Yes, I could continue ranting about the insanity over here, but I’m sure you’re as tired of reading about it as I am of writing about it.  So now, for something completely different…

I have been very lucky in the sense that neither of my kids have ever struggled with language.  They were both always comfortably in the average range for their age, and sometimes seemingly well above average.  They have good vocabularies and are generally very easy for most people to understand when they speak.  Their pronunciation has improved as they’ve gotten older, with no intervention from us. While I do make it a point to pronounce words correctly when I talk to them or repeat back what they’ve said, I don’t do it in a pointed, correcting kind of way.  I just talk. That’s it.

They have also shown an interest in trying new words just for the fun of it, and both are consciously trying to pronounce “L” and “TH” correctly, which is pretty neat to watch.

In the meantime, they have a few consistent mispronunciations that I have actually stopped my husband from attempting to correct.  I just love them so much, and I know they’ll be fixed on their own in time.  So, for the moment, I just want to revel in them.

coconuts = “poconuts”

backpack = “pack-pack”

umbrella = “bwing-gwew-wa” (it’s a weird one, but they both say it the same way)

remote = “ma-rote”

kite = “tite”

And, best of all, Daniel’s rendition of the chorus to “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” from Mary Poppins.

Wet’s go fwy a tite

Up fwoo da highest heights

Wet’s go fwy a tite

And send it snoring.

Up fwoo de atmosphere

Up where de air is cwear.

Oh, wet’s go…. fwy a tite!

So, what are your all-time favorite toddler mispronounciations?

We’ve had our share of those in the past that sounded lewd, especially when Daniel was obsessed with flags and would SHOUT anytime he saw a flagpole, “Flag on a stick! Flag on a stick!”  Except, well… the “l” in flag was dropped, and the “st” in stick came out more like a “d.”  It was alarming.

I know I’ve made various claims about trying again to potty-train Daniel over the last few months, but the truth is that each was a half-hearted attempt that fizzled out as blandly as it began.  I didn’t have the mental fortitude to commit, and Daniel’s interest was passing, at best.

While I know there are plenty of kids, boys especially, who train at an older age, I was just plain tired of changing Daniel’s diaper.  It was clear to me that he was capable of using the potty, if perhaps a little under-motivated.  And, with preschool starting up in the fall, I know they would prefer that he be trained, so I at least wanted to make another serious attempt before then.

Sunday night, I looked at my calendar for the week, and then for the next six.  I realized we are completely between activities at the moment, and had literally nothing on the calendar for this week.  But, after this week, things start to really pick up again.  New classes, big outings, travel, the whole nine yards.  It was very obvious that this was the biggest stretch of free time we will have until probably mid-August.  Time to suck it up, Mama.

And so, this week has been Potty Boot Camp, Take 2 (or whatever “take” I’m on now, lord only knows).  The first day was, in a word, discouraging.  What bothered me the most is that the accidents didn’t seem to phase him in the least.  Especially the poop ones!  And there is nothing quite so delightful as trying to remove and clean a pair of toddler-sized underwear full of poop.  Wow.

But I changed my reward strategy this time.  No M&M jar (not only ineffective, but AWFUL for me to have them around), but a sticker chart.  Earn five stickers (and yes, I’ll give them out for as little as about half a teaspoon worth of pee in the potty), and you get a special treat.  Popsicle, ice cream, Trader Joe’s star cookies.  Your choice.  And to try to keep Rebecca invested in the process (and not resentful of the attention Daniel was getting), she got a treat when he earned his five stickers, too.  My little mama-girl thought it was great that she could “help teach Daniel to use the potty.”

And…

Progress. Dare I say, some enthusiasm.  Initially, there was certainly happiness over the stickers and the potential for popsicles, but a notable lack of disappointment when an accident would cause him to not earn a Thomas or Cars sticker.  But in the last day or two, I feel like I’ve noticed a subtle shift.  He seems to be shifting from “poop anywhere, anytime, in the undies, who cares?” to “save it for the naptime diaper.”  In my world, that’s a notable improvement, and one I can totally work with.  And, though he might sometimes poop in the diaper, I’ve noticed it suddenly staying dry…  This morning, as I was downstairs psyching myself up for an early-morning run, I hear a door and footsteps.  I waited.  A few minutes later, down comes Daniel, looking for me.  Pajama bottoms and (dry) diaper in hand, informing me he had gotten up to use the potty.

