Twin girl silliness - an ad for Best Buy in Canada

It's kinda funny. Plus, Best Buy was the only big box retailer that was vaguely helpful on the story I had to do this week. Thank you to them for not being scared of the media.

Bookflix! Another free internet resources for kids and toddlers

My girls are surprisingly far into new media. They don't do twitter, but this article in the New York Times about cyber visits with grandparents could have featured them. And they are very well versed in vintage Sesame Street sketches thanks to YouTube and their Dad.

Here's another great online educational resource for kids. It's a new service by Scholastic called Bookflix. It basically offers read along versions of children's book classics from Harry the Dirty Dog to Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. It has them in Spanish too.

The catch is that it does cost money. The uncatch is that you can access it for free through some public libraries. The closest library I've found to our home that has bookflix access for free is the San Francisco Public Library. Fortunately my husband and mom have cards there so I can access it that way. However any California resident can sign up for a card by going to any SFPL branch. You can try to search for your local library and see if they have an onramp to bookflix.

Fits the bill of this site: budget AND simple AND ecofriendly (though plenty energy eating servers firing away acknowledged for those who are purists).

Good deal on rain and snow boots for twins

There's a "buy two boots, get 20% off" sale right now at endless.com. They have free shipping and return policy. So while used is always best for the pocketbook and environment, from a convenience standpoint I jumped in this puddle. And now I don't have to worry about the rain that's forecast for today -- except what to do with the girls. But more on good indoor budget activities next post...

Great site for internet coupon codes

When I buy online I often check this site:



As always reuse is best, but there are also plenty times when it's only appropriate to go new. Like buying off-registry. Or when you're about to miss a cross country gift deadline. And when you're on a budget this is a great site to hit. I remembering hitting a great coupon code for REI.com on here.

Great tool for setting up meal drops!

Or trying to make just about any other kind of group decision.

It's a group planning website called Doodle.

We use it for deciding times for my book club, and even WHEN the book group should meet.

If you're trying to set up a meal drop for a family with a new baby, you just email friends a link to a calendar you set up on the site. People can fill in their preferences for which days are best. By the end you'll have a good idea of what day works best for everyone with minimal fuss!

Pass it on....

Who's the decider??

A New York Times article not long ago prompted a lot of discussion among my friends. It was about totally equal co-parenting. Possible to have true equality in that area or no?

Now here's another article that's somewhat related from USA Today. There's a link to a website where you can take a quiz to see how well household decisions are split in your household. And you can also look at the national research results. Just for fun!

GoodGuide.com: useful new site

Here's a link to story I was assigned this week. It's about a useful new site that just launched. You can look up consumer products and get immediate scores back on health, environment and social performance. If you want to drill down and get more info you can.

It just launched with personal care and household cleaning products. Up next: Food, electronics and toy ratings. And of course, an iPhone app.

Not the way you want your kid to smell...

So we've entered the realm of potties and potty learning and so there are a whole lot more opportunities for the girls to stick their hands in stuff that's heretofore been tucked away in their diapers. Today it was poop. As many cleaning products as I tried I couldn't get the telltale smell off of my daughter's hand. In fact, I'd noticed that sometimes that smell sticks around my hands even after washing when changing their dirty diapers. Then a friend brought over a bar of sandalwood soap which she says worked magic for her. It worked great. Looking forward to using it on my own hands after certain diaper changes.

Once and for all: Are plastic bags really worse than paper?

I know that the most environmental thing is always to bring reusable bags to the store and I do that as often as I can. However sometimes...But when I am going to get the store's bags I really want plastic. I can use those in all our trash cans in the house as well as for diaper disposal on the go. But with the recent plastic bag bans around here, I'm actually hitting a shortage sometimes. My Mom had to import some for me from where she lives. We reuse the paper bags too for collecting newspaper recycling, but I definitely notice that those have started piling up a little, whereas we always had a way to reuse the plastic bags quickly and again and again. Sometimes it was to pack shoes in for trips, sometimes it was to carry sippy cups around to make sure they don't spill in my backpack. And once they were at the end of their useful life they became garbage/diaper bags.

That rant is courtesy of this article I just ran across on the New York Times website that has info debunking the whole "paper bags are better for the environment" argument (you have to scroll down a little to find it). Found it interesting because I'd heard the argument just not seen the data. Though again I will reiterate, reusable bags, always better...

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.

Recommendation for the digital converter box: Digital Stream

This goes in the category of things to save some money and simplify life...

Rabbit ears for your TV are nearing obsolesence. So because we rely on broadcast TV, not cable, we had to hop on the bandwagon and order our special digital converter box. You get a $40 voucher to buy one of these things... a box that brings your rabbit ears into the new millenium. After some research we ended up with the $60 Digital Stream converter from Radio Shack. So we paid $20 out of pocket in the end.

