House of Twins

Remember the Raggy Dolls? We bought the girls their first dollies today. Until now they have had strictly gender-neutral, educational toys (and a bouncing Tigger and a very needy Winnie the Pooh) but we decided they needed something vaguely girly to play with. I'm very resistant to the crying, weeing and pooing dolls with their weird eyes but I played with dolls as a child and I'm not Paris Hilton so I think R and G will be ok.

The girls' reaction? They looked vaguely interested to start with but Serena Van Der Ragdoll and Blair Waldorf-doll (as I've christened them because one is blonde and one is dark haired) were soon discarded in favour of the Thomas the Tank Engine playset and the Miffy board book that they love so much they have torn it into three pieces. It's a work in progress.

Another little milestone reached. We took the girls to buy their first proper pairs of shoes today. Thank Goodness we had the foresight to set up a little shoe fund in which we've been depositing cash and cheques since before the girls were born.

Despite the eye-watering prices (£26 per pair, ouch!), I can't fault the customer service at the Clark's we visited. The sales assistant carefully measured R and G's feet (G is a 4F, R a 4G so they have inherited large feet from me and wide hobbity feet from their father), learning the girls' names and chatting to them as she did so. We had already done a recce of the shoe selection and pointed out the ones we wanted, in the same style but pink for G and light brown for R.

I have a bad time in shoe shops with my size 8 feet as I carefully select the shoes I want (avoiding anything that will make my feet look like I've strapped canoes to them) and invariably find that they don't stock my size. It's got better recently but I'm now programmed to ask for three different styles to make sure they have one of the ones I might actually want.

No such problems for R and G today. In true Cinderella style, the shoes fitted and R celebrated by going for a toddle round the shop with Daddy while G decided she didn't feet like walking to order, put her hands on the floor and set off on a crawl. The assistant took a photo of each of the girls wearing their new shoes (predictably, G posed for the pic - R kept wandering off until approximately 37 people stood behind the camera and made faces at her) and we were given copies in a little cardboard frames. So cute.

They are scheduled for a fit check at the beginning of April as apparently they need to be measured every 6-8 weeks, although I've heard that shoes can last much longer than that depending on the growth of the child. We will of course keep their first pairs to embarrass them with when they're older. All subsequent pairs will be sold on Ebay when they've grown out of them.

To celebrate, we took the girls to the park for a wonder round. They celebrated by standing for a nanosecond before sitting down and watching all the other children toddle around. Sigh.

....repeatedly knocking at the wall at 5.30am doesn't make a wakeful 14 month old stop crying and go to sleep. Thanks for your help though!

Also, it doesn't help someone who's feeling very anxious, so thanks once again!

It's fine. There's some drilling going on. The wood-buring smell is nothing to worry about.

Anyway, playpens. They divide opinion a bit don't they? Some people can't live without them - we certainly couldn't for a time - and other people react to the news that you've invested in one in the same manner that they would if you announced that you had been giving your child opium to soothe teething pains.

My reply is this: you don't have twins do you? You don't have more than one toddler roaming around the house getting into mischief, climbing into the desk when you're not looking, wondering over to the recycling bin and pulling out discarded tins of tuna and playing with them, popping in to see what you're up to as you sit on the loo on the heaviest day of your period and attempting to sit on your lap. All of which is lovely if you're into sharing intimate personal ablutions with your 14 month old daughters (my personal view is that they are a little young to learn how the female body works) or if you really enjoy spending valuable afternoons and evenings at A&E.

Oh and while we're on the subject of things that middle-class parents sneer at, the girls have reins and will be using them. All I can say is PAH! PAH! PAH! PAH!

I'll be climbing off my high horse now.

After a successful day of 'useful' shopping (i.e. buying things for the house rather than spending three hours trying on dresses in River Island and not buying them) yesterday, we are currently in the middle of adapting our house to make it toddler-friendly. I use 'we' very much in the Royal sense. Dh has been wondering about with a drill and a small saw and I've been reading Heat magazine (I've adopted more of a Director of Operations role)and making lame jokes about handy men and tool belts.