I could care less that it was 45 minutes before his Good Nite Lite was scheduled to turn yellow, that was a HUGE freaking breakthrough.

Other accomplishments this week include staying dry at: Trader Joe’s (where we have an unfortunate history of Daniel and poop accidents), the MOVIE THEATER (he sat through the entirety of Toy Story 3, told me he needed to use the potty with two minutes to go, and actually waited for the credits before we bolted for the bathroom!), and an entire morning at the playground.

It really feels like we’re turning a corner, thankfully.  And, to be fair, I think my mindset is different this time around.  The first time I did boot camp with Daniel, I had done the same with Rebecca only a couple of weeks earlier.  For one thing, she was relatively easy to train and I was able to back off of her relatively quickly, once I could tell she “got it.”  Daniel seemed to “get it,” and then had an enormous backslide about a week later.  I couldn’t handle all of that mess and the inability to go about our usual business, especially combined with the fact that Rebecca, while pretty reliable, was still fairly high-maintenance on the potty.

This time around, I barely have to think about Rebecca at all. She’s almost entirely self-sufficient on the potty and, despite a strange uptick in overnight accidents, is very low-maintenance.  Not only do I have a bit more energy to focus on Daniel, but I have also shifted the mindset and know that I’m going to have to stay a lot more proactive with him for a lot longer.  While I’ve noticed major improvements, he’s always been the kind of kid who gets very easily distracted and, when involved in one thing, kind of tunes everything else out.  So, if I’m constantly nearby and asking him if he needs to use the potty, and asking how the undies are doing (“clean and dry!”), he’s good about stopping and telling me.  If I leave him to do his own thing for a while, that’s when I’m more likely to see an accident.  Forgive the comparison, but it reminds me a line about house-training puppies in a book I read when I first got our dog: “If they have an accident, you’ve given them too much freedom, too soon.”  And while there are certainly more complexities to potty-training a kid than housebreaking a dog, there’s an aspect of that that rings pretty true.

Though, seriously, crate-training was awfully effective. Are you sure I can’t do that with toddlers?

I know this isn’t over.  I know he’s not going to be the same as Rebecca.  But I am cautiously optimistic that we are on a good path, and I’m very much hoping that the move to underwear is a permanent one.

That’s right, I’ve gotten back on the horse that so violently threw me off a few months ago.  I’m taking another pass at potty-training Daniel.

The recap, in case I never quite finished the story here, is that we did a “boot camp” with him about two weeks after Rebecca’s.  He did quite well for the first week.  Minor accidents, but plenty of success. Wohoo.  And then a week passed, and it all fell apart.  It was like he simply stopped caring, or stopped paying attention.  He’d have a success or two in the morning, and then it would be all downhill the rest of the day.  After more than a week of that nonsense, I decided it wasn’t worth the stress/power-struggle and put him in Pull-Ups full-time.  Mainly because they’re easier for the times that he actually did want to use the potty.  Which, as it turned out, he did not.  Zero interest.  And when there’s absolutely NO potty usage, Pull-Ups are just a very expensive and messy pain in my ass.  So we went back to diapers.

Anyways, some time has passed, and changing the diaper of a nearly-three-year-old is getting rather tiresome.

I asked Daniel yesterday what he would think about wearing big-boy underwear and using the potty.  Previous questioning along this line has been dismissed with an uninterested “no.”  Yesterday: “Oh! Yes! I would be very happy!”  Um, OK.  And up he ran to the dresser to choose his big-boy underwear.

And, so, we have begun again.  For the moment, I am not going the boot camp route.  We’ll do underwear when we’re at home, diapers when we go out and when he sleeps.  I don’t trust him in the slightest to tell me that he wants to go, so I’ve been setting the timer on my phone, and he knows that when it “boings,” it’s time for a potty break.  In a day and a half of being part-time in underwear, we have had no pee accidents and one poop accident.  That didn’t phase him in the slightest. He did not feel the need to mention it when it happened (on M’s watch, I might add), nor did he seem like he was trying to hide it in any way.

