Baby Squared

Wow, that's a lot of new things, wishing you luck.  Seems like timing is great for all of the above.  

I am also looking forward to folks replies on the spitting.  My girls are younger than yours and just like to suck the toothpaste off  the brush then use the brush to paint the wall or comb their hair.  We needs lots of advice on toothbrushing.

And I am a bit late to the party on this but that cute photo reminded me...I love the girls hair the way you have it.  Looks great and totally seems to suit their personalities.

Good luck with potty training.  Michael class is technically where they start training them, but the first half of his second year he made no progress.  He's starting to get there, at least mentally if not physically.  Lots of trips to the potty in school, but not much action.  

As for spitting, I'm not sure how he learned it, but he can do it with water.  This however, did not translate to mouth rinse, which I tried with him when he had stinky cold breath.  Luckily it was only a tiny bit, because he swallowed it.

I hope all goes smoothly with preschool.  Michael cried a lot when he started at his current day care, but he was younger.  It's heartbreaking, but they really do get over it in time.

ooh, i need advice on the spitting too!  We are still using toddler toothpaste as well!

As for the potty training - good luck!  I just did it this week - if they peed/pooped in the potty they got an m&m.  I didn't think it would work at all (since it was my husbands idea) but low and behold I have 2 kids that pee and poop in the potty now!  

I need the opposite advice - how do you get your kids to understand that spitting is gross.  It's very disgusting coming from a 2.5 year old.  It doesn't happen often but when it does I have just ignored it.  Don't know how long I can pull that off though.

Good luck with the potty training - I am sure they will catch on pretty quickly.   There will be pee incidents but whatcha gonna do...  Before I started I thought it would be hard but both girls potty trained very quickly.   However, I didn't train them both together.  Watching one like a hawk for signs or impending pee was all I could take at once ...  I potty trained them 2 months apart.  You are a brave woman!

I've been following your blog for a while and it's my first comment. Your girls are a little younger than my kids, but a lot of what you write resonates with me.

I just trained my b/g twins two months ago at the end of my maternity leave (my baby is now 5 months). The twins are turning 3 in a week. Basically we said goodbye to the diapers and got them excited about their underwear and that was that. We actually had the potties in the kitchen for the first few weeks because until they get to know the urge it's always a rush to get there. And you are on the right track with expecting accidents. But we really stayed home for 5 days straight and low and behold they succeeded! They started a camp the following week and had some accidents there, but not really since! My daughter wants to know now why she can't pee standing up :)

It is a bit overwhelming to train twins, but you've made it this far with them, and chances are that they won't need you at the exact same time all the time. A big help for you will be to teach them to pull up and down their pants...

Good luck.

My twins are just a little younger than yours (born March, 2007).  My dentist told me not to really bother about tooth brushing until they turn 3, as they aren't very capable of following instructions yet and it turns into more of a game for them.  We didn't listen, and started with the toddler tooth brushing anyway, but her warnings have proved accurate.  They'd rather play with the toothbrush and chew on it and don't really get it yet.  Your kids may well be more clever than ours, but in our case, we're waiting till they're 3 to 'get serious' about it.

We will be doing the full on potty training with Cooper sometime in September or October I expect. It is a double edged blessing/curse I think. I won't miss paying for diapers that is for sure. Cooper has been going to school since he was 3 months old, and he LOVES it. I think your girls are going to too. As for spitting, Cooper watches a few movies we have found for him, and one of them, Madagascar, has taught him how to spit. The problem is teaching him the appropriate time to spit. He thinks it is great fun with water, milk, you name it. On second thought, I really cannot recommend that as a method of teaching to spit. Never mind.

My son's four upper incisors came in with enamel defects, and as a result are very prone to decay and chipping, so we had to start with real toothpaste at about 13 months. At first he couldn't spit so we just used a tiny amount of toothpaste on the toothbrush and just reapplied the toothpaste for each quadrant of the mouth.

