Twin little monkeys out about the town

So Baby A has started playing fall soccer, which means a practice one evening a week, during CPA Daddy's fall busy season.  So since it's the only night Daddy is home for a real meal, I felt I should attempt to prepare a real meal....mostly.  Enter my first venture into crockpot cooking. Having never used our crockpot for more than keeping queso warm on football Sundays, I have asked my social network for suggestions, and my family will be voting for the winner at the end of soccer season.  Since I am not a 'professional blogger', I am probably not linking to original posts properly, but needed a spot to share the recipes where my participating friends can find them.  Apologies to the original creators. Criteria for our selection of Crock Pot Recipe Champion will be: 1. Ability to throw together in 15 minutes or less. 2. Use of Ingredients on hand vs trips to store(s). 3. How good does the house smell during the day. 4. Do we like it? (incl...

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...