reanbean

Wondering About Me Time

I hear other mothers talk/blog about how important it is for us moms to have “me time”. And I’d just nod in agreement, not ever really stopping to think about what me time actually is. But lately, I’ve been wondering about the definition of me time and exactly how much me time a mom needs to have each day or week to stay sane.

So, is me time anytime you’re on your own, regardless of what you may be doing during that time? Or does it only count as me time if you’re doing something you really want to do- something fun, maybe even relaxing?

Because I know I have two chunks of time each day when I am not responsible for my children- nap time and nighttime. During nap time, I often start by cleaning up a bit around the house. Then I make myself lunch. Sometimes I’ll watch something on Hulu while I eat, but once I’m done eating Hulu goes off even if the program isn’t over. Then I spend some time preparing for my afternoon tutoring session, and if there’s time, I’ll write a blog post and/or read and comment on other blogs that I follow.

After the kids are in bed, 5 nights a week I’m off the the gym and don’t get home until about 9pm. Then I shower and get ready for bed. Sometimes I read blogs for a bit before watching a TV show on DVD with T (gotta love Netflix) and turning in for the night. Two nights a week are my nights off. But that just means that I don’t go to the gym on those nights. Those nights are filled with laundry, bill paying, and other housekeeping tasks. Not much of a night off, huh? Occasionally, I’ll make plans with a friend for one of those nights. It feels great to get out and be social, but then it seems like I’m playing catch-up the whole next week, trying to catch up on all the things I would have done if I’d been home instead. Ugh!

So, what counts as me time? TV and blogging sounds like me time, but laundry and bill paying? And what about working out at the gym? I’m not so sure. Just the other day, I finally found 5 minutes to sit down and clip my fingernails, and wondered if that was 5 minutes of me time. Was it? Perhaps I’m getting more me time than I think. What’s your definition of “me time” and how do you choose to spend it when you have it?

p.s. Don’t forget to enter my giveaway. You can’t win if you don’t play.

Review and Giveaway: One and the Same

Two weeks ago, I received an email from Abigail Pogrebin, an identical twin and author of the book One and the Same: My Life as an Identical Twin and What I’ve Learned About Everyone’s Struggle to Be Singular. Her email encouraged me to check out her book (just published this past October) and asked that I consider mentioning the book to my readers. At first, I wasn’t sure I’d have the time to take on another book (knowing that I’ve still yet to finish a book on time for my monthly book club meetings). But after poking around a bit (here, here, and here), I became so intrigued that I knew I had to get my hands on a copy of her book.

One and the Same tells the story of Abigail’s life with identical twin sister Robin and how their twinship changed as they grew older. But it’s not just a story about the Pogrebin twins. Stories from many sets of identical twins and other experts (doctors, researchers, authors- some of them twins themselves) are woven in throughout each chapter, allowing the reader a most complete depiction of what twins experience throughout their lives. From these stories, I learned how amazingly safe and secure one can feel with a twin by his/her side, as well as how difficult it can be to constantly feel the need to match and represent the one who shares your same image. But what blew me away were the stories that shared such honest emotions regarding how it felt when the twins separated and began to individuate on their own.

While the story is focused on twinship between identicals, I couldn’t help but notice similarities between the personal stories shared and the interactions I observe daily between Tiny and Buba. I can see how Tiny and Buba cherish their special relationship, but also how they are beginning to individuate already. And while I’ve been able to see for a while that it is difficult for Tiny when Buba wants some time away from her, I can now begin to understand why it is difficult for her and what she might be feeling.

I have no idea how Abigail Pogrebin came across my little mommy blog, but I am so happy and thankful that she did. It was exactly the kind of resource I needed to begin to understand how my twins may see themselves, as well as what I can do as a parent to help them develop as individuals.

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Enter my first giveaway to win a copy of One and the Same: My Life as an Identical Twin and What I’ve Learned About Everyone’s Struggle to Be Singular for yourself! There are four ways that you can earn an entry for this giveaway:

1. Leave a comment on this post.

2. Write a question for the author (who will actually answer questions in a guest post here next week) in the comment section of this post. Ask anything you’d like to know about being a twin or parenting twins.

3. Write a post on your blog, linking to this giveaway post. Then leave another comment on this post telling me that you did.

4. Tweet about this giveaway and/or post about this giveaway on Facebook. Then post your tweet and/or Facebook post in the comment section here (one additional comment/entry for each).

All comments must be left on this post to be eligible to win a copy of One and the Same. All entries must be posted by 9pm (Eastern Stanard Time) on Tuesday, March 16th. Thanks for entering and good luck!

