Where did the babies go?

In this journey of raising twins, it's been a crazy, hectic ride!  It seems like just yesterday I could hold them both in my lap at the same time, and now we squeeze into the chair together!  In the blink of an eye, they are growing up and developing their own personalities, likes and dislikes.  Even though there are still some sleepless nights, meltdowns, temper tantrums, and fights to break up, I miss those times when they were so little!

I miss the way they could just fall asleep on me for a nap!  Now I can barely get them to sit still long enough to watch one cartoon.  This time goes so fast, and I can't stress enough how to cherish it!  I feel like I haven't just stopped and done that as much as I should, because, let's face it, life gets in the way.  The dishes need to be done, dinner needs to be made, and so on.  

There are times where I feel like I'm not doing such a great job as a mom.  These are hard moments, and we are our worst critics.  The big thing is, don't compare yourself to other moms, it's just not worth it.  If you are out with your kids and feeling frantic, breaking up fights or telling them to lower their voices, and  you look over and there's another mom with kids that are so well behaved, it's hard not to do just that.  You never know what their struggles may be.  Always keep that in mind!

I was having one of those days last week when I took my girls to VPK.  It was like pulling teeth to get them in the car, I had to get to work, they weren't listening, and I was just so OVER it!  I hate to yell, and I feel like I jump to that so fast, so raising my voice doesn't work AT ALL!!  Hahaha!  (Lesson learned, point to the girls!)   By the time I got them to school and got to work, I just had to take a huge breath and move on with my day.  I was feeling sad about that baby stage where mommy is everything and they wanted to listen to me.  If only they could stay that way!!  

I got to their school to pick them up and it was like they were new children!  They both ran up to me with huge grins and hugs.  They told me they were so happy to see me and how much they missed me!  It was like they didn't remember how we weren't that happy with each other this morning.  This made it all worth it!  I mean, it was like having those little babies back!  Even it was just for a few minutes, I stopped and just hugged them and enjoyed it!  

As they get older, it can be sad to know that those baby times are gone, but moments like this will remind you that no matter what, you will always be their mommy, and they will always be your babies!  Hug them a little tighter, and take the time to just live in the moment, even if it's just a couple times a day!  They won't remember the time outs or the frustrations, all they will remember is that extra long squeeze, and that mommy was there for them.  You're doing great, Mom, YOU are doing GREAT!!!!

The Toys Have Taken OVER!!!!!

As anyone with multiple children (not just twins!) knows the pain that comes with toys!  They are just everywhere!  You have bins or toy boxes to store them in throughout the house.  With kids that are close in age and of the same gender, of course you have multiples of the same toys!  So how do you keep them organized?  

For us, I put them into those collapsible bins that can go into the bookshelves.  Do you know what I'm talking about?  They have them at Target and the Dollar Store.  I was tempted to have two sets, one for each girl, but they really do trade off which one the claim is theirs a lot.  Instead, I decided to put them into like categories.  

To do this, think about all the toys they have, even down to the ones that come in the fast food kids meals!  My girls love those, and play with them for a bit, but then forget about them.  Once this happens, I go through and toss the ones that they don't play with anymore.  I feel bad at first, but guess what??!!  They don't even notice that they are gone!  Once I had my categories figured out, I went and got the boxes to put them in.  

In my house, horses and ponies (My Little Pony) are a BIG deal!  I have one for just the ponies and horses!  I put them into it, and all those little accessories that come with them, I took an old Halloween bucket and put those into it, that way they didn't get tangled up in the hair.  Next was the barbies, and I did the same thing with their accessories!  It takes a bit to get this all together at first, but let me tell you what!  Having all those toys have a place makes clean up easier!

The girls are in VPK now, and their teacher is doing a letter a week for them to learn about.  To get them to help clean up, I turn it into a game!  We play find the toy that starts with the letter __, and put it in it's place.  This is helping to clean their rooms, and at the same time they are learning more about the letters and words!  It doesn't always work, but we are learning and growing as we go, and at the end of the day, they were learning and cleaning at the same time!  Parenting is tough, but the thing that I'm learning is that I will learn how to be a better parent to them everyday, just by the things that they show me!

Toddlers going on Teens!!!

Now that my girls are 4, I can look back on the years of the two's and three's and grin, shake my head, and just say "Welp, it was loud and fun!".  Anyone that has had kids knows those years when they start to figure out that they can throw temper tantrums, say no, and just plain try to rule the house.  It's loud (there is no such thing as inside voices!!), and it's tiring!  Have lot's of coffee and wine (or other adult juice available) for when it's appropriate!  (Like at 5 o'clock when your other half gets out of work and you just want to go pee by yourself!)