At 20 months, I was able to teach him how to spit by drawing a bulls-eye in the bathroom sink with a washable marker and telling him to aim for the middle. I don't think you'll have any problems teaching them to spit, its teaching them that its not appropriate to spit anywhere and everywhere that is the hard part.

by way of encouragement (potty training): we had a week between day care sessions earlier this summer, when willow was 2.75ish, and we decided to go whole hog on potty training after a year of having a potty in the bathroom, asking her gently if she kind of, sort of wanted to, etc. (and being rejected every time). so we made her wear underwear (she hated it), had a couple of pee accidents on the floor, and i swear to god, it took about three days for her to be completely pee trained, and an extra day for poop. we've had a couple of accidents since then, but WHO CARES?

oh, and there was lots of singing and cheering, of course. and we still read many books in the bathroom. make that *too* many books in the bathroom.

so: GOOD LUCK. you can do it. and here's the song, sung to the tune of "for he's a jolly good fellow:" clio/elsa sat/peed/pooped on the potty, clio/elsa peed on the potty, clio/elsa peed on the potty. . . she's getting to be a big girl!

Good luck with the potty training. I'm very interested to hear your experience with it. I'm sure you and I read the same thing via the listserv, and the idea really appealed to me as I tend to be a "rip off the band-aid" kind of person.

Enjoy the rest of the summer, hard to believe it's almost over!

You write the blog I wish I were writing. Do I sound like a stalker? But seriously, this post cracked me up. I've totally been thinking about some real potty training, rather than the half-assed "awareness" thing we've been doing, too. And oh my god, do my girls need spitting school. I can barely get the toothbrush in their mouths before the toothpaste is sucked off it. I keep trying, I've shown them what to do. No luck. I know it's not crucial, I guess they will eventually get it. But I've been wondering lately if they're...I don't know, behind in spitting. (yes, I'm totally aware of how neurotic that makes me sound) So I'm feeling better now knowing the Elsa and Clio can't do it either. :)

Oh, yeah, I forgot to write this. I thought you might appreciate it. Last night during the bath/bed routine, my husband commented that he was kind of disappointed that the girls hadn't gotten further in potty training. So I pointed out that we hadn't really potty trained them. And he said, "Well, we bought them these potties and told them they should let us know when they feel like going..." Apparently he thought that's all that needed to be done.

That is a lovely pic of you with the girls. Three pretty ladies! :)

We still use the candy toddler toothpaste too. Eric just tries to suck it off the whole time instead of letting me actually brush his teeth!  We are going to try to do the potty training in one day thing too.  I have not read the book yet.  I was going to start after we get back from vacation in early OCt, but I think I am going to wait until a little later like early Spring since they have yet to tell me they even just went potty.  Their verbal skills are behind too so we need to wait a bit.  I still have plenty of time before preschool fall 2010. I hope.

Good luck with everything!  You can do it!

Gwen: Don't worry I stalk her too. :P  She is too fabulous not too.

Many years ago I used the "How to toilet train your child in less than a day" (he was past 3, so it was time!)  He used to tell me he "didn't want to go on the toilet train", but the training was very effective.  One of the stages in that book, after an accident, was that the child had to practice going to the bathroom from 10 different points in the house.  After the first accident and the first practice session, he told me:  "I'm going to the toilet from now on because I don't want to practice anymore."  Done deal!

Here's how to teach spitting: give them toothpaste they really hate (say, yours.)  They'll spit it out.

Oh, potty training.  I've got no useful advice on that except don't do what we did.  We tried everything.  As it turns out, "everything" is rather inconsistent, so nothing worked--for a long, long time.

As for spitting out toothpaste, we were more successful in that department. It didn't happen all at once and unless they have a specific dental problem (like the child of one of the previous commenters), it's really okay to use that toddler toothpaste for a while.  With our daughter--now four--she's a great mimic and susceptible to the occasional, well-designed bribe.  So we had her watch us brush our teeth and spit out the toothpaste several times, and we explained what we were doing and why.  Then we bought her fluoride toothpaste with pictures of Disney princesses on it (I tried to avoid the princesses, but there are times you just have to decide what's more important) and told her that when she could spit out her toothpaste without swallowing any the way Mommy and Daddy do, she could use princess toothpaste.  She was sold, and began trying in earnest; it was probably a week or so after that I was confident enough to let her switch, and she never looked back.