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Full Disclosure: While I was contacted by Abigail Pogrebin and asked to share my opinions of her book with my readers, I was in no way compensated for this post. (I did not even get a free copy of the book).

Happy Birthday to You…

Although we’ve been celebrating since Wednesday, today is Tiny and Buba’s actual birthday. They’ve been having lots of fun playing with friends, visiting with family, and opening presents. We’ve been fortunate to have good weather (in the 50s) this weekend, and they were thrilled to try out their new bikes yesterday before going out for their birthday dinner.

Happy Birthday, Tiny! Happy Birthday, Buba! Love you!

The Twins

The following post is also posted over at How Do You Do It?, with only the endings being a bit different. I drafted this post for reanbean.com, but during the proofreading stage, decided it was a good fit for that community as well.

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Back when I was about six months pregnant, I happened to run into a former colleague at a district wide grade level meeting (which basically means that all the 1st grade teachers in the district were getting together to discuss curriculum). I hadn’t seen her in quite a while, but news of my twin pregnancy had reached her and she came over to congratulate me. “Oh good,” she said when I told her that we were expecting a boy and a girl. “People are much more likely to see them as individuals instead of a packaged deal. I just hate when my friend refers to her girls as the twins. They are two individual girls, and they should be treated as such.”

Her comment came as no surprise to me, as this very topic pops up quite often in the blogoshpere of parents of multiples. It’s not difficult to find a post where a parent writes about trying to distinguish their children for family and friends or passes on tips regarding how to find time for each child when time is something of which we never feel we have enough. And while parenting multiples has quite a few challenges, I imagine parenting identical children (I mean in appearance, of course) has a few more unique challenges on top.

But all this in mind, I have to confess that thus far (almost two years), I’ve done almost nothing to individualize my twins. It helps that I have one girl and one boy, and I rarely dress them alike, but I know that I can and should be doing more to help them develop their own sense of self. They are always together, and have only had a very small amount of one-on-one time with a parent.

And just recently, I’ve begun to wonder how they think of themselves and what they might be wanting. It is clear that they enjoy spending time together (for the most part), but Tiny can sometimes take it hard if Buba wants to go off on his own. She’ll go after him, take him by the hand, and bring him back to the activity that she wants him to play with her.  When I find a bit of time in the day to sit down and play with the kids, often Buba will wander off to do his own thing (read books or play with a toy that Tiny hogs) seeming to know that Tiny will be occupied with me and therefore won’t demand companionship from him.

It’s hard for me to know what’s best for them sometimes. I want them to be close, as singleton siblings might be, but not so extremely close that they can’t do anything without each other. Will this work itself out over time? Will they learn to be individuals when they go to school? Will they independently develop different interests that will lead them to separate activities? Or will I need to take a more active role to help these things happen? I just want to do the right thing, but right now, I’m not exactly sure what that is.

Who Will Be My Baby?

A couple of weeks ago, I happened to arrive at the gym just a few minutes after the family swim time had ended. The women’s locker room was packed with mothers and kids of all ages. One little boy (maybe 3 or 4 years old) was having a ton of fun as his mother was trying to get him and his slightly older sister ready to go. Whenever his mother turned her back, he would disappear into an empty locker and then wait for her to find him. After she’d finally gathered all of their things, she turned to find that he had disappeared again. “Come out, baby!” his mother called.

The boy jumped out from behind a locker door and indignantly replied, “I’m not a baby! I’m a big boy!”

The mother dropped everything and scooped him up into her arms. “But if you’re a big boy, who will be my baby?” she asked. The boy didn’t have an answer, but just sat there snuggling with his mom as I (now dressed and ready to workout) headed out to the gym floor.

It was just a few days later when it occurred to me that we are in the same boat. We were at a sing along at one of the local libraries, and I actually got a little teary as I watch my two sing along and perform all the motions that go with The Wheels on the Bus. Tiny and Buba are not as old as that mother’s little boy, but they are growing up, and so so fast…

Still, I remember that day in early March 2008 when T and I brought them home from the hospital and placed them side by side in the crib that is now just for Tiny.

They slept swaddled and snuggled up right next to each other no matter how far apart we placed them in the crib. Tiny always found a way to get right next to Buba.

A few weeks later, it was warm enough to start taking walks.

And not long after, they were staying awake long enough to enjoy playing with toys.

But mostly, they just hung out a looked around.

Then, before I knew it, they were rolling over and supporting their own heads. We loved taking Buba and Tiny outside that summer to play with toys on a picnic blanket.

And we started solids just as summer became fall.

