Toilet Learning Twins - Part 1 - Our Beginning

As I've planned out how I would cover our toileting journey, I realised there is more and more information I want to add. To ensure this flows and so you have some context to make sense of our journey I have divided this into different parts and will link each section as they are posted.

• Toileting Pre-reading  - posted here
• Part 1 - Our beginning - posted
• Part 2 - Cloth nappies - posted here
• Part 3 - Training pants - posted here
• Part 4 - Prepared Environment for toileting  - posted here

Background

I came across Montessori when G started crawling and I wondered how I was going to survive two moving babies. I had heard of Montessori before, but I thought it was aimed only at the 3+ age group. Since discovering Montessori I have made changes around the home which I know have made life at home easier. In terms of toileting, I always planned on cloth. I was a cloth baby, if cloth was good enough for me, why not my children? What I didn't know at the time was how much the cloth nappy market had evolved. Talk about information over load!

Evolving Spaces - Bedroom and floor beds

I've had this post sitting in my draft folder for awhile just waiting for me to add the last finishing touches. I hope you enjoy reading and seeing what we have done and enjoyed. Meanwhile I'm still working on that toileting post.

 

I love the idea of the floor bed. My girls were 5 almost 6 months when I started searching the Internet on what parents were doing for children or twins the same age as A & G.  Throughout my Internet search I found myself returning to Montessori related sites. Obviously something about Montessori called to me on a number of levels. I was hooked. I borrowed every Montessori book from the library and began to include more Montessori activities, spaces and thinking into our lives.

Toilet Learning - Pre Reading

There are so many wonderful sites covering Toilet Learning. I'm not one to reinvent the wheel and since  others on the Internet have written some informative and comprehensive information on toileting the Montessori way I will not be covering this in my toileting posts. So without any further ado, here are some links related to toilet learning.

• Me do it  - Written by a twin mum. It's nice to know that I'm not the only twin mum giving it a go.
• Montessori ici  - The 3 P week A well written and comprehensive, three part series on toileting.
• At home with Montessori  - Toileting 
• Vibrant Wandering
• How we Montessori

Happy reading

Almost Wordless Tuesday

I'm working on a post about our toilet learning adventures. In the interim here are a few pictures taken during the week

G, watching the world go by. I really do love these cube chairs.

Early Start

The girls woke up at 5:30am this morning. I'm not sure why or what caused them to wake so early. This also means our day started early. Between 5:30am and 8:00am I had two happy and cuddly 14 month old toddlers....... After 8 am we had crying, rolling around on the floor while kicking and screaming, pushing and shoving their sibling, throwing of objects, refusal of food, refusal of drinks, every book or toy they could lay their little hands on has been removed from its home and tossed on the floor......

"Enough" I said, "it is time to go to your cots and have quiet time." They spent 5 minutes screaming... and I ignored their screams whilst tidying up the chaos only two wee people can create. They are currently rolling around in their cots, laughing, chatting and babbling.

Caterpillars, Caterpillars and more Caterpillars

Caterpillars seem to feature prominently in the girls reading material. The collection of caterpillar related material has evolved by coincidence

 
We have this well known book, The very hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, as mentioned in a previous post.

Books we love at 14 months old

We now have a Kidcraft Sling Bookshelf like the one below in our living room.

The girls select and bring to me the books they would me to read. Here are some of their favourite books at the moment.

First Art for Dad Dad

Here is the girls first art piece for Dad Dad. They had lots of fun. Sometimes they used the paint brushes, which they found very interesting and other times they used their hands.

I was going to take a picture of their first art on the floor, but I had a little visitor.

 

Then another visitor.

 

The Learning Tower

 

 

 

The learning tower arrived! Life has been slightly easier than it was prior to the arrival of the tower. In a previous post I wrote about the Funpod, which has been great, but only fits one child. The Learning tower definitely fits two children, however I am glad that I made the decision to purchase the learning tower in addition to the Funpod.