That’s the biggest potty-training obstacle for Daniel & me.  As excited as he is to wear big-boy underwear, and he is quite excited, he just doesn’t seem to give a rat’s ass about the accidents. With Rebecca, her accidents got her quite distressed.  Daniel? Meh, whatever.

At Target today, we picked out some special Lightning McQueen stickers that I plan on using for a special potty sticker chart. He’s a big fan of ice cream, so I’m thinking 10 stickers and he can get a treat from the ice cream truck or something.  Just in case, I got the 2-lb bag of M&Ms, too. [As a side note, Rebecca wanted her own Tinkerbell stickers. Trying to think of a sticker-chart-worthy behavior for her, since she's already got potty training in the bag, but is clearly perturbed at the sudden focus on Daniel.]

On tomorrow’s shopping list – a few bottles of wine for Mommy.

He won’t go to college in diapers, right?

I’m not sure how it got started, but the kids have a new favorite game at dinnertime.

As much as we can, we have tried to make dinner a family affair on most nights.  Timing has been switched around so that we all eat around 6 or 6:30, and M usually manages to get home from work in time to sit with us (sometimes just barely!).  It’s a bonus for all of us, really. It’s fun to be together, the kids are working on table manners and waiting for people to be done, and it means M and I eat dinner before 9PM.  I’ve also tried to get away from making separate food for the kids, though some weeks are better than others, and there are definitely meals when they only eat fruit and yogurt. Ah well.

Anyways – the game.  It’s a simple one. All we do is ask the kids to try to repeat a word.  Except that M is usually in charge, and comes up with some of the trickiest words that he can. He’s got a pretty impressive vocabulary, plus a science major to pull on, so he can come up with some good ones.  It started out with fun words like “phenomenal” and “stupendous.”  Then he tries to get creative and starts in with “combustion,” “exothermic,” and “aquadynamic.”  Heck, he’ll throw in random names of chemical compounds from the organic chemistry days.

But the kids think it’s absolutely hilarious to try and repeat these crazy words Daddy comes up with (and, yes, Rebecca sometimes calls him Dad.  Where does she get this stuff?).  Daniel especially loves it, which is not too surprising as he’s always been more talkative than his sister.  They both give the word a try, and often come quite close to pronouncing it correctly.  M and I cheer, and they are thrilled.  Sometimes, of course, they bungle it horribly and switch syllables around.  When that happens, it usually makes the adults laugh hysterically, which only adds to the fun of the game.

Are they learning something from this?  I don’t know, maybe.  It reminds me of when I was a little kid, and my dad would “teach” me square- and cube-roots (yes, he used to be a math teacher). And then, in front of other family members, he’d “quiz” me on what the square root of 36 was.  Everyone got a kick out of it, myself included.  Did I really know what the “cube root of 27″ meant? Not really, and yet I also remember that when the concept was introduced in math class, it felt pretty familiar.

Often the word repeating is quite enough on its own.  Sometimes M will pause and explain what something means, and sometimes the kids will ask. But we don’t go into the game thinking we’re out to beef up the kids’ vocabulary by having them repeat random scientific terms. Maybe they’re getting good practice with different word sounds. Maybe they’ll actually remember a couple of the words.  Or maybe they’re just having fun at the dinner table with words.  And that, on its own, is just fine by me.

I first found Isis more than four years ago.  I was in that stage where we weren’t quite ready to start trying to get pregnant, but I thought about it ALL. THE. TIME.  I read everything I could online, I covertly checked out maternity clothes.  When poking around the maternity section of the Brigham & Women’s Hospital website (the place I thought I might deliver, but ultimately did not), I saw that they outsourced their prenatal education to the then-new Isis Maternity.  I ate up everything on Isis’ site. I imagined signing up for their classes and learning how to breathe through labor, and read all about breastfeeding consults.  Why yes, I do obsess over things long before I need to. Why do you ask?

Anyways, when my turn came around, I took my first Isis class at their original center in Brookline, and it was Parenting Multiples (the class was so-so, but reports from other friends lead me to believe that it’s really awesome now).  I got my prenatal massage there.  And when my itty bitty babies were five weeks old, we started Great Beginnings, the very first in the mom/baby class series.