The play pen is no more (deceased, dead, etc.) so anyone that reads this and disapproves of cages for children can take social services off their speed dial (you know who you are) and is being adapted for a new use, hence the drill. It is going to form a protective shield around the desk and pseudo particle accelerator machine also known as dh's PC, which means that the girls can roam free around the room formerly known as the dining room.

It will also stop them from planning and executing raids on the desk approximately 34 times a day. I think it was after the 600th time I'd pulled R and G away from the bloody thing - G had actually managed to climb into the desk and all I could see was her little derriere sticking out - and said the n word (you know, the one that 14 month old children have no concept of?)that I finally cracked and demanded that we make changes.

So, change we need(ed) - thanks Mr President - and they are now taking place. We have a very large, very new, very plastic toybox. We have a new dining table. We have a large bean bag (thanks Ikea!). We have socket covers and table protector thingies. It's all terribly exciting. Oh and a new nappy bin which isn't so much a nappy system bin as a normal bin. Stinky bin has gone to be recycled, hurrah!

This is not quite as exciting (naturally) as all the shopping we had (had) to do yesterday. We had a lovely afternoon in Ikea and I'm very proud to announce that we have come up with a new invention. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the LAGER VASE! Perfect for the ladies man, man's man, man about town, it will revolutionise batchelor living in the UK. When you're single you can use it as a receptacle for your alcoholic beverage of choice. When you have a laydee in your life you can buy her flowers and lovingly present them to her in the lager vase. Filled with water, not lager obviously. Anyway, it's genius and I may have to write to Dave Gorman and tell him about it. That, or enter the Dragon's Den. I'd do a spoof of the show here but I haven't actually watched it so if you have, you can create your own scenario here.

While we're having all of this buying, building and Heat-reading fun the girls are at nursery. They will get to test out their new playroom tomorrow. Right, I'm off to investigate the strange wood-burning smell.

It’s all about the walking this month. Oh and cows’ milk and sleep....
1. Walking. R is an expert independent walker and can make it most of the way across the room before grabbing hold of something or sitting down for a rest. She is very co-ordinated and upright – must take after her father! G is more reliant on having things to hold on to: she is very confident when she’s pushing a walker or when one of us is holding her hand but is still very wobbly (with a sticky-out bum!) on her own.
2. Drink. The girls are now on full-fat cows’ milk full-time now. We finally completed the transition from formula at the end of January. R was more reluctant to change than G and refused her bedtime bottle for a couple of weeks but they are both fine with it now. G guzzles 8oz morning and night and R around 5-6oz.
3. Food. They have switched and R now eats more than G in an average day. G goes through phases where she eats everything you put in front of her and suddenly she’ll refuse things she normally loves. I’m just trying to be consistent – sticking to the same meal times, not commenting on G’s poor eating but making a point of praising R for eating so well. They still have 5 meals a day – breakfast (cereal, toast and a beaker of water), mid-morning snack (finger foods and water), cooked lunch (mains and dessert with water), mid-afternoon snack (finger foods and water) and tea (sandwiches or crumpets or crackers and cheese or chicken dippers, waffles and veg, followed by a banana or raisins).
4. Teeth. They still only have 6 each. I think that’s all they are going to get!
5. Weight. Absolutely no idea – I’ll get back to you on that one
6. Standing. They both stand unaided for long periods of time and can stand up, stoop down to pick things up and stand back up again.
7. Climbing. They have learnt to climb into and over things. I have no idea how. I seem to spend a large part of my days rescuing them from mildly perilous situations
8. Dancing. G now does a little ‘screwing in a lightbulb’ movement with her wrist when she’s dancing, which is hilarious!
9. Chatting. R is queen of TA! TA! She says it when she gives things, receives things, when she wants you to take something, all the time really. It seems to be her catch-all word. G is starting to pick up on it but uses it more indiscriminately i.e. she says ta and keeps hold of the thing she was offering to you. G picks up her toy telephone and says ‘Hiya’ when she puts the receiver to her ear. They both say Mamama and Dadada all the time now. They are still babbling away to us and each other and R gets very annoyed when we don’t understand what she’s trying to tell us!
10. Motor skills. I’m so chuffed with their ability to play with complex toys. G uses her stubby little index finger to push buttons and make things work. R will spend ages figuring out how a toy works before mastering it.
11. Naps. The long afternoon nap from 12.30pm until about 2.30pm seems to be working pretty well. I don’t let them sleep after 3pm as I’m concerned it might affect their bedtime routine. They don’t seem to be missing the morning nap that much although R could probably do with a little 15 minute power-nap mid-morning.
12. Sleep. G’s sleep is so erratic (a few good nights followed by some indifferent ones interspersed with some unbearably bad nights) that we’ve resorted to a ‘faces’ chart to monitor it. A good night’s sleep (goes down well, doesn’t stir during the night, sleeps past 5am) is rewarded with a smiley face. An indifferent night (difficult to put down, might stir briefly in the night, wakes before 5am) gets a straight face. A bad night (you can imagine) gets a sad face. We’re on a bit of a run of sad faces at the moment, interspersed with the occasional indifferent face. Not good. The chart isn’t a reward/punishment thing, it’s just to monitor her sleep behaviour. It seems to be pretty random.
13. Cross-stitch project. As predicted, my progress has slowed down considerably and I’ve completed just over a quarter of it.
So, what’s coming up? I think we’re going to have to bite the bullet and get the girls’ measured for their first proper shoes. I’d like to get them saying more actual words rather than lots of babble with the occasional comprehensible word somewhere in the mix. Oh and I wouldn’t mind a decent night’s sleep!