 

 

 

So you may be wondering about how much room the Funpod and the Tower take up in our kitchen. Our kitchen is U shape and I currently have the Funpod at the end of the kitchen bench and the tower on the other side. This works very well for us, as I am close to both girls and we can interact with each other very well. We have used both the Funpod at the Learning Tower every day and several times a day since it arrived. Prior to the arrival of the Learning Tower we used the Funpod several times a day, but the girls had to take turns. Now they both can stand at the big bench at the same time.

 

I haven't taken the opportunity to take pictures of the girls in their respective towers, but I will make a conscious effort over the next few days and I will post some pictures.

 

 

 

We purchased our Learning Tower from Montessori Child and our preloved Funpod via Ebay.

 

 

 

 



Play at Home Mum

I am a PAHM (play at home mum)

I was surfing the net and came across a blog where a mum has created a sit called a play at home mum.  I have since decided my reply when asked "what do you do?" will be as follows.

Me: I'm a Play at Home mum
Stranger: - What's a Play at Home Mum?
Me:  It's an extremely important role, based on positive parenting and play based learning
Stranger: Sounds interesting
Me: It is. So far the most fulfilling role I've ever had. Tough at times, but immensely rewarding.

Anyway, if you have a moment take the time to read Play at Home Mom's Blog. It is a wonderful blog and so many inspirational ideas for play based learning.

Care of Ebay - The Little Helper Fun Pod

We are proud owners of a Fun Pod.

 

We were lucky enough to be the winning bidder for a Fun Pod listed on Ebay. These do not appear very often, so when I saw the listing I just had to have it.  For any parents of multiples I will say that the fun pod only fits one child. I did know this prior to purchasing and I did think long and hard about the value of buying a large item that will only fit one of the twins. After much pondering I decided that it would be worth it and it has been a fantastic purchase. 

 

There must be something liberating for a young child to see what happens at the BIG bench. The girls take turns in the fun pod and both love been in it. Their favourite game to play is peekaboo. The twin not in the fun pod thinks this game is hilarious. G sometimes likes to just sit inside and chat to herself.  We often play apple, orange and lemon.... a game where they pick up the item and I name it. The apple has yet to survive a session .

 

 

 

What I like about the fun pod is that it is fully enclosed, so no chance they will accidentally step back and slip out. The downside is that the child needs to be lifted in and out. However the smiles, laughter and delight on the girls faces when they are in the pod out weighs any negatives.

 

I have also purchased a Learning Tower which we are expecting any day now. Here is a fantastic link to a post about the learning tower used by twins. We are lucky enough to have the space for both in the house we currently rent and eventually in the house we are going to build. I opted to have a learning tower and a fun pod to give our family the option to have them both in the tower or split them up to work/play different activities at the kitchen bench. As most parents know siblings do not always play nice together. Sometimes they like to have their own space and the dedicated one on one time with a parent.

 

As a side note, if you are tossing up between a fun pod and the learning tower, one aspect you might want to consider between the two is the age of your little person and if you intend them to use the fun pod for water play. The fun pod is splash resistant it is not water resistant. It will stand up to some hard knocks and repeated use, ours is secondhand and looks brand new. However, it will not survive a drenching by enthusiastic little people helping with dishes and/or adventurous water play at the kitchen sink.

 

All in all I am super impressed with our Fun Pod, unfortunately brand new Fun Pods are no longer available for sale in Australia, so the only way to obtain one is secondhand.

 

 

 

Hi again

It has been a long time since I last posted. Since my last post the girls turned one, started walking, started cat napping and spent the mornings and afternoons crying because they were soooooo tired. I moved them into their own rooms and spent weeks yo-yoing from two naps to one nap back to two naps again.

The girls are now 14 months and we are solidly working on a one nap rountine. Some days the nap is 40 minutes long other days it is longer (1.5 to 2 hours). I like it when the nap is longer. This generally occurs when we have plans to go out after their nap.

Amoungst all this activity, I am in the middle of getting our plans for our new home from design stage to build. So all in all we have been very busy, which is why I haven't posted in a long time. I do have alot of pictures to share.