The One-Stop Internet Spot for Parents of Twins and Multiples

With no warning, I got some bad news a couple of weeks ago. It certainly wasn’t earth-shattering or tragic news, mostly just yukky news that affects your ego. And maybe your stomach. For awhile. That kind of bad news.

I was upset, naturally. I had planned to meet up with a friend in downtown Los Angeles that night for a quick dinner before going to an event for online journalists at the LA Times building. It still sounded like fun even though I was feeling punky, so I went.

Amazingly, I didn’t hit any traffic at all and was driving through Chinatown when I realized that I was pretty early. I’ve always wanted to stroll through Chinatown and have literally never done it in the years that my husband and I have lived in the Los Angeles area.

Magically, a parking spot appeared and I knew the moment was meant to be. I took a couple of photos with my snappy new mobile phone camera and then went shopping.

The first store I went into had an array of the usual stuff you find in American Chinatowns, but I was so thrilled to be there that I perused everything carefully. Suddenly, along one wall, I saw an assortment of carved stone stamps.

When I walked over and looked closer, I saw that they were Chinese characters for people’s names and for special words. I started looking for my name but gave up because there were so many and they were arranged in no particular order (that I could determine).

Then I saw it. The stamp that made me feel better and more hopeful, all at once.

Here it is:

PASSION

Or, at least that’s what the label on the stamp says (if anyone sees that I have actually bought a stamp that says I LOVE FUDGE or KITTENS ARE MY LIFE or whatever, do, please, let me know.).

I bought the gooey red ink to go with my stamp and happily went on my way to pick up the rest of my life, post-bad news.

I wrote a little poem today about how, before I had kids, I used to turn up my nose at the thought of ever letting my future children ride the merry-go-round at the mall. I love carousels and favor vintage ones, like the carousel in Griffith Park in Los Angeles, and the mall one just doesn’t fit the bill.

Of course that was before the twins arrived.

You can read my ode to the mall carousel at my Family.com blog Mommy! Mommy!.

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.

Last year I wrote about the “anxiety of the mom at the hunt” and discussed my thoughts about stacking the deck for success at my girls’ first Easter egg hunt.

It turned out that the deck was already stacked by the generous fire fighters in town. No kid at our local egg hunt could possibly go away empty-handed.

This year, Dinah and Djuna are aware of what an egg hunt is, so I had to explain that in our park hunt, there aren’t really that many eggs to find. I told them that there is candy to collect everywhere instead of having lots of hidden eggs. There are actually a few golden eggs to find, but there are only a few and most of the hundreds of kids at the hunt won’t find one.

But Djuna was very excited to find a golden egg. At the hunt, Djuna really wanted to find a golden egg, and Dinah focused on gathering candy.

At one point, we passed a family with a little just-walking toddler, and they found a golden egg in the damp grass just as we were passing. I called Dinah and Djuna over so they could at least see a golden egg. This only made Djuna more determined.

As soon as we moved away from the golden family, my friend ran over to me (Auntie Lisa a.k.a. “Sleesla;” she sweetly braved the rain to come Easter Egg hunting with us) and told me that the family had actually brought their own golden egg.

Brilliant, I thought! What a fun and innocent way to let a little one have some fun than to let them find a home-brought golden egg over and over again. Parents’ ingenuity never ceases to amaze me.

I don’t think I could have pulled this over on my kids, because they knew that people were bringing the eggs up to the fire fighters at the microphone to redeem them for big Easter baskets.

But that’s OK. We went up to the head of the city’s Volunteer Fire Fighters’ Association and asked to touch one of the golden eggs. Djuna liked that just fine. Dinah shook the Easter bunny’s hand while Djuna panicked, and once again this year, a good time was had by all.

My husband and I took our three-and-a-half year old daughters to a little “play date” session at a local private school. Really, of course, this play date was an admissions event.

Already, I have a number of reservations about applying to private schools. I grew up going to public schools, and overall, I got a fine education. I realize I was lucky and that I grew up in neighborhoods with good schools.

