Molly Piper

If you have twins you are not going to have a lot of time for meals. It’s just reality. I know they tell you if you’re nursing that you need to eat healthy, well-balanced meals and snacks. The more children you get, and the closer they are to each other in age, the chances of that decrease almost exponentially.

So I’ve taken to always having snacks in the van. Some of you might be thinking, “Duh! I always do that!” Well, I suppose I’d often have snacks in my purse, especially when I was pregnant, but I never had the quantity necessary for how often I need them now that I can rarely get a spare moment to eat at home. And most of the snacks weren’t for me, but for the kids.

Here’s what I consider for mom snacks:

• They have to have a shelf life. Anything perishable is not gonna work for me and my brain right now. I just need to be able to get in the car, realize I’m starving, and have something available.
• In my arctic world, you have to pick things that won’t freeze!
• Decently healthy. I’m not a super-duper health nut, but I’m not a junk food junkie, either.

I find that my private stash of snacks often includes crackers and nuts. They fit my criteria quite nicely.

My quick cracker of choice is Cheez-Its. I have to be careful not to gorge on them, but they’re still my faves, and if I just eat a few, I figure it’s okay. I’m sure I’ll get emails about how bad they are for me or how they’re made with carcinogen-soaked cow stomachs or something. Whatevs, I guess I must like carcinogen-soaked cow stomachs. And Cheez-It people, if you read this, I love you and will not believe the haters!

Anyway…if you’re a mother of twins, stock the car with snacks for you. You’re gonna need them!

What are your favorite on-the-go mom snacks?

Right now, I’m really digging doing baths like this.

If you have double sinks and Bumbo seats, give it a try! It’s also nice if you have a sprayer, but not necessary. This would also work just fine for a single baby too, of course, but it just seems to be especially helpful for me these days with two.

You’ll get your shirt a little wet lifting them out to get their behinds, but you save your back, not bending over the tub–it’s the trade-off. There’s always a trade-off, right?

I always have their towels, washcloths, diapers, lotion, and clothes all collected and ready for after the bath, too. That way they (hopefully) are less fussy afterward.

Any bathing tips for twins? Please share!

For Christmas, my awesome BFF got the babies an amazing contraption that I’m convinced will make my life easier with twins:

This, my friends, is the Boon Squirt Baby Food Dispensing Spoon!

So, here’s how it works:

1. Unscrew the colored soft plastic portion (it’s squeezy).
2. Fill that with baby food or cereal.
3. Screw it back onto the clear plastic spoon.
4. Squeeze the desired amount onto the spoon (there’s a small hole at the base of the spoon).

We have two of them, one for each baby. Here’s why I think I’m gonna love these (and you might, too):

• You can throw them in the dishwasher.
• There’s a little cap (not pictured) that fits on the spoon portion for travel.
• When you’re feeding two, things get kinda crazy, especially if you have to mix one baby’s cereal with soy formula and one baby’s with regular (like me). If you get two different colors, you can keep them separated easily.
• Less chance of spilling (if you’re anything like me).

And here’s a short video presentation, brought to you by Whitsun & Cadence:

I’m still having trouble wrapping my brain around having the time to give them solid foods. Right now we’re only doing it once a day, around dinner time. If you have any tips on this topic, please share how you did it with twins!

Bon appetit!

I’m teaming up with my friend Kristen from We Are THAT Family for a Works For Me Wednesday post, and I did a video! [hooting, hollering, lots of raucous cheering, please]

I met Kristen when I went to Birmingham for the Deeper Still event. I was sporting a new-to-me scarf that a friend had just given me, and I had it tied all fancy-like. I passed on what was of first importance, of course, and showed all my girls how to do it too!

Now, I’m not very good at accessories or hair. Seriously. I found out how to do this fancy scarf thingy by stopping a cute college girl at church (who happened to be a stranger) and asking her, “How did you do that?!?!” This very un-hip momma of 4 needs all the help she can get! She was gracious and showed me this fun new look!

So pop over to Kristen’s blog and see how it’s done! I promise you won’t be disappointed, even if you already know how to do this trick (hint: there’s a guest appearance at the end).

Happy New Year, friends!

Today I’m over at (in)Courage, posting about my failure to read the Bible regularly.

I hope you’ll pop over there and join the conversation. Perhaps you have good suggestions to share to keep us in the Word in 2011.

Thanks for reading!

A couple months ago I met a mother of twins that has two sets of twins! And she was not insane, I’m happy to report.

She told me, “Molly, I have two words for you: Dry Shampoo.”

I had no idea what it was, but she eagerly explained it for me. So when your hair is greasy (which it will be if you’re the mother of multiples), you just spray this hairspray-like product onto the roots of the hair, let it dry a bit, and then comb it out.

It absorbs the oil and even volumizes the hair. Volume is such a luxury at this stage of the game, but it’s easy with dry shampoo!

I just went to Ulta and bought whatever one was on the shelf (about 8 bucks). But my friend who’s in the beauty industry told me that there are nicer dry shampoos out there. You can ask your hair stylist what brand they’d recommend if you’re into that.

Be aware that it comes out a little white-ish, so you need to comb it out, otherwise you look like you’ve gone gray in one day (which you might, if you have multiples). There are also colored ones out there, but the colored one I tried out seemed a little too dark for my hair color so I decided to just get the plain kind.

Do any of you use dry shampoo? What brands do you recommend?

So maybe this is just a plain ole parenting tip, rather than having to do specifically with twins, but it happened to me yesterday (with one of the twins) and so it’s being grandfathered in with the twin tips.

Abraham writes:

If your baby is inconsolable and you’ve done everything for them that you can think of, check their fingers and toes to make sure there’s no hair twisted around any of them. (And on boys, check the penis, too.)

This is called a hair tourniquet. It cuts off circulation and is about as uncomfortable as it seems like it would be.

In my case yesterday I was able to remove the hair from Cadence’s finger pretty easily, though the indentation remained for a few minutes, making me check and double-check it multiple times to make sure I’d gotten it all. Scary!

Feel free to share your favorite hair tourniquet stories in the comments!