Rotating Toys

When I worked with children with Autism I would recommend that parents put away almost all of the toys and leave only a few out.  At the time, my thinking had more to do with creating motivation for the toys that were put away (and could then be used for therapy) and providing an uncluttered environment to see what truly interested the child.  When there are 50 toys in a bin, usually kids will pick something out and play with it for 10 seconds before something else catches their eye.

I knew before I had children that I never wanted overflowing bins full of toys around the house.  I wanted the toys we had to matter and promote creativity and education.  I found a great website to help with choosing toys that get played with over lengths of time- Best Toys for Babies & Young Toddlers  From there, I stumbled upon this great website where the author is an SLP and talks about rotating toys How to rotate toys
She has wonderful ideas about how to separate your toys into categories and get rid of the shiny and flashy toys.  The categories are: Thinking, moving and pretending toys.  I won't go into much detail here, but want to refer you to The Little Stories website for more information.

The concept is simple and at the end you have 10 toys (or sets of toys) laying around your house.  Sounds amazing right?  After all, how many toys can your child play with successfully at the same time?? You can tweek it to fit your families needs if you have more than one child or children of different ages.  I have 15 toys out and that includes 5 toys from each category.  We have our toys divided between the living room, foyer and toy room. This works for us, but I could definitely put more toys away and they would be just as entertained.

I have been doing this with the girls since they were around 9-10 months and we started to acquire more toys.  Sometimes I get busy (read: lazy) and forget to rotate for a few weeks, but when I do it is like Christmas morning.  The girls look at all of the new toys in amazement! They forgot about all of these awesome toys! The best part is that they really PLAY with the toys for greater lengths of time, allowing for more creativity within their play.  The only part I'm really bad at is books.  We have 16 out right now.  But 16 out of like 200 isn't bad!

My toy list:

Thinking:
1) Shape Sorter
2) Melissa and Doug Farm animal puzzle
3) Fisher Price Geo Trax
4) Melissa and Doug basic skills board (fine motor)
5) Leap Frog reader junior (girls haven't learned how to use yet, we are still teaching)

Moving: (all in the foyer)
6) Strollers
7) Rody
8) V Tech sit to stand
9) balls
10) cars

Pretend:
11) Kitchen set (always stays out)
12) Brooms
13) Little People Talking Zoo Keeper
14) Leap Frog Tea Time
15) Mickey and Minnie

A day in the life at 18 months

A normal day begins around 6-6:30.  I have the luxury of sleeping in until one of the girls wakes me up! For a bit they were both sleeping until 7-7:30, but recently they have been getting up earlier. We do the typical morning activities; milk, get dressed, have breakfast, read books and play. Around 8 we head out the door.  3 or 4 times a week we go to the Y, where the girls have finally accepted that I will just be dropping them off for a hour, not abandoning them for the rest of their lives.  This was a MAJOR feat for us, especially Brooklyn.  It took her a good 3 months of going consistently before she stopped crying hysterically when we pulled into the Y parking lot.

After the Y, we usually go to the park, go to a story time, or listen to music at Whole Foods.  They have a kids hour and musicians sing children's songs and all the kids get wild on the dance floor.  Ok, mostly it's my children getting wild on the dance floor and running around the room like mad women, but it's really great (free) entertainment! Some days we meet up with one of my girlfriends so that the kids can play together and moms can have some adult time, but it's hard to really have an adult conversation at this age because they still need us to help them with a lot of activities.

"Is mom watching?" Whole Foods Kids Hour

All danced out

I forgot to mention, almost every day they stand at the fence and hope that they neighbor boys will come out to play.  Yes, it starts early ha.

Sisterly love in Publix.

We head back to the house around 11 and meet up with Daddy for lunch.  The girls go down for a nap at 12:30 and will sleep for 2-3 hours.  When they get up we hang around the house, play outside at the water table or in their Cozy Coups or walk over to the park.  Dad comes home from work and we eat dinner and the girls get bathed every other night.  This is the time of day Brooklyn and Ivey seem to get crazy and like to run around the house chasing each other.  It is so fun to watch! We encourage them to get nuts in the hopes that they will wear themselves down.  They cool down and watch a tv show before we put them to bed at 7:15.

