Check if you're eligible for a Verizon Wireless discount...

There's certainly no harm! I happened to go in to a Verizon store today to find out about upgrading my phone. Turned out that because my husband works for the state, we've been eligible for a 15% discount on our personal bill and reduced prices on new phones. Just no one told us that before. You can check if your employer is one of the discount partners by entering your work email here.

It definitely adds up! Especially if the governor is really going to furlough all those employees.

All the other carriers have something similar. For instance AT&T has a deal with labor unions that give labor members an automatic 10% discount.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Today is the first day of the Year of the Ox. Two thoughts related to the holiday:

1. We took the girls to the Lunar New Year festival in Oakland's Chinatown yesterday and they had a great time taking in the sights. The Lion Dance was the biggest hit, since they could see the kids underneath who were manipulating the costume.

For me, it was a reminder of how great it is to take kids to lots of cultural festivals. They're colorful events, and usually feature lots of music and dancing. On the budget side of things they're often free.

But there's more to it. Raising kids with a green conscience isn't just about what you buy or behaviors like reusing and recycling. It's also making them aware of how wide our world is and how many people we share it with. The slice they see everyday is a wonderful part, but it's just a part!

Often there is a calendar of festivals posted for major cities. For instance, this is the one for Oakland in 2009, though it looks like some festivals I'd expect to see there aren't up yet.

2. We just got the girls a new book that they love (see left). It's called "The Pet Dragon: A story about adventure, friendship and Chinese characters." The book mixes a nice story of friendship with a subtle lesson about Chinese characters that is appropriate starting at any age. And probably until any age (unless you're already fluent in Chinese and this is just silly and elementary).

The story and illustrations are by Christoph Niemann whose work I really like. In fact, one of my favorite blog posts of all time is the art-blog he did about coffee for the New York Times. If you haven't seen it, it's worth a look. And if you're passionate about your coffee, it's a must see.

Home ECOnomics: No more little yogurt containers

These containers are not a perfect eco material but they are the most economical solution I've found for carrying baby and toddler snacks around with absolutely no leaking.

And they do confer some green cred. I haven't bought yogurt in disposable cups since I invested in these Rubbermaid containers a year and a half ago. That saves plastic and money.





On the subject of food and carbon footprints, the New York Times ran this great story yesterday about the environmental impact of a glass of orange juice.

Maybe my favorite part was the title: How Green Is My Orange?

Elizabeth Alexander's Inaugural Poem

First, a pic from last night of the signs that usually mark Bush Street in San Francisco. (via http://www.flickr.com/photos/violetblue/)



I watched the inauguration with my 2 year olds this morning. The girls came and went from the room but interestingly they were transfixed when Elizabeth Alexander read the poem she'd written for the occasion. I don't know if it was because Alexander was speaking slowly and clearly so they could understand the words more clearly. Or if there was something hypnotic about her delivery. Whatever it was, I admire their taste in poetry. Here it is again...

Inaugural Poem

The following is a transcript of the inaugural poem recited by Elizabeth Alexander, as provided by CQ transcriptions.

Praise song for the day.

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others' eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."

We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, "I need to see what's on the other side; I know there's something better down the road."

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by "Love thy neighbor as thy self."

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.

Big family, small cars!

A low cost, low pressure way to keep track of those milestones

With twins the standard baby book records are pretty overwhelming to think about. I would be lucky if I took care of all their needs in the moment, let alone take note of their accomplishments for posterity. As a shower gift we did receive two small wall calendars that came with stickers that you could use to mark firsts. That was a great solution for the first 12 months. I'll actually be able to tell the girls when they first walked if they ever need it for a school project or something.

But, at least from my perspective, it's in the following years when they're talking and first interacting with the social world that those truly "cute" moments occur. Those funny moments that you think you'll never forget but can't even recall a week later.

I happened to stumble on a good solution last year and plan to do it again. At this time of year when all the calendars in the stores are 75-80% off, buy a really compact, cheap daily planner. Keep it by your bedside. That way at the end of the day if there was some funny sentence or situation you can just jot it down in the appropriate day (see above). I've found it a really satisfying way to keep track of those things, without the pressure of a big baby journal or such. And in families with multiples and siblings it's a general "family" record of the year.

Home ECOnomics: Wrapping Paper

I got this tip from a friend and it served me well for the holidays. Time to pass it on. Save the paper your kids doodle on and use it to wrap presents. People find the paper more touching and personal than commercial wrap, and you get to reuse all those artisitc musings. I could never bring myself to simply recycle them anyway.

Seventh Generation dishwashing detergent: good green cred, bad smell

In my opinion, going green, shouldn't send you into the red, or make you blue. But that's kinda how I felt after trying Seventh Generation dish washing detergent. At some point after we started using it, there would sporadically be a really bad smell when we opened the dishwasher in the morning. Sometimes washing the load again would make it go away, sometimes it wouldn't.

After about three-quarters of the box we figured out that the culprit was eggs. If we had scrambled eggs or even baked a cake with eggs one day and then put the bowl that had contained raw eggs in the dishwasher with Seventh Generation detergent, the whole load came out smelling bad the next morning. Our best guess is somehow the soap didn't work to break down the egg and instead the egg got heated up and spread around everywhere and dried smelling really bad.

Hopefully this is some weird idiosyncrasy with our dishwasher, but I thought I'd post it in case someone else is trying to get to the bottom of intermittently bad smelling wash loads.

We went back to Cascade for the meantime since it never had that problem. But next up for us is trying Trader Joe's detergent as we try to get greener in our cleaning supplies. High hopes here, it was rated really highly by Consumer Reports.

