Today marks the end of Week 1 of Operation "Stick the Twins in One Room and Let Them Fight It Out Like Hellcats" (otherwise known as Sleep Training). We finally got off our collective arses and decided that we needed to get Loud and Louder sleeping together in their room. They had been separated since the age of four months, when we moved them out of the bassinets in our bedroom. Luci transitioned well to her crib. Nicholas did not.

If you've been following the hellacious odyssey of the twins' sleeping issues the past few months, you know that:

A) Nicholas hated his crib and slept only in the swing, including through the entire night, except for a brief morning nap in his crib, most of which he spent crying

B) Luci slept (swaddled) in her crib just fine, but napped in Isabella's bed for her morning nap because of A),

and

C) While Nicholas would at times sleep (in the swing) through the night, Luci never would, meaning I was up feeding her at least once every night.

Last Friday we decided to throw caution, predictability, and the hope of something even resembling a peaceful evening to the wind and put the twins in the same room together beginning with their morning nap. I also decided to stop swaddling Luci at the same time, something she seemed to fight before bed, but oddly not before her naps. It was time though. Summer + Swaddling = Sweaty Baby.

And so I nursed Luci before her nap, just as I normally did. I brought her to her crib, rocked her a bit, and gently placed her in her crib. Even before her body hit the mattress, she went ballistic. She had no idea what to do with her unswaddled body. I nursed Nicholas, rocked him as well, and then placed him in his crib. He was seriously unhappy with me, the crib, and the universe.

If the sound of two apoplectic babies doesn't make you want to pluck out your eardrums with any sharp tool within arm's length, I'm not sure what does. We followed my friend and fellow twin mom's suggestion of Modified Ferber (enter room and pat backs/tummies, rub heads, etc.) after 5 minutes of crying, then after 10, then after 15). She told me she never had to go past 15 minutes; her twins always conked out by then. Luci and Nicholas? Had no intention of ever stopping the endless screaming.

That first morning "nap" never happened. I think Luci and Nicholas each slept for 10 minutes during their afternoon "nap." Nighttime was a complete and total disaster. I was up virtually the entire night with them, feeding one while the other fell back to sleep, then awakening a short time later to the other twin crying, and dashing in to grab him or her before the other one was awakened. They simply will not sleep through each other's cries. It is maddening.

Now, one week into it, there are good naps and nights and there are horrific ones. At this point, the horrific outweigh the good. Both are up a lot more often than they were when Nicholas was in the swing and Luci had their bedroom all to herself. This, of course, means that I am up a lot more overnight, because I am feeding whichever one is crying before he/she awakens the other. One crying baby in the middle of the night is difficult enough to deal with.

It seems so cruel to force them to sleep in the same room together. How awful to be awakened by your screaming sibling several times a night while you were peacefully sleeping. I know twins get used to this arrangement, and mine have no choice. They live in a 3-bedroom house, and we needed to get Nicholas out of the swing and out of our living room and the hubs off the couch and back into our bedroom.

But right now, it's very hard for me to see this ever working. I cannot imagine that the day will come when they can make it through an entire nap or through the entire night without waking each other up.

Fortunately for them, they are adorable bundles of schmooshable love when they sleep, and just as I did with their sister, I have taken the photos to prove it.

Luci, unswaddled for the first time.

Nicholas, wisely covering his ears and wishing his sister would STFU already.

It WILL get better, right?

Lest anyone think that 8-month-old twins and an almost-three-year-old put a cramp in one's vacation style, allow me to show you how we're rolling this summer.

Behold, the indoor pool* we invested in to entertain the kids.

It's incredibly versatile.

You can eat your afternoon snack in it.

You can watch Blue's Clues in it.

You can even assemble Play-doh worms in it.

If you asked my relatives, they would tell you that I have a lot in common with the mother in this NYT article.

