My favorites

I know how blessed I am to have 2 beautiful children, a supportive, loving husband and we work really well together as a team. I truly don't have much to complain about in my life. It is easy to get hung up on material things sometimes or small 'problems' day to day but in general, we are pretty lucky.
However, let's be realistic. Every minute of every day is not perfect. There really is no such thing as an absolutely 100% perfect everything.
So, they say the 3's are harder than the 2's. And I am starting to think maybe they might be right about that. I hate using the word the "terrible two's" because I never want to say they are terrible. They are my babes, and they are my absolute favorites. But MAN are they giving us a run for our money these days!! And I do believe they leverage the twin thing to their advantage. They totally gang up on me. It doesn't help that they like to ignore what I tell them, and laugh at me if I try to discipline them. Time outs really don't work well, and some days are truthfully just discouraging. They have a way of making me feel defeated at times. Maybe my expectations of them are above normal? But they are either getting along very well and laughing and having fun - OR not. I feel like I'm talking to a wall when I try to reason with them. If one of them does something bad its really easy to put them in time out, explain what they did wrong... and be firm with time out time, etc... But if they both do the same bad thing at the same time it starts to get a little bit more difficult. And I think they know that.

They also have little independent attitudes goin' on as well. That, I do believe is just strictly to do with their age. They are realizing that they have a say, and whether right or wrong... that they can do what they want and are their own little people. So it's our job to make sure they know right from wrong, nice from not nice, how to be polite, and most challenging at the moment - teaching them that there are consequences if you don't listen, or do something bad. And no matter how inconvenient it may be for us, we really need to stick to our guns about consequences. For instance, "if you do that again, we are leaving." Well, when you are at a friends house visiting, or in the middle of a restaurant eating a meal, it actually ends up being more inconvenient for you to follow through with your punishment than it is for them. But one of our joint missions right now is really to stick to it and follow through. Maybe then they will take us (me especially) more seriously and listen the first time. They do tend to take Andrew a bit more seriously than me.
So far in the last few weeks, we have had a few incidents when this had to happen. For one... we were on our way to our friends for dinner and Emma had to have her medicine that she normally takes before bed time before we went because we didn't know how late we would be. So we put it into her juice and told her she had to finish it (or at least drink most of it) before we went into their house. She decided that she absolutely was not going to. We told her a few more times that she either drinks it, or we don't go... and she can't play with her friend. She was determined to challenge us on that. So we spent the first half hour or so that we were at their house parked out front, in the car with Emma, taking shifts, while the other one went inside to visit. Drew of course was allowed to go in and play... but Emma sat in the car refusing to take her medicine and we refused to let her go inside. It was a total stand off. The medicine hasn't been that much of a battle lately, this was really just her testing us, and trying to get her way. Eventually she broke down, because it started to get cold and we were telling her all of the fun things Drew was doing inside. But it's circumstances like that which make it more difficult as a parent to stay true to your word and hold to consequences, but that is when it's most important I think.
The other one was at breakfast the other morning... Andrew and I took the kids to breakfast and usually they are good in restaurants. There was a period of time when they were younger when they first learned to walk that we couldn't take them to restaurants because they wouldn't sit down. Once we got past that phase they were fine and we haven't had any issues.

For some reason that morning at breakfast they were so hyper and loud... and we warned them a few times that if they didn't sit down and have good restaurant behavior, we were leaving and they wouldn't get their pancakes. Our breakfasts came and no less than 5 minutes later they did what we told them would result in us leaving, and so we did. Andrew hauled Drew out of the restaurant (he was the final breaking straw that time.) and Emma and I asked for boxes to pack up the breakfast, paid the bill and left.

These obviously are isolated incidents, and again I know we are pretty lucky for the most part... but this is just being realistic. We have our off days too. No one really ever talks about those kinds of days. And, it's just being real.
We had a really good Christmas... but we did have a few meltdowns. I think there was soooo much hype leading up to Christmas day, so much talk about it, so much apprehension... probably complete over stimulation, and Emma cried on and off for about an hour on Christmas morning. She couldn't even tell us why.
I guess my point is... we're responsible for molding these two little people into well rounded, honest, respectable, healthy individuals. To me that seems like a really big responsibility! And I truly want to excel in doing so, for their sake and their futures.
I want to make sure we introduce and promote healthy habits, and impose good manners and social skills... and most importantly morals and a solid foundation of good judgement. These things weigh heavily on me everyday, and I feel is my most important job above all else. Because although this job doesn't currently 'pay well', it will have the largest return.
At the end of the day, no matter how many time outs we had, or how many toys were taken away, whether we had to get mad at them.... or, if it was a perfect day with all good behavior, regardless - every single night I make it a point to cuddle and snuggle with both of them before bed and make sure they know and understand how much mom & dad love them. Our days always end on a good note. =)
At the end of the day, they will always be my favorites.