of them did say "pillow" and "nurse" about 2 days later (we always nursed on a pillow), but because it was at a time when we ordinarily didn't nurse at that point I felt OK saying, "no not right now" and she never brought it up again.

I hand expressed my milk in a hot shower for about 5 nights after that and that was the end of things. I was shocked, but happy. I think it was the right time for all of us.

Flying tips with infant and toddler twins

We just got back from our family vacation for the summer: 10 days visiting family in Casper, Wyoming. It was a great time, but there were plenty logistics involved in the flight to Denver and 4 hour drive to Casper. And lots of time in the car to write down some of the lessons from 16 air flights with twins:

• Our policy over the last 18 months was to "lap baby" our girls for flights under 2-1/2 hours. Otherwise we always bought a 3rd seat. When lap babying bring a copy of their birth certificate to the airport so you can prove their age. Some airlines seem to require it others, some don't, so you can't go wrong having it.
  
• When flying with two lap babies there's the whole issue of the parents not being able to sit in the same bank of seats because there are not sufficient oxygen masks for more than one lap baby. Once we entered the realm of squirmy babies we found that rather than sitting across the aisle from each other, it worked out well to sit one in front of another. This way the most squirmy daughter would be held by the parent in back and she was just kicking into another parent rather than a random passenger, which can be stressful.
  
• Also because of the oxygen mask situation, if you're still breastfeeding while traveling with lap babies just be comfortable with the fact that you'll be breastfeeding in close quarters with a stranger. Even if the aisle or window is on one side, another passenger will probably be on the other side.
• Both of those scenarios hold true for a full flight, which a lot of planes are these days. But always make sure to ask at the gate how many empty seats they might expect so you can try to grab an extra one (at least on Southwest... other airlines may be helpful in trying to get you a "soft block" on the seat adjacent to yours).
• Pre-boarding isn't necessarily your friend. We've learned that on flights with reserved seating it's sometimes just as well to be one of the last to board. That way the babies can crawl/run around as much as possible before getting on. And it's not like we have a rolling suitcase we're toting around that needs precious overhead bin space.
  

• Don't have any expectations of the flight attendants. While on some trips our flight attendants have been amazing saviors -- walked the girls up and down the aisle, holding them while I used the bathroom -- other flights have been nightmares. I've a seen a team roll their eyes at each other and even make some nasty comments about kids on their last flight as they saw us boarding. I've also had a flight attendant who paused and wrinkled his nose every time before collecting our trash saying "is that a dirty diaper?" Um, no it's clearly a peanut wrapper. If you're on the sensitive side like me feeling unwelcome makes a stressful situation worse. I've discovered it works best to board the plane with the lowest expectations for support and then usually be very pleasantly surprised. To be fair to flight attendants I'm sure they have their share of miserable stories dealing with kids. And on the dirty diaper note, I've found the best way to stay on the flight crew's good side is to have plenty bags at hand in order to double bag dirty diapers and bring them to the flight attendants so they can put them in the designated place for human waste (on some airlines that's the bathroom and in other cases it goes in the galley trash).
• DONT' FORGET: from 0-6 months make SURE to bring lots of diapers and changes of clothes. My friends and I have never put our finger on the cause (pressurization? all the extra nursing the kids do by moms desperate to keep them calm?) but messy poop explosions multiply on airplane flights. One of my 2-1/2 month olds went through 3 changes of clothes on a 4-1/2 hour flight. from 6-12 months a toy they have never seen before. At the beginning when baby gifts are rolling in put aside a few toys for travel occassions. Novelty works. from 1-2 years a DoodlePro travel-sized pad... it's one of those magnetic drawing boards that you can wipe clean and oh my goodness it is the perfect thing for first drawing FOR your kids and then once they get older (say 18 months) letting them go at it on their own.
  

