Monthly Archives: May 2012

A Rainy Day

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Today it has rained all day.  We’ve been to twins’ group this week and the supermarket too, and I object to paying £6 to go to our local soft play place.  Everything costs more when you have two!  After more than a week of beautiful sunshine and lots of outdoor play, we were stuck indoors, so I had to get a bit creative.

This morning I hunted out a story bag which used to belong to my mum when she was working.  She was an Early Years teacher, like me, and she was fantastic at putting these bags and boxes together for children to explore stories.  The children had a lovely time looking at the books and playing with the soft toys.

After, they enjoyed playing with the fabric.  Little Miss always makes a beeline for this kind of thing at twins’ group; she likes to wrap them around herself, and put them over her head, popping out to say “boo!”  And trust a boy to make himself a cape, although he was buzzing like a bee – no superman just yet!

After lunch and a nap, it was time to get messy.  This morning I made some edible paints, a recipe I found on The Imagination Tree, a lovely blog with lots of fantastic ideas for things to do with your little ones.  It is made with boiling water so it had to have some time to cool.  This is the first time I’ve been brave enough to do anything like this – a class full of three year olds doesn’t bother me in the least; 18 month old twins is another matter entirely…

Well, it went brilliantly.  They really enjoyed it and spent a good half an hour exploring, which I thought was pretty amazing.  I thought there was going to be enough left to do it again tomorrow but they kept asking for more and it had soon all gone!  Here they are having a whale of a time:

I’m linking this up with Multiple Mummy’s Family Frolics

The Gallery – ‘Sunshine’

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This week’s gallery theme is ‘Sunshine’.  I decided not to take it literally, so here is a picture of my baby girl at 7 months old, and this is why it links to the theme:
“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,
You make me happy, when skies are grey,
You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you,
Please don’t take my sunshine away.”

She was a poorly girl when she was born and we thought we might lose her.  She brightens my every day.

Check out the other lovely pictures at Sticky Fingers.

Going to groups with twins

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The other day someone asked me if I take the children to lots of groups.  Well no, actually I don’t.  We can’t go to groups you have to pay for because taking two makes it really expensive.  And in my experience toddler groups don’t work with twins.  
The first toddler group we went to was in the local village hall and at the end of the session there was a singing time.  Everybody sat in a circle on the floor with their (one) child on their knee, and I managed to grapple my two onto mine.  Then they decided to sing ‘Ring-a-ring-a-roses’ and everyone stood up.  And looked at me.  Now my two were about 13 months old at the time, not walking, and getting tired and grizzly.  I knew if I got up with one I wouldn’t be able to pick the other one up (I’ve only recently mastered this, since they’ve been steady on their feet – before that I found it impossible unless I could lift them from their cots).  So the only thing I could do was to get up and move, from the floor, holding both babies.  I nearly gave myself a hernia.  And everybody watched, someone said “oh, wow!” and nobody offered to help.  I wasn’t impressed, I wasn’t there to be a freak show.  We didn’t go back.  
The second toddler group I tried seemed a bit better, initially.  Until one of the bigger boys decided it would be fun to give my 14 month olds (one not walking by this point) a good hard shove.  One after the other, as I stood one crying baby up he shoved the other one over, twice each before I managed to gather them up like a mother hen.  I was horrified, the babies were really upset and the little boy’s grandmother was completely oblivious, having a natter on the corner.  And when I went to speak to the person in charge all she did was to go and tell the grandmother, who did nothing.  It became apparent that it was the kind of setup where children could do whatever they wanted and there would be no consequences.  As a nursery teacher myself, not my kind of place, and I didn’t feel like it would be possible to watch, and protect, both my children all the time.  We didn’t go back. 
One group we do go to is our local twins’ group.  It’s been a bit of a lifeline for me from the beginning, having first popped in when I was still pregnant and then starting to take the babies when they were 8 weeks old.  There was always someone to feed a baby for me and all the mummies had been through what I was going through and could offer masses of support and advice.  I still find this now – everyone mucks in and helps each other, and each others’ children, and I have made some good friends.  
When I told this to the person who asked me about groups, I felt faintly embarrassed, like I was being critical of mums of singletons (like her!)  I don’t mean to be critical at all, I have just found it really hard going to places where people stare at you because you are ‘the twin mum’ and don’t seem to see when you are struggling.  I’m sure there are plenty of  toddler groups where people give and receive brilliant support, but sadly I haven’t managed to find them yet.  
We did try one paid group which was good.  It was a messy play group and I took my dad because I knew it would be impossible to do it on my own.  We went for a trial session which cost me SEVEN POUNDS and if we wanted to continue we would have had to sign up for a twelve week term at a cost of around ONE HUNDRED POUNDS!!!!  I’m sorry, you run a lovely group but it’s nothing I couldn’t do at home with my little ones for a fraction of the cost.  We didn’t go back.  

Meal Planning Monday

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The veg box remained fairly safe this week.  I did have a rather large red onion dropped on my toe and I had to rescue the carrots again but we got away without the teeth marks this time.  Here’s Little Miss checking out the onions:

Here’s what we’re eating this week with the contents of the box, plus fennel and broccoli which I ordered too:

Marinated barbecued chicken with salad (grated cucumber is going down a storm at the moment (as Little Miss still doesn’t have any molars – cucumber’s tricky with gums!))
Vegetable and quorn sausage pasta bake made with roasted squash and peppers.  I’m not a huge fan of quorn sausages but normal ones have so much salt in its a bit bonkers (plus there are fewer WW points for me in the quorn ones.)
Grilled salmon with new potatoes, asparagus and broccoli - the first veg box asparagus offering of the year, which Little Man will be very excited about.
Lamb and lentil curry with rice and broccoli - I’m using lentils to eke out the lamb a bit – its such an expensive meat I can’t really justify big portions mid week.
Fennel and tomato couscous with fish - this is based on a Jamie Oliver recipe, but I cook the fish separately, use less couscous, and miss out the chillies.  Its really delicious and the children love it – I never thought I would see toddlers eating and enjoying fennel, of all things!

I haven’t managed to put last week’s chicken tagine recipe on – we ate it before I remembered to take a picture.  I had two hungry, demanding toddlers on my hands at the time.  It was yummy though and it worked well, despite the experimentation!

This week I have made peanut butter cookies too – they are really nice but a bit light and crumbly for little ones, they fall apart when they take a bite.  It might partly be the heat but they haven’t been very interested so far, so I’m hoping I might catch a hungry moment to see what they really think!  

Check out more Monday meal planning over at Mrs M’s.