Toilet Learning Twins - Part 4 - Prepared Environment

Baby Bjorn Smart Potty from The EC Store

 

We have three potties and all of our potties are Baby Bjorn Smart Potties. Two in white and one red. The white potties are set up at the potty station. I have to admit the location as moved several times since the beginning our toilet learning adventures. The red one is for emergency catches.

The main reason I brought potties and included potty time as part of our routine was A. A has been waking most mornings dry since she was 10 months old. The only occasions she has been wet in the morning has been illness, teething, when she is unsettled, and a few day after she started walking. So our toilet learning has been lead by her.

Toilet Learning and Public Outings

Today we went to our multiple play group to hang out with all the other twins and their mums and dads. During this outing I made the conscious decision to take A & G to the toilet. The play group is held at a local church and they have a toilet for wee people. I went over to A, said "potty time." Then I went to G, and said the same, "potty time".

Toilet Learning Twins- Part 3 - Training Pants

Training pants are the bane of my life. Honestly, if you are early toilet learning or practising Elimination Communication, the options for training pants or little undies is rather limited in the department stores. Also purchasing a pair of training pants in a small size has proven to be a challenge in some of the online stores, as the stock is either sold out or unavailable. For what it is worth here is my training pants adventures so far.

Long Day

It's been a very long day today. I had a grizzly, unhappy little girl today. I think G is teething. She had a new molar come through last week and it looks like another one is about to make an appearance.

Although it has been a very tiring day, there have been a few highlights. Here are some pictures.

 

Peeka

 

 

 

BOO!

 

Ring, Ring...... "Hello, how can I help you?"

 

 

 

 

Toilet Learning Twins Part 2 - Cloth Nappies

Before A & G arrived, I surfed the Internet looking for information on cloth nappies. Boy oh, boy! There is so much information on cloth nappies, I was overwhelmed.  I just could not decide what to buy, so in the end I didn't buy any cloth nappies at all. I did own those flat square terry towel nappies (which I used as burp and clean up cloths.)

In the first three months of my twins lives they were in disposal nappies, whilst I adjusted to our new life as a family of four. When the girls were about 4 months I started researching cloth nappies again, and yes, I was still very confused about what to buy. I really wanted to spend my money wisely and on the right nappy system for us. The weather was warming up at this time, so I started to let the girls have more nappy free time, but continued to use disposables for night time and going out. Honestly they were in disposable a lot more than I would have liked them to be. At this time I hadn't read anything on ECing. Perhaps if I had they would have had more nappy free time than they did and I would have been more in tune with their toileting ques.

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.

My little pilot

Walker plane - beautifully hand crafted

June has been a very busy month for us. I expect it always will be. This month we had a long weekend away and went on a farm stay in Northern New South Wales, near Byron Bay. Lovely weekend, but it was cold and it did rain and rain and rain.

On this weekend we made our way into a little town called Bangalow, which hosts a farmers market on the weekend and has a number of little shops.  During our visit we saw a number of handcrafted wooden toys. I fell in love with all the toys, they were amazing and I wish I had taken a photo of all the toys they had available. In case want to know, they had a huge dump truck, train, truck with trailer for car transport (including the cars), rocking horse, cars, smaller trucks and a pram. All the items are made by a local craftsperson, from wood (look at the wood grain) and the workmanship is superior. If you are ever visiting Bangalow please visit Windhorse Gallery.

Unfortunately when travelling with twins there is never spare space in the car. So we could only buy one item. I was thinking a small car, however A had other plans. She saw the plane, her eyes were as huge as saucers and once she sat on the plane she had the hugest smile. There was no way we were getting out of the shop without the plane.

A and her plane - Future Pilot perhaps?

So, we are proud owners of a walker plane. A loves this plane and this is definitely hers. G does get to sit on it and have a ride, however, G is always quick to turn up and take over. I guess we will have to work on her sharing skills.

A (in striped top) taking over again. Poor G been sidelined (again)

In the kitchen - Butter Cake

"Cooking is Love made visible"

A and I had some one on one time. This is a rare treat and came about by pure chance. A, woke up early from her nap and G slept for another 45 minutes. Enough time for A and I to spend some time in the kitchen together.

I like baking but I try not to bake to often, because then I have to eat it as well. The recipe of the day, butter cake. I decided this is the cake recipe I will be using for their birthday cakes, which is a month away, so a test batch needed to be made.

When I bake with the girls around I place them in their highchairs. If I don't they will be under my feet. They are like kittens at the moment, sneaking up quietly when I'm not looking (or one distracts) and pouncing on my feet.

I place their highchairs on the other side of the bench across from me so they can have a clear view and can see what I'm doing. I talk to them the whole time I bake. I read out the recipe, discuss the ingredients, collect the ingredients, explain what equipment we need, tell them why I select one baking dish over another and I talk to them about the different ways to measure ingredients (scales, measuring cups and spoons.) As I make the mix I walk around to their side of the bench and show them how the mix changes as I add, mix, beat and fold new ingredients into the mix. I placed a small drop of the mix on A finger yesterday for her to taste and let her have the mixing spoons when I was finished.

A (and G) are too young to understand what I'm saying or doing, but it does keep them riveted and quiet for the time we are in the kitchen. I can't wait until they can be active participants in the baking process. A had the hugest big brown eyes yesterday watching me mix together the cake. A few times she tried to lift herself up from her seat to get a better look. I wonder what it looks like to her? Did it look as magical to her as it felt to me? I think it must have. There was so much love in the kitchen yesterday. Love it the special ingredient we add to all our recipes, it takes food to a whole different level. After eating we often say, "that was lovely, it must be all the love that's been added whilst the meal/cake/snack as been prepared."

We are sick

We are all sick. Some of us sicker than others. I think we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I hope so. There is a level to how much a mama can cope with, non eating, non drinking, non sleeping, clinging, grizzly and grumpy 10 month old twins is an endurance test.

The grandparents are arriving tonight it would be good to have another pair of arms to give cuddles.