Running laps around the house

Sweet Ivey.  Love those blue eyes!

Nothing too exciting!  The girls won't be starting preschool until next year so I have one more year of just us three gals.  I was considering going back to work, but since these will probably be our only children I have to look at the bigger picture.  They will only be little like this ONE time, so I had better savor it.

First trip to the beach.  Gulf Shores

Love <3

Around here...

I have extra time on my hands now that the craziness of the holidays and 1st birthdays are over so maybe I can blog more? We will see.  The girls are back to being good sleepers.  We had some bumps along the road like early wake up times or waking in the middle of the night but we worked it out.  They still take a morning and afternoon nap (which I love) and sleep around 11 hours a night.  They go to bed at 7 and wake around 6-630. We are weaning them off formula and onto whole milk.  Once we have done that in a few weeks we will get rid of bottles.  Be gone bottles!

The coolest part of having twins (for me) is the development of interaction between them.  At first, they have no clue that each other exists.  Then, it's like who is this other chick that takes up half your time?  Now, they will hug and kiss each other, try to touch each other's faces and engage in parallel play.  They are constantly by each other's sides doing the same activities, but not really engaging with each other.  As a behavior analyst, I love watching their interactions with each other and analyzing if they are developing social awareness faster than they would as a singleton.  I think they are, but probably not any faster than those who have siblings.

I am the toy police pretty much 24/7.  It doesn't matter if we have two of everything.  If Brooklyn has a baby doll, Ivey wants THAT baby doll, even though she has the same exact one laying on the floor next to her.  If Ivey has something that looks cool, Brooklyn HAS to have it.  Right now we tell them they aren't allowed to take the toy and redirect.  And repeat. And repeat again.  I know they don't have the self-control necessary to restrain themselves yet, and I can't wait for when they do!

My favorite thing is to watch them when they don't know I am there.  Baby A will crawl to an area and stare back at Baby B.  When they make eye contact Baby A will take off to a play area and Baby B will follow. And they will giggle and laugh the whole way.  They spend about 75% of their free time within one foot of each other doing the same activities by choice.  I can't wait to see how their friendship and sisterhood develops.

Trying to pull Xmas lights down

See saw at Gymboree

This is considered a hug

Brooklyn is the unwilling recipient of a piggy back ride

Our favorite toy: the window

Let's get smashed

This past Sunday, the girls turned ONE! I know, I know. It flew by.  They have grown so much this past year and really have become little ladies.  Ivey was born weighing 3.2 lbs and 15.5 inches and at her 1 year appt she was 23 lbs and 30 inches.  BK weighed 3.2 and 17 in at birth and was 22 lbs and 30 inches at her 1y appt.  Currently, both girls are crawling and cruising everywhere.  We expect that they will learn to walk within a month or two.  Some of their motor skills are still delayed from being premature, but we are super happy with their progress and feel that the gap between where they are and where they "should" be is insignificant at this point.  The vocal skills are growing daily.  They both say "Mama" "Dada" "Uh-oh".  Brooklyn can also say "up" "nana" and Ivey can say "moo" in response to what does a cow say. They will also imitate some words like "baby" and animal sounds but not consistently. Ivey does touchdown and I have a new goal of teaching her Praise jesus with only one hand because I think that would be hilarious.  They learn something new everyday, it's so amazing to watch.

I have been taking them to music classes, open gym time and story times at the book store.  They love music (as almost any baby does) and enjoy interacting with other babies.  I do these activities as much for them as I do for myself.  It's hard in the winter time because we don't go on as many walks as I would like, so it's nice to get out of the house and interact with other moms and have a reason to shower in the morning.

The girls had a great Christmas and spent time with J's family and my parents.  My mom was able to come down and stay for almost a week and then my mom and dad came back the day after Xmas for a few days to celebrate I&B's birthday.  We had a lot of fun preparing for the party and just spending time with the girls because they are entertainment all by themselves.

Here are some pics from the party.

Monthly pics

Ivey face planting onto her cake

Brooklyn decided to pick up her cake and smash it! That a girl

The girls buddies made it to the party

Mrs. Claus waiting for Santa to come home

Caution: taking twin girls in public dressed like this will cause a commotion

Fabulous