Toolbox Twins by Lola M. Schaefer, illustrated by Melissa Iwai

Toolbox Twins

Photo from Amazon.com

Review by Sandra Horning

This week at the library a book with the title Toolbox Twins caught my eye. A new twin book? Yes and no. It is a book about twins, but not the same birth date kind of twins. Instead, Toolbox Twins refers to a small boy, Vincent, and his dad, each with his own toolbox and each making repairs around the house.

As Vincent’s dad goes around the house fixing things, Vincent follows along with his toolbox. They hammer the “steps that squeak” and the “stools that creak.” They move outside and work on the gate and chairs. Then into the garage to work on the bike. Back inside they go to hang pictures. Vincent and his dad work inside and out, pulling out different tools for every job. Each new tool in the text appears in bold, helping with identification as the tool is shown. The pleasing illustrations complement the simple rhymes.

Young twins will enjoy learning another way to use the word “twins”. And if your child also happens to be a fix-it child like my four year old son, Toolbox Twins is sure to be a hit.

Ages 2-6.

Snow White and the Seven Whores, or, The Birth of My Bloggy Self

When I started BeTwinned, I wanted it to be an online magazine with feature articles. Once I got it up and running and my post-journalism school life turned out a lot different than I had imagined (and I had absolutely no time to feed this creation with feature articles), I realized that it would be better just to make BeTwinned a blog.

So, I’ve been wanting to write more “bloggy” and to create a blogroll of all the blogs I read and to do other things on the site that would be generally, well, bloggy.

But I haven’t really gotten around to it. Tho, I plan to do it this summer when I have two months off from my job. Yes, I have two months off in the summer. You can hate me, I can take it.

Anyway, something so funny happened this morning, and it’s something so random and it’s such a short story, I thought, “How could I possibly create a whole, meaningful entry about this one little thing?”

I decided that I couldn’t do all those perfect things and that this would be the day that I would start blogging at BeTwinned. Really blogging, like all the other Mommy Bloggers I read. Having fun and writing short, pithy posts if I damn well feel like it. And writing stuff that I probably couldn’t get away with on my Disney parenting blog, Mommy! Mommy!.

Here goes.

My husband’s twin sister sent my daughters a box of Disney videos, like Mulan, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White, etc.

I asked them this morning if they’d like to watch a new video from their stack (they’ve been watching Peter Pan over and over), and they said yes. I offered up Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and they said yes.

Djuna said, “Is Snow White and the Seven Whores scary?”

I looked breathlessly at my husband, who looked like he was about ready to piss himself, so I knew I had heard her right.

I said, “I’m sorry sweetie, I didn’t hear you. Could you please say that again?”

Call me horribly cruel, but I had to hear her say it again.

And she did. I had to step out of the room, I was laughing so hard.

We watched the movie together in small pieces (that is one bitchy, freaky queen/witch, in case you have forgotten) throughout the day, and “whores” changed from “dwores” to “warses” to its current incarnation: “warves.”

I guess it is a pretty hard word to say for a three-year-old.

Mother’s Day, 2007

Here’s a thought-provoking article from Truthdig, a site that recently won a Webby for both the juried award and the People’s Choice award for “Best Political Blog.” The article contains an interesting update about the so-called “mommy wars” and how mothers still face discrimination in the workplace.

Also, I’d like to link readers to my Mother’s Day post in my blog Mommy! Mommy!, which I’ve been writing for Disney’s new site Family.com.