Freedom of Movement

We own 1 baby gate, which is currently dismantled. A & G can move freely throughout our house. Rooms I do not want them in I close the door, for example the laundry. I have select toys, activities and a mystery basket in various locations in our house.

A&G have been wake from their morning nap for about an hour. I gave them a  morning snack consisting of a whole strawberry and 1/2 a Cruskett with avocado. Since snack time, I've been observing them discretely and they have been very busy.

Front Entrance

• Both crawled to front door to look outside and watch the building activity at our neighbour's house across the road. 15 minutes.
• G  crawled to archive box waiting to go to storage. Stood up and banged on the box lid. She spent 10 minutes at this task which I think is a long time. She obviously loves to bang on things. A is still watching what is happening across the road. 
• G is bored now, lets out a squeal and disturbs her sister who turns around and squeals at her.
• A crawls to storage cupboards to open and close the bottom draw. G joins her and they enjoy 10 minutes opening and closing the draws whilst babbling to each other. Not sure what they were discussing but they sure were enjoying themselves.

Total time 35 minutes

Study (next to entrance)

• A crawls to study and sits under desk.
• G follows (2 minutes later) and starts squealing. The squeals echo so A joins in.
• The squeals are ear piercing, I go in and speak to them about using their inside voice when in the house.

Total time 5 minutes

Lounge

• A & G follow me to lounge area and both see the nesting cup tower I built for them while they were having their snack.  Both crawl to the tower to smash the tower down.
• A crawls over to the books and G uses the couch to stand up. She spends 5 minutes cruising from one end the next. A is still reading her book (upside down.) The book has photos of baby animals.
• G crawls over to join A reading, en route she is distracted by a noise from outside. Crawls back to entrance to investigate. (5 minutes)
• G comes back, rolls around on the floor in the lounge whilst talking to her foot. A discards her book and selects another book. (10 minutes)

Total time 20 minutes.

The grand exit

• G crawls off in direction of kitchen.
• A decides to join her. Discards her book and crawls off.

I can't see them any more, but I can hear one banging on the bongo drums and the other babbling in the hallway. The babbling sounds like A. I'm off to take a sneaky look at them.

Gardening Activity

I love vegetable gardens, as we are renting I'm limited to gardening in pots. A salad garden is always good to have and can be gown most of the year in South East Queensland. On the weekend I purchased a variety of salad seedlings. The other day the girls and I planted the seedling consisting of lettue and Kale. Not sure how the Kale will go in our warmer climate.

I set up the potting station in our garage. As they are too young to really garden, I did all the work and talked to them about what I was doing. They were most attentive, until A became bored and crawled off to bang on the drink fridge door. G remained and seemed facinated by what I was doing. I turned around to pick up the brush and shovel to clean up our mess. When I turned back around, two seedlings were missing and G had a lettuce leaf hang out of her mouth.

Success alround and finised off by the girls crawling to their room for an afternoon nap.

Creative montessori spaces on the cheap

Before I read up on Montessori we would put the girls down for tummy time and then give them rattles and toys. We all but put items in their hands, so they never really had to reach for anything unless they threw items out of their reach. Once I started reading up on Montessori we stop doing this, pared back the toys and were more thoughtful in our toy selection.

As mentioned earlier my introduction to Montessori coincided with G learning to crawl, so I knew we would need to make some changes in the house. I loved the idea of having a few select items on low shelving, but we are renting at the moment whilst we look for a house plan to build. I couldn't justify buying new furniture that may or may not fit into our new house.

My solution was to remove the junk in the cupboard of our TV unit and placed some of the select items on the shelf. When the babies went to bed we would just close the door and hey presto a clean tidy room.

G loved it, she loved to pull everything out and climb inside it even better. Working on her spatial awareness. The novelty of climbing into the cupboard has worn off, she moved onto bigger and better things, which I'll cover in another post.

A, at first wasn't a big fan, remember we use to just give everything to her. We knew she was capable of rolling we never gave her the motivation to roll. Eventually she realised if there was something she wanted then she had to move herself (in this case rolling.) Also watching her sister having all the fun was a big motivator to move. Consequently, she also figured out how to sit up.

Eventually I had to remove the doors as G liked to sit by the doors and swing the doors open/close/open/close and it became a hazard once A was more mobile and rolling. So the TV unit looks like this now. The items change, except for two books they like, the Fisher Price Shake Rattle and Roll Ring sorter (a gift) and the nesting cups (another gift) remained as firm favorites. The activity centre remained for a while, but has made its way to the garage, where all baby bits and pieces end up.

Night time sleep and naps

Today we are out of routine. We went to the shopping centre to buy a slow cooker and replacement printer cartridge. The outing was very pleasant. Except the girls fell asleep in the car on the way home. To be precise they fell asleep at the set of lights, a mere 2 km from our house. Not long enough to be considered a nap. I tried to remove them from the car asleep, to no avail. So the mini, mini power nap has been enough to keep them going for another two hours.