Lessons of a part-time working mom in a creative field

Keeping up your creative side is a challenge being a mom, especially daunting if it's a required part of your job. As a new twin mom it's pretty tough because keeping everyone happy often means finding ROUTINES that work and sticking with them. I spent some time the other day thinking about what has helped me the most with keeping up my creative side when working and when mom-ing. This is what I came up with:

+ Seek out other part-time moms to hang out with at least once in a while. I found myself overly critical of myself when I was always with just SAHM or else moms who worked outside their house full-time. Even though it was my own issues hearing what they were up to made me feel I wasn't giving either enough attention to my girls or enough creativity to my job. I know it was silly, but hey, post-partum/nursing hormones and being sleep-deprived doesn't really lead to being even-keeled. So checking in with other part-timers is great.

+ When you have time to read again, find a book that talks about the various stages of parenting. Yes, I mean all the way through the empty nest. I kind of stumbled on one at the library and took it home and, admittedly, just skimmed it but,man, it makes me feel better when I feel like I'm just not going to get through the next few hours. Helps me give me some concrete image of the distant future to keep it all in perspective.

+ Get rid of as much technology as possible on the days you're not working. It took me a little while to figure this out, but throwing myself into watching the girls on the days that I did - i.e. no email except during their naps and avoiding the phone - helped improve my performance in both realms. I will admit to trying to write an email about a story idea to my editor with unhappy kids in the background and no one won in those cases.

+ See this time as an opportunity to learn what you really love about your job and try to just focus on that as much as possible.

+ Keep up your creativity when you're not working OR watching the babies. For instance, date night should always be somewhere new and different. When you're exhausted going somewhere familiar sounds so appealing. But I've found even though I'm usually initially annoyed with my husband for insisting on going to a new neighborhood or town for dinner when we do get away from the apartment, I'm always really glad for the new perspective.

Fitting multiple kids (with car seats!) into a small car

We can't be the only ones with a compact car who have wondered how on earth you can keep your small wheels and potentially transport 3 kids around. Car seats just seem so big. So far we've been very fortunate with our setup. Two Britax Roundabouts in a Honda Civic. With twins anything bigger, like the Marathon, just wasn't an option because we couldn't fit them in rear facing. We are still able to use the middle back seat to squeeze in one small adult - and often do - but I've wondered what would happen if we needed to get another car seat back there. Or even to make it comfortable for the adult back there.

I just learned about this Radian Car Seat line which I would have opted for in a SECOND over our Roundabouts if I'd known about them when we were buying. They're each about 1.25 inches narrower than the Roundabouts but add it up and that's 2.5 inches less car seat which in a compact car's back seat is significant. An added bonus of the Radian seats is that the bottom folds up into the back for really easy travel. They're supposed to have a great safety record too. Oh, and the sides aren't as high as the Roundabout's. Initially that seems like a nice comfort feature but it makes it difficult to maneuver the girls into their seats given the car's low headroom and if they squirm I often end up accidentally bonking them while getting them in their seats. Poor girlios!

And I just want to put in a plug for making due with a small car and twins. At first I was worried with the strollers and gear we'd be squeezed too tight. I don't rule out getting a second bigger car when we do more carpooling and traveling around with their friends but for now this is perfect.

Twinsight #7: Breastfeeding twins advice

Gimmee your ear!

I had a hard time finding really useful info on breastfeeding twins, so here’s my perspective from the other side. The first year is behind me and now my worries are about how to wean the girls. Who would have thought!

+ NO PRESSURE – Because I found one of the keys to getting my milk flowing was to relax, I think it’s really good to go into the whole experience with a "we’ll see" attitude. A partner who is on alert to give you shoulder massages and refill water at every feeding in the very beginning is a plus.

+ DON’T LET A (SHORT) STAY IN NICU THROW THINGS OFF – I can’t speak to a prolonged stay, but one of my daughters was low birth weight and spent her first 3 days in NICU for monitoring while we were in the other hospital room. I had the NICU nurse call my room before she would give her a bottle. About every other feeding I was able to make the trek over to NICU to let my daughter suck on me for about 10 minutes before they gave her the bottle.

