TTT.....

[AtLongLast]

OTT / self-indulgent I know, but Toddler Twin Tantrums..... aaargh! Just as well they're so cute too. Ds2 was v funny today wiggling his bum singing uh, uh Bobby' in response to me dancing round the kitchen to Bobby's girl'...

Here too LadyM! Ds1 has had a couple of sessions at nursery with the toddlers and... he keeps pushing them over . He had a lovely scratch on his cheek last week where one of the others had retaliated. Can't blame them though. Boys are both really into randomly pushing one another over at the moment. Annoying but (hopefully!) just a phase.

Not quite the same but the other week we were at a military museum with my parents. They kept pointing out guns / tanks / general fighty-things-that-boys-should-be-interested-in. Boys have no concept of such stuff yet & I feel unreasonably keen that it stays that way. I'm happy for them to understand a blown up car is `broken' and that injured people are asleep or poorly...

Did you sort dh's bday Tarti? My dp's in a couple of weeks & he's keen to let it pass unnoticed. He has a couple of kites & Ice Age dvd set (all for the children really) & think I'll get him an experience thing. Know he'd like a go at zorbing but only 1 roll down a hill is a bit pants. Think I'll go for either windsurfing (used to do a bit & I know he'd like to try again), or a driving thing. Then we might have something on which to base a holiday around ...

Hmm yes, we have a bit of random-pushing-over going on here, thankfully just between the girls and am hoping it doesn't spread to other children. I have noticed their behaviour worsening since starting nursery and am convinced it's because they see this kind of behaviour from other - older - kids. I know it's normal to become a bit more rough-and-tumble but still so galling to see it happen to our little cherubs eh?! :)

Had a day at home today, getting LOADS sorted. Also have had a parcel arrive every hour or so, most embarrassing. I am not doing ANY more sale shopping, or shopping full stop. We go on holiday in two weeks, DH finishes his job in two weeks, there is no sign of a new one yet... argghh!!

Tis galling!! I'm not enitirely surprised at ds1 but I did think he might wait til he was settled in before <span class="line-through">making enemies</span>. I suppose they have to sort out their relationship with one another too though but at the moment the victim is seeking attention by wailing at me to get the other in trouble / cuddles for self so it can spiral into a cycle of whinging / pushing. I'm trying to ignore it a bit. I thought I'd try making them apologise the other week. Ds1 barked stand up' at ds2. He did and they cuddled - very funny & sweet to see & they will do it (for now) without question. They must do that at nursery.

I planned on going to town today. Then remembered I'd already carried dd in the sling for a few hours this morning so she & I could both do with a rest from it. So rummaged in a charity shop for a while. Spent a grand total of £1.50 on 2 books and a vintage' Mr ChimneyPot toy thing. Bargain. One of the books was the Ladybird Pinocchio' & ds1 absolutely loves it & made me read it over & over tonight, then went through the pictures talking about the story. I think he's ready for stories more complicated than the ones we currently have!

Is dh still pretty relaxed about prospects for a new job fairly soon LadyM? I don't envy you. Like the move back here, it's stuff that is out of your control, but affects you a lot!

Very sorry that your DH has lost his job, mucky, irrespective of hating it. Hope a better option pops up very soon. Re differences in popularity etc, how does J seem about it? Does she notice and seem a bit bemused/crestfallen or blithely unaware? I dare say you notice it much more than she will for now, and there will be many back and forths throughout childhood where one seems to be doing better than the other before they swap again. All you can do, I suspect, is gently encourage play independently & with others, and remind yourself that no one scores an A on all personality traits and that's OK. If she doesn't form so many friendships as E (big if!) she will probably form closer ones. I hear you on the heart breaking though, will be absolutely the same for me.

A very belated happy birthday for the girls, Kate. Sounded like a really lovely morning of present opening. How is E getting on with her peg now, and are you finding the difference easier to include in family life than you were? Love all the dresses you picked out too, but wow it's £££ when 5 kids are involved isn't it! Have you resolved the decision yet?

Hope you enjoyed the wedding LVB! Agree that you looked gorge on FB. Was that really a jumpsuit? Didn't look it at all, looked like a floaty Grecian gown.

Garage all dried out tarti? That must have been some rain. This summer is shocking. Useless with present ideas for men - imagine my horror at working out I had not one but three occasions to buy something for DH last month - birthday, Father's Day and wedding anniversary! Argh. Hope inspiration struck in good time for today?