We were pretty skeptical before receiving it, assuming somehow there'd be something in the whole changeover for the cable companies and expecting the worst for our signal. Instead, we now have crystal clear broadcast reception of all the local networks, 3 PBS stations, innumerable foreign language and worship channels and even a weather and traffic station. Of course we still couldn't find anything to watch - the two finalists for our inagural viewing tonight were COPS and Antique Roadshow.

But just wanted to put in a plug for anyone who has basic cable and doesn't really use it. This new converter box might be more than enough and it's a single $20 pay out rather than monthly charges. Every house is eligible for up to 2 $40 vouchers.

Telecommunications industry side note: my husband and I were talking about this recent news that AT&T has lost 10% of its landline customers in the past year. It's amazing how this confirms that in the past few years cell phones went from the luxury item to landlines being the luxury item. That's the service people are shedding in hard economic times. For what it's worth the girls definitely seem to make cell phones their go to pretend phone item... "open it" "close it" they say when they hold up a Lego to use as a phone.

Mama Law 101

So I just had one of those bad days. Where I could actually say "So I was standing talking to a cop to file the police report, when I got stung by a bee." All's well that ends well but, sheesh.

Today just a news heads up for any video making mamas out there. A lawsuit just got under way by a mom suing Universal Music Corp. She got slammed by Universal's lawyers for posting a 29 second video of her 13-month-old dancing to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy" on YouTube. They claim copyright infrignement, she says it's perfectly legal use of the music for NONCOMMERICAL purposes. She's being represented in her fight against Universal by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They're good people. I've often interviewed them for stories. Consider them the "eACLU."

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.

Wholesome mac 'n' cheese with veggies for your toddler

This still has cheese and milk and a little butter, but it is also made with whole wheat pasta and chock full of veggies. An easy all in one meal that your toddler and the big people in the house will down with gusto. It's also a great easy to reheat casserole to bring to a new mom as a "sunshine meal" (that's why I'm making the mac 'n' cheese pictured below in a disposable pan).

I've taken an old recipe my mom used for us growing up and made it about as quick and easy as a dinner dish could be (caveat: assuming you have a food processor).

Here's what you need...
EASY WHOLE WHEAT MAC AND CHEESE WITH VEGGIES

8 oz. whole wheat pasta (penne, spirals, easy ones like these for tots to hold are good)

1 sweet bell pepper
2 medium green zuchinni
2 medium carrots
(or the equivalent of the above in fresh, seasonal veggies - about 4 cups shredded, packed)

8 oz. cheddar cheese, cubed
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
dash of pepper (if you want)
2 cups hot milk (I use a glass 2 cup measure to heat the milk in the microwave)

1/2 cup whole wheat bread crumbs (I make them whenever I have bread around that's getting a little stale and keep them in the freezer)

Preheat the oven to 350 F

Start out by putting water on to boil to make the pasta. Next wash the veggies and put them through a grater blade in the food processor.


Once the vegetables are grated in the food processor, transfer them to another bowl and put in the metal blending blade. Now it's time to make the "sauce." Check the water pot on the stove and ideally it's boiling so you can start cooking the pasta now according to the directions on the package. Once the pasta is in the pot, I set a timer for 3 minutes LESS than it will take the pasta to cook thoroughly. When the timer rings I throw in the grated veggies to just cook briefly.

Put the milk in the microwave to heat. While that's going on, with the metal blending blade in place put the cheese cubes, flour, butter, salt, and pepper in the processor bowl. Once the milk is almost boiling, cover and turn on the processor and start pouring the milk slowly (and carefully) in through the feeding tube. The cheese will melt as the milk pours in and if you let it run for about 40 seconds it will turn into a nice cheese sauce.


Hopefully the timer has rung and you've added the veggies. After a few minutes when the pasta and veggies are ready, you can strain it. Now put the pasta and veggies in a casserole dish. I believe I use a 2 quart. Cover the pasta with the cheese sauce and stir to mix. Cover this with the bread crumbs. Put the pan in the oven. Bake for 30 minutes. It's done when it's bubbling. YUM.
I'm actually curious how this stacks up cost-wise to store bought organic mac n cheese and veggies so I'm going to try to do that ounce for ounce cost comparison in the next week and will post.

More travel tips with twin toddlers

+ Don't forget to pack: Stain remover stick - though you need to put it in your checked bag, not the carry-on. I had one confiscated from me at security once since it broke the 3 oz. liquid and gel rule. These are infinitely handy since washing machines and soaking buckets aren't often at hand on trips. A small bottle of dishwashing soap - It's great to have this around for washing out bottles and sippy cups. Both of these are things that you can of course buy at a drug soter or supermarket, but it's nice to just know you have them.

