Moms of multiples tell it like it is

Everyone in our family has to wake up painfully early for work and school. M has been struggling particularly hard this week. Her environmental allergies have left her completely exhausted, poor thing. I’ve used all the tried and true techniques to get her to wake up happy. I’ve climbed under the covers with her and [...]

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The first graders at my daughters’ school took a field trip to see Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax. I’m all for field trips. If this one got kids excited about Dr. Seuss and reading, so much the better. There was one thing about the field trip announcement that bothered me, though. The movie snack pack would [...]

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Our daughters’ elementary school has organized a raffle to raise money for travel to Austin. I’ve never felt strongly about raffles one way or the other, but when my daughter J told me, “My teacher said I MUST bring a dollar tomorrow to get a new bicycle,” my reaction was strong and immediate. “No way. Besides, [...]

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When my babies and I returned to Chengdu from Hong Kong after their birth at 31 weeks of gestation, they were almost 6 months old. Many of our friends came over to visit; to meet the tiny babies. One of those friends was a school principal. Since we’ve been considering schools, and when to start [...]

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My husband has a very physical job, and our daughters, M and J, are incredibly active kids. It takes a little more effort on my part to fit exercise into my day, since I have a desk job, but I do my best. I will admit that I haven’t been good about working out since [...]

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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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When I told you that my twin daughters were now in separate grades, many of you provided very thoughtful, thought-provoking responses. The bulk of the opinions were on the side of keeping M and J at the same grade level, rather than having J skip 75% of kindergarten and 25% of first grade to become a [...]

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I thought that once we’d decided that to place our twins in public school and in separate classrooms, we could sit back and let the kindergarten year unfold. Some of you may recall that getting M and J into their kindergarten classes was a little stressful. Fortunately, both their teachers turned out to be skilled [...]

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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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