Mommy & Me Day

It is December 23rd and our Christmas shopping is all done, the hustle and bustle to get ready for Christmas is done and now it's time to just enjoy the Christmas season. As a treat, Mike gave all 3 of "his girls" a gift certificate for lunch to "Cheesecake Factory" today. Having little girls is so much fun and the older that they get, the more I enjoy them and their company. Today, they were absolute angels at the restaurant, and I even noticed that they copied me when I put my napkin on my lap before the meal (it was the first time I observed them to do that all on their own and without any prompting from me; and let me tell you, that moment of good table manners from the twins made mommy so very proud.) It was truly a delightful day and I couldn't have asked for better company at "Cheesecake Factory" than my 2 beautiful daughters...

A fun mommy-and-me lunch in the city.

We also grabbed a little cheesecake to go for the Christmas holidays!

Why I Love Twins

Why I love twins…there are so very many reasons to love!

Sometimes it's hard to remember all the reasons I love being a twin mom when my twin toddlers are on a major hurricane rampage all day or are pestering one another for a much-prized toy or doll. Sometimes it’s hard to remember when, say I haven’t had my morning coffee yet and both kids are trying to out-scream each other...

Best thing I remember - and realize - is that they will grow up. Too fast! From the time Paige and Taylor came home from the NICU until now, our whole world has been upside down, messier, with everything revolving around diapers, feedings, big girl pottys, toys, crying, fussing, and the list goes on and on and on.

And then I blink and here they are these little kids - not babies anymore – but toddlers and things have begun to settle down in a big way. I can now take a deep breath and am no longer stressing over the little things that can and will go wrong on a daily basis as when they were little babies just home from the NICU, especially since my twins were preemies with special needs ranging from extremely tedious feedings around the clock to 16 months later the discovery of cerebral palsy with one of the twins leading us to participate in an intensive, rigorous regimen of at-home and in-clinic physical therapy for Taylor.

Whenever I run into a new mom of twins, whether it be at the mall, the grocery store, even church, she and I instantly have this “bond” simply because of our experience as multiples mommies. If it’s a new mom to twin infants, and we strike up a conversation, I find it so strange to be on the end of the conversation where I am giving words of encouragement and advice because after all it wasn’t long ago that I was tending to twin babies myself, always overly exhausted from the rigorous daily routine of caring for twin babies. I find myself now saying the very things that I was told by other twin mommies when I was caring for twin newborns: "Try to focus on the positive and remember that it gets easier!" (I usually leave out the part that it doesn’t really get that much easier until the twins are about 18-24 months old however because after all when your twins are just a few weeks old, the thought of keeping up the pace you’re keeping for another 1-1/2 to 2 years would be quite daunting)

Back to what I love about being a twin mom…my husband and I have become a really good tag team! After raising twins, I have found that we have become like a well-oiled machine. I have tested this theory against some of my single-baby mom friends and it seems that their husbands are far less hands-on, whether they have one, two, three, four children or even more. With twins, husbands don’t have much of a choice but to play a much greater role in feeding them, changing diapers and generally just are more a part of the children’s lives, simply through sheer necessity!!!! I’m lucky I’ve had a great husband and partner in this twin parenting journey.

I think I’ve also had to become very creative in my approach to parenting. As a result of having twins, I’ve learned to be more patient, more organized, more able to plan ahead for anything to go wrong, have a great sense of humor (usually) and definitely much better balance (sweeping up twins continuously from birth and feeding and carrying them at the same time makes a person very agile very quickly). Again, these are things that I think having twins teaches a parent – there are generally going to be times in life when things are just slightly out of control, and having made it through the early infant years – I can now look back on the first two years of my life with twins and see all that my husband and I have accomplished! Our little family of 4 has learned to work together to cope with everything as a unit, an instantly larger family, and somehow that makes us feel unique and special. I also have found more support than I could have ever imagined from other friends who have raised multiples as well; and time and time again, I have found them to always give awesome advice for nearly every multiples milestones from juggling dual feedings to dual potty-training endeavors, etc. Their advice has seemingly always been just right!