+ KEEP A FEEDING LOG FOR EACH BABY FROM THE BEGINNING – And that means output as well as input. Take a few minutes to make an Excel spreadsheet (or hand draw and photocopy) charts for each baby before their birth. Include time of feeding, amount, and type of feeding and then also include boxes where you can note the times of dirty or wet diapers. When breastfeeding you have no idea how much the babies are eating unless you’re going to weigh them constantly. A much easier way is to gauge appropriate nutrition by how many wet and dirty diapers they’re having. Our girls were released at 4 lbs. 1 oz and 5 lbs. 1 oz. (they had lost some of their birth weight) and we were required to check with our pediatrician the next day. When I went in and showed her their chart of dirty and wet diapers she said I was free to exclusively breastfeed based on their output.

+ LINE UP ANY FRIENDS WHO ARE MOMS (THOSE WHO WORK IN OB OR MATERNAL HEALTH FIELDS ARE A PLUS) – I had one OB friend who came to the hospital. While the nurses were very helpful, my friend was the one who had the time to really show me and walk me through the football hold for an entire feeding. Football hold was key with my tiny babies. After I went home, a new mom friend of mine had committed to coming over every day for the first week. She helped me get hooked up to the breast pump and sat there with me saying encouraging things. I think regularly using the breast pump in the beginning really helped my milk flow.

+ DRINK LIKE A MARATHONER – The pediatrician who checked us out of the hospital said he told breastfeeding moms of singletons to drink at least 1 liter of water a day. He told me to drink at least 3 liters. Sounds crazy, especially since your bladder isn’t always all that it should be right after birth, but I followed his advice and think it helped a lot.

+ DON’T PUT TOO MUCH STOCK IN NIPPLE CONFUSION – In my experience it wasn’t worth driving myself crazy trying to have my girls suck on fingers rather than pacifiers in the early days to avoid “nipple confusion.” I did my best on that front, but the pacifier was a lifesaver at times in the early weeks and no harm to breastfeeding in my experience. Ditto for bottles. I took advantage of that milk I was pumping in the beginning to get a little feeding relief. Of course if there appears to be a problem with nipple confusion definitely reverse course.

+ SPEAKING OF NIPPLES – They really can hurt. Breast feeding for me was not easy in the beginning at all. Even maybe the first few months of it. But it can become second nature and I really enjoyed the experience. If you think you might too then try to stick with it. So while breastfeeding those first few weeks, put a book of humorous essays in a cookbook stand so you can read something distracting. Turn the radio up. Ask for a shoulder massage. Just do whatever helps you not focus on the initial discomfort (if you have it).

Finally, here’s a list of tips from La Leche League. And this is the book "Mothering Multiples" that I read before the babies’ birth and found it very helpful.

Now tandem feeding is a whole other challenge. Another time...

Best price I can find on Seventh Generation diapers

We go through a lot of diapers, as I suspect any family who is using disposable diapers does with non-potty trained twins. My favorite kind is definitely Seventh Generation. and diapers.com is my favorite place to get them. They ship them incredibly fast which is key when you realize you need to order more with only a handful of old ones remaining.

Now diapers.com has some promotion where you can buy a Seventh Generation discount card. It gives you 15% off Seventh Generation purchases over the course of a year. I'm generally skeptical of such things, but I did the calculations. They're now selling this card for an introductory price of $29.99. It gets you approximately $6 off each case you buy. So after 5 cases you break even. Every case after that comes at a $6 discount. If like us you go through 1+ cases per month, then it can add up to a case or two of "free" diapers by the end of the year.

The only annoying thing about diapers.com is that free shipping is for purchases over $50. So that means getting wipes with your diapers, or else ordering two cases at a time.

Public Radio Twin Mom: Always put your keys in the refrigerator

Let me explain.