It can be very frustrating when your 2 or 3 year old is in the store and just starts throwing a fit.  I have had to break up fights and you just try to either grin and bear it, shop fast, and get the hell out of dodge, or you can pack them up and leave the store as a punishment for them.  Neither way is very fun, but THIS TOO SHALL PASS!!!  There is a light at the end of the tunnel!  The hardest part is for you to stay calm while these two little people that think they are really old enough to make the decisions are trying to rip every shred of your patience away from you.  

I know I've made this sound horrible, and you will loose your patience some.  Just know that others have been there, and have survived!!  And at the end of the day when those little ones just want your snuggles and kisses, and you get that first real "I love you Mommy", it makes all the headaches, stress, anxiety, and frustration worth it!!  I promise!!


I mean, who could really stay mad at these smiles!!  Am I right??

Ugh, Swelling!!!!

I'm going to hop back to my pregnancy for this one guys!  Everyone knows that pregnancy is wonderful and life changing.  It also takes an ENORMOUS toll on the woman's body!!  When you are having twins, it can take even more.  

If you've ever been pregnant than you know about the swelling that happens.  All of your mucous membranes swell, (nose, vagina and the like), and you can read about this in any of your pregnancy books.  Another thing that swells towards the end are your legs, especially if you are on your feet all the time.  This swelling can be dangerous for you, so I suggest that you can do whatever you can to get it to go down.  One thing that I tried was after I would get home from work, I would lay down on the couch and put my feet up on the back of it.  It worked for a while for me, but remember what I said about twins being harder?  Partway through my pregnancy, I couldn't get the swelling to go down AT ALL!!

Here's my story about my pregnancy:

Twins automatically put you into a higher risk pregnancy.  I had to go to a specialist all the time to make sure that the girls were doing okay, on top of going to my regular OB.  At 22 weeks I had some cramping and did a week of bed rest (you can find ways to keep entertained, just check out my post about it right here   http://twinmomstories.blogspot.com/2016/01/bed-rest-doesnt-have-to-suck.html), then went back to work.  I am an X-ray technologist and am on my feet all the time!!  So, I went back to work for a week, then had to take another week of bed rest!  It was frustrating, but I wanted to do the best that I could for my girls.  

I talked with my doctor at the appointment, and they recommended that I go from full 8 hour to half (4 hours) days.  She didn't want me to go into pre-term labor and have the complications be even worse, like NICU stays.  So, I went back to work for 4 hours a day. All was great, but I was also using up my FMLA (here in Florida, it's an act that you apply for so that the company that you work for will hold your position for up to 12 weeks while you are out for medical reasons)!!  After going to half days, my legs were STILL swelling!  I tried everything (like I said) to get them to go down, and after 2 weeks I went back to my doctor to reevaluate.  At this point I was 27 weeks along, and my doctor said I needed to stop working all together if I didn't want to deliver early.  It was SO SCARY!!  My income was a big factor for our family, and I had used all of my vacation days!  What do you do??  Well, I'm a firm believer that my children came first, and we would find a way.  

I'm so glad that I did what my doctor recommended because at 30 weeks I went back in for the normal stress test (you will have these through out the pregnancy) where they watch the babies heart beats as well as yours, and also can monitor for any signs of pre-term labor.  The nurses come rushing in to check the machines and keep asking my how my pain is and if I was okay.  I was so confused until they told me that I was having contractions every 5-7 minutes.  I had to be admitted for the night, and to stop labor they gave me a magnesium drip.  This drip was necessary because I have a heart problem and take medication for it, and that is a contraindication for the shot to stop labor.  (Special circumstances!!)  This wonderful stuff to stop my labor made me feel like I was DYING!!!!  Luckily it worked, I was able to go home, but had to do flat bed rest for 6 weeks.  

The moral of this story is to listen to your doctor and to follow your instincts!! You are going to be a Mommy, and God will give you the instincts on what you need to do!!  You can do this!!!  Keep that swelling down ladies and enjoy the ride!!!

Document, Document, Document!!!

Have you noticed that time just flies by now?  It seems like since I've had my girls, all those little milestones go so quickly.  It's hard to remember when they took their first steps or started to crawl.  What their first words were and more.  

So how do you solve this problem?  Document, document, document!!!  With all the different types of social media out there, it's a great way to save those milestones so you can look back at them later, kind of like a digital scrapbook.  There's also an app called Timehop that accesses your photos on the different social media, and each day it shows you what you posted from the previous years.  I've found a lot of pictures that I had forgotten about on there!