Additionally, private schools are expensive, and my husband and I hover in that middle range of the middle class where we don’t make enough to send our kids to private schools, and we don’t fall into the range of people who qualify for financial aid.

But, we live in the Los Angeles area, where good public schools are few and far between, so we have to hedge our bets and explore lots of options for the time being. At least we live in a neighborhood where the public school has a good reputation. So, my husband and I agreed to just check out all the possibilities and watch where the chips fall.

So that’s how we found ourselves at the crack of dawn on a Saturday morning, taking our kids to meet strangers who would be evaluating their academic and social prowess.

This particular school has a stellar reputation, and a number of friends of mine have sent their kids there. I also have a number of former students who have gone to this school, all with the same rave reviews.

So I went with the best expectations.

When we got there, we were invited into a large multi-purpose room where there was friendly kiddie music playing. The kids were all playing with the giant blocks and having a nice time.

I watched as a teacher approached Dinah and asked her to come with her. Suddenly, seeing this teacher approach only Dinah, I realized that they were going to separate the girls for the session.

I went up to the teacher and asked if this were the case. She wasn’t even aware that there were twins coming! And she said that yes, they probably were going to be separated, and that if they came to the school, they would probably be separated then too.

Now, as a teacher and a parenting writer who regularly receives electronic news feeds about twins and multiples, I am a double ringer. So, I decided not to make too big an issue out of it. After all, I figured, maybe Dinah and Djuna would do fine being separated. Who knew?

But, I couldn’t help thinking, that the current trend is not to separate twins in school. There is even a law being proposed in New Hampshire that would prohibit schools from automatically separating twins in school. (Read here for more information.)

The kids all eventually scampered out with their respective teachers, and it was hard to see, in all the hustle-bustle, just which kids were with which teachers.

Dwayne and I waited in the room with the other parents, and the kiddie music continued to play in the background. We chatted with a family we knew, but I was distracted, thinking that my always-together girls would be apart.

In fact, they were separated. The parents were invited to wander through the school for a bit, and we caught sight of Dinah and Djuna at different times in the playground. They seemed content enough, but somehow sedate, not my sparky, sparkly daughters.

As a teacher, I get it. I know that the teachers only wanted to see the girls in their individual state. That’s OK. But would you say to a tiny, young individual, “You know, we want to see how you do this try-out session without your right arm. If you are truly strong and smart, you’ll figure out how to cope without that arm. You have another one, after all.” The cherished all-American value of independence is different for tiny twins.

How can I explain to people who don’t have twins that being a twin is an integral part of their existence? That when I was in the hospital with one daughter when she was one-and-a-half that she woke in the night, calling for her twin? That on the few occasions when we have separated and done different things with the girls, that they run to each other and hug when they are reunited? That they have a multitude of jokes that only they understand?

Things are different as twins grow older, I’m sure, and I know that different twins have different needs too. But, shouldn’t teachers at least ask what’s best for my twins? Funnily enough, without my husband and I asking the girls specifically, they have both told us that they missed each other yesterday morning.

It made me have a newfound appreciation for Mama Pete, the woman who runs the girls’ current preschool. She’s over 90 years old and has been running her preschool for over 50 years. In her holiday card to us, she wrote something along this line: “Dinah and Djuna still pretty much stick together, but that’s completely appropriate for twins at their age.”

Thanks for your wisdom, Mama Pete.

Just a glimpse from just-before-bed-time last night:

My adorable little three-and-a-half-year old twins working sweetly on a puzzle together singing, “We’ll work together, we’ll be friends forever,” from Pooh’s Heffalump Movie.

And then I called them upstairs for bed, and Djuna read out loud to Dinah while she tried to poop on the potty.
How cute is that?

And a glimpse from tonight, right now:

One twin in a monkey costume, one twin in a frog costume, running in and out of our home office, hiding behind the door, opening and closing the door, giggling one second and screeching the next, teasing each other by swiping the little stuffed banana that came with the monkey costume.

