Tag Archives: twins

The return of the sticker chart

Posted on August 21, 2011 by admin| 1 Comment

Every now and then I come over all ‘super nanny’ and truly believe that if I follow her strict procedures I will end up with angelic children who don’t find it funny to throw their food across the room and to wee everywhere whilst using the potty as a hat.

So last week when I ventured into town for some ‘me’ time I thought I’d see what stickers were on offer in the WH Smith’s summer craft sale and found a 3 for 2 offer on bumper packs and on mini sticker reward charts. I ummed and ahhhed and then calculated just how much poo and wee I’d cleaned up over the past three days and caved in and bought the best stickers to bribe the reluctant potty trainer to use his potty as a loo rather than an accessory. 

Of course when bribing one child you have to bribe the other two as well but the 4 yr old has been a bit of a menace of late so I duly made him a behaviour chart and the happily potty trained 2 yr old  was never really rewarded for her endeavours so I thought I’d do her a potty training one to inspire her twin brother.

I was full of good intentions, I stuck the sticker charts on the wall after talking with the children about what they were for a la Jo Frost. I put the stickers out of reach until an angelic looking reluctant potty trainer shuffled onto his potty did a large poo and smiled sweetly at me while reaching out to choose his sticker.  “Eureka! It’s worked” I thought and by the end of the day was feeling hugely smug quite pleased.

Day two was also relatively pain free and the lure of the stickers kept everyone happy and doing their best.  By day three the little horrors darlings had found out where I’d hidden the stickers and used the kitchen steps to get them down. I came into the kitchen to find stickers stuck everywhere and war breaking out over who could wear the most on their clothes, oh and I also found a large puddle of wee…

Day four I battled on in the vain hope that day three was simply a blip. We got through about five pairs of pants and I had to remove poo from a bed – enough said.

Day five I caved in, the reluctant potty trainer asked for a nappy and promised to keep it on so I let him. We haven’t looked back, he’s actually keeping the nappies on and I’m having a break from cleaning up poo and wee… it beats lying to friends on play dates that what they’ve just walked through is spilled water rather than just another undiscovered puddle…

Any top tips on potty training are welcome, any top tips on what I can do with the remaining 160 stickers also very welcome…

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Summer time and the living isn’t really all that easy…

Posted on August 2, 2011 by admin| Leave a comment

Finally the Big Boy has finished pre-school – woo hoo! We celebrated by having a camp out in the garden (I say ‘we’ but I actually volunteered Grandad for the job).  All was great until he came sprinting up the stairs at 5.45am (AM! I’m not going to suggest this is morning because frankly it’s not) green as the tent and then threw up everywhere. Grandad blamed the amount of Pringles consumed but I think it was down to a bug or sheer over excitement.  Not quite the start to the holidays I’d envisaged – digging out sick bowls and washing carpets but there you go.

To make up for the lost day I decided to treat BB to an afternoon at Legoland, which was brilliant as we didn’t get there to 3pm but they extended the opening to 8pm – managed to do loads of rides and had a very happy boy on the way home. Feeling great that I’d conquered Legoland I ambitiously thought an outing to a farm park with the twins too would be just the ticket to ensuring the summer hols was properly swinging. Hadn’t factored in the lag exhaustion factor post Legoland, or that the twins wouldn’t have a proper sleep. Or that it would be scorching hot.  We survived but only just, I was the snappy, hot and bothered mother trying to force the reluctant potty training twin to do a wee when all he wanted was to lie down in a puddle and not move, and all I really wanted to do was lie down and join him…

Lesson learnt, the rest of the week I’m planning to do very little and let the children just rampage at home.  In reality this isn’t strictly the ‘easy’ option as already have had to evacuate the paddling pool after the reluctant potty trainer did a large poo in it but has to be easier than coercing them to have fun just because I’ve spent the week’s ents budget to get into a place!

 

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Twin discrimination?

Posted on July 18, 2011 by admin| Leave a comment

I’m finally getting to grips with being a mum of twins and the next hurdle is finding some affordable childcare for next September to get them ready for school.

When I first looked into childcare I was a working mum and the only options available where nannies, childminders or private nurseries with long opening hours. Now I am a SAHM the world of ‘community’ pre-school has opened up.

Naively I had assumed that giving 18 months notice would get the twins three or four sessions a week but sadly not! Every group I’ve contacted have been fairly positive until I mention the ‘t’ word… twins. Then there is a lot of umming, aahing and rapid turning of pages.  However, I have other friends who are still able to get their children in without problem and without going on the waiting list….hmmm confusing.