It’s something that’s happened to all public radio reporters. You’re getting the perfect, emotional interview in someone’s kitchen and just at the critical moment when their cadences are slow and you can hear a pin drop as you wait for the next thought… the refrigerator clicks on. And it’s loud and sputtering and ruins the mood and the tape. The solution, of course, is that you always unplug a refrigerator before recording an interview at someone’s home. And the outcome more often than not is that you forget to re-plug it in when you leave. Whoooops. Unhappy interview subject calls the next day about rotting milk. Not ideal.

The solution is simple. Any audio producer worth their salt (or fresh milk) knows that you DO unplug the fridge but you put your car keys in there at the same time. That way you have to return to the fridge before leaving and inevitably remember to plug it back in.

Being a twin mom is like needing to remember to re-plug in every appliance in the house before leaving. Sometimes “always put your keys in the refrigerator” is literal for the mommy me. Like when it’s vitally important I remembered bottles of milk. Put your keys in the fridge next to them and you’re not going to leave without those bottles.

Sometimes it’s more figurative. Say I’m driving and I take my cell phone out so I can hear it better. If I just throw it on the seat next to me, it’s probably going to stay there when I scramble to get out. So I make sure to put it on top of my coat or scarf, so it’ll at least go flying when I grab that.

It’s a great lesson to extrapolate from.

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.

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!

Bottom's up...

I'm trying to get my girls to drink out of cups and someone had the great suggestion to teach them using our shot glasses. Shot glasses are better proportioned for their small mouths, plus there's less liquid to spill when they decide to turn the cups over to see what happens. It was great advice and is helping a lot.

Mixing breastmilk and shot glasses reminds me of a story I read in this really useful book - So That's What They're For!: The Definitive Breastfeeding Guide. The book relates how a lactation consultant was working with a breastfeeding mama. One of the woman's problems was that her pumped breastmilk just wouldn't freeze. It took the lactation consultant a while to get to the bottom of it, but I'll give you a hint - what's the other liquid that doesn't freeze in your freezer? You got it, vodka. I think of that story everytime I go out and have a drink these days.

The Plastics Question

Rubber Ducky,
you're the one...
with pthalates!

I was stopped yesterday while food shopping by two Cal Anthropology students. They were interviewing moms of young kids about their knowledge of pthalates and Bisphenol-A. I actually felt like I was back in school on one of those days that I coincidentally had done all the reading and the teacher decided to give a pop quiz. My good friend who works in maternal-child public health had just been talking to me about the plastics question earlier in the week.

My friend suggested I read this article in the Nation. It's about pthalates in toys... the component that seemingly makes plastics (like rubber duckies) soft. Pthalates are actually banned in Europe. Bisphenol-A (BPA) meanwhile is a concern in harder plastics like bottles. Clear bottles like Avent and Dr. Brown's have them, while murky ones like Medela and Born Free don't.

I've basically decided that plastics are convenient at times and I'm not going to banish them from my house, or invest in pricey products like Born Free. Instead, my ground rule is when it comes to kitchen wear I won't freeze or heat foods in plastics, but I do serve the girls out of plastics. And for toys, I'll happily accept hand me down hard plastic toys, but won't buy new ones.

Here's a recommendation on the baby bottle issue in particular from a Chicago Tribune article:

Until more is known about the real dangers of BPA, choose glass or supposedly safer-plastic baby bottles offered by Born Free (made with polyamide) or Medela (polypropylene) so bisphenol A can't leach into the milk. For sippy cups and water bottles, plastics labeled No. 1, No. 2 or No. 5 in the recycling triangle are considered safer. Try to keep your child from putting plastic toys -- especially those designed for older children -- in his mouth.

And always use glass, rather than plastic, to microwave food and liquid.

This mama walked into McDonalds...

This isn't a joke. And actually I didn't even walk. I went to the drive thru - ten gazillion times worse for the planet, I know. I remember doing a business story about how some cities to get in compliance with the Clean Air Act had to restrict the hours of their drive thrus.