The whole thing reminded me of one of A's favorite "man on the street" interviews in The Onion. The question was something like "What efforts are you making to be better to the environment?" And one of the "respondents" said, "My wife keeps buying these green cleaning products, but I think green means you have to use twice as much to do the same thing." I think that was unfortunately true with some of the early products and some people - like A - are jaded.

But slowly I've been convincing him otherwise. My latest favorite find is Biokleen dishwash liquid.

Sure enough, making them at home...

...saves money when it comes to wholegrain waffles. The way it shook out, I am paying about $5.89 for the ingredients to make 16 toaster sized waffles. Altogether the final product weighs 24 oz.

At Safeway this week, I could have bought the Eggo Nutrigrain toaster waffles, but they're $3.99 for 10 oz. So that would be over $9.00 for 24 ounces of that product.

$5.89 homemade versus $9.00 storebought.

I was actually surprised by this outcome. I was assuming that from a money standpoint it might be a wash. Money aside I feel strongly about continuing to MAKE the girls their waffles because they're just so much healthier when done from scratch. For one, my version includes stuff like organic blueberries. And exclude additives such as gums and the like.

I'm still skeptical that making my own food will always ring up cheaper, just because the raw materials seem so high these days.

Next up... analysis of Mac'N'Cheese: Homemade v. Store Special. And after that I think I'm going to do a financial breakdown of a bread recipe.

Happy New Year!

I'm back from a holiday break that included
5 relatives from out of town
4 generations to coordinate
3 rained out day trips
2 cars between us all
and only 1 big disagreement with hubby as a result.
Of course there were countless cute conversation with the now 2 year old twins ("How old are you now?" "Two much old!" "Two years old?" "Two much old!")

Best was when B bowled everyone over by looking at the biography her grandpa got as a holiday gift and correctly identifying the cover photo as "Andrew Jackson." I explained the girls knew his picture because I'll often entertain them with the contents of my wallet when all else fails. "Who else's picture is on money?" I asked. B thought a bit and then said "George Washing-machine"

Speaking of money, since this is a blog about raising multiples on a budget and with a mind to the environment, a recurring theme this month will be whether it actually saves any money to make your own healthy foodstuffs. I go to a lot of trouble to make things like the girls' mac'n'cheese from scratch. At a time when money is tight for almost everyone, I'm curious how much I actually save by doing this.

At least my assumption is that I save money, I've set out to find out if I really do and by how much. Because the last time I walked past those Annie's organic bunnies and cheese they looked awfully cheep compared to the cheese, butter, pasta and milk I was putting in my cart.

First up tomorrow, will be a price comparison of homemade oatmeal blueberry waffles, to the Nutrigrain toaster variety.

Thought for the holidays

So we're all managing holiday chaos, I'm sure. Fortunately things are pretty low drama here, although there was a family moment today while my mom and I were trying to coordinate for a joint party. She told me I was being hard on her, which I know I often am. But I REALLY wasn't this time and she sounded honestly upset. So I called back to ask my dad if everything was OK. Sure enough it wasn't about me at all.

"Ah well," he said. Then he kind of sighed and chuckled. "We're just adjusting to married life."

And they've been married 40 years. Turns out they'd had a disagreement over a shopping list. But my dad's words hit a chord with me. Life is so full of adjustments. Good to never stop being open to them.

Just a thought headed into the heart of the holidays.

Twinsight #9: sleep training twins

Gimmee your ear!

This was our approach to sleep training our twins. We didn't want to do a total cry it out thing. But we also weren't ready to just follow their lead and not sleep all night.

Tied up in their sleep training was the fact that they were still snacking in the night at 6 months. So what we did was get up with them when they cried, but walk them around until an appointed hour for the feeding, every other night pushing it out a half hour later. So the first night they would feed at 3:30 but then the next night if they got up before 4 we walked around with them until they nursed at 4. The next night ditto, til 4. The next night we walked around with them till 4:30, the next night ditto, till 4:30.

They did actually sleep longer and longer when they realized they weren't going to get food before that. The following night was 5 am. Once they got to 5 am, I then used the tactic of reducing the minutes of the feeding. If they were both nursing about 10 minutes the first night, every night I reduced the amount of time they could nurse by one minute. I think once we got down 2, or maybe 3?, minutes they ended up dropping the nighttime feeding. But they did wake up early - between 5:30 and 6 am -- and did for a long time after. But they were sleeping through the night. It seems like a really involved process. But I couldn't bear to hear them cry and so that was our (exhausting in the short run, but worked in the long run) solution.

Key point... work out your plan for the night with your partner BEFORE going to bed. Waking up to screaming babies when you're exhausted doesn't set the stage for terribly kindhearted conversations. So much better to know exactly what you're doing and then there's nothing to argue about.

Give a gift, support my friends!

The economic downturn has me doing a turn around on my usual, buy nothing attitude for the holidays. This year I'm trying to support friends' businesses. Here are two with reasonably priced, fun stuff who also sell on the internet:

Little Miss Matched - my friend from high school started this company about 5 years ago. He started with socks in packs of three, which are still the best all-around gift pick on the site. BUT these mismatched gloves (also in packs of three) are pretty brilliant because if you lose one, you're still good to go. And I always get compliments on them when I wear them.


Krank Press - This stuff is gorgeous letter press. And it's useful. Who doesn't need a pack of Thank You or cool novelty cards for the holidays? Also, Nor's wildlife calendars and cards are really great. We always stay with Nor when we go down to LA and I'm always wowed by her letterpress operation set up in the garage and front room of her little house. And she pulls this off on top of a demanding job in architecture.

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.