You can always keep a journal and start a paper scrapbook too.  Those will be good to give them as gifts when they are going off to college or before they get married!  Whatever you choose to do, just make sure you make it fun and personal for them, and create one for each of them.  Keep those memories alive because trust me, it goes by so fast and you will be sleep deprived so the chances of things getting blurred is real!!  Also, try to enjoy it in the moment!  They are only babies once!!

Bed Rest Doesn't Have to Suck!!!!

When you hear the words "bed rest", what comes to mind?  For a lot of people, it's dreaded!  What are you supposed to do all day?  There's only so much day time TV to watch, am I right?  Wrong!!!!  You can still be active while on bed rest, it's just a different type of active!!

Find a hobby!  What do I mean by this?  Well, teach yourself something that you can do while lying or sitting down!!  I crochet, so I made blankets for my girls while on bed rest.  If you don't do that or knitting yet, what a perfect time to learn!!!  You don't have anywhere to be, and you can make something that your kids will treasure when they are older.  How do I know that?  I have blankets that my Grandmother made for me still!  Now that she is no longer with us, I still have those and love them!  She was the one that taught me how to crochet, so being able to make things for my girls has been a nice way to carry that on!

Don't have any stuff to crochet?  That's ok!  Once you go on bed rest, your friends and family come out of the wood work asking what you need and what they can do!  Don't be shy, TELL THEM!!!!!  They will be happy to do something for you to make this time easier!!  Ask them to stop at the local craft store, and there you can find kits that will teach you.  Have them pick one up and get to it!  Once you get an idea of what you need to do, then you can have someone pick up yarns in colors and weights (you'll learn what that means I PROMISE hahaha!!) that you would like, and extra crochet hooks.  Then start going online, and you can find lot's of free patterns!  

Another way to pass the time is books!  Not just pregnancy or parenting books, but books just for fun!  I read books from my favorite authors that I hadn't had a chance to read before because I was too busy.  Trust me, read now because you won't get to for a while after they are born!  There's also a new trend out of adult coloring books.  If you are really just looking for something to pass the time and keep your mind stimulated, that's one way to go!

How about Netflix?  Is there a show that you've been dying to watch, but your husband has no interest in?  Now's the perfect time!  You can watch your shows while you crochet or color!  Amazon Prime also has a ton of shows and movies, so have at!!!  Bed rest only has to be as boring as you make it!  It's called rest for a reason, and trust me, you won't be getting a lot of it after your twins are born, so take advantage of it while you can!!!!!

We're Off to See The Doctor!!!

Do you remember my post about going to the grocery store?  The experience is similar when going to the girls doctors appointments!  You'll need to pack up that dreaded huge diaper bag, and make sure that you take extra diapers and bottles!  If you live in big city, chances are the pediatrician's office will always be busy, and you will have the dreaded wait.  If you are in a small town, I'm sure that you will still have somewhat of a wait, because pediatricians are probably in short supply.

That being said, when your twins are infants, most likely they will sleep in the waiting room and through most of the appointment.  Make sure you bring something for you to read or do.  I like to crochet and read, so I always take my Kindle with me and some type of small project to work on while I'm there.  Why do I still do this?  My girls are 4 now, and they have a little slide and a TV at our pediatricians office, so the girls have something to do to occupy themselves.  It was true when they were infants, and TRUST ME, you will be watching plenty of kid shows in the next few years.  Save your sanity while you still can!!!!!!!!

I also had to take them to my follow-up appointments with my OB.  That was interesting!  Those rooms are TINY!!  Imagine the table that we all know and love, plus a double stroller parked in the corner!  If you haven't seen one, here you go!!

This was us just getting ready to go for a walk, but you can see the size of this thing!  My OB loved seeing the girls, and she told me something that I thought was the biggest compliment of my life!  She told me that I looked like the most put together mom of twins that she had ever seen.  I had my hair done, my makeup done, and I had put on something that made me feel human.  Why was this important?  In the crazy life of twins, taking a shower is a luxury (as it is with just one baby too, but you really are doing double the work all the time).  If I was going to leave the house, I wanted to make myself feel good about how I looked.  I mean, let's face it, you spend most of your time in yoga pants and PJ's, why not feel like a woman!!  It automatically changes your whole attitude, am I right?  The other part was that I wasn't stressed.  I'm a little bit OCD and a big planner, so I try to make sure that I have everything ready to go before I even really have to leave.  

What does this mean for you?  Be ORGANIZED!!!!  That is the most important thing that you can do!  Save your sanity and just get everything together and organized, even do it the night before so that you can be ready to go.  In a world where you aren't getting much sleep and anything can happen at anytime, having one thing that you have control over will make your life sooooo much simpler!!!  