But here's the dilemma for any parent, and times two for a twin parent. You're driving home and your babies fall asleep in their fixed car seats. You want them to keep sleeping, what do you do? I think I should probably stash a book in the car and just park in the street outside our building. Unfortunately our apartment's garage is kinda claustrophobic to me. Plus for some reason the girls always wake up right away in there.

Yesterday, though, I was hungry and tired and so I went and got myself a sundae in the drive thru and then went to a beautiful cemetery near our house and sat there eating it. It was a great quiet moment. I may get addicted. Before I do, any other suggestions for a pleasant, sane break with two sleeping babies in the car?

Ergo-MOM-ics, Part 3

For those with postpartum joint pain (especially in the hands like I had) these were some of the things that helped me heal:

1. I can't say this enough... try not to tote around the infant car seats. Those things are heavy and were killers for my wrists and finger joints. (but I know, it all seems worth it at the time if it keeps baby sleeping)

2. No pushing the umbrella stroller with one hand! While it's so tempting to do - if you need to hold/comfort a baby or talk on the phone while you're going down the street- I had some of my worst joint pain after trying to steer our double umbrella stroller one-handed.

3. And on the subject of strollers, I now am trying to push ours with the palms of my hands and keeping my fingers out straight. I found that I was really gripping the stroller handles hard which was not helping things.

4. Another thing I discovered while trying to give my hands a break... gmail has keyboard commands. If you have gmail and you enable that functionality then you can ease up on your mouse use, which I found helped a lot.

5. Comfy shoes. It's a real pain to lace up sneakers when you're trying to get out the door with two little ones, but fortunately there are some good for your foot/back slip on athletic shoes out there.

6. Ask for help carrying when possible. I know, yet another thing to ask for help with, but twin parents get a crash course in this kind of community building exercise the first year.

Ergo-MOM-ics, part 2

What could this image possibly have to do with... ?! Hang with me for a sec. An issue I've heard about from lots of new moms, especially twin moms, is joint pain. When my hands and wrists started aching, I tried to just suck it up for a while. But when I couldn't squeeze a tube of toothpaste I went to my doctor. That's because a friend of mine reminded me about that oxygen mask lecture on airplanes: "Parents should put theirs on first and then you can help your kids." I decided that was pretty smart and I should probably be taking better care of myself so that I could go on lifting and toting my babies, especially since they'll only get heavier.

After my doctor's visit and follow up research, I've basically concluded what this post below - from my favorite parent's listserve - says. So I'm just going to repost the info below. And tomorrow I'm going to try to blog about some of the little changes I made that seemed to help my joint pain a lot:

Most postpartum joint pain is caused by ligament laxity due to
the hormonal effects of pregnancy. Ligaments are responsible for
joint stability, and after pregnancy, do not adequately support
and stabilize your joints as you move.
Most postpartum women will feel this mostly through the hips and
pelvis, though it's not unusual for other weight bearing joints
to be affected.
The good news is that since you're already 6 mos. post
childbirth, you should begin to feel more knit together soon. In
the mean time, treat your joints with care. Avoid movements that
aggrevate your joints, don't try to stretch a joint to relieve
pain. Don't walk bearfooted, choose shoes with a conoured foot
bed. When getting in and out of bed, 'log roll' your body to one
side, then use your arms to help bring yoru body upright as your
swing your legs off the side of the bed.
When lifting your baby, squat, and brace your core muscles before
you lift. Nurse your baby in a supportive chair, with a neutral
spine, i.e., don't hunch over.
Take special care of your wrists. Avoid twisting movements, and
wear wrist braces if you experience pain or tingling at night. If
your wrist pain continues, or gets worse, get a referral to a PT
who specializes in repetitive stress injuries and/or postpartumissues. In some cases postpartum wrist pain can become chronic if
left untreated.
Helene Byrne, BeFit-Mom, author, ''Exercise After Pregnancy: How to Look and Feel Your Best''

Making craigslist buying easier

Part of the reason that I feel strongly about buying used and/or less for kids is not just for the immediate green cred. It's also about setting an example for kids from the earliest age. I know that buying used can be a real drag, though, since you have to constantly comb for the item you're looking for. So here's a way to make buying used a lot more convenient.