I've placed them in their beds, in the vain hope that they will play and then fall asleep. Over tired babies are every mother's nightmare.

Day time naps
When they were younger and had just past the sleepy newborn stage and become infants, around 12 weeks, I had a real battle with day time naps. There is a wealth of information on night time sleeping, but information on daytime naps were for me harder to locate. In hindsight I made all the mistakes, over stimulating them by picking them up because they cried, not picking up on their tired signs. In truth, I had no idea what tired signs to look for, and misinterpreted their different cries. A cry was a cry to me. As a result I spent a lot of time with crying babies. Over time I became to recognise the difference, don't ask me how, one day it clicked into place for day time naps. We did keep a routine diary and this did help to establish an ideal time to put them down for naps.


Nighttime sleeps
We were blessed with babies that slept through the night early, between 12 and 16 weeks. The first point I will make is the babies were breast feed until 12 weeks, and then we changed to formula feeding.

Between 12 and 16 weeks they decided that they would drink most of their night time bottle. We always gave a full bottle (260 mls) and let them drink as much as they wanted. The first time this happened I  had a sleepless night, they slept fine, but I just struggled to come to terms with them drinking 220 to 260 mls in one sitting. I was up checking on them every few hours. I also tried to give them a night feed, which upset them, they didn't drink and were very cranky about been woken up. Eventually I realised I had to step back, if they wanted to drink a full bottle and sleep the night through, who was I to interfere? They continued to sleep through but it didn't stop the nighttime parent visits to see if they were fine.

So as you can read for the above, whilst they were sleeping through the night it took a long time for our day time naps to fall into place. Two babies who cried most of the day was hard work. But I still consider myself lucky, because there just might be parents out there struggling with night and day sleep.

P.S       15 minutes after been put in their cots they are sleeping.
P.S.S    Forgot to buy the printer cartridge (big sigh)

Two little people

Meet "The Girls" I think they are 6 months is this picture. It was taken just before G started crawling.

Below - Meet G  - 9 months in this picture. She is our early crawler (6 months 1 week) and started cruising the furniture a week later. She can crawl really, really fast.

Below - Meet A - she started rolling at 7 months and crawling at 8 months. Not as fast as her sister but is catching up. Currently likes to be up on her knees and is working on standing up using the lounge chair.

Montessori sites I love

After the 2011 Christmas/New Year break I actively started researching the internet for information on baby proofing, weaning and crawling. What spurred this hub of activity? The girls had just turned 6 months and A loved food, she would watch anyone eating and took to eating mushing solids like a duck to water. G on the other hand did not want anything to do with food. I feel we may have pushed the solids on G and in reflections she just wasn't ready for it. G on the other hand showed signs of crawling at 6 months, she was up on her hands and knees rocking back and forward and sure enough at 6 months and 1 week she was off. A on the other hand showed no signs of wanting to roll.

The challenge of twins is you always have another baby, for want of a better word to compare too. One rolls the other doesn't - there must be something wrong, one eats the other doesn't - there must be something wrong, one crawls one doesn't - there must be something wrong. See the theme here?

As a mother I have to constantly remind myself to take a deep breath and be in the moments, because they fly by so fast. So how do you do that with two babies, so I searched and searched and came across two wonderful sites

How we Montessori - Australian based (Canberra) please note Kylie is not a twin mum, but her site is rich in information and links to resources. I've found her site to be invaluable.

Montessori on the Double - Stephanie is a twin mum and never ceases to amaze me with what she has achieved with her two little ones.

Wow what a discovery, and I've been hooked ever since. I won't reinvent the wheel by rewriting what has already been written, but if you are interested in finding out a different way/lifestyle/option for weaning, bedrooms for infants and much, much more head over to Kylie's site at How we Montessori and  Montessori on the Double.

Whoops it's rubbish day!

Almost missed it. It's rubbish day. Always a trial, as the girls nap at the same time the rubbish truck comes around. It gets noisy, so I do try to ensure the window in their room is closed so they have a good nap. I heard the truck in one of the back streets, and thought, um, I think the window is open in their room. So sneaked into their room and very slowly, and quietly closed the sliding window. It's a skill A very important one. One I didn't value until the girls came along.

What additional seemly small insignificant skill(s) have you acquired since becoming a mum?

Closing windows whilst sleeping babies are a mere metre away is one of many I've acquired since I became a mum. Might be worth a separate post.

Ever had one of those days?

Ever had one of those days, where the simple things are difficult? For example I need to scan and email one tiny document, but the printer is out of ink, which means it will not scan. (Big Sigh) Who would have thought that scanning would not be impacted by an empty cartridge, but it is. Leaving the house to buy a printer cartridge, (one item) is no an easy endeavour with multiples, especially when you don't need to buy anything else.

I'm currently debating how important scanning this document is. In light of "The Empty Cartridge" it is dropping fast to the bottom of the list.