Some days when they run around like crazy opening and closing the door to the office, like two little freaks in some Moliere play, I think that the only reason they still have their fingers is because of the blessing of little gadgets like this, something that every parent-to-be or every parent of toddlers simply must have. This one isn’t exactly like mine, but you get the idea:

Image of “Door Mouse Finger Guard” from One Step Ahead

And during the time it has taken me to write this post, now the girls are sans costumes, sitting right outside the door that would have otherwise taken off their fingers (if not for the safety gadget), and they’re sitting on the floor, their toes touching, reading their books.

Sigh. Ah, life is lovely …

About TwinWatch @ BeTwinned

by Diana Day

While nesting and neatening last night, I found two wooden nickels.

Just before going on a trip by myself, without my husband and our two-and-a-half-year old daughters, I tend to nest.

I think it’s a morbid impulse. I neaten and spruce things up so that if something tragic happens to me, I’ll leave behind a tranquil domestic scene as a reminder of me or as a comfort — I was here. Dwayne, I was your wife. Dinah and Djuna, I was your mother. I loved you all more than you’ll ever know.

I realize that a tranquil domestic scene is not typical when I am here, so I don’t know how my family will suddenly associate neatness and classy candle arrangements with me if I am gone. And I also realize that I have less chance of being tragically killed on an airplane than I do navigating the Los Angeles freeways like I do every day, but there I go, neatening anyway.

The wooden nickels I found during last night’s pre-trip domestic binge are souveniers from the “Train Ride to Santa” at Griffith Park’s Travel Town. We went for the first time this past year and loved it.

It was a nighttime event in a place we only ever go in the daytime, so that alone made it magical. We got to ride the little train to Santa’s Workshop through lights, fake snow and holiday music. Somehow the Travel Town staff had turned the desert into a winter wonderland.

We could redeem the wooden nickels for free train rides at Travel Town, but I don’t think we’ll ever use them for that. Not now, anyway. Finding them so suddenly made my heart leap into my throat.

I put them in my pocket, to take with me.

About TwinWatch @ BeTwinned

by Diana Day

Daddy reading to Djuna
and Dinah

I had the opportunity to meet movie producer Bonnie Arnold the other day at a press junket for the upcoming DreamWorks animated feature Over the Hedge (very cute movie, funny, well worth seeing … best for kids who can handle the loud, raucous scenes and the scary bear, very effectively voiced by Nick Nolte; I’ll link to the feature I’m writing when it comes out on May 19, the day of the movie’s release).

Bonnie Arnold produced Toy Story, one of my all-time favorite movies. For having produced such a classic movie, she didn’t appear to have too many secrets of success. She really had one message: tell a good story, and try to work with other people who want to tell a good story too.

In journalism school, learning to tell good stories is a recurring theme. Years ago, in the early 90s, when I was learning to teach kids how to read, it was all about story structure and how kids come to us primed for enjoying and retaining the basic structure of a good story.

But seeing my kids learning to love a good story is more thrilling than seeing it as a writer or as a teacher.

My daughters Dinah and Djuna, 2 1/2, both love to “read” their books. We have truckloads of books and magazines in the house for them to enjoy, and we are starting to appreciate our local library now that the girls don’t run up and down the aisles, giggling wildly. My husband and I read to them at every naptime and bedtime and every time they ask during the day.

They both read stories from memory, as so many kids do. Djuna almost always starts off her retellings by saying, “One day … .”

From a reading specialst’s point of view, this amazes me and proves everything I learned in my teacher’s training. Kids do come with a knack, an instinct, for internalizing story structure.

“One day … ” is the beginning of every story. First, the scene is set, and then “one day” brings you to the problem in the story — that specific day when everything is different from all the other days before it, as in: One day, Miss Gulch came and took Dorothy’s dog away from her family …

And, then, recently, I heard Djuna start to insert a new word into her memory retellings — meanwhile. This excited me even more. Meanwhile! A great transitional word, a word that introduces a plot complication, as in: Meanwhile, as Dorothy ran away from home through the countryside, a great storm was brewing.

When I was a fifth and sixth grade teacher, I often had parents come in and look to me for solidarity when they would turn their noses up at serial books like Nancy Drew mysteries or Bobbsey Twins books, or any number of other formula pulp fiction for kids. (These parents wanted their kids to be reading only high class literature that could guarantee admission to Harvard.)