Oh, how I loved that class.  So much knowledge and comfort.  I loved our teacher, Carole, who had such a way with both the babies and the moms.  I loved our group, the fact that we all got along and that we still try to get together when we can.

Since those first days more than two and a half years ago, we have taken almost the entire Child Development class series. Social Butterflies. Sprouts.

Sign & Sing. Explorers. Lightning Bugs.

There’s a part of me that’s pretty sad about the fact that my kids are about to age out of the Isis offerings.  But we’ve had an awesome time there. It was always a safe place to go. A place where they understood babies who cried, toddlers who touched things they weren’t supposed to, and moms who were exhausted, at their wits end, or celebrating the biggest or tiniest of accomplishments.

So, when my friend Cindy at Isis invited me to a big launch event at the Boston Isis location, I was tickled. While I’ve always been skeptical when a company does some “rebranding,” in this case I think it was a fitting evolution.  It started as “Isis Maternity” six years ago, and quickly became the largest provider of prenatal education in the country. It is the official childbirth education provider for nearly all of the major Boston hospitals.  Their prenatal classes of all varieties (hypnobirthing, anyone?) are great, but they go way beyond those few months of pregnancy. Classes through age 3.  Toys and gear and clothing from nursing bras and slings to puzzles and ride-on toys. Every product is on someone’s “must-have” list, and is the latest in gadget-y, organic-y, and of-the-moment-y stuff.

Their new identity is “Isis: Parenting Starts Here.”  That couldn’t be more fitting. It was really and truly where I got my start. I could go on for days about how the classes there gave me confidence, taught me how to get out of the house, taught my kids how to behave in a group class setting, and always was one of my favorite outings.  Boston-area parents, do yourself a favor. If you’re at all accessible to Arlington, Boston, Brookline, or Needham, sign yourself and your babies up for whatever class you can. If the price seems too high to manage, talk to someone at the center, because they’ve got a community fund to help if the cost is prohibitive.

I have never regretted signing up for a class at Isis, and I bet you won’t, either.

One of my favorite things to sit back and watch, recently, is the way Rebecca approaches drawing.  I am certainly not claiming she’s any kind of artistic prodigy.  But from a developmental standpoint, she is showing a lot more detail and precision.  When she first got the hang of crayons and markers, of course, it was your typical scribbled mass.  Finger paints, in particular, always ended up a big brown-ish blob.

Then she started to move from scribbling back and forth to a more circular motion.  Round and round and round she went.  She loved making circles.

Now, though, I’ve noticed that she has been drawing more small, separate shapes.  Even with finger paints, it’s  a dab here, a dab there, a line here, an arc there.  A strategically placed handprint.

She’s also started actually telling me what it is she’s drawing.  Sometimes, I think she makes a mark and then decides it looks like an oval or the number 7 or something.  But the other day, out at lunch, I saw her draw something intentionally for the first time.

She had made a small, loopy shape that started to look like a face. M picked up another crayon and made two marks for eyes.  Rebecca, then, made a round mark on either side of the circle for ears, and scribbled at the top for hair.  Narrating her intent as she was doing it.

I love watching this shift as it’s happening.  And, if I can be so bold as to make a prediction, I wonder if she is going to really gravitate towards learning to write when she starts school in September.  Being a Montessori program, of course, she’s free to choose her activities as she likes.  And I’m sure she’ll like the drawing and painting things.  But even now, she will sometimes tell me that she’s drawing letters and numbers, so I wonder if she’s going to seize the opportunity to figure out the real deal.  Time will tell…

Today was one of those glorious “OMG, winter might not actually last forever” kind of days.  After days of pouring rain that left nearly every basement in Massachusetts flooded, today was perfection.  Temps in the 60s and bright sunshine, hardly a cloud in the sky.  We were thrilled to make a triumphant return to one of our favorite playgrounds.

It was a playdate with the usual suspects, our core group of twin-mom friends.  Six moms, 15 kids, no biggie.  The playground is reasonably friendly to the littler ones, and who can complain when you’re wearing sunglasses and no jacket? But one of my favorite parts of the afternoon was the pairing of Becca and her buddy, A.