+ Don't plan on eating at full service sit down restaurants (unless this works for you ordinarily). My girls have lots of energy and while we've found it's OK to go to the kinds of restaurants where you order at the counter and then get your food, we've not yet had a successful meal with the girls at a full-on full-service restaurant. One or the other just has to get up and run around, or they start crying form being confined so long, or they're hungry and the food just isn't coming. So our current M.O. is to eat picnic style breakfast and lunch and then eat dinner after the girls go to bed. If we're with family, we take turn leaving one person with the sleeping girls and everyone else goes and enjoys a fully relaxing dinner and brings back take out to the remaining person. If we're just the two of us, one person goes out and brings back take out.

+ We've found that for us, small town destinations are a lot easier to manage with twin toddlers than big cities. This was a surprise because we always preferred going to big cities for all the activities accessible in a small area and lots of things to see generally. But something my mom said about my childhood in a small town sums it up. She told my husband that I used to do cartwheels down the aisles of our local grocery store. And that's the thing, kids can do that kind of thing in a small town without the kind of sidelong glances you'd get in a big city. And our goal now is to go wherever we'll feel most welcome with all the chaos we bring in tow.

+ The longer the better. A little counterintuitive, but once you get somewhere it just pays to settle in enjoy.

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.
  

Here comes the sunscreen

I have a good friend who works in maternal-child health and environmental toxicities for the state. She read up on sunscreens made with the least possible harmful substances and then went out and bought me this brand... Hawaiian Tropics Baby Faces. Yup, turns out it's not Aveeno or California Baby or anything like that.

In addition to being a good sunscreen, the bottle shape is great. A small bottle just kind of clicks into the large one like a puzzle (my husband the chemical engineer said "I wonder what kind of processing plant it takes to produce this!").

I take the travel size everywhere - of course I also learned last year to refill a bunch of the small bottles we have that used to be full of hotel shampoo with sunscreen and stash them in the car, every stroller we own and the diaper bag. Somehow on the hottest days I was always caught without sunscreen and that can ruin a perfectly good day at the park.

Baby and toddler proof your dining room

Before kids we had a pretty low-maintenance (I thought) eating area... an old but pleasant teak table and chairs with upholstered seats. We used place mats to protect the table and had a sisal rug on the floor.

Turns out this was possibly the worst possible combo with messy babies and toddlers. The texture of sisal rugs traps all kinds of food that's thrown on the floor and forget about cleaning up spills. Meanwhile the unfinished teak was susceptible to water and heat damage. And there appeared to be nothing the girls liked more than reaching up and pulling down the place mats. Ditto for lots of tablecloths we tried. And since room is scarce for two highchairs, we had booster seats strapped onto two of our chairs which wasn't doing wonders for the upholstered seats. Here's how we stumbled through making the daily dining space kid proofed and also not terrible looking:

First we had to come up with a table covering before the teak top got irreparably ruined. We ended up getting some Mexican-style oilcloth (below). It cleans up REALLY easily, plus the back has a sort of stickiness to it so that it stays in place fairly well. At first I used binder clips clip it all together under the table so the girls couldn't pull it off. But now I just let it hang loose and with a fairly generous overhang it hasn't been a problem at all.

Next issue was the upholstered seats. First I tried an old flannel backed tablecloth that I had lying around and cut it in half. Then I wrapped the seats bottoms up with it like a present and secured it with duct tape. After a while the tape failed and it ended up looking pretty terrible. And with all the folds and the textured vinyl material it just didn't clean up very well.

So I finally went and got some smooth plastic tablecloth material that they sell by the yard at the local longs. It was clear with cute frogs on it. This time I took the 30 minutes to actually take the seat bottoms off and use thumbtacks to properly to put this easy clean material on top of the existing upholstery. Voila! See pic at left, but I think it looks great and it has worked really well.

when we couldn't stand it anymore we'd post it on Final challenge was the rug. I kind of let it go and just let it get dirtier and dirtier assuming that freecycle and then figure out what to do next. I tried using a smaller cotton rug under the girls' chairs but even though that could go in the wash it was a pain to wash and dry it all the time.

The answer has come in the form of Home Depot. They sell industrial grade carpet in sizes of 6X8 and 9X12. This stuff isn't the most gorgeous thing ever, but it's indestructible, can be hosed off and I smelled all the options they had there and I couldn't detect any nasty smells. When the grand total for my nice multi-hued 6X8 rug came to $23 bucks at the register, the sales woman asked "that's a great deal, where did you find it? are there more back there? I want to get one."

It was a long process, but we're finally in a state where the girls can feed themselves and the food can fly everywhere and I can just sit back and let them learn and make a mess and not stress about the clean up.

Green product IQ

There is a lot of info out there about making green consumer choices. But a friend is working on a new site that is supposed to help people on the go make quick decisions about one product over another - very mobile device friendly for people who are literally standing in front of two brands of baby shampoo in the store and want the skinny on their green cred. Anyway, he just sent along a link to a quiz that they've set up to pique interest. I scored 5 out of 11. Give it a whirl if you'd like.

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.