Welcome to the latest instalment of my Twiglet Top Tips series – where I recommend places, products and brands which we love and would like to share with you all 😊 Last week we were lucky enough to be invited along to have lunch at The Chilli Pickle, a street-food inspired Indian restaurant in Guildford.
For a number of years – basically since we bought our house – we’ve had a mainly purple and silver theme for our decorations. I say mainly because there are exceptions – random decorations we’ve picked up along the way which don’t really fit the colour scheme but which we liked or were gifts etc. This year, I would LOVE to have a rehaul of our decs and you can probably guess what my dream theme would be – RAINBOWWWWWWW!!
Sleep. When you have a new baby, it’s one of the questions everyone asks you – ‘How are they sleeping?’ You almost get sick of talking about it, especially when you have not one but two rubbish sleepers. At least when they’re babies though, you feel like you’re in good company – all the mums you meet are moaning about lack of sleep and surviving on coffee. You feel like you’re all in it together, helping each other through. What I’ve found is that it’s a much lonelier place when your children are 3 and a half and *still* not sleeping.
Hello! So, as expected, I haven’t blogged since I’ve gone back into teaching. At all. Life has been super busy and it’s been a big adjustment for us all – I’m not quite sure even after half a term that we’re actually fully used to it yet. So I just thought I’d write a little about it and how we’ve been getting on 🙂
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I feel like there’s a lot of stuff swirling around in my head at the moment and I’m in the mood for writing some of it down… So here we are 😂
A few weeks ago, we spent a fabulous morning at Mayfield Lavender with the very lovely Rachel Thornhill. I’ve known Rachel for a few years as she used to teach the twiglets Gymboree before she embarked on her career as a photographer. Her work is amazing so when she offered to take some photos of them I almost bit her arm off 😂 We met at Mayfield Lavender Nursery, the ‘secret’ lavender field 🙊😊 It’s a bit more wild and natural than the main field further up the road but, unlike that one, is not open to the public. It is available for private hire though 😊
Back when the twiglets were babies, whenever I met a mum with older twins, one of the main questions I’d end up asking was ‘when will it get easier?’ Always spoken with a slight undertone of crazed desperation, meaning ‘please tell me it gets f**king easier, please, PLEASE!” 🤣 The other day, as I got the twiglets out of the car and they walked, both sensibly holding my hands, into their playgroup, it suddenly struck me that maybe we were actually there – has it finally got easier?!
Now don’t get me wrong – it’s not easy, not by any means. We have plenty of sh*t days. H still has the most monumentally epic meltdowns, usually over very little, and has been super emotional recently. C is an absolute diva – knows what she wants, is extremely impatient to get it, will trample on anyone in her way (sometimes literally) and god help us all if she doesn’t get what she wants (which she frequently doesn’t because I’m a mean, horrible mummy 🤣) Strong-willed to the extreme. Both can be soooooo naughty – H in a bit of a silly-hyperactive-annoying-little-puppy kind of way, C often in a more calculating push-all-mummys-buttons-until-she-completely-loses-her-sh*t kind of way 😖 And the times when both are at their naughtiest together… well let’s just say you’ll find me mainlining wine of an evening (erm, that’ll be every evening then 🙈🤪🤣) Since they turned three a couple of weeks ago, C has taken on her threenager role willingly, and seems to have a newly acquired attitude problem. She’s started answering back, defiantly refusing to do what she’s asked, telling me to go away etc. So that’s all thoroughly joyous. And don’t even get me started on potty-training H 🙈
And yet… When I think back, to the hazy fog of the newborn days – the tears (them and me), the rollercoaster of emotions, the struggle to breastfeed and then to pump, the guilt, the endless pooey nappies, the extreme sleep deprivation, the crying, just the sheer overwhelmingness (?🤔) of it all… And then a few weeks and months in – the reflux, the wind, the screaming when feeding, still the endless nappies – the relentless conveyor belt of feeding, burping, changing, rocking to sleep, sterilising bottles, washing clothes – over and over. As they got older, the challenges changed. Suddenly they were on the move so I needed eyes in the back of my head 🤣 I’ve said this before but for me, nothing was quite as tough as the newborn period, yet still I’ve always found parenting twins hard. That’s probably an obvious thing to say, and I’m also aware I’m probably sounding very negative here, and I don’t mean to – I love being a mum, even more so being a twin mum and I wouldn’t change a thing (although children who sleep might have been nice 😁) But it’s ok to admit it’s bloody hard, right? Even a few months ago, every outing was so stressful and anxiety-ridden because of H having no sense of danger and just wanting to bolt at every opportunity.
So being able to walk calmly across that car park holding the twiglets’ hands and chatting to them, without stressing, really did make me stop and think. No more lugging two heavy car seats at once, or wearing one baby in a carrier and carrying the other on my hip, or having to get the tank (aka buggy) out just for a 30-second walk from the car as it was the only way to do it safely, or trying to walk them both and instantly regretting it as they tried to do a runner in separate directions in a busy car park… In a way I miss all those times as it signifies how much they’ve now grown up and matured, but I can’t help but appreciate the ease of things like a simple car transfer now.
So yes I still have sh*t days where I feel lonely and down and like I can’t cope, yes I still need to have a rant sometimes when they’ve driven me to the edge, yes the tantrums are something else and the challenges have just changed as they’ve got older… But even still, I think I can finally say that overall, parenting twins has got that little bit easier at age 3 😊
(*Disclaimer: I reserve the right to fully revoke all of this if they’re being absolute turdmonkeys tomorrow 😉)