Why I LOVE Twins – Here are Some More Positive Generalizations About Twins

I have found Paige and Taylor to be confident, very supportive of each other, creative in their play together and very friendly and outgoing (even to strangers…they never did have that infamous “stranger anxiety” many children do)

Paige and Taylor have also never known loneliness. They have learned to share, wait, take turns, care for, empathize with, play with, fight with and support each other since birth. Granted, lately, there is a lot more fighting with each other, but hey, best friends are prone to do that from time to time.

Now that Paige and Taylor are 3 years old, surprisingly this gives me more freedom like I haven’t had prior to this time in my life with twins. The girls wake each other in the morning, keep each other in check with the “rules”, eat together, and generally between the 2 of them are actually staying out of trouble. Well, most of the time anyways. They always have a playmate so they are not so dependent on mommy or daddy keeping them busy or entertained. In fact, it has actually freed up my time enough in order to build this website! Speaking of this web site - that's become a HUGE positive in my life because I use this site primarily to journal and record my life with my sweet daughters and to record the memories of our lives before I forget them all…occasionally I do get off track and venture into other subjects on this site, but hey my life and thoughts aren’t ALWAYS twin-focused.

So, the raising of our twins…as they have grown, things have also grown easier. Things have finally settled down to feel “normal”. Paige and Taylor truly are a double-blessing and I’m so happy God blessed us with twins! What an awesome experience it has been and will continue to be.

Being A Mom - Worth A 6-Figure Income

Sometimes it’s hard to be proud of being a stay-at-home mom. When you think about all the stereotypes - spoiled and so forth - it can get frustrating. It often feels like few people appreciate the work of a stay-at-home mom. But when you think about it, stay-at-home moms have plenty to be proud of and plenty of work to boot.

In fact, I’d say that many stay-at-home moms that I know, myself included, do an absolutely amazing job caring for their home and family on a ridiculously tight budget. Despite what many people think, few stay-at-home moms are spoiled little Stepford-type wives with husbands rich enough to support the family EASILY. Living on one income for most of us in the stay-at-home mom category is pretty tough, a major sacrifice.

As a stay-at-home mom, I often remind myself that being with the twins all day is hands-down the most important role in my life right now. I’m contributing tremendously to the people that they will grow up to be. We stay-at-home moms get to determine how our children will be raised. We also get to enjoy the luxury of time in sharing all kinds of experiences with them, and we get not only the “quality time” that has always been so hyped-up in the past, but we also get the “quantity time” too. Few experiences compare!

I’ve talked with some other stay-at-home moms who say that it’s really tough to feel accomplished when so many accomplishments in today’s society are measured in dollars. I have to agree. Raising children and staying at home with them is an invaluable contribution, but you definitely don’t get cold cash for the kind of work we do. The dollar value of being a stay-at-home mom is not so obvious at first blush….more on that below.

Well, we stay-at-home moms can start to take heart about our value. A recent report by CNN suggests that if mothers were hired to do all that we do, we’d be very well compensated!

Salary.com released its annual market valuation of a mother's work. After talking with 400 stay-at-home and working mothers, it determined the 10 major jobs a mother performs at home and the number of hours she typically devotes to each of those jobs.

Researchers then tried to determine the competitive market value that an employer would pay for one person to do a blend of those 10 jobs seven days a week.

Salary.com determined that a stay-at-home mother might be paid as much as $134,121 for her contributions as a housekeeper, cook, day care center teacher, janitor and CEO, among other functions. The stay-at-home mothers surveyed said they logged a total of 92 hours a week performing those jobs.

The market valuation for working mothers – who make up close to 70 percent of all mothers with kids under 18 -- comes to $85,876, assuming a 50-hour week in the Mom role. That would be on top of whatever salary a working mother draws from her job outside the home, working 44 hours.

So, here’s what we can conclude: Running a household is comparable to a top manager's job – a manager who in the workforce might easily make six figures. So, now we know and hats off to all of us stay-at-home mommies!