Category — Toddler-hood

We have officially — and reluctantly — made the transition to Big Girl Beds.

It’s been a long time coming, really. Both Elise and Althea climbed out of their cribs a couple of months back. Althea only did it once. When she saw how much trouble it caused, she lost interest.

Elise, on the other hand, was a different animal. It started with the occasional escape. We’d find her wandering around their bedroom in the morning, sometimes diaperless, passing Althea miscellaneous bedroom contraband — books, plastic dolls, shoes from the closet. And, since Althea could now enjoy the contents of the room without ever leaving the crib, she had no reason to escape again.

But Elise was just getting started.

The occasional outing turned into a daily escape. Elise wouldn’t nap and would often keep Althea awake. I turned Elise’s crib around so that the short side was against the wall. This held her captive for a couple of weeks.

How stupid I was, though, to underestimate this child’s cunning.

After a blissful return to regular naps and contained toddlers, Elise figured out how to hitch her leg over the edge of the crib once again. The antics quickly escalated. It got to where I would lay the girls down for their nap, close the door, count to 10, open the door and Elise would already be out of the crib.

Upon my entry, Elise would scamper to the corner and cover her eyes in terror.

After all, if she can’t see me, I can’t see her.

In my Big Angry Mommy Voice, I would huff, “ELISE. What are you doing? I have told you a thousand times to stay in your crib. It’s nap time!”

“Yes,” she would reply sweetly. And in her crib she would lay.

Until I closed the door and counted to 10. Over and over and over again.

(This all took place in Spanish, so it was way more dramatic and telenovela-like than it reads here.)

Then, one day, Elise climbed out of her crib during nap time and hurt herself. At the siren-like sound of her wailing, Chris and I rushed into their bedroom to find Elise pretzeled painfully between the crib and the wall.

That was it. We made the yet another major parental decision with absolutely no forethought or planning: We decided to convert the cribs to toddler beds right then and there. Chris grabbed his screwdriver and got to work.

“Jesus Christ, I’m going to break my goddamned back doing this,” cursed Chris.

“Jesus Christ,” repeated Althea. “Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.”

***

For the next week and a half, I proceeded to LOSE MY FUCKING MIND. The girls would NOT nap. They decided, after two-and-a-half years, that the changing table was a ladder. The drawers of clothes and shoes were party confetti. The door knob suddenly had a purpose and they were willing and able to use it. And escape. And wander around the damned house whenever they pleased.

We cleared every single thing out of their room. I got child-proof closet door hooks and an extra-tall gate to barricade them in their room. To make up for lost naps, Chris and I moved their bed time up from 8:30 to 7 p.m.

Fighting against the purple circles under their eyes and heavy pink eyelids, the girls would pass out within seconds. The following day, they would be whining, tantruming, defiant, miserable, exhausted heaps of tortured toddlerhood.

The whole experience took a major toll on my Mommy fortitude. I very quickly went from Generally Okay Mommy to Ready To Sell The Kids On eBay Mommy.

Turns out, eBay doesn’t work that way.

***

What finally worked was separating the girls for their naps. I put Althea in our bed and leave Elise alone in their bedroom. I’ve been doing this for a week and a half, and they’ve both gotten used to the new sleeping arrangements. Elise generally falls asleep pretty quickly, while Althea likes to have a few books to zone out with before she crashes a little while later.

Bedtime generally isn’t a problem, though we do occasionally find Elise sleeping on the ground.

This has been a learning experience, to put it gently — and I’m referring to us as parents, not the kids. And it’s making me feel like a mom to little girls instead of twin babies.

All five of us in one photo looking at the camera at the same time? Yeah, pretty much a miracle.

A conversation between toddlers:

• “Hold my hand.”
• “Okay.”
• “Let’s go over here.”
• “Okay.”
• “Let’s chew on our blankies.”
• “Okay.”
• “Let’s go over there.”
• “NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!1!!11!!!”

After this weekend, I have three words for you:

Fuck potty training.

Fuck potty training and the horse it rode in on.

Fuck M&Ms. Fuck cookies. Fuck juice. Fuck potty training books, guides and advice. Fuck panties and training pants and pee-pee and poo-poo.

