Monthly Archives: January, 2014

We are Three

The twins turned three today!  This is how the day went.

Great excitement over gifts.  Labradoodle not happy about toy electric guitar.

Breakfast at our favourite cafe.  Master inconsolable after water spilt over his trousers.  Change of trousers does nothing to rescue the situation.   I decide our trip to the MCA will be postponed until Friday when we are all in a better mood.

We try bribery at cupcake shop.  Cupcake shop not open until 9.00am.  Master tries to enter cupcake shop behind a tradesman.

Back to cupcake shop but ovens are not working so purchase six cake pops instead.

Twins fighting in street over who carries cake pop box.

Multi play group.  Great fun and no incidents.

Master and Miss need a wee half way between play group and car park.  Split decision means two wees on the grass.  Master wants to do a plop too until he sees the look on my face and decides he will wait until he gets home.

Arrive home to find both downstairs toilets have exploded all over bathroom floors.  (Do not ask ).  Clean both bathrooms, use 1 litre of disinfectant and now need to buy more cans of Glen 20.  Labradoodle sleeps in one of the bathrooms so wash all his bedding as it soaked up the toilet fountains beautifully.

Belated lunch for twins, more bribery with a cake pop each.

Unwrap more gifts.  Spend an hour putting barbie glamour vacation house and trashie garbage truck together.  (Note:  always assemble gifts before you wrap).

Dinner which is leftovers from Monday night.  Nobody likes it (even labradoodle) so hope that Workaholic comes home from the city with emergency cupcakes.

Workaholic home with cupcakes and a bunch of the most beautiful roses for moi!!!!

Candles will not light on cupcakes due to gusty wind that arrived at 5.31pm and left at 5.34pm.

Twins lose the plot somewhere between the bath and bedroom.

Workaholic on conference call when Master takes blankie onto the landing to sleep and Miss needs the toilet.
I was watering the front garden oblivious to it all.

Overall a fabulous day.  I can’t believe it was three years ago today.  Where did it go?

Pilfering of the Worst Kind

We have the most lovely cafe that we frequent most Sunday mornings.  The owner is the best and the staff have got to know us over the months.  For a long time there were never any highchairs so we would frequent somewhere else when they were little but I noticed under its new management that two chairs had made their way out on to the pavement.

I wished they were there when ours were little but still it was nice to see them there now.

Recently we were there and I overheard the waitress saying that there was only one chair now as someone had stolen the other one.  Now this cafe is open from about 6.30am until 5.00pm every day of the week, so somebody stole a highchair in broad daylight.  Who would do such a thing?

It is not just highchairs though.  In our travels we found ourselves at Wellington Airport, NZ when the twins were about 13 months old.  We asked if there were strollers to get them from checkin to the lounge and if possible to the departure gate as they were tired and getting pretty surly.  The assistant informed us that all the strollers had been stolen over time and so they don’t offer that service anymore.  Who would steal airport strollers?

I can’t quite get my head around this sort of behaviour.  It is hard enough for multiple parents to find more than one highchair at a cafe and two or more stollers at an airport is a blessing.  So come on those of you that might be tempted to steal items such as these either for a joke or for your own use, give it a second thought before you do it.  And if anyone has a clean, quality highchair that they don’t want, please let me know so we can be community spirited and donate it to a cafe that does a brilliant job at catering for all kids.

Potty Time x 2

We have now successfully navigated toilet training x 2.

We started on 26 November with a version of Dr Greens bladder-training plan (Green: 234-235) and were done by the 15th December.  There are still a few accidents which are usually just the start of something on the way to the loo.  I have discovered a few things about having twins that now use the bathroom during the day.

Firstly,  your nappy bill will decrease but your toilet paper one will quadruple.  This is partly due to having four people instead of two but also due to master and miss procuring more paper than is required.  I think we might even have purchased a 48 roll packet recently (sigh!).  I also seem to have many (too many) cans of Glen 20 around the house.  I just love that stuff!  The labradoodle is not so sure of it though.

Twins in a public toilet is hideous, but you just have to suck it up.  I love my mothers groups playground meet ups as I can leave one in the playground under the watchful eyes of the group.

Sometimes trees are better than toilets.

It is better to pee on the lawn than in the pool.

Going out is a whole new challenge.  You need a lot more spare clothes, just in case.  Usually you only need them because the toilets are too far to get to or they do not exist.

Miss likes to visit every bathroom she can even though she doesn’t need to go.  She likes to make comments like, “this is a nice toilet  Mummy” or “this is nice handsoap”, (she has picked that up from me).

You will be selective in which parks you visit due to available facilities or lack of.

Yet I do believe my back is better as I no longer have to lift toddlers on and off change mats (just toilets).

Sunshine and Tears

Oh my.  It is just so hot here in Sydney this week. Even the labradoodle is frazzled.  Nothing can budge him from the cool kitchen floor. Even the garage door opening, which can be a signal the Workaholic is home, can move him.  Luckily we live on the coast and are being spared the worst temperatures.  Give a thought to Adelaide which is supposed to reach a record high of 46C this afternoon and the players in the Australian Open in Melbourne where it is currently 42.1C.  Apparently Australia is the hottest place on earth today!

We had a 46C day last February if I remember rightly.  The Workaholic was somewhere tropical (working of course and informed me it was 32C and almost 100% humidity there). I am not sure which is worse, hopping into bed sheets that feel like they have just come out of the washing machine, or twins  happy to spend the afternoon in Mummy’s air conditioned bedroom,  until they realised that Peppa Pig was only recorded on the TV downstairs.

I made sure they were extremely slip, slop, slapped this morning before we headed off to kindergarten.  On our arrival at the gates  we were met with the most heart wrenching site.  A little boy wanted his mum and was hanging onto the gate,  howling his head off and crying for his mummy.   One of the staff was trying to coax him off the gate and divert his attention but to no avail.  I had a rush of memories back to my first few days of school when I was five.  I don’t think I was as loud but I surely was just as upset.  I remember sitting beside the teacher at break times because I was terrified of the large open space that was the playground (strange from a child that grew up on a farm).  I cried endless tears all over the sandwiches and snacks and was in a state of great anxiety.  Since I have had children these memories haunt me more often than usual.  I worry that my children will feel anxious, stressed or heaven forbid be bullied (that is a topic for another day).  So this little boys distress just about broke my heart.  Little Miss stopped to offer her support but that didn’t help.   As I left I saw a concerned Little Master (LM) about to visit the crying boy and teacher who were in the next room.  Another teacher advised LM that the other little boy would be fine but I am not sure LM was convinced as he was still looking glum about the situation as I closed the gate.

On my way back to the car I marvelled at how kind and caring my two are and I hoped that now the little boy was happily playing racing cars with LM.   They may only be “almost three” but I was very proud of them today.  I wondered if it was because they were twins that they showed such a concern.  Was it because I have spent so much time sounding like a stuck record while trying to get them to show empathy for one another.  Sharing has been hard for them to grasp and sometimes the fishwife in me appears as I try to break up the fights.  But they are very fond of each other and when one is upset the other one is pretty quick to offer a cuddle. I hope that we can continue to nurture these altruistic abilities that they seem to have adopted so early on.  And I also hope that the mummy of the little crying boy can be assured by the staff that he did have a good day and that he is happy going again next week.