Surviving Twin B-day Parties (with wallet and sanity intact)

One of the biggest worries that came with my kids entering school was the Great Birthday Party Arms Race. You know, that seemingly endless quest of the Alpha Parents to find the newest, coolest, or most expensive children’s birthday party entertainment, while the ordinary parents try to figure out how to walk the fine line between "cheaping out" and "running up a deficit".

It didn’t help that my girls’ first WEEK of kindergarten netted them 3 birthday invites - one at a dance studio, one a “cheerleader” party at a high-end fitness club, and a “simple” one at Chuck E. Cheese. We knew we didn’t have the budget to enter the arms race, nor did we want to even if we could. Fortunately, the popularity of the countless simple, mostly handmade activities at their school’s annual Pumpkin Patch festival made us feel confident that our kids and their classmates could have a good time without a huge price tag.

We have now survived hosting three school-age twin birthday parties without either draining their college funds or causing our kids to become social outcasts known as “the kids with the cheapo parents and boring birthday parties”. Maybe it’s too soon to think we’ve got a handle on this process, but we can at least offer a few suggestions of budget-friendly fun that seem to work with the Kindergarten through second grade age group. Details tomorrow...

A Vaccine We Can All Agree On

The news about the possible H1N1 flu epidemic has parents everywhere worried over whether to vaccinate and if so, where to get vaccinated. Meanwhile a much greater health risk is getting a fraction of the publicity. Fortunately, there are widely available preventative remedies for this health risk - click here to find out more.

TBB Halloween Party

TBB celebrated our first ever halloween party last night. It was a great success with kids of all ages enjoying crafts, activities, story time, songs, and tasty treats. Board member Witch Jill entertained the kids with halloween themed stories and her girls jumped in to help with the songs. Special thanks to Kika Rocha for all the prep work, set up, cute crafts and delicious treat bags.

Our youngest trick or treaters at 3 weeks! Yay mom for getting out of the house!

To match or not to match...that is the question.

When I was pregnant with my twins, I never thought I would dress them alike or in matching outfits. As I am one of the least girlie females I know, it seemed this type of behavior was silly at best. Especially for one having fraternal twins.

But, now that I have them, and pretty much since they were born, I have in fact dressed them in similar outfits and sometimes even exactly the same. Here is some of my rational.

1.) I get almost all of my clothes from two places a.) Used from twin moms or b.) presents from Michael's mom. (I've bought some shoes, leotards and some target pants, but that is pretty much it) I hate shopping more than most things so the thought of shopping regularly for little girls clothes makes me ill. Since there are some twin moms that buy nice clothes for their kids and miraculously still have them in good condition, I take advantage of that and just buy their clothes in bulk. I don't even look at them before I buy most times. My main suppliers are a mom who lives in Danville and has identical girls and really good taste. She has mostly matching stuff. The same outfits in different colors. Mostly gymboree and other quality stuff. The other one is TBB Member Amy Wright who sells her stuff at the garage sale. She also has great taste, more identical outfits, and her kids have seemingly unworn clothes.

2.) It's just plain easier in the morning to not have to put together two outfits when you can just put together one. Perhaps other moms like to arrange outfits, but I'm not one of them. Quick and easy is my motto.

3.) Lately, it seems the girls actually want to dress themselves alike. Elizabeth in particular loves to pick out the clothes and then wants Miranda to dress the same. She gets very confused when I tell her "there isn't a matching shirt for that one."

4.) Sometimes, it's just plain cute. Like when I took all the kids to gym class with me. The girls wore matching leotards, Amy Wright shorts and matching piggie tails in their hair. It was ridiculously cute.

So, I've learned to never say never, because you never know what life will throw at you.

The "Good Enough" Mother

This article from PBS Parents was posted on another bulletin board that I frequent, and I found it to be a helpful reassurance that we don't need to be a "perfect" mom to be a good one. Hope you find it helpful too.

A surprisingly pleasant inconvenience

Probably one of the first pieces of advice all new/expectant parents of multiples receive is “Get them on a schedule”. And although it is never an easy process with the infants and toddlers, we might feel like we’ve earned a well-deserved break the first day we get to drop both kids off at preschool at the same time and place. And when they get to kindergarten, we might even be getting envious looks from parents of different-age siblings who are scrambling to arrange car pools so that they’re not making several trips per day to accomodate different drop off and pick up times at one or more schools.

But a funny thing happened this year - when we received our (now second-grade) girls’ reading group assignments, there was the logistical hassle we were afraid of: A was an “Early Bird” (8 a.m. arrival/1:55 p.m. pickup) and B was a “Late Bird” (8:45 a.m. arrival, 2:50 p.m. pickup).

And then a funnier thing happened: knock wood, so far this has been a *good* thing for all of us. Each girl has a bit of “sibling-free time” built in to the day. I get to enjoy a little one-on-one time with each of them, and find it’s easier to appreciate their unique and different personalities when those personalities aren’t clashing with each other. I get more exercise because we've been doing more walking (walking B to school in the morning, and A home from school in the early afternoon - fortunately my neighbor's 4th grader has to be at school from early bird drop off to late bird pickup so each of the girls has a carpool for one part of the school day). And since I'm only walking with one of them, I don’t have to hear B complaining that A walks too slow or A crying because B called her slow. B, who often seems to compete for my attention when her sister is around, seems more relaxed when she gets to start her day with a bit of 'mommy time', and A, who isn't as outspoken as her sister, seems more relaxed knowing she has my uncontested attention for that hour before her sister comes home from school.

Of course, I might not be quite so happy about this arrangement when the rainy season and sick days arrive and put a damper on our walks, but for now, I’m enjoying my surprisingly pleasant inconvenience.

Room Ideas

Many of here in the Bay Area, with it's expensive housing market and smaller older homes, have our twins sharing a room. On the TBB general forum I've seen several recommendations to divide a room with a simple privacy screen or sheet between the beds to help kids go to sleep at night. One of my favorite kid related home design blogs, Ohdeedoh, has some neat ideas for shared rooms:
Creating Privacy in a Shared Room (I think the bookshelf pictured is from Ikea)
and
Space Saving Ideas for a Shared Room