You can subscribe to something called an RSS feed from craigslist. That lets you type in your search terms, even the geographic area you're looking in and you get live updates when an item is posted that meets your search query.

All you do is go to the craigslist home page for your area. Say you're looking for a used Maclaren Volo in the east bay. Click on "baby and kids" and then type in "Maclaren Volo" and choose the east bay tab. You'd get a screen like this:


That screen above is hard to read, but the key item is the small orange highlighted link in the lower right-hand corner. Clicking on that gets you to the RSS feed for that particular query. Once you click on it you can choose how you'd like the information delivered. If you have a google account you can have the updated search info delivered to your customized homepage. Or you can choose "Live Bookmark" and that will create a special bookmark tab in your browser that you can pull down occasionally to see if the item you're looking for has been posted and is available.

Any other helpful hints to buying used out there? I'm eager for them...

Little tissues for little noses

My little girls have the sniffles. Fortunately they don't seem too uncomfortable, but we end up going through lots of tissues as I try to keep their noses wiped and their germs separate. I know the most eco-friendly alternative is a handkerchief but I find that practically I mix them up and never have them handy and when they have active colds, I don't find it so sanitary. So because with babies most of the tissue goes unused I'm trying to tear a bunch in halves or quarters at the start of the day and put the pieces in a baggie that I can carry around in my pocket. It's not a huge resource savings, but it's something!

And on the subject of colds, not that they've taken the infant cold medicines off the shelves, here's an article from CNN and the Mayo Clinic about how to handle the common cold in infants.

Twinsight #6: What to do with a hoarding twin

Gimmee your ear!

We've been having a problem since about 6 or 7 months with one of our daughters stealing toys from her sis and hoarding them. Yup, she's the one who's grabbing her sister's face in the picture. She just adores her sister, but that seems to translate into her wanting and taking anything her sis has. Fortunately the one who has things taken is really laid back and doesn't get worked up about it. But I was concerned about what to do and asked for peoples' advice. Below are some of the different answers I got. They certainly helped me and hope they might be useful to you.

As far as what happened in our case, things have calmed down a bit from the initial stage. Either that or we've gotten used to it. I just try to make sure that they both always have something to play with. As they've gotten older I spend more time telling the hoarder "stop" and trying to get her to understand that. Interestingly, the more laid back sister has started to crawl first, maybe to get away from her sticky fingered sib?

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We have the same issue with my boy/girl twins that are 15 months old but this started about the same time as yours.

Ann "steals" Jake’s toys. Jake is pretty laid back so when he was younger it didn't bother him too much, but I would still separate them by distance (with me in between) so that Jake could play with his toys without Ann butting in. Ann has a shorter attention span so she gets bored with toys more easily so Jake can snatch them back. I’ve been glad he’s more laid back because he tops her by at least 5lbs.

As time has passed, Jake has become more assertive in keeping Ann from grabbing his toys so I would think yours might be the same. I will warn you that as they go through terrible teething that if someone grabs a toy from the other and their teeth hurt--watch out! They will grab back that toy back with a bite if I’m not fast enough.

I’ve also been a little concerned because they play pretty rough with each other, more than I’ve seen singletons play, but I have credited that towards being with each other from the start including kicking each other in the face pre-birth.

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My girls did this at that age too. And it was also Alma, who couldn't crawl, who was stealing all the toys. Bea, who crawled sooner, was always having everything stolen. I just let them have at it and didn't worry too much. As soon as their coordination shifted, this behavior changed. (Now at one they are equal opportunity thieves). I would just continue to feed toys to both so that they always have something. I think they like to watch each other move and act, so I guess I always felt like at that age, the "victim" was somewhat entertained by watching her sister take and manipulate an object.

I could see going a different route, but that's my two cents!

