The most boneheaded move ever (seriously)

TubaDad was in Boston yesterday and our air conditioner was on the fritz. In sweltering 94-degree heat, no less. So the girls and I amused ourselves with cool water while we waited for the saintly A/C repair dude.

After the blessed A/C system was repaired and beginning to chug away again (the inside of our house was 89 degrees at that point), we decided to beat the heat by going to the movies. Might sound pretty tame, but it was a really really big deal for Ro and Ree. See, they’ve never been to the movies before. They just never had any interest, their attention spans were laughably non-existent (so we were chicken to take them), and most movies had something that scared the buhjeezus out of them. But they’ve gotten braver recently, plus it was really freaking hot in the house. I figured the worst thing that could happen was that we would take a nice cool drive in the van, they’d last 15 or 20 minutes in the theater, then we’d beat a hasty retreat and take another nice cool drive in the van. Only it didn’t happen. They munched happily on their snacks, didn’t make a peep during the movie, and sat through the entire one hundred and three minutes of Toy Story 3 (in 3D). Color me surprised!

When we returned home, the inside temperature was back to a nice, lovely 75 degrees. Ahhhhhh. We fooled around a little, cleaned up the house, then double locked all of the doors inside and out and went to sleep. (The place is closed up tighter than Fort Knox when TubaDad travels.) Normally the story would end here, but unfortunately this one didn’t… I hate to even admit this in public, and am only saying it outloud because I am wracked with guilt. Ugh… Ok, here it is: I screwed up the day of TubaDad’s return from his business trip. He came home in the middle of the night last night and couldn’t get in the house. !!!!!!! He called a bunch of times, but the phone doesn’t ring upstairs so I didn’t hear anything and just kept sleeping away. And he said he didn’t want to make a huge neighbor-alerting racket and start pounding on doors, so he went and slept in a hotel. !!!!!! A hotel. After “sleeping” on the redeye flight Sunday night, going straight into business meetings Monday morning, then hopping back on a plane and traveling half the day back home. Oh my word, the guilt. I feel horrible. And moronic. Horribly moronic. Ugh. So there it is. I’ll be spending the next month or more attempting to make it up to him in case you wonder why he’s golfing every weekend or eating Mexican food every night or getting breakfast in bed or whatever he wants.

Things we’ve learned in the pink car

1. Ro is a total backseat driver

2. Ree thinks it’s ok to slam the car into reverse while speeding forward (I may or may not have heard a story about my little brother doing this when he was a teenager driving the Pinto)

3. Ro can do a wicked donut (again, not confirming anything, but my little brother might possibly have done this a time or two when he was younger)

4. People can’t help but grin when they see two little girls driving a bright pink car

5. Ro wants a race car that’s tie-dyed lime green and black and has black letters when she grows up (that’s 11, according to her)

6. Ree wants a van that’s green with white polka dots when she turns 19.

Officially leaving all traces of babyhood behind

Today is the girls’ last day of preschool (pre-K). It’s the end of an era. As Ro and Ree are fond of telling me, several (hundred) times a day “We are big girls now, mama.” Yes you are, lovies. Beautiful, sweet, funny, creative, strong, smart big girls. And definitely not babies any longer. (sob) Ro white dress, Ree blue dress Their very first day of preschool was Monday Nov 26, 2007. Ro and Ree were tiny little peeps, just over two years old. It seems like I’ve taken pictures of everything, but startlingly there’s no formal picture on that first day (I guess I was too frazzled to even think of it). Ro is in the white shirt with pink sleeves (holding Pink Nanni), and Ree is in the white shirt with green sleeves (holding Yellow Nanni). I stayed at the preschool with them for as many days as they needed me to, sometimes cramming my butt into a tiny blue chair in the back of the room and sometimes peeking in from the office: At the end of the first week, we were all pretty proud of ourselves. :-) The girls even got a lollipop at pickup that day. I like pictures like these because you can see how tall the girls are in relation to the cupboard handle (see the difference from today’s pics above? Wow.) Ro pink shirt, Ree blue shirt.

I grabbed a little video after they finished their first week of preschool: (direct link to video) And then remembered to take one today, two and a half years later, on the last day. I couldn’t resist asking about the lollipop I dropped when we visited scary Santa in 2007, just to see if they remembered (they did): (direct link to video) Congratulations baby girls, I mean big girls. Now let the summer vacation begin!