Fuck it all.

Nothing could have prepared Chris and me for what we experienced with our first attempts at potty training Althea and Elise.

We started out with the methods outlined in the book “Toilet Training in Less Than a Day.” (Oh yeah, fuck those guys, too.) We had the girls teach their little dollies how to “pee-pee” on the potty. They learned how to take the water-filled pot to the toilet, dump its contents, flush the toilet and take the pot back to the potty. Things were looking promising.

Interesting to note from the outset was that Althea, contrary to what I expected, was far more cooperative and interested than Elise was.

We put the girls in little character panties (Nemo! Toy Story! Snow White!) and started giving them whatever they wanted to drink. Every few minutes, we’d start in:

“Are your panties dry? Touch your panties. Are they dry? Good! Ama has dry panties. Daddy does too. Big girls have dry panties. Big girls do pee-pee in the potty, not their panties. Are your panties still dry? Check! Check if your panties are dry. Oh good, they’re dry! Have an M&M because you have dry –”

And that’s where things started to fall apart. Eight minutes into training, and things were already proving to be way more difficult than what the book led us to believe.

See, we really don’t give the girls junk food. Not that I’m adamantly against it, but I don’t want to start bad habits early on. Besides, it’s hard enough to get them to eat any food with any semblance of nutritional value as it is. I certainly don’t need to introduce them to Nabisco’s extended family.

So, at their first taste of the candy-coated chocolate treats at 9:08 on a Saturday morning, you’d better believe we ran into some issues. For Elise and Althea, nothing existed beyond the bite-sized cookies and little chocolates we were using to encourage their potty training. Chris and I stuck to our guns and emphasized that the treats were only for dry panties, but for some strange reason, our two-year-old twins wouldn’t stop asking for them . . .

Still, over the shrill cries of “CHOCOLAAAAAATE?!???? COOOOOKIIIEEEEEE??!????”, Chris and I persevered. We continued to ask about the state of panty dryness. We put them on the pot every 15 minutes. We doled out cookies, candies and juice when the panties were dry. We read new books on the toilet. We talked over and over about “Ama and Daddy go pee-pee and poo-poo on the potty. Grandpa and Grandma go pee-pee on the potty. Do you go pee-pee on the potty? You can learn how just like your friends do. Pee-pee goes in the potty. Does pee-pee go in the panties? No! Pee-pee goes in the potty! Very good! Look, your panties are dry! Only girls with dry panties get chocolate. Have an M&M!”

Within two-and-a-half hours, Elise and Althea had completely tuned us out.

Chris and I called a meeting to re-evaluate.

“I think they’re on to us,” I whispered.

“Definitely. Screw the treats. Not working. Let’s back off a little bit on the panty questions and turn on a movie,” he suggested.

So we put them in front of something Pixar-y and animated while they sat on their pots. Zoned out, Althea peed on the potty.

Mayhem erupted.

‘WOOOHOOO ALTHEA!!! YOU PEE-PEED ON YOUR POTTY!!! YOU’RE SUCH A GOOD GIRL!!! PEE-PEE GOES IN THE POTTY!!! YOU DID PEE-PEE IN THE POTTY LIKE AMA AND DADDY!!! YAAAAAYYYYYY!” we screamed as we jumped up and down with glee.

Oh, you bet she was happy. We were happy, she was happy, everyone was happy. She even took it over to the toilet, dumped the pee into the commode, and carried the plastic pot back to her own potty. Not too long afterward, Elise actually pooped in her potty, carried the pot to the toilet, dumped it, and replaced it on her potty.

YESSSSSS!!!

But these triumphs were overshadowed by the rest of the horror. The horror of potty training. The girls tantrumed, defied, ignored, and peed through it all.

I consulted the book. According to its authors, when faced with these sorts of situations, we were supposed to remain positive and “teach them to obey.”

That’s a quote.

And the first part of our day wasn’t even over. Naptime was a serious problem. Elise and Althea still pee a lot during naps and bedtime, but the book insisted that we not go back to diapers at this point. So we tried. And we proceeded to go through all six crib sheets and six more pairs of training pants as the girls peed through every cotton barrier we placed in their way.