We are in the process of removing the last traces of babyhood in HoT and are launching full-pelt into toddlerdom.

We live in a terraced house and the warmest room is the dining room, or the room between the living room and the kitchen that used to be a dining room, was briefly a study and is now a baby room with a computer and dining table in it taking up valuable exploration space. If I had a pound for every time dh says 'Oi! Get out of there!' as R or G (or often both working as a tag team) ransack his computer for the thousandth time that day, I'd be able to bail a few banks out.

The computer is staying put, for now at least as it is scheduled to start firing particles round the room any day now. We're getting a smaller dining table though and getting rid of the current one. Why? Because it doesn't actually do anything, that's why. It just sits there being a dining table, which is frankly a bit dull and it takes up too much space. Also, bits of wood stuff (plastic stuff with a woody veneer, I suspect) keep falling off it.

So we're getting a smaller, funkier one. Funkier how? Well, it starts off fairly small and grows. Magic eh? We have people round for lunch fairly often and it's getting to be a bit of a squeeze so the extra bits will be very handy.

I have moved the portable storage solutions* that used to hold the nappies, wipes, cream, bodysuits, sleepsuits, bibs, muslins, socks and tights as they are on wheels and far to tempting to two 13 month old with ideas of world domination on their minds to other parts of the house. Remember the bit in Goldeneye where James Bond uses the moveable metal cages to aid his escape from the Russian weapons facility? That's R and G wheeling the metal shelving unit along, complete with evil cackles and excitable squeals. Also, I'm not sure that Meeshter Bond banged a toy on the shelves as he went along. Anyway, they've gone. The clothes have been moved into the girls' room upstairs and the changing materials have been moved into the bathroom, so nappies are now being changed in there.

*I love storage solutions in an almost fetishistic way. Dh has been known to gently lead me out of Ikea so that I don't faint with excitement in the boxes and racks section.

Where was I? Boxes. Lovely boxes...fitting together...hiding stuff. Anyway. Bibs. Bibs are now stored in a plastic box in one of the kitchen cupboards. Dh proffered an empty Pampers box for the purpose and was me with a withering (Ruthie) stare. "You'll be writing shopping lists on the back of cut-up cornflake packets next - AND THEN YOU WILL HAVE TURNED INTO YOUR FATHER!" I scoffed in reply. Dh retreated, Pampers box in hand. He knows when he's beaten.

So we have a spot of shopping to do: 1. Dining table with flappy wings 2. A proper (large) toybox 3. Beanbags. 4. Cushions 5. Corner protectors

Why on earth didn't I think of beanbags a year ago when I used to sit on the floor feeding the girls? Bloody baby brain.

