Eve of Three

In just a few short weeks, my twins will be three years old. The birthday party invitations have been sent (okay, it was a Facebook invitation. Just being cheap and lazy trying to keep things green.), the venue has been reserved, the “birthday girl” shirts have been bought.

I’m admittedly having a very difficult time coming to terms with the idea of having three year olds. Amaia’s growth toward turning one isn’t helping. Every box of the girls’ old clothes I bring out makes me feel anxious and depressed. I’m trying desperately to remember how Elise and Althea were at Amaia’s age as I soak in every millisecond of Amaia’s infancy.

So much has changed in the past year with the twins. I haven’t done a blog post about their development in a long time. It’s about time, then, to catch up. Long post ahead.

Eating

This seems like a silly topic to talk about with preschoolers. They eat when they’re hungry and don’t when they aren’t . . . or when they feel rebellious or are tired or mad or busy or don’t like pasta/beef/garbanzos/honeydew/air/being alive. Sometimes, they eat like  horses. Sometimes, they eat three raisins, then jump up and down on the couch for six hours non-stop.

Come to think of it, I could benefit from this diet.

That said, Elise eats more and is a much more adventurous eater. Elise will try a bite of almost anything. Meanwhile, Althea will rarely try anything that she doesn’t recognize or that isn’t properly presented or explained to her. Elise tends to like more savory foods — pasta, casseroles, meats, starches –, while Althea tends toward more sweets, dairy and fruit. There is now a visible weight gap between the two.

Random food information: A pediatrician (not ours) recently informed me that you’re not supposed to feed hot dogs, popcorn, grapes, nuts and a variety of other common foods to children until they’re four years old due to the risk of choking. Um, woops. I get that you can’t give a nine-month-old a kielbasa covered in unshelled walnuts, but come on. FOUR???

Sleeping

As is to be expected for preschoolers, their bedtime routine takes approximately forever.

Between the periodic and inexplicable hatred of bath time; the kicking, shrieking and flailing to get into pajamas and a nighttime diaper; the minimum 18 books that we MUST read, despite the 9-second attention span; the drama-filled and violent separation of children into two bedrooms (more on that later); the subsequent two to three hours of checking on and replacing of one twin into her designated bed (I’m talking about you, Althea); the sips of water, storytelling, song-singing and final trips to the bathroom even though I just asked you if you needed to go pee-pee, that happen EVERY SINGLE EVENING, it takes anywhere from two to four hours for the twins to be bathed, dressed, put into bed and finally, actually fall asleep — not to mention fitting in the baby’s bedtime somewhere in there.

It’s as exhausting and frustrating as it is enjoyable. I love the reading, singing and telling stories part. The kicking and crying and alligator rolling, I could do without.

Beginning shortly after we converted to toddler beds back in May, we discovered that the girls could not fall asleep in the same room anymore. First, we separated them just for naps. We decided that Althea, the less defiant of the two, would sleep in our bed.

The first few weeks were really stressful. I constantly had to check on her and replace her in the bed, sometimes to the point that she wouldn’t nap at all. Then, I started putting her blankie in time-out if she got out of bed. It was a few more weeks of that before she really understood that she was expected to stay in bed for the duration of a nap.

(Why do kids need things explained 9,000 times? I don’t understand this.)

A few weeks later, we started separating them at night. They were often keeping each other up until 11:30pm, which led to cranky and over-tired kids the next day. Althea now falls asleep in our bed between 9-10pm and we transfer her to her room with Elise, usually around 10:30 or 11pm. Althea has always required slightly less sleep than Elise anyway, so this works well for us most of the time.

When they do nap, which is becoming rare these days, they still do decent three-hour stretch from 2-5pm. I’m finding that they’re super-sensitive to being overstimulated and thus not being able to sleep, much more so now than when they were younger (contrary to what I’ve read and believed). In fact, since starting preschool in September, their napping has become sporadic.

Bedtime is theoretically (and sometimes actually) from 8 or 9pm – 7 or 7:30am. Elise would happily sleep longer if Althea weren’t up first.

Milestones

Oh, I don’t even know where to start here. There’s just so much that has happened in the year from toddler-hood to preschooler-hood:

• They started going to preschool twice a week.
• They can ride tricycles.
• They had their first real haircuts this year. ::cry::
• The roll of fat in their upper thigh has disappeared. ::sob:: . . . ::sobcrywailwhinewillnotacceptdoesnotcompute::
• They can speak in complete sentences, sometimes even two or three complete sentences in a row, of five to seven words in both English and Spanish. They speak mostly French to my mother-in-law and will easily and intuitively switch languages depending on who they’re speaking with.
• Yes, I’m bragging. Suck it.
• They sing songs, recite lines and music from movies, and sense the time of day (e.g., a certain show starts after naptime).
• They can use the toilet on their own (but don’t wipe their own butts yet).
• Their imaginations are completely fantastical. They re-create characters and scenes from books and movies, play pretend with dolls and stuffed animals, and make up games to which only they seem to know the rules (and they both create and agree upon the rules without a single word).
• They enjoy school and have a good relationship with their teachers and other students.
• They can sing the ABCs and (sort of) count correctly to 20.

Personalities

This topic has become rich over the past year. Things we thought we knew about each twin has flip-flopped. I suppose that a big part of that is the general feeling of pressure to categorize each twin as “the such-and-such” one or the “this-and-that” one. In reality, even the most identical-appearing of twins are truly two separate people. Navigating this terrain with increasingly sentient little kids is new to me.

We used to think of Althea as The Bold One and Elise as The Sensitive One. But now, we’re seeing that it’s simply not that black and white. However, we are seeing that each seems to have generally taken after one parent or the other.

We agree that Elise tends to take after me. She’s bull-headed and wants to do things her way, not as she is told to do. She feels deeply and is very intuitive. She’s determined, a bit lazy, a bit detached, and has a great sense of self-pride. She’s a bit socially reserved (though that has changed some since starting school).

Althea takes more after Chris. She strives for social interaction and acceptance. She walks into a group of kids and either makes her own friends or attracts them to her. Negativity and punishment are met with extremely emotional responses. Fear of failure doesn’t keep her from trying anything. She’s a little clumsy and very creative.

As for talents and proclivities, Elise still tends to react to music, as we saw very early on. I don’t see it as something that will help me retire early a natural gift, but definitely something that is interesting to her.

Althea has shown tremendous interest in drawing and reading, without a doubt. She wants to read 24/7 and can draw her face off.

Overall, they’re doing awesome. I adore them with every iota of my being and couldn’t be a prouder mom.

Sigh. Someday, we'll get a normal picture with normal smiles. For now, this will have to do.