Bedtime Manipulations

I am sure every parent has had trouble at bedtime with children manipulating the system and trying to squeeze out a few more waking moments from the day.  If you haven't battled this time of the day or aren't anymore, please let me know what you're doing.  We have a very set routine for the twins.   Bath, PJs, Teeth, Books, tucking in.  Even the tucking in process has to be sequenced perfectly.  Blankets in order, animals in their places, each parent has to give a kiss, and then bye bye's and blown kisses at the door.   I am okay with this night time routine.  It is what comes next that makes me want to pull all my hair out.  
   The Excuses begin.  Here is how it has gone so far tonight as I am sitting her typing this.  First, Jae says she has to pee pee.  I let her go because we are trying to get her to stop peeing in her night diaper.  Then, I have to re-tuck and Daddy has to come back into the room to kiss her.  He tried to protest this request tonight and Jae was besides herself carrying on, so Daddy caved.  Then, Kaden claims to have to pee pee.  I lecture him about lying and he just lays his head down and gives up......UNTIL he thinks of his next idea....."Poo Poo, Mama.  POOOOOO POOOOO!"   I ignore this and Daddy goes in and tells him to lay down and that Mama is asleep.  Now, I can hear them talking and laughing in twin language right now, probably plotting their next stale tactic.  What will it be next, will they pull the old, "Agua!  Agua!  MAAAMAAA, AGUA!!!"   Another one that they try frequently is kicking off the covers and then saying "Uh, oh,  Oh no," and crying it out until they get us to cover them back up. Sometime they sacrifice their snugly.  Sacrificial lamb takes on a new meaning her.  Her little lamby gets rocketed out and then she screams just so we will come in and give it to her.  Kaden has been known to do the same with his little Giraffe.   Sometimes they try to request new never slept with before toys or animals, as if their cribs are not crowded enough as it is.   That's right, I said cribs.   This bedtime game is so hard that we still keep the twins in cribs.  I think I am the only mom I know that still has kids this age in a crib.   I need to get this bed time chaos fixed by the new year, because that is the date we have choosen to start them in beds.  I have no idea where to start with this.   I am completely open to any ideas on this one.  They share a room, fight bedtime, and ometimes they play across the room in their cribs for an hour before they fall asleep at nap time and bedtime.   This will definitely be a challenge.  If anyone has ideas for me, let me know. 

Transforming the house

Today was the second weekend of making changes to the house.  I think what spurred the changes was the thought that I would have to tolerate being in my house for extended periods of time when I am home.  So, this lead me to some reorganization.  The problem was that it seemed like every room was run over with kids stuff.  I wanted to make the rooms back into rooms with individual functions again.  For example, the loft upstairs was an office slash playroom.  It was divided in half by a 10-12 ft gate.  It was very distracting to work in the office with all the clutter about.  Then, I was thinking the one room we don't use much is the guest room, but I can't exactly get rid of that.  So, what I finally decided was that I would slide the bed into the sliding closet, and then it will be a playroom unless we have guest.  Then, I had to paint the guest room because it was all red and that was just too much energy.  So, I painted it the same color as the rest of the house. 

 In the above pic, I used decals that I bought off of Amazon.  Also, I decided that the kids need their own work space.  Sometimes it is nice to have them separated when they are working.  There is less competition and less hoarding of crayons and stickers and things like that.  I took advantage of their size and got too $10 side tables from Ikea to use as desks.

 This corner is dedicated to pretend kitchen play.

 I also picked up these mirror tiles at Ikea.  


I am pretty happy with the new feel to my home.  I have an organized place for the twins to play.  (Let' s see how long it stays that way.)  And, I feel much better in my own office.    I did some minor tweaking of the arrangement of the furniture in the downstairs living room also, and I feel much more comfortable in my own home....less of that I need to get out of here for a while feeling.

 

A Better Day has come, wet pants included

I felt some relief today, with my big task to tell our nanny about my leave of absence from work.  She seemed to feel better today and had even gotten a response from someone that saw her nanny profile we set up yesterday.  Although it wasn't a full time position that would workout for her, I think it gave her hope.  I am glad things weren't too awkward today.  I expected there to be some awkwuardness for a while, but it seems to be okay. 

Teaching seemed really easy today, and I even felt up for a long walk with the twins this afternoon.   We walked down  to the duck pond.  It was a gorgeous 77 out this afternoon.  The kids threw the old bread to the ducks and then we headed on our way.  About 1 1/2 miles from the house Kaden screamed he had to pee pee, but I told him that he couldn't because we were not at the house yet.  Despite him bringing it up a few more times, he actually held it all the way home.  That was an added bonus, I expected I would be cleaning up a pee pee stroller and a pee pee covered boy.  Then,when we are about 8 minutes from  home, I hear, "Uh oh, uh oh, UHHHHH OHHHHH!!!!"  with increasing intensity from Jaelyn.  I look and the entire 16 oz bottle of water had fallen over and spilled into her crotch.   Her reaction was to grab her crotch rather than the bottle, so she was completely soaked and getting cold.  She cried the rest of the way home while Kaden and I looked for Pine Cones as we strolled.  We were trying to distract Jae into our game, but it didn't work.  I still count the walk as 80% successful. 