Where can you buy decent-sized beanbags from though? Ikea doesn't appear to stock them. Argos has a pathetic little footstall called a pouffe (which I imagine is French for slightly crap soft stool) but not anything even vaguely resembling a bean bag. Are they ridiculously out of fashion? Please enlighten me if they are. Equally, if you know of somewhere that sells them, do let me know.

Cushions? Well, who needs an excuse to buy new cushions? Plus, we need something to protect the fireplace from the girls - or should that be the other way round?

So, during our 'week off' in a couple of weeks we're going shopping. Hurrah! Note to self: I must not lose my head in Ikea. I must not lose my head in Ikea...

As I haven't got a date for my first session with the counsellor yet, I have taken matters into my own hands and started to make little changes that hopfully will make a big difference to my well-being:

1. My job is a job. It pays well. I like working with the practitioners and doing the outreach stuff. I can live without the bureauocracy and internal politics. I have asked to be removed from e-mails that don't concern me and my inbox is no longer bogged down with documents and lengthy conversations concerning the wording of business plan documents. I am therefore free to get on with the things I love.

2. I shouldn't feel guilty about being ill, needing to be in bed and leaving dh in charge of the girls. He's brilliant at it, the girls were fine and I had the time I needed to get better. Therefore I shouldn't feel guilty about spending time away from them when I need it.

3. I'm taking little time-outs when something annoys me to assess whether it is worth getting worked up over. I'm finding that generally, it isn't and I'm not getting disproportionately angry at people for no real reason.

4. Alcohol is a depressant and best avoided. One glass is fine. Any more than that isn't worth the hassle.

5. Chocolate is an excellent therapeutic tool

6. As is Heat magazine. And rubbish telly.

7. I'm listening to music that makes me smile and wave my hands in the air:
Baby Baby by Amy Grant
Sharp-dressed man by ZZ Top
Apparently Nothin' by the Young Disciples
Black Betty by Ram Jam
Sussudio by Phil Collins (it's happy music, not good music ok?!)
Cuddly Toy by Roachford
Heaven must be missing an angel by Tavares
No more tears (enough is enough) by Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand
...among others.

8. I have added Jazz FM to the presets on my digital radio. Nice!

9. Dh and I have booked a week off together towards the end of Feb. The girls are going to nursery for their usual three days and dh and I are going to have some proper time together. We're going to go shopping, have long lunches, go to the cinema, that sort of thing. I can't wait

10. As the days get longer and the weather improves, I'm going to start taking the girls out for longer walks again, rather than quick dashes to M&S

11. I love having people over for lunch and taking the girls to see people so we have implemented a plan to try and see friends and family any weekends that dh is't working. March is pretty booked up now and a couple of Feb weekends are taken care of as well.

I think this is a pretty good start. I'm going to keep adding to it though. It's often the smallest changes that can make a difference.

As the title suggests, the girls didn't have their MMR today. The nurse was just about to administer the first injection when she noticed that the girls had only had their previous injections two weeks ago. Apparently there needs to be a month between jabs and we were too early.

The receptionist didn't tell me when I booked the various appointments a few weeks ago. Nor did the nurse two weeks ago. Sigh. As part of my drive to maintain a serere karmic balance (ho ho), I only exploded a little bit. More of a dribble of annoyance than an eruption of fury.

As dh said, no harm done and the appointments have been re-booked for 6th March.

Our usually excellent organisational skills fell by the wayside earlier in the week. I spent three days in bed with a horrible virus fluey-type thing, nursery was shut due to the bad weather and dh had to take time off work to look after them.

It's a shame that the girls aren't walking more reliably because they would have had a lovely time in the snow. Instead they watched it falling for a bit, got bored and shuffled off to cause mischief and mayhem. Their favourite 'naughty' game at the moment is playing with daddy's computer, i.e. bashing the keys, pulling the mousemat out from under the mouse and sending it crashing to the floor, jabbing the bright shiny buttons with their chubby little fingers and attempting to eat the printer paper.