Soon they were sitting

then crawling

and then walking all by themselves

And as days went by, it became very apparent that they were no longer babies anymore.

They haven’t been for quite some time now.

On Sunday, Tiny and Buba will turn two. And while I’m do miss (a little) those days when they were so small and dependent on me for everything, I can’t help but also feel excited about all the things we’ll be able to do this spring and summer now that they’re another year older.

Healthier Me: 100 Miles

After having a really great January, as far as exercising and healthy eating go, February was a pretty big bust. I’m not exactly sure where it all went wrong. It’s almost as though I put so much attention and effort into January, that I just didn’t have anything left for February. I made tons and tons of poor food choices, and skipped several nights of going to the gym just because I didn’t feel like going. And on several of the nights that I did manage to get myself to the gym, I just didn’t have the drive to really make myself work. So, February wasn’t my best month, and I’m hoping to turn things around in March.

However, there is one thing that I do feel is pretty remarkable considering my lack of effort in February. Last night, on the last day of February, I went over the 100 mile mark (101.5 to be exact) for the number of miles I’ve run in 2010.

Back at the start of 2010, LauraC and Erin, challenged each other to a road race to see who could be the first to run 500 miles in 2010. They invited people to join in the challenge and created a blog that lists all the participants’ stats (as well as posts about the participants, recipes, and workout tips). I thought a lot about joining the challenge, but I was just too scared to put myself out there. I was worried that I’d be blown away by participants who are serious runners, and that I’d end up looking foolish. However, I did decide to keep track of the miles that I put in on the treadmill and elliptical machine and made it a personal goal to reach 500 miles before the end of 2010.

Prior to January 1st, I was running roughly .5 miles before every strength training workout and about 2.5-3 miles on the days that I did only cardio workouts, which came to about 7 miles each week. I calculated that would need to run 10.4 miles every week in order to reach 500 miles by the end of the year. But I’ve actually been running an average of 12 miles per weeks (some weeks less, some weeks more), which has put me well on track to reaching my goal. In fact, if I continue to run the way I have been, I should hit 500 miles by late October or early November.

I know that there’s always a chance that I’ll have a bad week or a bad month, as far as the running goes. But I already know that having this goal of running 500 miles is motivating me to get myself to the gym when I’m tired, and really, really don’t want to go. While it’s true that I skipped several workouts in February, I know I would have skipped even more if it weren’t for this goal. Because I think about that 10.4 that I want to hit each week, and I know that if I don’t go one night, I’m just going to have to put in more miles the next night.

So thank you, thank you to LauraC and Erin for inspiring me to run. I know that you’ll both (along with many others) beat me to that 500 mile finish line, but as long as I finish sometime this year, I’ll be quite pleased with myself.

Time to Clean Up, Uh-huh, Uh-huh

Tiny is usually great at cleaning up the toys in the kids’ room when it’s time for breakfast. But yesterday morning, it was Buba who cleaned up all the toys while Tiny talked on her purple, plastic phone…

All Tiny:

“Hello, Nammy? It time clean up.”

“Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Mess, mess, mess!”

“Time clean up.”

“No, no Daddy. No work day. No work.”

“Uh-huh. Uh-huh.”

“No Nammy bacation. Nammy home.”

“Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Clean up.”

“Ok. Yep. Ludoo. Bye-bye!”

I love that her pretend phone calls give me some insights as to what she’s understanding. She clearly knew it was time to clean up the big mess in her room, even though she chose not to help. And she understood that T wasn’t going to work that day and maybe that we’d be going to Grammy’s house now that she’s home from her vacation.

Her “Ludoo” at the end is her pronunciation for Love you.

Potty Training: 5 Weeks Later

It’s been about 5 weeks since we started potty training with Tiny. I know, for many, potty training is a process. I’ve read enough blogs to know that some kids take weeks, even months, before they really get the hang of it. Thankfully, that has not been our experience with Tiny. She has done extremely well, and I’ve had absolutely no regrets regarding ditching the diapers.

As you probably remember, we went with the three-day plan. Tiny had done very well in those first three days, but I was still very nervous about leaving the house. Would she tell me when she had to go? Would she use the travel potty I’d purchase? Luckily, the answer to both questions was yes. I can’t say that she hasn’t had a single accident since we ditched the diapers, but thankfully all but one has been at home. And all within the first week after our potty training weekend.