The mother is not fond (to put it mildly) of the junk food her kids eat at school during their classmates' birthday parties and other special occasions. Rather than allowing them to eat the cupcakes, juice pops, and other sugary treats, she gives each of her kids a Tupperware container (the "junk food collector") and makes them place the treat in it, and bring it home.

She regularly fires off angry emails to the school district and to other parents concerning the treats, and believes there should be permission slips for any food not on the school's lunch menu. School district officials have called her hostile, and while some parents agree with her message (with a childhood obesity epidemic, do kids really need regular injections of sugary treats into the school day?) many other find her tactics offensive.

Granted, it seems as if this woman is a bit unhinged. I did a little digging, and it seems her crusade might be more about weight than it is about health. (In an interview with the U.K. newspaper The Guardian, she told the interviewer that she will not eat until after she's exercised, even if she doesn't get in her workout until 4pm. She also claims she's a master at meeting with people in places and at times of the day that do not revolve around food, lest she, you know, want to eat something.)

But while her methods are questionable and offensive, is she wrong? In my opinion, no.

My children's health and nutrition are very important to me. Isabella's diet is made up of about 90% organics and the twins eat nothing but organic. I made all of Isabella's baby food, and I'm now making the twins'. The fact that one in five preschoolers is now obese (obese, at three or four years old) scares the shite out of me. The hubs is not a small guy. Weight issues run in his family. I do everything I can to make sure Isabella eats healthy foods and gets plenty of exercise. I don't believe that my kids need a lot of sugar-laden treats in order to survive or even to be happy.

That said, as I wrote a few months ago, Isabella is hardly denied sweets. She gets a small dessert after dinner a few nights a week (we don't offer if unless she asks, and if she's eaten a decent portion of her dinner, she gets a small cookie or a sugar-free popsicle), and now that it's warm, the hubs has stopped the ice cream truck for her a few times, and we've also taken her out for ice cream as well. We used to give her one M&M as a reward for using the potty while we were potty-training her (that's since been discontinued, not because I stopped it, but because she no longer asks for it.).

But I don't allow her to eat cookies and other snack-type foods before lunch or dinner. If she says she's hungry, she can have as many carrots, cauliflower florets, edamame, grapes, or blueberries (all of which she loves) as she wants. But do I let her stick her hand in one of the many boxes of cookies or crackers my aunts and grandma are constantly bringing over here? No. And they think that's criminal.

Most of my relatives, including my mother, believe I am the Cruella de Vil of food. My grandma and my mom have told me on numerous occasions that my withholding sweets from Isabella is going to make her develop an eating disorder when she's older and that I am "denying her her childhood."

No, they're not kidding.

And so they sneak Isabella food. If my grandma comes over to watch Isabella and the twins in the mornings when I go for a run or do some errands, she gives Isabella cookies, ice cream, or whatever it is that she happened to bring over for her that day. This, even though I always leave Isabella her morning snack (which is usually fruit, or cheddar bunnies, or some other healthy, kid-friendly fare). And I know this because Isabella tells me.

One of my aunts hustles off Isabella to the back bedroom of my great aunt's house where we have dinner every Sunday and lets her feast on a hidden bag of M&Ms. She thinks I don't know about it.

There is a cupboard in my kitchen that is literally full of crap food for Isabella that I didn't buy. And while I may have given her more of it in the past, the fact that my relatives are on me constantly about how horrible I am for not offering my child her weight in cookies each and every day makes me want to withhold it from Isabella even more. It really pisses me off because their actions seem to me like a gigantic "screw you." I know that in my Italian family, food is a way to show love. But they don't respect the way I'm choosing to feed my child. They think they know better and tell me constantly, "we allowed you to eat whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted when you were growing up." What if I was raising Isabella as a vegetarian? Would they sneak her meat? What if I were raising her as a Buddhist? Would they kidnap her and take her to church?