I was never an ally for these types. I lived and breathed Nancy Drew as a kid, and I still managed to become a successful adult. And now, I firmly believe that anything that reinforces story structure, even if it’s bland and predictable — and sometimes, because it’s predictable — is great for kids to read.

Predictable story structures, complete with their one days and their meanwhiles, are what give children the bedrock they need to deal with more complicated literature, as in: One day, Hamlet returned from college to find his father dead and his mother remarried to his uncle. Meanwhile, people were seeing the ghost of Hamlet’s murdered father out and about in the castle …

About TwinWatch @ BeTwinned

by Diana Day

We didn’t tell Dinah that she had to go to the doctor until this morning — the morning of the appointment. She had to go for her year’s follow-up to see if the teeny hole in her heart muscle had closed up or whether we’d need to come back next year for another check.

It occurred to Dwayne and I that Dinah and Djuna hadn’t been apart in ages, probably since Djuna went to the hospital over a year ago when she had pneumonia.

The parting went OK — it actually seemed as though both Dinah and Djuna were excited to be alone with a parent. They said goodbye to each other cheerfully enough, and off we went.

Once at the doctor’s office, we waited over an hour to get in. But it was fun and different to hang out with Dinah on her own. I am so used to interacting with both of them at the same time.

At one point, we called home, and Dinah chatted with her Daddy for a minute, and then I suggested to Dwayne that he put Djuna on the phone. When Dinah heard her sister’s voice on the phone, she was thrilled and stunned.

“It’s Djuna,” Dinah said, sporting an enormous smile. The sisters had a little conversation, and both Dwayne and I were touched by their affection for each other.

After the doctor’s appointment — and after hearing that the little hole had thankfully closed up, like most do — I took Dinah to the bookstore, and she picked out a Thomas the Tank Engine book. I asked her what book Djuna might like, and she immediately said, “George and Martha,” naming two subtly hilarious hippos in the children’s stories by James Marshall.

Dinah picked out the George and Martha book she thought Djuna might like.

Once together again, Dinah and Djuna hugged and hugged. Djuna showed Dinah the flowers she had picked for her, and Dinah showed Djuna the book she had chosen for her.

So many moments in the day I am reminded of how great it is to be betwinned!

About TwinWatch @ BeTwinned

by Diana Day

My daughter Dinah sat dutifully on the white line with a bewildered look on her face, looking around for the other kids.

Only moments before, the dance teacher had said that class was over and that it was sticker time. So Dinah made her way to the place where the teacher had asked the kids to sit the previous week — the white tape line. But this time, the teacher let the kids gather round her in a big bunch to collect their stickers.

Dinah reminded me of myself in that moment so much that my heart almost burst. The obedient good girl, so intent on following what she thought were the directions, didn’t see that it was all different this week.

I remember so many times in my childhood where I was bewildered like that, so focused on doing the right thing that I ended up missing all the new directions.

I started worrying about the upcoming Easter Egg Hunt in our town, our first hunt with the girls. I was concerned that Dinah would have an experience like the white line, where she would so lose herself in the technicalities that she’d miss the whole egg hunt. My friend suggested that I bring a couple of plastic eggs in my pocket to surreptitiously stuff in Dinah’s or Djuna’s baskets if the need arose.

Hopefully when my daughters are older I won’t be so willing to stack the deck to avoid hurt feelings. Instead, I’ll hopefully be able to let moments just be, figuring that I’ll be there to hug, hold and talk about sad things that have happened.

Hopefully.

But my husband said we’d be fine without an egg stash, so off we went to the hunt, baskets in hand, tempting fate.

Luckily we live in a terrific little town where the volunteer firefighters’ association does the deck-stacking for the parents so they don’t have to do it themselves.

The park was absolutely loaded with generous piles of donated candy, enough so no child could possibly go home empty-handed. Dinah and Djuna hunted like seasoned pros and came home with baskets filled up.

A good time was had by all.