So, at five weeks out, we’re in a pretty good groove. If we’re at home, I don’t have anything to worry about. Tiny will independently go to one of her potties and use it without any prompting or help from me. Sometimes I don’t eve know that she’s gone until she comes up to me with her panties and pants in her hands, asking for help. Tiny is alway willing to sit on the potty before we leave the house, and 8 times out of 10 she’ll go at least a little. If we’re out and about, she’ll tell me when she needs to go. During the first few weeks, there were a large number of false alarms. Personally, I think she just wanted to get a look at the bathrooms of all the places we frequent. But we’ve had fewer and fewer false alarms in the last two weeks. On one occasion, when I was pretty certain that she did not need to go, I told her there was no bathroom where we were shopping, so she’d just have to wait, and she dropped the potty request instantly. (I now know that she’ll whine and cry if she really, really has to go.) Although she’s doesn’t get terribly upset when she has an accident, she takes great pride in being able to keep herself dry and clean all day.

But the cutest thing ever is how she cheers for herself when she uses the potty. As part of the training process, we gave tons and tons of praise (no M&Ms and very few stickers- but that’s for another post)- lots and lots of ” Yay!” and “You did it!” along with “Tiny went pee in the potty! Tiny went pee in the potty!” So now, when Tiny uses the potty all by herself, she takes her Abby Cadabby doll with her, and has Abby cheer for her and give her hugs and kisses when she’s all done.

And although Buba is still in diapers, and we’ve not continued any of the three-day techniques with him, he’s still very interested in Tiny’s use of the potty. Buba often comes with us when we empty Tiny’s potty into the toilet, and he still claps and cheers with the same amount of enthusiasm as he did on day one. Buba likes to sit (with diaper off) on the potty twice a day (first thing in the morning and right before bed), but hasn’t produced anything yet. When he gets up from his potty, he says, “Empty. No pee. I’ll try again later.”

So, what can I say. I’m pretty happy with how things have been going. I know that there can still be some bumps in the road. While Tiny wakes up dry from naps, she still very much needs a diaper at nighttime. And just because Tiny trained so easily doesn’t mean that Buba will as well. But that’s okay. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Buba

I’ve been calling my son Buba since the day he was born. I’m not sure why or how I determined that Buba would be my pet name for him, but it felt right. Of course, I do call him by his given name too. But until recently, I’d say 8 times out of 10, I’d call him Buba.

T calls him Bub sometimes, but most often uses his given name (which T chose). I don’t think it really bothered T that I call him Buba until Tiny started calling him Buba. Now, I don’t mind that Tiny calls him Buba (she can’t pronounce his given name very well), but it doesn’t sit well with T. So when Tiny says Buba, T will sort of correct her by repeating what she said, but replacing Buba with brother. Something like this:

Tiny: I see Buba running. Running fast.

T: Oh, you see brother running? Running fast?

I’m not sure how that makes the situation better. And I would rather that Tiny use Buba’s given name than call him brother all the time. So, I’ve decided to make it a point of calling Buba by his given name more often. But I’m not ready to give up Buba altogether. And I hope that’s okay.

p.s. Thanks for all the great snack recommendations.  I now have a few new things on the list for my next grocery trip.

(Un)Healthier Me: February Vacation

From 2004-2007, T and I spent every February vacation with his parents in sunny St. Maarten. His parents have a timeshare there, and it was because of their incredible generosity that we were able to enjoy such a heavenly tropical vacation in the middle of winter. For one week each year, we sat on the beach, sipping tropical drinks and enjoying the sun, sand, and water. We fell asleep to the sound of the ocean and woke to the warm breeze blowing through the balcony screen door. They were truly the most relaxing vacations ever.

But as you can see, that trend stopped the year I gave birth to Tiny and Buba. T’s parents continue to go and enjoy their timeshare (who could blame them?), while we stay home with our kids. It’s not that we haven’t been invited back. We have. But each year we’ve declined, feeling that we’d rather wait until it won’t feel like so much work to take a vacation.

But last week (which was this year’s February vacation week), we sure did eat as though we were on vacation. I can probably count on one hand the number of times we cooked a meal for ourselves. Instead we dined on take-out and left-overs. And my healthier me goals flew out the window. I did not make it to the gym 5 times, and I won’t even disgust you by listing all the non-healthy food choices I made.

While it seemed like fun at the time, I’m not realizing that I’ve got to find a way to get back on that healthy living horse again. Slapped in the face with the reality of gaining weight as a result of not eating right, I need to stop this downward spiral quickly before it gets completely out of control.

I tried getting right back to it on Monday, but there were still too many temptations around. And I felt sooooo hungry. I’m pretty good at sticking to healthy meals, but it’s the snacks that get me. I can only eat so many apples and yogurts.

So please, help me jump-start my healthier me plan by telling me some of your favorite healthy snacks. Perhaps if I can get the food part back under control, I can get back on the other tracks too.