After we realized we had run out of training pants, we once again re-evaluated. We needed to get them in diapers for sleeping or none of us would ever get any rest. After the kids finally fell asleep, Chris and I decided that this approach was definitely not for us or the girls. It was too intense, too militaristic, too overwhelming for everyone.  So we decided to completely back off on the panty-status question and just plop them nonchalantly on the pot every 30 minutes.

This approach lasted the rest of the day yesterday and through this afternoon. But all it did was make me consider becoming an alcoholic. Elise and Althea peed and peed and peed through every pair of panties we put on them. They tantrumed through every cleanup and panty change.

It actually got kind of creepy at one point when I got Elise to her room for yet another pair of clean underwear, and she stared me in the face and laughed maniacally over and over again. Determined not to waver, I pushed my way through the full 10 minutes it took to get her to stand up and help pull on her panties. This bizarre behavior repeated itself several times in the course of just a few hours.

Chris and I clung to each other for dear life. Our sweet, mild-mannered, beautiful little children had turned on us. “Who are these . . . these barbarians?!???” we beseeched an apparently unloving god.

The constant peeing turned from accidental to blatant. We would put them on the pot for 5 or 10 minutes. Nothing. They’d stand up and help pull up their pants, walk away, and pee on the carpet. We’d change their wet panties and they would pee in the new ones within 30 seconds. They finally stopped telling us they’d peed themselves and just kept playing through it, then deny they’d peed when we asked if they were wet. At one point, we caught Althea putting toys into the plastic piss pot while peeing her pants!

Within three hours this morning, they had peed through 12 pairs of panties. I broke down sobbing in a dark closet.

The book did not say anything about this part.

After what all of us have gone through the past two days, Chris and I have decided to hold off on potty training for a few months, or until the girls’ entrance into kindergarten four years from now forces us to do it.

Some of my friends who have up-and-coming potty training kids asked me to share any success tips. Obviously I don’t have any. I do, however, have a few lessons learned:

• Unless you’re in a situation where you’re forced to train the child, don’t potty train until everyone is seriously ready, parents included. As I mentioned in my last post, I was not — am not — ready to potty train the kids.
• Find a potty training approach that fits your parenting style, not just whatever seems fastest or most convenient. “Toilet Training in Less Than a Day” obviously works for some parents, some households, some kids. But it’s not for us. Trust me — I’m a special kind of lazy. I’m the type of person that will put in a ton of hard work now if it means I can relax later, so this approach seemed like a good fit. But Chris and I are pretty laid back folks overall. We have our own brand of parenting, like everyone else. We took away some very good concepts and guidelines from this book. But the intensity of the approach felt unnatural for us and our children.
• It is impossible to be totally upbeat and positive about toilet training 100% of the time. It’s impossible even 90% of the time. Everything I read made me feel that, as long as I stayed positive and encouraging and followed the rules, the method would work. Yeah . . . No.
• I honestly don’t know what to suggest for parents like me who have twins to train and a needy infant to care for. I think that, unless the girls come to me and request to use the potty, I’m just shelving the whole project until Amaia is more self-sufficient, or at least able to be watched by someone else for a few days. Even with intensive training over a weekend, I definitely know I can’t do it on my own once Chris goes back to work on a Monday. Picture this: By 10 a.m. on the first day, I found myself breastfeeding on the kitchen floor while the twins sat crying on their respective pots as a hungry infant screamed at a lost nipple while I tried to read and turn the pages of “The Little Mermaid” with my toes — all while remaining upbeat, encouraging and positive. (If you’re exhausted by reading that sentence, just imagine what I was feeling.)
• No matter how you choose to potty train your child, buy several bottles of your favorite alcohol before you get started.
• Also, OxiClean — for the carpet and clothes.

For the past three or four months, Elise and Althea have been showing more and more signs of readiness for potty training. They both know when they’ve peed, they often announce when they poop and dislike the feeling of it.

Most recently, Elise has taken to completely undressing herself during naps and bedtime and peeing in her bed. When we get the girls in the morning, there’s Elise, naked as a jaybird and proud as a peach of her accomplishment.