Big Emotions for a Big Day I've Been Dreading

So, today was the day that I broke it to my nanny about my leave of absence from work coming up.  It was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do.  Our nanny is like a member of our family.  She treats our family like we are her own and our kids like they are her grandkids.   When I broke the news to her, we were both sniffling through the conversations with teary eyes.  What breaks my heart was that her main concern was not for her own employment, but whether or not she could still come and visit the kids.  Her heart was broken at the thought of not being a part of their lives.  I understand this because it is like she is their 3^rd parent.  It was so hard to talk to her about this because it was breaking my heart to know I am taking her away from these children that she loves so much, and that I am taking her away from my kids who love her so much.  I explained that I had to take this opportunity to be the mom I want to be for my kids now before they are in school all day long and that I didn’t want to look back with regret for not taking this time with them.  She was understanding, but still had a hard time with it as I expected she would.  I know in my heart how in love she is with our children.  

                She worried that she wouldn’t get to work with kids anymore because no one will hire her when she is 62.  I assured her that we would find her a job with a good family before she leaves us.  I am 100% confident that she would get any job she wants as long as she is given the opportunity to interview for it.   It was evident to my husband and me right away the night we interviewed her.  When we closed the door behind her, we didn’t even have to discuss it; we just looked at each other and said, “She’s it, right.”  Nothing more needed to be said because it was so obvious that she was better than we had ever expected.  Later when the initial shock had worn off a bit, I showed her the research I had done on the internet and the families on care.com that I liked for her.  I was happy to see that they were the 2 she liked best too. I shared with her my own selfish hopes that she takes one of those jobs since it is in the same community we live in, which means it would be easy for me to pick her up after work and bring her over to spend time with the kids while I get out of the house with my husband for a few hours.  She seemed to like this idea.  I let her know that I would not be abandoning her completely.  I am still out here in Southern California all by myself without any family to help me in a pinch or to offer me any relief.  So, I was hoping I could still have her come on weekend or after her work hours.  

                With all of these things that I said and did to help lessen the impact for her, I still feel horrible seeing her go through this heartbreak and the pain on her face.   I know she truly loves my children, and that is priceless.  And for myself, I will truly miss her when her last day comes and I will value her even more these last weeks that she is with us.   Today was a big day for second guesses for me.  Still, when I search my heart, I know that staying home with the twins this next year is what is best for us.   I am convinced that if our nanny wasn’t one of the most wonderful people who has ever been in my life, than this would be nearly as hard.

“BAD DOOR, MAMA, BAD DOOR!!!”

Today I was reminded of a crazy event that happened a few months ago. This particular evening after work I was grocery shopping with the twins. I love shopping at Henry’s and Trader Joes even though their single shopping carts are a pain since there is not a place for both children. So, as we are walking across the parking lot toward Trader Joes, my son starts yelling, “BAD DOOR, MAMA, BAD DOOR.” This reference was to a door that his arm was stuck inside a few months ago. At the time of the incident I was loading the kids into the single shopping cart. I let go of Kaden’s hand to put Jaelyn in the cart. Kaden ran into the store to press his face up against the store window and make a face at me through the glass. As he pressed his hands against the glass, a man walked through the automatic doors and they slid to the side and over my son’s hand. His hand and forearm were stuck inside the door. He was screaming and yelling, “OH NO MAMA, OH NO, MAMA!”, so I left the cart with Jae still in it and rushed to him to try to get his arm out but it was stuck. We were so close to the door that we kept setting it off. So, he is being pulled back and forth by his arm as these doors open and close, and he is so scared and screaming. After working and failing to get his arm out, I yelled for help. 

The whole time this was happening surreal thoughts were flooding my head about how, this is it, his hand will never come out of the door and he will lose his arm and I will be on Oprah talking about having to raise a child without a limb and try to teach him how to survive without. Then, I would have to talk about the horrifying even I had to witness and the helpless feeling as I looked on. Flash back to reality…another few adults had rushed to the scene at this time and as we were trying to figure out what to do (as my son is being pulled back and forth by his arm because all of us are setting off the doors). I can vaguely hear a woman outside tending to my daughter, Jae, which I knew had to be freaking my daughter out. She HATES stranger and get super shy and nervous if anyone even makes eye contact with her. So, Jaelyn is trying to climb out of the shopping cart, and this woman stranger/helper is trying to hold her in so that she can be safe, which is making Jae flip out even more. Finally, a man says, “Miss, hold your son still.” I did and he yanked the door back off my son’s hand. Kaden is screaming his head off and his bottom lip is all the way out and he is looking absolutely terrified. I examined his arm and it appeared to only be a little red and swollen. So, I have this 37 pound 2 year old in one arm. I lift out Jaelyn with the other bench and I carry them over to the bench outside the store and we just sat down all of us crying. So, here I am sitting outside Trader Joes, with tears running down my face. The manager brings out a bag of peas to put on Kaden’s wrist and 2 fruit snacks for the kids. Kaden calms down pretty fast and I observe him putting weight on his wrist. I of course was on edge and over protective of him for days following this event. Nonetheless, we went back into Trader Joes and got our groceries, because at the end of the day, no matter what we had been through, we were still out of milk. 

