Starting on Monday, Caden requested to go to Delaney’s room at daycare. Not after nap, now. Why? She missed Delaney, and if she wasn’t with her she wouldn’t know where she was. While shocked by this sudden turn of events, I thought it was sweet. Daycare said they would try to get them together in the afternoon. Perfect!

Tuesday and Wednesday it only got worse. She cried at drop off. Begged to stay in Laney’s room. WTH? They don’t like each other that much! I couldn’t help but think there was more to this issue, especially since her teachers said she was just fine once the day started.

When I picked her up on Wednesday she told me another girl in her class called her stupid at naptime. I asked if she told her teacher, she said no, she was saving it for me. Here’s the thing with Caden. Emotionally, she’s my mini-me. Well, my mini-me when I was much younger. She’s very sensitive, especially to what other people say. She also really wants her teachers to like her. As soon as we started talking about this, I knew this was the core issue. She couldn’t verbalize it, but I knew she felt like she couldn’t tell on this other girl. She also started saying other things that had happened – the boys tackled her, they hit her on the head, etc. All things that probably have happened, but when? No idea. They could have happened weeks ago.

The other piece of this is that Caden tells on Delaney a lot at home. I try to nip it in the bud, but perhaps that was leaving her feeling like she couldn’t say anything? Or maybe she sensed I didn’t like this so she didn’t want to anger her teachers by doing it at school?

I talked it through with her teacher today and she agreed that this could be it. She had a talk with her about when it was tattling, and when she really needed to tell the teacher. She also told her that even if Caden thought it might be tattling, it was still okay to tell the teacher because they would help her decide if it was tattling or not. Excellent.

From my side? Big changes around here. The tattling can be nonstop, but they’re telling me these things for a reason and I need to validate that when they tell me. I’m also working on validating her feelings when [insert person] says something to her that hurts her feelings. I often find myself saying “Caden, it’s okay, that’s not something we cry about.” Instead, I’m now going with “I know that makes you sad, but it’s what you know in your heart that counts.” or something along those lines. One of these two things happens about every 15 minutes in our house, so we’ve been doing a lot of validation around here.

It’s funny because with twins, I think you think it will be the physical work that is going to exhaust you. And yet, this stuff is way worse for me. I was chatting with my dental hygienist this week and she said “I don’t know how you deal with girls. They’re just so emotionally exhausting!” Ha! Indeed. Even knowing that these kinds of things are what we’re going to be dealing with for oh, the next fifteen years? Does nothing to prepare you for it!

* Why is it that the girls come to my room at either 1:30am or 4:00am? Always one of those two times, never anything in between.

* Why is it that Caden injures herself every day? Every day! How many lumps and bumps can a girl take?

* Why does Caden cry every morning when we drop her sister off? This separation anxiety from her sister phase is throwing me for a loop.

* Why does Laney love to sleep on the floor?

* Why are my girls so obsessed with their birthday party planning?

* When will Pinterest figure out their search functionality?

We’re in a weird nap phase. Most days, Caden doesn’t take a nap at school. Occasionally she will, especially if she’s up early or not feeling well, but for the most part she just rests quietly on her cot. You can tell she’s tired in the evenings. She’s more sensitive, but she isn’t crabby and she generally falls asleep fairly quickly at night. On the weekends she usually naps one day, does quiet time one day. I think she likely needs a nap, but for whatever reason she doesn’t want to sleep.

Delaney naps every day at school. Monday she was asleep within five minutes and slept for 2 hours, yesterday she slept for 1 hr 40 minutes. It takes her a little longer to fall asleep at night, but she absolutely needs that nap during the day, so I’m okay with that trade off.

On the weekends I’ve been trying to just let it go. My big thing is that I want to be able to run in peace, so I just need them to stay in their room quiet for 45 minutes. On Saturday I thought Caden needed a nap, but after 20 minutes she hadn’t fallen asleep. I gave both of them books, told them they had to stay in bed while I ran, and left. When I came back upstairs they were both sound asleep!

