Moms of multiples tell it like it is

Growing up in the UK and Bangladesh, I was raised on Mahatma Gandhi’s life story and words as the embodiment of a worldwide move towards civil rights and mutual respect between people and between peoples. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. embodied those same values, and today’s US-wide commemoration of his achievements is a reminder to [...]

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This afternoon, I received an email from my daughters’ school informing me that a spot had been secured in Mrs. G’s 1st grade classroom for our daughter M. She starts Monday. Mrs. G is a great teacher, and a warm and lovely person. I once ran into her at the grocery store and we chatted [...]

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I love the holidays.  Holiday music, baking opportunities, community events, Christmas lights–all of it makes me smile. I don’t enjoy shopping during the holidays at all, though. The crowds give me headaches, so I’m usually done procuring gifts well before Thanksgiving. One of my favourite activities at the end of the year is sending out [...]

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What do you do when you observe an uninformed parent putting her child in danger? No one likes unsolicited advice, especially when it comes to parenting. Strict routines work for some families, and not for others. Breastfeeding works for some mother-child pairs, and not for others. Discipline comes in as many flavours as there are [...]

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I’ve written a little before about my efforts to help the boys’ teachers and friends tell them apart. I’m happy to report that their teacher, by mid-October, had found some tiny freckle on one boy’s face that he can use to tell them apart. Their friends still have no idea and arbitrarily call them by one [...]

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My husband made one of his incredibly astute observations the other day, as we were looking at pictures of younger versions of our daughters. Specifically, we were looking at this one. “They’re healthier for being twins,” said my husband, as if stating a basic truth. I had no idea what he was talking about. If we’d [...]

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“Which twin is older?” The question is absurd. In China, I get it all the time. And it works me up. “They are twins. They are the same age.” I reply, irritated. “Yes, but they didn’t both come out at the same time, did they? One had to have been born first.” They insist, “Is [...]

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Nearly everyone has an opinion about dressing twins alike. (Mine? It’s adorable when they’re little, but a luxury people who dress mostly in hand-me-downs can rarely afford!) My boys have a handful of matched shirts — gifts from their grandma, or the fruit of a Target clearance rack. Every so often they like to dress alike, [...]

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A few weeks ago, our 5-year-old twins J and M were pre-schoolers. I’d clock off work around 5:00, and drive to their pre-school to pick them up. When I reached daycare around 6:00 pm, they were always bursting with stories, discoveries, and questions to share with me. They’d trip over each in other their attempts to [...]

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When I last posted at HDYDI, it was April and I was speaking with the school principal about my concerns that my twins’ placement testing results had been mixed up, and also that their teachers couldn’t tell who was whom even though they had different haircuts and didn’t dress in matching clothes. And their teachers [...]

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