An evening by myself tonight has been put to good use (in my opinion) progressing a task that has taken approximately 8,345 separate attempts to get done. We have walls that are pretty much unadorned by anything and I am SICK of living in a house that never gets any more 'done', so my mission has been to buy a stack of photo frames, get photos and stick them up on the stairs in a sort of picture gallery style. I've now got all the frames, nearly all the required photos, and tonight put nearly all of those into their frames. So now all I need to do is decide on the arrangement and get a handyman round to knock the nails in (a job definitely beyond either of us, before you ask). Expect it to be done sometime around 2015...

Sorry if that was immensely tedious to read. Obsessing about tasks I am prevented from finishing is one of my 'things', and a consequence of having nippers that I just did not anticipate!

10.30 already? Where has this evening gone?! Did I really use it all up on photos??

I love this dress
Would be filthy in minutes but is gorgeous!

cute too!

Oooh which ones LVB - the links both take me to the main page. I have of course already browsed that site this morning

Have you ordered from them before? Was v pleased with the service with my last order, came relatively quickly and beautifully wrapped/packaged.

Cerubina - thanks - wise words re. their popularity. J does indeed seem nonplussed by it really, although she continues to be innocently nice to this boy despite the fact that he is continually rude and excluding to her. Also had to raise a smile at you talking about your bare walls. We are EXACTLY the same, although by coincidence a painting I bought recently (and in a tizz once again because I was so frustrated at the bare state of our walls) arrived yesterday which once framed will be the FIRST such thing to adorn our walls that I even remotely like. And like every major art buyer, I bought it at Achica - glad to say I do actually like it now it's arrived! by Richard Storey and was a bargain, in my defence. Anyway - where did you buy your frames from? I can well imagine the buying of frames/choosing pics to go in them/etc taking at least a week of my thinking time - amazing how long it can take to prevaricate consider all the options in all these things...

Btw tarti reading your thoughts on the popularity thing, the one thing which leapt out is that because we've recently moved, the girls don't yet have a 'gang' of friends so I just don't have any examples where I see Juliet forging her own friendship. I think I need to do what I can to redress this by exposing them to more people so hopefully she starts to have her own little niche.

The Bow dress followed by the colour dot tunic

Vvvv nice, although at the RRPs on those items! That Bow dress in particular is v special although I too would be tripping over myself to stop them doing ANYTHING muddy in them.

All dried out thanks cerub.
And thank you all for birthday ideas. I went for the wine you suggested mucky but am also going to get tickets for La Boheme at the ROH (hopefully - they don't go on sale until next week) in Jan/Feb, as he has randomly really enjoyed the opera when we've been in the past (rarely, I should add!) and more to the point I would love it. T'will bust the budget but obviously it's a present for me as much as him, plus as a bonus a weekend in London means a possible coffee opportunity with some of you lovelies... .. ?

ALL mine push/hit each other all the time. Fortunately as you say they don;t do it to anyone else - yet/as far as I know - so I'm trying not to obsess about it but it is very annoying. The would play nicely for much longer if the other weren't there, which seems the opposite of how it should be with twins!

Can't open your art link muck. Am studiously ignoring all links to lovely girls clothes as I refuse to buy them anything else for the time being.

It's similar to this one tarti - although ours was £300, and for an original 70x100 I thought that was pretty good! DH wasn't keen although perked up when I pointed out that there would be bare boobs on our wall

YYYYYyyyyyy to a coffee meet up if you come down!!!

PS: The 'Trois Hectares' wine by Bauduc is my absolute absolute FAVOURITE white wine EVER.

We have a new dynamic in the sibling bullying: dd has found speed when crawling this week. She & ds2 were screeching the other day & I came in to find them each tugging at ds2's snack plate. Thought she was far enough away from him yesterday that I'd have time to pop to the kitchen to pick up the boys's water. I was wrong.... Luckily ds2 seriously adores dd so has forgiven her so far but I guess it's going to wear a bit thin when she's in the middle of everything all the time.

I'm totally unsure about the popularity thing at the moment. I always thought ds2 would be the popular one as he's far more open/sunny/mad. Ds1 can, I think, come across as rather sullen & moody when really he's just sussing things out. He does have friends at nursery though and our friend's dd seems to prefer him. Maybe ds2 is just a bit too much of a pain in the bum for some. Hopefully it means they'll have a good, but different, set of friends?!

Yes totally different friends would be the ideal wouldn't it. I know what you mean about the more boisterous, confident one not appealing to everyone ALL and can see this happening with my two, with the people they know well. Agree mucky that this will start to manifest more as they become increasingly established at nursery and in local groups of friends.