As a mom, naptime is sacred. You look forward to it all morning. You plot out what you’ll do during naptime. It’s a break during the day to pull it all back together. To maintain your sanity. To take a breath. The thought of losing that time gave me heart palpitations.

Because I saw that naps were coming to an end, I tried quiet time a few different times. It never worked. Quiet time was more like party time. Why are they now able to read books quietly in bed? No idea. I do wonder if it isn’t because they are both very used to having to stay quiet during nap time at school. Maybe it’s a little bit of maturity? Either way, I’m more okay now with losing naps, knowing that it still means downtime for everyone. We are still a ways from totally getting rid of them, but I no longer feel panicked when I think about it.

Gymnastics started up again last night and the girls were SO excited. They love gymnastics. I realized last night that I love gymnastics too. I love that they love dance, but I don’t get to watch those classes so I can’t see their progress. With gymnastics I can see it each week. And after a four week break? They have much better body control! More confidence, more smiles, it’s so fun. I love that they’re athletic, and even more that they are good listeners in the gym.

The coach this time is a high school girl and I’m very excited. I think she’s going to push them a little more which I love.

My kids are obsessed with Blue’s Clues. Prior to Christmas they had never even seen an episode. Delaney got the Blue’s Holiday DVD in her stocking from my parents and they were enthralled from the first viewing.

They request it every evening, and fight over who gets to take it to school. Yesterday they didn’t get a nap, so I asked if they wanted to watch a movie and relax on the couch. Caden immediately requested Blue’s Clues and then started crying when I said I thought we should watch one of the Toy Story DVD’s. Crying!

I know this show has been around forever, but I had never seen an episode. When the girls started carrying notebooks everywhere and asking me how to draw things, I didn’t get it. But, when they started saying “That’s the second clue!” and laughed about seeing paw prints on various things, I realized they were playing Blue’s Clues in their imaginary play a lot.

As far as shows go, it’s not bad. It’s somewhat educational and so far, none of the songs have annoyed me. I also thinks it’s super cute how all of the animals are named for their color. Periwinkle! Magenta! Miss Marigold! I love it.

Veggie of the Week – Possibly carrots if I pull it together. I have a bag sitting in the fridge, just need to figure out how and when.

Sunday – Braised Chicken with Lemon and Capers – Here’s a shocker. The girls loved it, cleaned their plate, asked for more, and Caden even liked the sauce and asked for it to be served again. What can I say, we’re a family of protein lovers.

Monday – Taco Corn Fritters – I made these Sunday night and they are Good. Well, I like them anyway. Nice and sweet with the corn, plus they made a huge batch that I froze. Next time I’ll def add more seasoning though.

Tuesday – Shrimp & Veggies

Wednesday – Steak & Hot Dogs

Thursday – Soup

Friday – Leftovers

Saturday – Dinner Out

I feel so bad for Caden right now.

She’s got a bad cold and has had it for a while. Nothing in her sinus area drains, so she has tears coming out of her eye and snot coming out of her nose. Her preferred method of wiping both is to use her shirt which results in her cheeks and nose being rubbed raw. I’ve been putting my moisturizer on her cheeks and vaseline under her nose, but there’s a scab there now and you can tell it’s painful.

And do you see her eye? That was a great story, once they finally told me the truth. It was after lights out and Caden was singing so that Delaney would have music to dance to. When the song ended, she took a bow … straight into the bed frame. I thought for sure it would go black and blue, but not yet.

So the poor kiddo is pretty miserable. Everything coming out of her nose is clear, so I can’t even offer up antibiotics in the hopes of kicking this quickly. She didn’t nap at school yesterday so she went to bed early. When she didn’t whine about that even a little, I knew she was exhausted. Baby girl was asleep within 10 minutes.

The girls are at a stage where they really want to figure out words. They’ve been at various stages of this stage for a while. I remember over a year ago when they would try out words, words like maybe or perfect or never. Now they want definitions for words, even for words they already (seemingly) know. It’s maddening.