The thing is, because it's not an everyday part of our lives, Isabella doesn't even ask for treats. Occasionally, she'll ask for whatever treat my grandma brings over (since dear grandma shows it to her the second she walks through the door) but 5 seconds later, she's moved onto something more important, like trying to putting Dora stickers on the cats. She doesn't whine for food, or even get upset when I tell her no, you can't have more ice cream or a second cookie, or whatever.

So here's the bottom line. I'm not sending Isabella to preschool with a "junk food collector." If there's a birthday party or Valentine's Day celebration at her preschool, she can eat whatever the treat happens to be. I'll have to accept the fact that she'll be eating a morning snack twice a week that's provided by another parent and might not be all that healthy (she's attending a semi-cooperative preschool, and parents provide snacks for the entire class on a rotating basis). And I won't be staging a revolt at her preschool, or firing off angry emails to teachers and parents, although I will admit to hoping for an "approved" snack list of mainly healthy foods to be mailed home in advance of the school year.

But when she's home, she'll eat the way the hubs and I want her to because the health of her little body and her tiny teeth are more important to me than making sure she has a favorite flavor of potato chip by the time she's 3 years old.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some puppies to skin.

June 2009

Two years ago, I wrote this post, in which I stated that some establishments should be "child-free zones."

I'm older (sigh...) and wiser now. I also have two more kids than I did when I wrote it. I have much more parenting experience. I've taken my children a lot more places, and have felt the visceral need to get out of my house and interact with the world a lot more deeply than I did when I was the mother of one fairly portable 5-month-old.

So, where do I stand now on this issue?

Check out my post on Grow Together, Root & Sprout's social networking site. You'll need to register there to comment (it only takes a few seconds), or leave your comments here. I'm interested in your opinions.

Isabella turned 34 months yesterday. Only two more months until my baby turns 3.

My daughter has always been a curious girl, but this past month, I've noticed her amping up her questions. She's constantly questioning one thing or the other: "What's that building over there?" "Is this the way to grandma's house?", "Why is the sky dark?", and a few days ago, one that I am just not equipped to properly answer for an almost-three-year-old, "Where is heaven?". Every Father's Day, we go to the cemetery to visit the graves of our grandfathers. Isabella has gone each year, but this is the first year we've had to explain a little about where we were headed. I gave her a very basic explanation: "A cemetery is where we go to remember our family members who are in heaven" (Isabella has heard my grandma mention "heaven" before as an explanation for where her papa is). Fortunately, my half-assed response, "Heaven is in the sky!" seemed to cut it-for this year, anyway.


And she is a jumping machine. She loves pretending to be a frog or a rabbit. The twins get a big kick out of her antics.

This has also been the month of weird fear development. She now fears the vaccuum (when it's never bothered her before), she shows a strange shyness when some relatives come to visit, even though she has seen these relatives at least once a week since the day she was born, and (as we learned the other day when she fell and skinned both her knees), she's also afraid of Bandaids.

She's loving the warm weather, and would spend every second outside if we let her. Blowing bubbles (especially with the plastic bubble gadgets her relatives keep buying her), riding her caterpillar (a gift for her second birthday from Aunt Karrie), and digging in her sandbox are her most favorite activities these days.

Check out my most recent article on preparing your kids to move and transition to a new school on Root & Sprout.

Listen up, ladies. Allow me to state the obvious. Sometimes being a girl sucks.

We must worry about our hair, our makeup, our clothes fitting too tightly or not tightly enough. Then there's periods, childbirth, baby weight, and wrinkles.

Frankly, it's exhausting.

But here is the ultimate injustice. Imagine the following: You're more petite than your brother. You weigh less. You nibble. He scarfs.

And yet...

...he gets shapely, toned thighs and you get dimpled and pudgy ones that mommy loves to chomp on.

However, fear not. Like my mother, I may forgive, but I do not forget.

The boy loves his binky.


And now...



'Tis mine.

And this, my friends, is a game...





...that never gets old.

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Check out my new blog header! The fabulous Vanessa from MacNessa did an incredible job. Thank you, Ness, for the amazing work.