Me, exasperated: “ELISE. Why did you do that again??!?”

Elise, jubilantly pointing: “Pee-pee! Hoo-ha! Culo (butt)! Naked!! YAYYYY YIPPEEEEE!!”

It’s extremely difficult to be angry at this.

I didn’t want to take the potty-training plunge, so to speak, when I was still pregnant because — uh, because I was pregnant. And massive and not very mobile. I haven’t wanted to do it since Amaia was born because it just seems incredibly inconvenient when she’s so little, nursing frequently and erratically, and not on a completely reliable schedule.

For instance, what do I do if we’re at a park and I’m nursing the baby when one of the twins announces she has to go potty? Jump up and take the child to the bathroom — and run the risk of losing a nipple in the process? Yeah, I don’t think so.

BUT. I can’t deny the girls the next big step in their development just because it’s not super convenient for me right now.  Chris and I are also tired of constantly washing sheets. Plus, the girls are pushing size 6 diapers, and that’s just embarrassing.

So, I’ve got a plan. (Famous last words for a parent, I know.) A friend of mine with five kids, including a set of twins, recommended “Toilet Training in Less than a Day.” We’re taking this weekend to give it a go. I’ve got training pants, big-girl panties (Yo Gabba Gabba and miscellaneous Disney characters), and lots of delicious juices and candies. I’ve got the potties, which I’m somewhat wary of since the girls have been using them as push toys and cowboy hats — and boy, would that be messy if they decided a doo-doo-filled pot would make an excellent sombrero.

I’m also worried about Althea. Elise seems more interested in how her thingamajigs work than Althea does. Althea can also be more resistant to following directions in general, especially when she senses it’s something we really want her to do.

So readers, bring it on. What are your potty-training tips? What worked and what didn’t work for you?

Breastfeeding is supposed to be a beautiful bonding experience mother and baby, right?

Yeah, well.

This is what happens when you have two-year-old twins and you’re caught, vulnerable, breastfeeding your newborn.

My darling daughters,

Happy birthday to my two favorite people in the world. You have made me a better person by being my daughters. As long as I am your mom, you will never be alone. I’m so excited and humbled to be able to hold your hand while you discover who you are.

Enjoy the ride, my sweet girls.

Love,

Ama

Yep.

It was only a matter of time.

Chris and I both curse freely and frequently. I’ve heard the saying that people who curse a lot do so because they don’t have the vocabulary to express themselves through appropriate channels — in other words, people who swear are stupid.

If that’s the case, I’m dumb as shit, yo.

So, considering the girls repeat every other word they hear, it was only a matter of time, really, before someone finally picked up on a four-letter flyer or two.

Last week, Chris and I were chatting while the girls played next to us. I don’t know what he was talking about, but he casually dropped the F bomb.

“Yeah, so yadda yadda yadda and I was like ‘What the fuck?’”

Out of the entire sentence, Elise heard the word “Fuck.” And she repeated it.

“Fuck!”

Chris shot me a look. “Did she just say ‘fuck?’”

Again, in an adorable pipsqueak voice, Elise repeated, “Fuck!”

Well yeah, genius, I think she DID just say “fuck.”

Elise continued pushing her die-cast Thomas the Tank Engine toy around on the coffee table. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

Suppressing a bit of laughter, I glared at Chris. “Babe, you have to be careful what you say. They’re repeating everything.”

“Elise, are you saying ‘fuck?’ Fuck is the most versatile word you’ll ever learn.”

Uh. Not helping, Chris.

With this, Elise started really enunciating. “Fu. Ck. Fu. Ck. Fu. Ck. Fu. Ck.” No smiling, no laughter, no realization whatsoever of what she was saying or our reaction to it. Elise had discovered the F word and she was determined to do it justice, to pronounce it correctly.

For the next 10 minutes, she dropped the F bomb no fewer than 80 times, practicing the play of consanants and vowels, exploring the the friction of the initial f, the subsequent hardness of the ck sound.