(at naptime)
“Please rest. You don’t need to sleep, but you do need to rest.”

“What’s rest?”

“It means to relax. You know what rest means.”

“Do I close my eyes when I rest?”

“You can if you want to.”

“You just said I didn’t have to close my eyes!”

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

The other night they asked the babysitter about ‘disgusting’. She actually gave them a really good definition and talked about when they could use it and when they couldn’t. For instance, things are disgusting but people never are. Also, you wouldn’t want to call food that your mom made you disgusting. You can tell she works with 3-year-olds all day. So now they call everything disgusting. “That garbage is disgusting!” “That toy is disgusting!” We’ve had to have a lot of conversations about what things are actually disgusting.

Tuesday night everything was stinky. I think they’re still trying to figure out when words can be silly, and they definitely thought stinky was silly. Nicole the babysitter and I did not find stinky silly. They kept calling her stinky as she left and laughing like it was oh so funny! Ugh. It was late and she needed to go so we wrapped it up and talked about it in the morning. Both girls had to find Nicole at daycare yesterday and apologize. Caden was so embarassed by this, but Laney got it. I think Laney was the stinky instigator and Caden followed along, not realizing the trouble she was going to get into.

The other word we’re having troubles with is ‘pretty’. But that’s a whole other post on its own!

For any parent that has more than one child, one of the things that weighs on your mind is one on one time. With twins it’s a bit of the holy grail. You’re always trying to figure out how to get some, but it rarely seems to happen. As a single mom I don’t have those times when one parent takes one and the other parent takes the other, so I get creative in other ways.

When the girls were younger I used to take them out to lunch. It was nice even though they didn’t talk much, but it became more difficult to do as their lunch hour shifted. Instead I took them out for breakfast. They love Starbucks! But as soon as they got their special treat, they wanted to take it back to their classroom to show their friends. Much as I love Starbucks and spending all of my money there, it didn’t seem like a good use of our quality time.

Now that the girls are in separate rooms, I pop in fairly frequently. It started out just giving hugs, but then the other day I grabbed my lunch and brought it downstairs to eat with Laney. She loved it! She is someone who loves/needs to spend time with me. Her favorite thing to do is help me in the kitchen. She’s actually quite good at this point and seriously helps me out. Having lunch with her was a perfect one on one thing.

Yesterday I grabbed lunch and headed to Caden’s room. Her first question to me was “Are you staying for the movie?” I’ve done that before, gone into her room and snuggled her while they watch a short movie before naptime and she loves it. All of her girlfriends pile onto my lap and around me. It’s a big snuggle fest. She couldn’t have cared less about having lunch with me, her thing is snuggle time. I know this, why did I think what worked with Laney would work with her?

For me, half the battle of finding good, quality one on one time is knowing what the girls are going to enjoy. Last night Laney and I went shopping for shoes while Caden made cookies with the babysitter. I knew as long as we spent time together, she would be happy and she was. She is such a hilarious shopper. She kept up quite the running commentary while trying on shoes! And then couldn’t wait to get home and show her sister. For the next babysitter night, Caden has requested a trip to Starbucks. Maybe we’ll snuggle up and drink hot chocolate together?

My photography mojo takes a hike every winter. It makes me realize just how much I rely on the outdoors and that natural light for my pictures. The thing is, I have great light that comes in my living room, and I found out yesterday that the girls room has great natural light as well. I’ve been trying to just take pictures, even if they aren’t spectacular or anything I want to keep. Anything to play with the light and try to take advantage of it if possible.

The girls went bananas over my niece’s bikini at Christmas, so my mom bought them matching bikinis. Might as well try them on and snap some shots!

And here’s my problem with light coming in a window, it only lights half the shot. Delaney has decent light, but Caden is in the shadows. Also, I had to crank up my ISO so it’s a little grainy.

Probably should have brushed their hair before doing this! At least the bikinis are cute, right?