Category: Twins

They Still Believe

I wrote the below three Christmases ago for “Parentlode” at the Huffington Post.  My twins were on the cusp of Kringledoubt.  I expected, when I wrote this, that by now, at ten years old, the Santa expiration date I talk about would have long past.  It has not.  I post their Christmas lists at the end.

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Santa Claus has an expiration date. Every parent who has introduced Santa Claus to their kids knows this. You get a few good years and then the doubts start creeping in. Other kids at school are usually the catalysts in this process, which seeps through school lunchrooms with the first signs of frost every year. Usually it’s the hand-me-down scoffings of older siblings. Sometimes, however, it’s an axiom discovered through a child’s deduction alone. Continue reading They Still Believe

The Long View of Working Parenthood

Last week I had the fortune of being interviewed by Dr. Portia Jackson of workingmotherhood.com for her podcast.  We  had a lot of fun talking about challenges and successes.  I talked about treating each child as an individual, which can be a challenge with twins.  (This article in Time about twins and gifted programs resonated with me as we submit our applications for public middle school this week – yes, applications because we have no zoned school.) Continue reading The Long View of Working Parenthood

Nine Years After the NICU

On my birthday last week, I was at Brain, Child Magazine’s Brain, Mother blog discussing two other birthdays – the day my twins were born and the day they came home.  I talk about the scars my twins’ NICU stay has left on me, but not on them.  It’s a piece I thought about writing for many years, but had not collected my thoughts.  The essay is here.

The twins on their actual ninth birthday
The twins on their actual ninth birthday

12 Gifts of Parenting Twins We’d Like to Return

Lauren Apfel and I both have twins — and a few singletons to boot — and we like lists as much as the next blogger. We agree twins offer unique gifts, as others have pointed out, but we also think they come with certain things we would rather give back.  We were recently at the Huffington Post listing twelve such gifts.  Click here for the article.

Having Twins First v. Having Twins Last

Having twins is tough — whether you have only the twins or those twins have siblings. But if you do have singleton(s) also, how does birth order matter? Lauren Apfel, of omnimom.net, and I were recently on Brain, Child Magazine’s blog comparing our stories. She had her twins as numbers three and four; I had mine as numbers one and two. We found there are some big pros and cons to both.

You can see our essays here.

Third Kids, Sixth Kids and Last Kids

My youngest daughter, Charlotte, just started nursery school.  She attends the same school my twins did, who are six years older than she is.  When the twins started, I was grateful for the phase-in period, where caregivers had to stay in the back of the room for the first few sessions, all of which were shorter than the full 2 hour 45 minutes.  I was not sure they were ready to be dropped off – it seemed like a big transition for them and for me.

This time around, when I got the phase-in schedule for Charlotte, I wondered aloud to my husband why we could not just drop her off for the whole session the first day. He reminded me of how grateful I had been with the twins in 2007, and that she is actually three months younger than they were when they started. But even he, as the primary caregiver, is willing to drop her off much more readily than he was the twins.

This third child seems to benefit from our experience and also maybe suffer a bit.  It’s a strange brew of impatience and wisdom and jaded parenting.  Continue reading Third Kids, Sixth Kids and Last Kids