Bye bye timeouts, hello clean-up time!

I just had a cunningly clever idea. I am so stunned that this thought never occurred to me that I’m kind of in shock. Ok, to back up a teensy bit, here’s some background:

When the kids misbehave badly they spend five-minutes in timeout. To be 100% honest, this is as much to remove them from the situation and give them some time to think as it is to give *me* time to calm down before dealing with whatever they have ruined, trashed, or destroyed. Because they can push my buttons like nobody’s business. Don’t even get me started on their rabid fascination with sneaking illegal and expressly forbidden water and sand mixtures into the house and spilling them every single time. Every Single Time. Without fail. Not even kidding. Drives me mad. (breathing, breathing…)

Anyhow, one of the girls snuck a contraband cup full of frothy sand, water, and dirt into the kitchen today, and, of course, spilled it. And in the middle of gritting out “Why?!!!!! Why do you do this?!!!!!” and breathing really deep so I would stay cool (since I lost it yesterday when they stealthily ran upstairs and covered the bathroom floor with wadded-up toilet paper, crayon, and water and then I felt terrible) suddenly, I thought of a better solution. Screw timeouts! Now, when one of the girls has been warned and still does something she KNOWS she’s not supposed to do (like wrapping her legs around her sister’s waist and pulling her off the monkey bars gladiator-style), she spends five minutes in clean-up time. I set the timer, point her at a mess (there is always a mess), and instead of sitting on her butt being bored/frustrated/annoyed, she cleans up for five minutes.

Ahhhhh, it’s a win win. A redirection of energy that just happens to benefit ME. Heh heh. Tried it today and it worked like a charm, by the way. Our playroom is now spic and span. I think I phrased it something like "If you have enough energy to schlep all that sand into the house when you know you're not allowed to bring it inside, you have enough energy to help out the family by cleaning." The girls are actually excited about it, little sweeties. We talked about how it would work, and Ree said “How about six minutes, mama, I can clean really fast if it’s six,” and Ro said “No, how about eight minutes, because I can do a whole room in eight minutes!”

Why haven’t I ever thought of this?! I almost can’t wait until the next twinrageous offense.

What all the stylish dollies are wearing to pajama parties these days

Is anyone having a pajama party this summer? Because we’re properly attired and ready to go. Ro and Ree picked out matching babydoll and little mama nightgowns at the American Doll store. And the sight of the four pink-clad cuties having a PJ party just makes me giggle.

Ro’s dolly is called Teebali (pronounced tee-buh-lee) today. Ok…:

Ree’s dolly is called Rachel today (I say “today” because the names change every day, and I just can’t keep up):  

Little mama Ree:

Little mama Ro:

The oh-so-serious looks on the girls’ faces crack me up. They paste on those sober expressions anytime they’re taking care of their babies. Being a mama is quite a serious job, you know.

PS: Remember that you can always tell who’s who if you can spy the bracelets. Ro’s is on the right arm and Ree’s is on the left arm.

A little gotcha you might not know about some booster seats

We’re doing an incredible amount of traveling this summer. A whole bunch of these getaways are girls’ trips, which means I’m on my own with Ro and Ree, our luggage, transportation, etc. So I needed a travel car-seat solution that wouldn’t reduce me to tears (or worse) in the middle of the Salt Lake City airport. In buying, trying, and returning options, I discovered a booster-seat gotcha that you might not know, and this is one case where cutting corners turned out to be a good thing.

Ro and Ree, who weigh in at just over 40 pounds, are still in Britax car seats at home, and we’ve traveled with those car seats before. But if TubaDad’s not around, it’s just not doable for me to get those dang seats (or seats from the car rental company) transported and installed on my own. I’m not fragile, but holy moly my sanity sure is, especially when the kids are running around the airport parking lot all crazed and sleep-deprived after a long flight and I’m hanging upside down in the back of the car cursing and fumbling with straps. So before our last trip to Tahoe, I bought some new backless booster seats that were easy to carry and required no installation.

One gotcha though, and the main point of this post: if you have captain’s chairs in your car or van (like we do), not all booster seats will fit. Of course I didn’t find out our new ones didn’t fit until 9pm the night before we left on our trip, while TubaDad was away on business. Crap!!! Luckily good friend Maggie came over to watch our sleeping babes while I dashed to Target to exchange the first pair of seats.