I first met Miss A when she was about eight weeks old. Her mom was my “big sister” through our twin club. She had two newborns, I was still enormously pregnant.  After my kids arrived, we took the double strollers out for walks, had “playdates” at each other’s houses, and have generally become good friends.  So it’s safe to say that my kids have known A (and her brother, D) their entire lives.

I remember how tickled I was when I realized the kids knew each other’s names.  Now? They tell stories about each other when they’re not around, they ask to go visit, and today, they spontaneously held hands at the playground.  They were beyond cute, holding hands up and down the play structure, down the slide. You could hear their little voices, negotiating the play. “Wet’s go over ‘dere! You go ‘dis way, I go ‘dat way. OK!”

I loved seeing the changes in the way they interact, now that they’re older (A is 4 months older, please ignore the fact that she’s crazy-tall and my daughter is a midget).  I love how spontaneous it was. Neither mom suggested one play with the other, much less that they should hold hands all over the playground.  I love how very “girl” it was, again in such a spontaneous way.

Oh, Spring. Welcome, my friend. We were waiting for you.

Right. So. Remember when I said my kids were potty trained? Well…

Rebecca is doing great. A superstar. I can think of only one accident in the last week. She can hold it, she tells me when she needs to go, she isn’t freaking out about poop the way some kids do, and she is perfectly willing to use the travel potty when we’re out and about. No problemo.

And then, there’s Daniel.  Oh, Daniel.

Sigh.

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know we’ve had a very, very difficult week.  Daniel has gotten hit HARD by the terrible-two-and-a-halfs.  Much like when he went through this phase back in October, he feels the need to be contrary AT ALL TIMES.  He pitches a fit that he doesn’t want breakfast.  Then he pitches a fit that he wants oatmeal. And raisins. NO RAISINS! I WANT RAISINS! NOT ON THAT SIDE OF THE PLACEMAT!  And this is all before 8:30am.  It goes on all day long.  If I ask him something or offer him something, he has to say no. I go to put it away, and he demands whatever he just declined. He claims to not want to play outside, not want to go to a friend’s house, not want to go to Starbucks. Riiight.  Sure ya don’t, buddy.

Worst of all, this has spilled over into potty training.  He did so well the first week.  Not perfect, but really well. He’d have a tiny accident (like small enough that a change of undies was not really necessary), stop himself, ask to use the potty, and finish. Brilliant.  No longer.

For one thing, he seems to have tuned out from listening to his body.  Now he has a full-on accident, and THEN tells me he needs to use the potty. When we’re at home, when we’re out. All over the damn place.  And, of course, if I ask him if he needs to go or ask him to sit and try before we leave the house… well, you can guess what the response is. “I don’t wanna! I don’t need to use the potty!”  Five minutes later… new pants. Again.  And did I mention he’s a notorious incomplete-emptier? The kid goes about a tablespoon at a time. Ugh.

The kicker is that sometimes he does well. Sometimes he asks to use the potty before he goes in his pants. Sometimes he poops in the potty.  He is very capable.  But much of the day, he tunes out and/or refuses all suggestion.  And those who have been through this will understand how it simply brought me to tears on Thursday night. Exhausted. Defeated. Broken. Sobbing.

So, friends, where do we go from here on the potty front?  Re-boot-camp?  New incentives? Back off and put on Pull-Ups for my own sanity?  As a general rule, I want to be as consistent as possible and don’t like going “backwards.” But I would also like to not end up in the looney bin.

And as for the behavior – pick my battles and ride it out? Be extra strict and nip the attitude in the bud? Start drinking heavily?

At my moms of twins club meeting this week, I gave away my remaining stash of diapers. Pampers Cruisers are now gone from my house, and both kids are in underwear.

(cue heavenly chorus)

If someone asked me if my kids are potty-trained, I would say yes. Yes, they wear underwear. Yes, they do their business in the potty. Yes, accidents are more the exception than the norm.

The moms of young kids, of course, know all about the asterisks that qualify my ‘yes.’ They still require a lot of reminders. They can’t go by themselves. The bedtime Pull-Ups** are not always kept dry.  For right now (and the immediately forseeable future) it’s a MUCH bigger hassle than diapers ever were.