I’ve been trying to teach this child “please” and “thank you” for no less than a year. Nothing. She hears the word “fuck” one time and is immediately documenting its etymology.

I have to admit, though, she was doing a great job of pronouncing it.

Yesterday marked the girls’ final month of their second year. Today marks the 31st week of my second pregnancy.

31 Weeks

Baby girl is getting big in my belly these days. As I suspected based on some incredibly painful movements last week, she has flipped head down. Fingers crossed she stays that way. Considering she’s approximately the size of a college football linebacker, I think she will.

I’m still sleeping well. Eating gets a little sketchy at night. Tums are still my (second) dessert most nights.

Despite pouring on skin oils and potions, I think the stretch marks are spreading rapidly to encompass a gigantic circle around my entire midsection now. I honestly can’t even think about it.

Now that the single-digit countdown has begun, the excitement is getting a little bit overwhelming.

23 Months

I’ll go ahead and get all cliche and say I can’t believe that the girls will be two years old next month. I haven’t done a monthly update on them in a long time. Skip it if it’s not your thing.

Eating

While there’s little that the girls can’t eat these days, there’s tons they won’t eat. Namely, most everything. Boy oh boy, can eating be a battle. They seem to be able to subsist on grape parts and stale cereal from the floor.

Currently, the girls won’t touch pretty much anything they don’t recognize. It was really frustrating at first, but I’m slowly letting go of that stress. As far as I remember, I lived off chocolate for approximately 13 years of my life, so I assume they’ll be fine.

Sleeping

I’ve been told that dreaming begins at about this age, and I think that explains why the girls sometimes stir out of sleep in fits of screaming and crying. Generally, we have to let them cry it out for a few minutes because trying to comfort them almost always makes it worse since they weren’t really awake to begin with.

The girls sleep from 8 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. and nap once from about 1 – 4 p.m.

Sizes

Still size four diapers. Starting to push into 24 month/2T clothes and size 6-7 shoes.

Talking

Some time back, I wrote about my vague worry about the girls’ lack of speech. Silly, silly me. A few weeks after writing that post, I swear the girls woke up one morning and decided to try out the whole verbal communication thing. Since then, they’ve become little parrots, repeating all sorts of words (some of them unsavory) in all sorts of languages.

Most of their spoken vocabulary and comprehension is in Spanish right now. I’d estimate they regularly say around 50 words, with probably another 15-20 infrequent and one-off words as well. In English, they readily use maybe 15 words. In both languages, though, they understand a ton and can follow (or ignore) directions.

Contrary to what I was warned about twins, Elise and Althea don’t have a special language of made-up words. There are only a few invented words that they regularly use, but we’ve figured out what they mean.

Recently, Althea figured out how to meaningfully count to two. I know other kids of the same age who can repeat numbers as high as up to 20 or more, but they’re not necessarily using the numbers meaningfully (i.e., they can recognize the number 20 can’t count out 20 beads). My little genius, though, can count to TWO, bitches. First, she started by trying to count these two distinct moles I have on my neck. She pointed to each one and said “Uno, uno.” Then a few days ago, she saw the two outdoor cats together. She pointed to each one and said “Uno, dos.”

Application to MENSA, sent.

Personalities

This could (and should) really be its own post, but I’ll touch on it here.

The girls get along great for the most part, but they are two very different people. Elise is more intense and attached to the family and people she’s familiar with. She likes to take you by the hand to play and explore. Althea, on the other hand, is more independent. She enjoys playing alone. She likes watching older kids and wants to interact with them. Althea is also always covered in some kind of scratch, bump or bruise.

Ironically, though, Elise is the messier of the two girls. She wears her food, digs in the dirt, lays belly-down in the sand and rubs mud in her hair. She’s a very tactile person. While Elise smears yogurt all the way out to her ears, Althea concentrates on keeping her food on the spoon to eat correctly.

Of the two, Elise is more likely to stick close by and follow directions. But Althea . . . man. She sees you coming for her and she takes off as fast as she can in the other direction, laughing like a madwoman all the way. And while Althea does get in “trouble” more often, she does nothing with malice. Her rebellion is full of exuberance and joy, which can be as maddening as it is completely endearing.