Now I know discrimination isn’t allowed on many levels but a chance conversation with chair of a community pre-school made me wonder if actually that is what’s going on. They said that parents at their pre-school are expected to fundraise but when they are lots of sets of twins in a class it means that the parent to child ratio diminishes and so too does fundraising potential (one family might give £10 say but parents of twins don’t automatically give £20 etc) . They also said it causes problems with numbers, if the twins move out of the area there are two free spaces etc.  Then of course there’s the general desire for the twins to attend the same sessions, squeezing resources.

I sympathise with these problems, community pre-schools are considerably cheaper than private nurseries so they need to work hard to ensure their survival and that the level of care they offer is comparable. But as a mum of twins I’d like either more transparency about what’s going on (as then perhaps I could help out) rather than feeling that ‘twins’ is somehow a dirty word.

As it is I’ve put the twins onto various waiting lists, all of which I’ve had to pay for and of course I’ve had to pay twice. Sadly, most of this is not refundable even if we don’t get the place. If we’re not offered anywhere I will have to do sessions at a private nursery and work out a way to pay.  Having twins isn’t a lifestyle option but one of those (happy) occurrences, I don’t want my children to be disadvantaged simply because they come as a pair.

 

 

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Summer hols are almost here – eek!

Posted on July 14, 2011 by admin| Leave a comment

It’s been ten months since I quit my job to become a stay-at-home mum (SAHM). As part of the transition to being at home I consciously left behind  some of the trappings of working life. However, ten months on, I think I need to re-instate some of my old ways, particularly prioritising what I should be doing and organising my time better.

This week, for example, I’ve been fretting about the looming summer holidays. My oldest is finishing pre-school in a few weeks and there is a six-week gap before he starts school. At the same time the twins are fully embracing what it is to be two years old (‘It’s all about me’) and want to be more independent, which is fantastic but three children on the loose and only one pair of hands and eyes is daunting.  To top it off there are no play groups, all the usual activities stop for the break and most of the free activities will be super busy. 

As well as wanting to keep them all safe, I want my oldest son to have the best summer holiday ever, not to have a stressed out shouty mummy who he can’t wait to see the back of in September.

To get us all through the summer in one piece, I’ve hired an au pair to help me out with park visits, getting food on the table and the like.  She is due to start in a few weeks but is currently AWOL, which hasn’t been helping my worry levels.

But this afternoon I had a revelation, all I’ve been doing is worrying about things rather than trying to tackle problems head on. I can do this by working out what matters most to the children, to me and then prioritising. Using my old management tools I’m going to make me a summer holiday survival plan.  Ok, so that’s a bit overblown, but essentially I am going to work out what we want to do, how to make it happen and then get on with it.

It’s time to go back to making priority lists, planning my time and really asking what we all want and need to get out of things.  Once problems are written down they never seem as big and seeing them in black and white provides an opportunity to get to grips with them, rather than letting them fester and grow.

I’m feeling better already and actually looking forward to seeing what being a SAHM at one of the most challenging times of year is like – bring it on!

 

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Potty about the potty

Posted on July 11, 2011 by admin| Leave a comment

I keep telling myself that I should possibly read a book about bringing up twins, but the problem is whenever I went to the book shop in my post-birth haze I couldn’t quite find what I was looking for (9 hours sleep in a peaceful, clean house) and so never got round to making a purchase. Now, it seems too late to start genning up and I fear I will only feel inadequate about all the things I have done ‘wrong’ to date.

So when it comes to potty training I’ve pretty much done what I did with the first, which is wait for the nursery children to tell me that they’re ready and then followed the nurseries their lead. All sounds good on paper but it turns out that my children are shameless liars… My DD twin took to it all straight away and apart from a few hiccups has less accidents than her big brother. My DS twin however is another story.  Delighted that I’d bought him some new pants he toted them around like a handbag for the day, merrily weeing through any pairs I persuaded onto him so that he could try on a new colour. Deciding I he wasn’t ready for the potty I put him back into nappies and tidied away the carpet spray.

Over the last few days, spurred on by his sister’s endeavours,  he has been demanding another go. I duly strip him off and he delightedly embraces the  picnic wee, except he’s never outside and it’s always within reach of a potty. This evening we had a breakthrough as he finally managed a wee in the potty.

Tomorrow is another day and I know I should perservere as he’s so keen so I’ll be bringing out the carpet cleaner once more and going for it. I will also be spending many happy hours surfing the Amazon website for books that endorse my parenting practices, although strangely I haven’t found one yet…

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