There are some things that I would love to do more often but it just seems too darn hard with two babies. These are a few things that some parents of singletons might take for granted:
-Giving baths everyday (or whenever you want)
-Using a baby carrier instead of a stroller
-Giving bottles/breastfeeding and snuggling your baby while they eat
-Going grocery shopping or Target shopping with your child
-Taking your child out-to-eat at a sit-down restaurant
With one kid I imagine one has more mobility and flexibility. It has taken us awhile to figure some of these things out with twins, but we have made huge progress over the last few months!
Tandem bottle feeding is something we had to figure out right away, and the process has definitely changed over the last 11 months. Over the summer we started having to give S&Z bottles on the floor because even a bed with bedrails is no longer safe! Here is a picture from late May, towards the end of when we could use the guest bed for feedings.
Derek is King Daddy of the Bath and now gives them to S&Z most days, even when he has them alone.
I wrote about going to Target back in May, and at that time I went with a friend and that was a very special outing!
Target and other kinds of shopping is something I routinely do alone now, and depending on how much I need to get I either put them both in the double stroller and use a shopping basket, or I put one in a shopping cart and wear the other in a carrier so that I can buy more stuff!
Derek & I take them on a BJ's run every once in awhile, because BJ's is one of the few places that has double carts. In my opinion, more places need to embrace the double cart!
Eating out is something that I have missed over the last year. A couple of times that we have gone out for date night, Derek & I have seen parents eating in a nice restaurant with a baby that is happily sleeping in their stroller. "Boy, wouldn't that be nice" is what we think every time. The first time Silas & Zoe ever sat in high chairs in something resembling a restaurant was in the food court at Logan on our way to Minneapolis, when they were almost 8 months old.
That experience went so well that we actually ate in a real sit-down restaurant at the Minneapolis airport on our way home. I think we were so nervous that I didn't even take any pictures!
I have such a system figured out for everything now that going out for ice cream,
Or stopping for a snack at Target is no big deal.
Now that Silas & Zoe are a little older and we are a little more relaxed, going out-to-eat as a family is something that I think we would do more often if Derek & I worked and slept on the same schedule. However, that is not the case so we need to make a little extra effort to make this happen. So today we went to TGI Friday for lunch, the definition of a family chain restaurant. We knew they would have enough high chairs to have 2 available at one time, and we anticipated the service would be pretty fast in order to accommodate short attention spans.
My friend and "twin trainer", Eugenia, recently gave us disposable placemats that worked out great for this outing. Everything went so smoothly that we must have looked like professionals! We brought grapes and fig newtons to keep them occupied until our food came, and then they had a hey day eating stuff from Derek's cobb salad, and broccoli, mashed potatoes, shrimp & salmon from my plate. We were there for exactly 1 hour and we successfully avoided any meltdowns. After lunch we went to Toys 'R Us to buy Ollie's birthday present. It was very special family time for us and we already started planning where we will take them to lunch on their birthday!
-Giving baths everyday (or whenever you want)
-Using a baby carrier instead of a stroller
-Giving bottles/breastfeeding and snuggling your baby while they eat
-Going grocery shopping or Target shopping with your child
-Taking your child out-to-eat at a sit-down restaurant
With one kid I imagine one has more mobility and flexibility. It has taken us awhile to figure some of these things out with twins, but we have made huge progress over the last few months!
Tandem bottle feeding is something we had to figure out right away, and the process has definitely changed over the last 11 months. Over the summer we started having to give S&Z bottles on the floor because even a bed with bedrails is no longer safe! Here is a picture from late May, towards the end of when we could use the guest bed for feedings.
Derek is King Daddy of the Bath and now gives them to S&Z most days, even when he has them alone.
I wrote about going to Target back in May, and at that time I went with a friend and that was a very special outing!
Target and other kinds of shopping is something I routinely do alone now, and depending on how much I need to get I either put them both in the double stroller and use a shopping basket, or I put one in a shopping cart and wear the other in a carrier so that I can buy more stuff!
Derek & I take them on a BJ's run every once in awhile, because BJ's is one of the few places that has double carts. In my opinion, more places need to embrace the double cart!
Eating out is something that I have missed over the last year. A couple of times that we have gone out for date night, Derek & I have seen parents eating in a nice restaurant with a baby that is happily sleeping in their stroller. "Boy, wouldn't that be nice" is what we think every time. The first time Silas & Zoe ever sat in high chairs in something resembling a restaurant was in the food court at Logan on our way to Minneapolis, when they were almost 8 months old.
That experience went so well that we actually ate in a real sit-down restaurant at the Minneapolis airport on our way home. I think we were so nervous that I didn't even take any pictures!
I have such a system figured out for everything now that going out for ice cream,
Or stopping for a snack at Target is no big deal.
Now that Silas & Zoe are a little older and we are a little more relaxed, going out-to-eat as a family is something that I think we would do more often if Derek & I worked and slept on the same schedule. However, that is not the case so we need to make a little extra effort to make this happen. So today we went to TGI Friday for lunch, the definition of a family chain restaurant. We knew they would have enough high chairs to have 2 available at one time, and we anticipated the service would be pretty fast in order to accommodate short attention spans.
My friend and "twin trainer", Eugenia, recently gave us disposable placemats that worked out great for this outing. Everything went so smoothly that we must have looked like professionals! We brought grapes and fig newtons to keep them occupied until our food came, and then they had a hey day eating stuff from Derek's cobb salad, and broccoli, mashed potatoes, shrimp & salmon from my plate. We were there for exactly 1 hour and we successfully avoided any meltdowns. After lunch we went to Toys 'R Us to buy Ollie's birthday present. It was very special family time for us and we already started planning where we will take them to lunch on their birthday!
Love this post :) You guys are absolute pros at this whole twin thing. S + Z picked a family they knew could handle it!
ReplyDelete