Twin little monkeys out about the town

A few days ago, a Facebook group/blog I follow, The Mighty, posed a question for parents of kids with Special Needs - "What is one thing you wish your family and friends knew about your life?"  A lot of people said things like "we want to be asked to do the things" or "even though we have xxx limitation, we still yyy."  Overarching responses were looking at the bright side of our lives in the Special Needs world.  But despite my normal positive outlook, none of this really rang true for me, and this topic had been in the forefront of my mind recently.   Despite Captain Chaos' cognitive limitations, we have always tried to keep our life as "normal" as possible.  I tolerate a lot of his "isms" and "quirks" publicly, in large part to model how to interact with him and accept these sometimes unusual behaviors.  But the more and more he closes the developmental gap, the more and more these quirks become more obvious.  And he...

The fact that I am writing a post with this title is still somewhat amazing to me.  And while it has been a really long time since I've posted, I've had this topic on my mind for so long and I finally needed to get pen to paper, so to speak. First things first, a little catch-up since my post nearly 3 years ago (here:   http://twinlittlemonkeys.blogspot.com/2014/01/which-of-these-things-is-not-like-other.html ) Right toward the end of 1st grade, a whole lot of things happened really fast, including Baby A's Gen Ed teacher looping to 2nd grade, Baby B making huge academic and language strides with a lot of one on one aide support (but no GenEd kids acknowledging him at his school's field day) and Baby B's SpEd teacher calling me with these shocking words "I think he is ready for inclusion with resource support".  After hyperventilating, talking to all the people who could guide and support our decision, and a lot of prayerful consideration, we decided t...

The boys are now 6 1/2 years old (!?) and we are having an absolutely magical year.  Their brains are exploding with knowledge, growth, and sassy-pants back-talk.  Yesterday, I read an article that referred to "pre-tweens", an age that apparently starts at 8 years old.  Are you kidding me?!  Right now, I have these perfect little boys that I want to trap at this age.  In one day, they will act tough and 'big kid' in one breath, and then ask to snuggle and watch Disney Junior in the next. The world is coming alive for them.  For years, at the holidays, family vacations, Sunday Football games, etc, we have forced the fun onto them. But now they are living it.  They understand and remember the traditions.  They have expectations and excitement.  Now, when Larry & I want to watch Football games on Sundays (All. Day. Long.) they want to watch with us. And this year, for months, they've been talking about Christmas.  In fact, Baby B, w...

When I was pregnant, I worried that the boys would look so much alike that I wouldn't be able to tell who was who.  We knew they were fraternal, but still...what if all I had to go on was that one had darker hair - and they started out bald?!  Lucky us, they came out looking like brothers, but other than when totally sleep deprived, easy to tell apart. When the boys were tiny (like 3-4 months old), I was part of a local twins club.  Now and then, I'd read about twin moms fighting schools, school districts, their states about whether twins should be allowed to be in the same classroom, or should be automatically separated.  So now, I could worry on that a little.  Should I fight to keep them together?  Encourage their individuality and independence?  At what age?  Then one day, I met an adult who was a twin.  He told me that he and his brother had grown up "not as close as twins usually are" because they were in different grades.  So ...

I'm not going to lie.  Although our initial flight w/ Mommy and Dada went pretty well, I was still nervous about my solo flight with the boys.  After two weeks in the semi-wilderness, they were a little stir-crazy and we'd watched every single movie and Elmo show until our DVDs wore out (seriously).  I was pretty sure they would spend the 5+ travel hours climbing me, screaming and eating one another.  I was (happily) SOOOOO wrong!  My mom joined us at the airport and was able to get a gate pass to help us with security.  Frankly, I could maybe have made it through without her, but it's nice to have an extra adult til you board the plane.  I suspect that next time I fly solo, the airline will be less willing to give the gate pass, but I'll keep trying until both boys are able to say "Yes, Mr TSA officer, I am more than happy to submit to your unnecessary pat-down.  But I'm not totally potty trained, so smoosh at your own risk."  On ...

After a miserable 2010 travel summer, we were reluctant to try again (see:  http://twinlittlemonkeys.blogspot.com/2011/06/terrible-twos-times-two-flight-or-what.html ) but try we did, with some adjustments as well as a year of maturing the monkeys. I would say it was an unequivocal success.  Dada would likely disagree, but his success threshhold is unrealistic.  What worked: Divide and conquer - we each picked a kid and on the plane, it was as if we were on separate trips.  We each had our own carryons filled with what we needed for that kid.  We were on Southwest, and did Early Bird checkin for the parents, so we boarded A and sat Window/Middle in consecutive rows. Practice - prior to the trip, we did some practice time watching our favorite movies on the ipad and laptop with headphones on.  Baby B doesn't love things on his head, so the practice was helpful so that the headphones weren't new and scary.  We also talked a lot about seatbelt...

So last summer's flight to and from Wisconsin was pretty much a disaster (well, at least in Dada's words), and since we (he) vowed never to fly again, my words needed to take a while off before writing about being an expert at traveling with twins.  Here's what went wrong and how I think (hope) it should be fixed: 3-1 seating.  We always have sat 3 in one row and Dada across the aisle.  This was fine when we had 1-2 kids in car seats and their legs were too short to do any damage.  No longer awesome - neither kid wanted to be with Mommy, both wanted to sit on Dada's lap.  Both spent a ton of time, especially during takeoff and landing, trying to climb across Mommy and the aisle to get to Dada who was sitting next two two business men on their way to a conference (their fault, not ours...it was open seating after all)  Wishful solution:   put the kids in the back of the plane and Mommy & Dada up front.  Pro...

Later on, I'll do a little retrospective on getting out with twins earlier in their life, but for now, I've got an upcoming trip with two-year olds and I'm procrastinating.  What better time to launch the 1st blog post.  I'm not lying when I say that our travels up to now have been pretty 'easy' (well, there was the one trip last summer when, after arriving at our destination, I told my husband that he was going to have to buy me a car so I could drive back 3000 miles to California as that would be easier than traveling alone with these screaming mad men who had once been my babies).  But I have mixed feelings of confidence and anxiety over this trip.  So I'll tell you all more about how this goes once we actually take the trip, but for now, here is how I'm prepping. Daily, we're singing "I'm a little airplane now" (if you don't know this, you're just not watching enough Sesame Street) and running around the backyard with ou...