And seriously, sometimes having two newly potty-trained toddlers seems like it’s going to push me straight over the edge. We bolt for the nearest bathroom (or discrete corner, or back of the minivan) at the slightest mention of “mommy, I need to use the potty.” They fight over who gets to use the little potty and who uses the seat on the big potty (we have one of each in both bathrooms). Daniel is king of the false alarm and, ahem, incomplete emptying. Rebecca refuses to “try” before we leave the house, but has to go the minute we arrive at the grocery store. There are times when it is incredibly hard for me to stay positive and patient, and there are times when I fail to do so.

But, still, we’ve made it over that first big hump.  The diapers are gone, the undies remain largely dry, and the potty is in use.

For anyone wondering, I took much the same approach with Daniel as I did with Rebecca. Last Saturday, we put on the undies and ditched the diapers, cold turkey.  Daniel proved much more open to suggestion and would pretty much pee on command. A handy skill, and his only accident on the first day was right before bedtime. Hell, we even threw caution to the wind and went out to dinner!

The trick is, of course, that they actually need the accidents to start to learn to listen to their bodies.  The second day included a few more accidents, but also progress (i.e. a very small accident that then led him to finish peeing on the potty). Overall, I found this second go-around less tense and stressful than my weekend with Rebecca, I think because he could (and was willing to) go more frequently.  On the other hand, I found myself a bit more tired and a bit less patient. I just wanted this part to be over.

I’m glad I separated the kids and didn’t attempt to work with both in the same weekend. I think we benefited from the ability to focus, and had all four of us been shut in the house for that much time, we might have killed each other.

Truth be told, I really have nothing to complain about.  Both kids are reasonably reliable after only a very short period of time. Clearly, they were “ready,” whatever that might mean. That’s not to say there was a lot of talk of potty and all of that before we started.  They seem to just have been cognitively/emotionally/physically ready.  And so passes one of the last big transitions of babyhood.  My big kids.

**Yes, we are using Pull-Ups for naptime and overnight. I don’t really think of them as a useful potty training tool, but I was not willing to mess with sleep in the name of the potty. I liked making the switch to Pull-Ups so that we could, even just in name, be totally done with “baby” diapers.  We call them “night-time undies,” and while they aren’t always kept dry, Rebecca for one is quite distressed when she pees or poops in them during naptime. I take that as a good sign, and will try to ditch them for naps within a month or two.

I never thought I’d be tickled that my kids have started arguing.

Oh, not the push-pull-gimme-mine-scream kind of arguing. They’ve been doing that for ages and there is no end in sight. It’s not pleasant.

Nor am I talking about the times when they seem to be fighting over a syllable. We’ll be in the car, and Daniel will say “Becca! Becca! …. uh-huh!”  And she freaks.  “Nooo, Daniel!”  And he continues.  “Uh-huh!”  “NOOOO!”  “Uh-huh!” *giggle* “NOOOO, DANIEL!”  That one’s weird, and a little hilarious, but not my current favorite.

No, what I love the most right now is the actual conversation.  They pointedly speak to one another, listen, understand, and disagree. Hello, cognitive and language development! I love you!

Yesterday’s example: we were in the car on the way to a friend’s house.  Daniel saw a backhoe, which is, of course, an endless source of delight and amusement.  In his excited, drawn-out, stutter-y way, he said “It’s a backhoe, mommy! It’s for pushing dirt. And it spins.”
I wasn’t sure exactly what he was saying, so I repeated back to him, “it spins, buddy?”
“Yeah!”
Uh, OK.  Not sure about the spinning backhoe.  Apparently, neither was Rebecca.  She replied calmly but firmly, “no, Daniel.  Backhoe not for spinning. It for pushing dirt.”

They now do this sort of thing all day long.  They verbally invite each other to play a game, take a toy, or any of their other daily activities.  Sometimes one kid goes along with what the other says, and sometimes not.  But I love watching them process the demand/order/request from the other kid and formulate an opinion and a response.

And to think that, this time last year, I was feeling a little nervous about the fact that they each had basically a single word in their vocabularies.