Ever since this event I have not had a problem getting my son to stay near me in a grocery store, and he no longer protests about having to sit in the shopping cart. For a while, he would whimper and cry every time we went through the sliding glass doors at any store, but now he has down-scaled to just talking (in a very loud voice) about how bad the door is randomly throughout the shopping trip. Today, every time we rounded the isles and he caught a glimpse of the doors, he would make sure I saw them too. “BAD DOOR, MAMA, BAD DOOR!!!” This continued through to the checkout lane, where I felt obligated to explain to the checkout clerk why my son is exclaiming at the top of his lungs what bad doors they have. To my embarrassment, the clerk had been there that day and clearly remembered the event. 

I know when I am a full time stay at home mom shortly, there will be many more of these public embarrassments and maybe even crying sessions as we venture out to explore the world together.

Big Change Ahead

  For me and for my family there are big changes that lie ahead.  I am a 30 year old mother of 2 year old twins.  For the last nine year I have been teaching in the public school systems in different schools in Southern California. I have worked full time since I graduated from college.  Work wise, I know nothing but schools, but that will soon change.  I am about to embark on an adventure/challenge that both scares and excites me.  I am going to be a staying home with my 2 year old twins beginning a month from now. Although I consider myself lucky that I am able to have this opportunity that I have been craving.  As I desperately want to be effective with my children in the same way I am effective with other people's children, I am nervous at the same time. I know that many of the patterns in my life are about to change. 
   Not only will I be alone now without the support of my nanny or of any family in town, but I know that my responsibilities are going to change in away that I don't have experience with.  I know I am going to have to now cook, pay all the household bills, carry out my educational plan for my children, and keep my sanity as an innately social person who will now be confined to the house for the majority of the day.  Although I have been craving this leave from work so desperately, I am not naive and do not believe that it will be a world of roses and perfection.  I don't know exactly what it will be, so I am trying  to prepare for the change.  I am planning, researching, talking to others, so I can smooth the transition.  I know it will be a difficult transition for me.
  Currently, I am very happy as a teacher.  I was happy in my job as a teacher.  I feel accomplished on many different levels as a teacher and this is very hard for me to leave behind.  But harder yet, was dealing with a sneaking guilt that had been growning inside of me.  " What if I am making progress with everyone's' kids but my own."  I have always loved children, and truly love working with them.  However, my strongest compulsion is to stay home with my own kids and to make sure they are getting everything they need to prepare them for life and for the public school system.  I miss my twins so much when I am at work and I want to be their teacher....their influence.  A mom once told me, " If you're not influencing your kids, someone else or something else is."   This powerful statement has stuck with me and lead me to the hard decision I made to stay home.  In my heart and sole, I know that staying home is what is right for my family.  I know I will have strong regrets if I don't. However, I can't help but to have fears that come with any big change, a change that not only affects me, but my whole family.  To me that is the scary part.  Will I be as good as our accomplished nanny has been with us this past 2 year?   Will the kids respond to my teaching, or will they be vying for Mommy time, in the constant competitive way in which they currently do?   Will all list of "experiences I want the kids to have" be completed and will it make a difference?   Will my staying at home change my relationship with my husband in a positive way?   Will me being home change my relationship with my kids in a positive way?  Will this next year make a difference and set the foundation in place for healthy family relationships and education to flourish?  Will the financial burder on my family cause new stress or make us more strongly united? 
   Well, I guess I won't know unless I try.  To me that is the important part.  I want to always live life without regret, and this is my time to seize the day.  The fear of failure is great, because there is so much as risk....all the things that are the most important...my children, my husband, our happiness and security.  To rest assured, I guess I will do what I always do when a big change is coming: RESEARCH AND PLAN.  Right now I am wrapping up loose ends.  On my to do list: Break it to the nanny.   I consider our nanny family, and I do not look forward to announcing my staying home to her.  So, I am currently searching to help  find a new position for her.  I know that this will not help me to escape the emotional part of me taking away the kids that she loves, and also, taking away a wonderful caregiver from my kids.  Hopefully, this research will help me feel  more confident about starting the conversation with her.  I don't like to present problems to people without a solution.  I want to make sure that our Nanny will have a comfortable job in the future.  I am protective of her, just as I am my family.  
   In that same way, I am tying up loose ends at work.   I am trying to find people to take my positions as a teacher, after school tutor, Credit recovery teacher, school site council member, and member of the leadership team.  I find it eases my apprehension when I come forward with a plan.  Next on my list of things to do, is to determine how to in-cooperate all of my goals as a mom and homemaker, into a weekly and even daily planning.  I know I have to do this because failing to plan is planning to fail.   So, tonight as I type this, I am nervous about the decisions I am making and the lives I am affecting as they are the most important to me.