Am laid low today after a feverish night shivering under blanket on sofa, have not gone to work as suspect I have (hopefully mild) tonsillitis. Certainly have yucky tonsils. Fortunately can still just about swallow

That looks obscene !! I meant I can still EAT

It would have been fine without the winky face, you piece of filth tarti

ALL that is indeed a good point re. boisterous not appealing to all. I must stop worrying about it. We went to a toddler drop in group this morning and Juliet got quite upset every time someone wanted to play with what she was playing with. She gets very upset but says very loudly STOP IT LITTLE BOY! IT'S MOINNE! She calls everyone 'little boy' or 'little girl' and it seems quite random as to whether she ever gets it right....

Haha Tarti . Hope you're feeling better soon - the end is in sight!

I thought ours had gender sussed but they do seem to get muddled again recently, especially with children. `Stop it' is a fave here too.... but mostly reserved for when Mummy is singing

at Tarti's 'swallow' comment!!

FWIW, I'm pleased that DTrips are past that 'pushing' stage, at toddler groups it was just exhausting . Mine would be silly enough to cry at the other toddler doing something small back to them!
When DD's would do it at home, they would slyly push a sister, and then look up at me with big eyes as if to say 'Whoops, how did that happen!?'

ALL I know what you've mean about different children being favoured because of personality, but I find that mine are liked for different reasons. 'A' is very confident and comes out with the most hilarious comments, so everyone finds her brilliant; but then everyone always loves the quiet, cute one who always wants a cuddle! And then we find the other is loved by people because she's incredibly painful shy, but within seconds is absolutely crazy! I suppose it depends on the individual - I've got 'friends' whose children are happy to play with a piece of string, and so my crazy girls are 'too much' for them and she prefers the quiet one; but then other friends who tend to just ignore the shy/quiet ones and give all the attention to the funny and confident ones. Is swings and roundabouts I suppose!

Love to have a little update Cerub - so strange what you said about your picture wall - we have exactly the same thing going up our stairs! We have quite a big 'stair wall' (?!) space and so I love getting all completely different picture frames and making DH add more. I love to think that in 10 years or so, it will tell a story of the girls' lives, in pictures - god that sounds ridiculously cheesy, but you know what I mean! P.s not tedious for me, I love to talk about decorating!

We went for the Boden ones in the end - we know the sizing, and for once, I let DH choose as its one of his best friends weddings so I thought he should have a say! We also know the sizing of Boden too, so it was the safer option!
Thank you for asked about E - the PEG is now part of the family! We were supposed to make a decision a few months ago about 'updating' to a Mickey tube, which would make it easier, but we've decided that it will go ahead this summer.

Ah, glad to hear the PEG is assimilated into the routine Kate. Good choice on the dresses too. You are more adventurous than me with the picture frames as I simply am too untalented can't be arsed with choosing more than one style, so have gone for different sizes of the same type. These ones if you're interested mucky, very reasonably priced when buying so many at once. I like to tell myself that them all being the same will look chic and not distract from the contents, but in reality I think it is preferable if you also introduce a bit of variety in the frames.

Latest update on picture frame watch is that all photos are in frames and I have decided which ones go on which wall, but not where yet . Don't worry, next time I mention this it'll be a single line reference to it being finished!

A right effort of childcare today, since S has decided he will not tolerate me holding R at any time and cries/wades in to stop it if it happens. He seems to want holding a lot more than usual - maybe a result of getting used to nursery again after a break? Anyway I hope he's over it soon as it's a bit of a trial if I can't comfort R when she needs it. I was round at a friend's house earlier when he was particularly bad and really just hate it when I make having twins look like hard work! I mean, it is hard work, but I do struggle with letting people detect that I'm not perfect at managing it.

Hope your sore throat is better soon tarti and that it's a very mild dose indeed. Memories of my tonsillitis earlier in the year make me shudder. Get well!

Right, onwards and upwards.

Tarti big sympathy for the tonsillitis, My tonsils are ravaged, they stopped routinely removing tonsils when I was in my teens and I missed the cut off, I regularly get bouts of it and huge huge holes in mine

Thank you to all, in regards to bridesmaid compliments amazing how easy it is to scrub up when you get your hair and make up done, lucky if I wear mascara and brush my hair normally it was a lovely day.

Cerub I am exactly the same too, keep meaning to do my photo wall, at Christmas I bought one of these but in dark wood and put all our early baby photo's in it. I need to do more,nour house never feels tidy or finished. It's always a work in progress...