Meanwhile upstairs I alternated (about every 10 minutes) between wrapping the duvet so tightly around myself that I resembled a mummy (as in Egypt not parent) in a vain attempt to keep warm and throwing all of the bedclothes off into a heap as I sweated like a marathon runner. In between, I enjoyed drum n bass dj playing some banging tunes in my head, a runny nose, aches and pains in places I didn't know could ache (and I was already suffering after the floor incident last week) and an annoying tickly cough. Oh and I got so feverish that I started hallucinating and thought I was pregnant. I'm not, thank goodness.

All in all, lots of fun. Dh and the girls appeared from time to time to see how I was - and to check I hadn't started knitting bootees, probably - and they came and bounced on the bed and threw themselves at me for cuddles. Well, R did. G was with her daddy and perfectly happy with that.

So we didn't build a snowman. We didn't throw snowballs. I didn't make a snow angel. R and G didn't get their first tramping through snow in wellies (wellies! I can't wait until i can buy them little pink wellies) experience. I've enjoyed seeing everyone else's snowy pictures on Facebook though. I feel like we've missed out.

I did watch some DNA results on Jeremy Kyle (I must have been seriously ill) and cought up with Eli Stone and Gossip Girl. I watched the first 10 minutes of the new series of Skins, declared it puerile nonsense and promptly deleted it from my Sky+. I happened to catch a bit of the new version of Beverly Hills 90210 and thought it was quite good (the shame). Dh and the girls got some quality time together.G was SO happy with this arrangement.

So, I got my duvet days. I just wish I hadn't felt so rubbish.

As the title suggests, the girls have their MMR tomorrow. Yes that's right. They will be having it. Unlike the vast majority of babies round here apparently.

We were chatting to the nurse when the girls had their menitorix injection (the one-year top-up of the jabs they had as tiddlers) a couple of weeks ago. Apparently there are 19 reported cases of measles in Greenwich at the moment. Every GPs surgery has been urged to convince parents of the benefits of the injection (i.e. not contracting and possibly dying, perhaps?) of a nasty disease and in reply parents tell them that they don't want their parents to be autistic. The nurse blamed the media for publishing scare stories based on old and widely discredited research.

As the situation in this area is so bad, the girls will have their MMR booster three months after the first injection, rather than waiting until the usual 3 years 4 months as it suggests in the red book.

I decided to do a little bit of investigating and thought I'd have a look on the National Autistic Society website and found this: http://www.autism.org.uk/nas/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=115&a=17533 and if they are reasonably happy that there is no causal link between the MMR vaccine and autism, I am too.

I may be wrong and there may be a link as yet undiscovered but in this particular parental judgment call I'm going to trust the information given to me by the medical professionals*.

*Oh and to link this back to my two, G is very well-behaved with injections and only cries for a couple of seconds. R lets loose a roar of pain that can only come from a woman scorned and spends the rest of the day giving whoever happened to be holding her (usually me) reproachful looks.

Not assisted by a push-along Thomas the Tank Engine. Not aided by an adult helping hand. Actual sitting on the floor, standing up without any assistance and taking proper little footsteps forwards.

Yes, R has been doing this for a couple of weeks now. She's even managed 5 or 6 steps before squatting back down again at home. However, she doesn't tend to achieve much distance, not a great deal of forward motion with her walking.

Until today. At nursery of course. Luckily, they filmed her trotting across the room, from one side to the other as if she had been doing it all her life or I wouldn't have believed them.

G was visible in the background of the shot, doing her usual wibbly-wobbly standing, pausing, wibbling and sitting manoevre. She does independent step, thinks better of it and sits down again. Why be a baby and walk yourself when your minions can carry you?

This is certainly much better than I managed. I didn't walk for ages (I rolled everywhere instead) and even now, at the grand old age of 29 I'm not exactly blessed with a great deal of co-ordination. G and R seem to have inherited their co-ordination from their father - along with everything else. Dh kindly says they have my grumpiness. I've taught R my withering stare, so I'll get my own back.

Anyway, walking babies = toddlers. Good. My back and shoulders could do with a break.