If any of you moms out there have any tips, feel free to share them in the comments, that way we can all learn and grow together!  We are a special group, us moms, and we need to make sure that we support each other!!

Who's Who???

Are your twins identical or fraternal?  With fraternal twins, a lot of the time they look like siblings, but they not completely a like.  Mine girls are identical, but there are some features that are different about them.  That being said, when they were newborns, I had heard stories about parents painting toe nails different colors, or using permanent marker on the bottom of their twins feet to tell them about.  I didn't do that, but they each had a color that we used for OTHER people to tell them apart.  (We were around them so much that we could do it easily.  That doesn't mean that we don't slip up and pull a roll call on them sometimes!!)

I have friends that are twins, and I asked for their opinions about things before the girls were born, and I got some great feedback.  There are also some awesome books out there, so get to reading!  Ultimately, their advice was to use different colors so that looking back on pictures you could tell them apart.  Lana was pink and Keira was purple, and we used clothes, hair accessories, anything we could do, especially out in public.  Another bit of advice was to not use rhyming names or names that started with the same letter.  My girls names don't rhyme, but they do have the same amount of syllables.  I love their names and will be forever thankful for the advice from my friends and books that I read.  I think that it helps them to make sure they know that they are individuals.  So many people will only refer to them as "the twins", so having their own interests and cultivating that is important.  

If you are having twins and are still pregnant while reading this, I'd love to hear your feedback, but take it from a mom of twins already, this works!  My girls like different colors (and now that they are old enough to decide what they like, I go with it!!!), and I let them pick out clothes and what they want to wear.  I know what you're thinking though, twins are soooo cute when they are dressed alike!  People are always getting them the same outfits, which is fine, I just try to dress them in those clothes at different times.  I often get them the same clothes, just in different colors or patterns, that way they look similar, but not completely a like.  

Besides the clothes, make sure that you take the time to let their personalities shine!!  They may look exactly alike, but they really aren't!  They will like similar activities and shows and foods, but if one shows an interest in dance and one in softball, don't stifle that.  Let them be themselves just like you would if you had two single children!  Here's a picture of my girls this past Halloween, they both wanted to be princess sheriff's, so I made sure that their colors were different, and they got to pick them out!  

And here they are when they were just starting to pull up on the couch!  They look so much alike, but can you tell the differences in them?  Look closely!!!

Going Out of the House

Gee, I need to go to the grocery store and get a few things, I'll just pack up the girls and go, it shouldn't be that bad!  Yeah, right!  First thing is first, you have to get the diaper bag together.  With twins you need a bigger bag, because, let's face it, if you need 4 diapers for one kid and a change of clothes, you have to double it all for twins.  Common sense right?  Try fitting that into a regular sized diaper bag though!  When you register for your gifts while pregnant, make sure that diaper bag is big!

Once you have done that, then comes the fun of getting them into the car.  Put them in their car seats, (make sure you get light ones because you'll most likely be carrying one in each hand!), and carry them out to the car.  Simple right?  Except then you have to worry about the diaper bag too, hopefully it has a long strap and you can sling it over your shoulder to share some of the weight.  If not, you'll have to leave it by the door and go back and get it once the kids are in the car.  

After you get everything settled, go to the store and shop!  Easy peesy right?  Hahahahaha!!!!!  You better have gotten a double stroller, and in my opinion one that isn't a side by side stroller!  You won't be able to fit down certain isles or around certain corners.  Also, get one of those mommy clips, the kind that looks like a giant thing that mountain climbers use.  You can clip a basket to the handle of the stroller, and that is what you will be able to buy that go around.  Why you ask?  Because grocery carts don't have room for two car seats!!  Totally unfair, I know, but that is our reality.  I made a trip to the grocery store a couple times a week, and it was a luxury when I could go and not have the girls with me, or if my husband and I could go and we would take two carts, one for each girl.  

It's not that bad in all reality, but it's not that much fun either.  That's just for the grocery store though.  Imagine if you are going to spend an afternoon at a friends house, you'll need toys, clothes, and probably your pack and play.  Luckily, they will probably be small enough to both fit in the pack and play at the same time for naps. The pack and play is your best friend for those first few months.  I found one that had the dual bassinet option for the top instead of one bassinet and a changing station.  That thing LIVED in our bedroom until they were ready for their cribs.  There aren't dual bassinets so that they can sleep near your bed.  Instead of buying two bassinets and a pack and play, this was a great option, and saved money (which is going to be a little tight!).  I found it at Babys-R-Us, and it was a life saver!!!!