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We had a very similar experience at a young age. I would separate them for periods of time. We had a pack-n-play in our playroom and would alternate putting a kid in there with a bunch of toys and it worked pretty well. I would sometimes put them at different ends of the room when they weren't crawling very much.

It got really tough around 10 months when my son (the toy taker) was crawling very well and my daughter wasn't. I was really worried, too, that she would become conditioned to have things taken from her and that my reaction might reinforce the "victim" role. There were times when I'd intervene a lot and get toys back for her, but also taught herself to immediately start playing with a toy she didn't want, he'd take it, and she'd take back the toy she was playing with. I was amazed that before 1 yr. she had figured out that strategy.

When they were starting to get verbal (and were totally mobile) around a year, we worked a lot with our daughter to put out her hand and say "no!" when he was approaching her to take a toy. We also encouraged her to get the toy back from him, while simultaneously telling our son that taking toys wasn't okay, that he needed to ask, or trader her for something else she wanted. When they were about 18 months it got really bad -- he would snatch and
run with the toy and leave his sister in tears. We continued hardcore with the strategies mentioned above and started using the counting method with our son -- he had the count of 3 to return the toy to her or I would take it away.

It was a lot of work, but I'm happy to say that now at 2.5 there is very little escalated toy taking and it has continued to get better since they were about 22 months. They tend to work it out themselves (while I force myself to hold back) and I rarely have to intervene. When I do, I find that when it happens it is usually b/c our son is tired, needs a diaper change, or is hungry. I also found that when our son was about to take a developmental leap the toy snatching and biting (he started biting her around 7 or 8 months and it would go on for a few days every 2-3 months) increased.


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I can't remember exactly at that age but, oh yea, mine are definitely interested JUST because sister has something. At a young age I probably would just separate them, use distraction and redirection.

I know by 16 months old they knew how to ask, "share?", "my turn" and "trade?". I also taught the one who was getting bullied to say, "enough!" (you could use "stop" or "NO!" too) They mostly play well but sometimes I have to separate them or distract them. I also end up buying two of the same thing a lot of the time now, depending on what it is.

I think it would be ok to tell A, "no, B is playing with that, have THIS instead". It will probably take a lot of repetition.

Another thing I read in a twin book which I found helpful.. is not to worry too much about one being "dominant" over the other. That can and will change over time. You can give them the tools to stick up for themselves, certainly, but, let them "own" their own relationship.

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We have been dealing with the same issue since our girls were about 7 months also. They are now a little over 2 and nothing has changed all that much. Astrid still wants whatever Billie is playing with. We still do the same thing we did then. We gently ask Astrid to give the toy back to Billie and explain that Astrid was playing with it first. Now we have a rule that you have to wait until the first person is done playing with the toy.

Like you, we were worried that the more submissive daughter would never fight back. As she has gotten older, she definitely fights back for items she wants to keep playing with. However, in general I would have to say that Billie does not seem to care as much about "stuff". She is really into people while Astrid is definitely more interested in and attached to material objects. Looking back, this may be why Billie never really fought back.

Networking aid

I just came across a great site for printing up calling cards or mini-business cards. This isn't exactly a twin issue, but I have found that I often want to exchange coordinates with parents I meet and I rarely have a hand free, not to mention pen and paper handy, to exchange info.

The printing site is called moo.com. It's based in England. I learned about the site when I was trolling for a great, cheap, quality place to print business cards as I reenter the workforce. I really loved the moo minicard designs (a vivid graphic on one side and simple text on the other), but worried they might not be taken seriously enough. It turns out my husband's boss (coincidentally a mother of twins) has them and he told me they're the ultimate hip symbol in the business world right now. So I got some with a business-like design and then some with a more irreverent design to use as a calling card with friends and people I meet and want to be in touch with. The beauty is you pay $19.99 for 100 and then you can have as many different designs on those 100 cards as you want. The images can be from their team of graphic designers or photos you upload of family or anything else! And while the paper isn't recycled, it's sourced from sustainable forests.