I ended up buying the Graco booster seat, which I’ve now tested in Tahoe, Chicago, and will soon test in Utah. Why? Because the Graco booster has angled corners in the back, so it will actually fit in a captain’s chair.

Here’s the front view of the first seats I bought that didn’t work, the Evenflo Big Kid AMP No Back Booster Car Seat ($24.99 at Target), as compared to the seats that did work, the Graco No Back Booster Car Seat ($19.59 at Target). They both look great, huh? This front view is the only one you get to see if you order seats on the internet or just look on the packaging:

Now let’s check out the back view. See those angled corners on the Graco? That turned out to be critical:

Here’s a close-up of the Graco sitting on top of the Evenflo. That tiny little angle that wasn’t visible on the web made all the difference:

Here’s a bottom view of those angled corners, just because I’m a picture nut:

Now, this is why I cared. Here’s the Evenflo booster in our van. Note the big, unsafe, uncomfortable gap between the booster and the back of the seat. I just couldn’t get it far enough back with the sides of our Honda Odyssey captain’s chair in the way:

And here’s how the angled Graco fits flush against the back of the captain’s chair. Ah hah!:

If you’ve got bench seats in your car, van, SUV, or rental car, then as far as I can tell you can go hog-wild and get anything you want. (I actually like the looks of the Evenflo better and it has sturdier seat padding.) But if you’ve got captain’s chairs like us, take a peek at the back of your booster seat before you buy it.

By the way, any booster seats can either be checked in free of charge when you check your luggage (fellow twinmom K2 saved the original boxes and tapes them shut and checks them in those – brilliant!!), or can be carried on the plane and easily stowed in the overhead compartments. They’re light enough that the kids can carry them if you’re short of hands, and there’s no installation – just plop your booster down, then use the normal car shoulder and lapbelt, making sure to put the belt underneath the armrests (or use the extra strap attachment) so it’s held in the correct position.

Happy traveling!

PS #1: I wasn’t compensated for this info in any way. I purchased all four of the seats and I’m just sharing facts that would have saved me an extra trip to the store. (An extra trip that cost me $32 more, by the way, because I *had* to walk through the little girls’ clothing section on the way to the car seats… Heh.)

PS #2: I’m not interested in debating the safety of backless seats versus full-back seats. I personally am not able to travel with two little girls and two full-size car seats on my own.

Minimizing our train-waiting time

Our last day and a half in Chicago were packed with fun. We met up with some of our fave people and four really happy twins played together.

Kristi and Eric invited us for dinner Friday night. And (after asking if Kristi was absolutely positively totally sure that she wanted the twinados in her beautiful home) we gleefully headed over (some of us caught a few winks in the cab):

Ree, Ro, Michal, and Kenna (l to r) had such a great time together. Something about seeing four cute little heads bent together just makes me grin extra big.

The next morning, we woke the snoring girls up, packed at the speed of light and checked out of the hotel, then drove like madmen back to Michal and Kenna’s house. We had to make the one morning train that went into the city and were cutting it so close! We called when we were one block away, and then chortled with glee to get near the house and see their van race out of the driveway with Eric’s hand out the window motioning us to follow. We screeched into parking spots, raced to the train, and made it. Ahhhhhh. Downtown Chicago, here we come! The train ride was kind of amusing. The four girls sat together and sang (loudly) the whole way there. (Ro, Michal, Kenna, Ree, l to r):

We arrived, then popped into cabs heading (where else?) to the American Girl doll store:

I’ve never been to this store and walked around with my mouth hanging open. Can’t even imagine how much fun the marketing folks had dreaming it all up. Can you believe they have a doll salon where your bedraggled, dragged-around-by-the-head dolly can get re-fancied up?:

At lunch, the girls made funkalicious wiki stick glasses:  

And then we went to the world-famous bean (the bean!!!):  (TubaDad is the big blue blob you see all over the place)

We cooled off in a big famous fountain area (cannot remember the name), and told the girls not to get soaked. Yeah, like that ever works.

After walking around some more (looking at cool stuff and hoping the sunshine would dry our soggy babes), we realized we were about to miss the last train back, hailed cabs, RAN through the huge train station (I don’t think TubaDad has ever seen me run), and made it 45 seconds before the doors closed. Whew, the great train chases were thrilling, to say the least, and TubaDad said we had definitely minimized our train-waiting time for the day. Heh.