Kate what are your Dtrips names? My girls are called Florence & Vivienne. I know what you mean about sly cheekiness, I've caught F about bite V, but she catches my eye at the last second and pretends she's trying to kiss her! So naughty!

Well it's nearly 10.30pm, I've got a huge pile of ironing and still haven't started packing, I leave for Italy at 5am on Friday. Need to stop procrastinating and get my ass in gear it can wait until tomorrow

Sorry to hear about tonsillitis too Tarti , its so horrible I remember about 2 years ago when I must have had it about 20 bloody times.

Cerub I'm definitely not adventurous, but I just tend to collect picture frames on our journeys! Having all similar ones (that M&S one is simple but gorgeous) will make it look much more classic; whereas mine is already looking a bit untidy because they're all different!

LVB Love that big picture frame!
Ohh your girls have such beautiful names, so so pretty :) Dtrips are Jasmine, Emme and Alexa.
I will admit one of my biggest 'secrets' though - I'm not even keen on the name Alexa any more. She was originally Amaya, but everyone convinced me to change it, I knew I shouldn't have listened. I feel so awful saying it because obviously I don't love her any less, but I can't help thinking that I wish I hadn't changed my mind.

P.s we've had many of those 'pretendings' - I remember once, about a year ago, J clearly went to go and bite a sister, I caught her at the last minute and my eyes just widened and before I could say anything Jasmine just started licking her sister instead! We had to laugh!

Other times they will jump on top of each other and pretend to cuddle but get really rough, then when I tell them off I get a whingy ''I just cuddying mum!''

I would vote for packing first, and then ironing if you have time!

The days is not starting well, they both seem to have a cold and F has just been sick on me just what I need the day before we go on holiday. I'm hoping she was just sick because of all the mucus, and it's not something more serious

I love Alexa, my brothers childhood sweetheart was Alexis although she went by Lexi, I nearly used it but was concerned that it wouldn't be great if they split up (which they did!) what are your older girls called? I'm not planning on having more children anytime soon but I still have my boys names

Clearly my 'E' has been talking to your 'F' - after I came offline last night, Emme had been sick everywhere too! Im 99% sure its not a bug though - she had a big tea that was quite late and then pumped full of feed, so I think she was just very full! She found the clearing up process and the midnight bath very amusing!

I do love Alexa, but I've just always had that little feeling that I shouldn't have changed her name..

DD1 is Isla - 6 years ago this name was pretty rare and we loved how unusual it was, my GP's are Scottish too so it was a great choice, only now everyone and their uncle (or aunt) are called Isla!

DD2 is Indy - Indiana on her birth certificate, but we very rarely call her that! In a way I wish that we'd just gone for straight Indy - when we went for her first school meeting the other day, all the children went off with the teacher for a while and were in the other half of the classroom. When I looked over the teacher was looking at DD2 and saying 'Indiana' - DD2's face was like !! DH then proceeded to call her Indiana for the next few days in the hope that we could 'undo the damage of calling her a different name' He soon gave up!

P.s I think I'm just destined to have girls - but I still have a boys list too!

Oh sorry to hear about the sickly LOs - LVB - especially hope F's incident was a one-off. Are you like me, and having to do the packing for all members of the family or does DP do his own? Last time we went away I was so stressed with the packing for everyone else I took hardly anything for myself and spent half the holiday grumpy because I had Nothing To Wear.

Cerub - sounds like you're making great progress with the photo frames! Honestly, that is a job that I would spend weeks prevaricating over. My life seems to be a non-stop decision trudge about incredibly dull household/clothing conundrums. New wellies for the girls or not? Does DH need some remotely attractive new clothes for holiday? How much is it going to cost to get my new picture framed? Oh no, the girls toys are taking over the house, how am I going to find a cheap storage solution? Why do none of my clothes fit me and what can I do about it in the next week before we go away? And on and on, ad infinitum. I am so dull.

Just to follow up on the popularity discussion, I had a meeting at the girls' nursery today with Juliet's key worker to discuss her progress. It was lovely, and she was full of praise for her. She talked about how at the moment J likes to play alongside other children, but doesn't play with them yet (although she does play with Eve). That all made perfect sense in that Eve obviously has developed that skill first, which explains why she's the one with 'mates'. Key worker wasn't at all concerned about it and just said that will be the next stage for J - in the meantime she said she has excellent concentration, is a real thinker, and is very pleased with her progress :)