I’m currently sat in Costa with a coconut latte and a toastie, enjoying a rare couple of hours of peace and quiet. It’s half term and the twiglets are at a Playball camp for the morning. I’m trying to relax and appreciate the time to myself but I can’t help but think about the fraught, stressful few hours we had before we left the house earlier…
I thought I’d share a few of the twiglets’ favourite toys at the moment – not sure if anyone will be remotely interested but I just figured there could be some useful ideas for anyone looking to buy birthday gifts (or Christmas gifts if you’re insanely organised 🤣) for 3- or 4-year olds 😊 So here we go…
I thought I’d share a few of my memorable moments of first-time parenthood so far. I’ve used the word ‘alternative’ because they’re probably not the moments you might expect – baby’s first smile, baby learning to walk etc. Not those ones. These are probably a little more… silly. But sometimes it’s the silly little things that can make a significant difference to your life and how you feel about this crazy rollercoaster called parenting 🤪
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.
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?!
I remember vividly the first time the twiglets came home from nursery and started singing a song that I didn’t know. They were about 19/20 months and hadn’t been going there long – their speech was nothing like it is now, but they were clearly attempting to sing a song and I had no idea what it was. It was such a weird feeling hearing words come from their mouths that I knew for a fact had not been learned from us. That was the moment I realised that it was no longer just me and twin.papa.po (and our close family) who were responsible for shaping their little minds. Up to then, pretty much everything they’d experienced in their lives had been with one or both of us. We were trying to teach them right from wrong, trying to explain things in a way they could make sense of, trying to encourage them to be kind and caring towards others, above all trying to ensure they were happy. All obviously guided by our own views, opinions and experiences and how we wanted to parent our children. So that singing moment felt significant to me because it was when I had the realisation that other people, with different views, opinions and experiences to ours, were now really starting to influence our twiglets.
Do you ever feel like your children are ganging up on you? Conspiring against you to send you into some sort of mental breakdown, while they no doubt point and laugh uproariously? I certainly do 🙈
Yesterday I had a parents’ evening-type meeting thingy (there’s probably a better term for it than that 🤣) with Cora’s keyworker at preschool (Henry’s is in a few days time). The only question I really had for her was about how C is getting on socially. I know her speech, understanding and physical development are really good for her age (which they confirmed) but I have been wondering how she is with other children. She’s a very chatty and sociable little girl, and when we go on playdates, she interacts and plays with other kids really nicely. But I just had a feeling that this may not quite be the case at preschool.
A month or so ago, we started to potty train Cora. Henry wasn’t ready (still p*ssing all over the house if I took his nappy off 🙈) and I figured I’d personally find it more manageable to do one at a time anyway, given that I wasn’t sure how it was going to go and had basically no idea what I was doing. Anyway C did amazingly with wee and was dry within a couple of days. She started off doing well with number 2s as well but then seemed to regress after a little while, and now waits until she has a pull-up on at night to go 🙈 She’s not dry all night so we can’t take the nappy away yet but I’m sure she’ll get there eventually – I’ve read and heard that it’s very normal for 💩 to be a bit more tricky to crack.
I could actually cry.
Yesterday we had a little breakthrough with Henry. To anyone else, this probably will not seem like a big deal in the slightest. But for us it was kinda huge. I managed to do a short walk (literally two minutes) from the car to a local softplay, and back again after, with no buggy AND NO REINS. And no twins – ha just kidding. To most other parents, even those with twins of a similar age, this is probably just normal. But for us, it definitely isn’t.