Twins Archives - Twins And A Blog

Camilla and Madison’s Cake Smash

For Camilla and Madison’s first birthday, the amazingly talented Amelia from Cherry On Top Photography generously gifted a cake smash session for the girls. It was the best day ever for the girls having their first taste of cake and icing!! They definitely love cake just like mummy!!

I am soooo IN LOVE with these beautiful photos that have captured the girls perfectly! In all the photos it is Camilla (left) and Madison (right). Amelia captured their personalities perfectly and the photos were the first time they had ever sat on their bottom (they only ever sat with W shaped legs before this!).

If you are in Sydney, especially in the Hills District area, I highly recommend Cherry On Top Photography! As you can see, Amelia’s photos are gorgeous, she is a natural with the babies and it was such a fun, smooth running and enjoyable session!

Website: https://cherryontopphotography.com.au/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Cherryontopphotography/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cherryontopphotography/

PS. I used the same backdrop for the girls birthday party and smash cake. It is a hula hoop I bought from Kmart, wrapped ribbon around it and I tied the ONE balloon & some fake greens onto it with fishing line. I cut up a bouquet of fake flowers and glued them on with a hot glue gun to change it up for the smash cake and to go with the pink floral theme. I was going to unravel it all for the boys to play with the hula hoop but now I’m keeping the frame as is and changing the middle number for the girls birthday each year! ??

As much as I love making cakes for my boys, I am over the moon to make OTT girly girl cakes for my girls! The cakes I made for the girls’ smash cake session were using my Perfect Buttercream Icing and Eggless Vanilla Cake recipes. For the buttercream I used 5 different colours & piping nozzles – it pipes beautifully especially using the tricky russian icing tips! The cakes were eggless as the girls had been getting a localised reaction from egg around their mouths – their mouths get red for about an hour then it disappears. I know some people can be allergic/not allergic to eggs cooked in different ways but the girls hadn’t tried cake before (let alone cake with egg in it) so I didn’t want to take that risk with these precious photos taken!

October 20, 2018 By Sophia Brown

Babies/ Parenting/ Twins

My Top Tips for New Twin Parents

As a fumble my way through my 4 years of motherhood, I have no idea & will never know about what it’s like to have a singleton baby. I only know how to look after/be pregnant with/give birth to 2 babies at once! Nearing the girls’ 1st birthday & the boys’ 4th birthday in a few weeks, I am one of the lucky few in this world who has gotten to experience twins more than once! The first year of being a parent to newborn twins is one the hardest, as you get used to the routine & changes in your life (& relationship) with 2 little ones the same age. Some days I feel like I can run the world, other days I can’t stop thinking about my pre-kid life, pre-kid bod, and all that sleep & spare time I used to take for granted! But I have been a twin mum for nearly 4 years, have nearly ‘survived’ 2 sets of twins for a year, still love my husband Mr Twins and A Blog (Mr ‘Super Sperm’) more than ever & life is complete with the 6 of us! Here are my top tips for new twin parents:

• Lower your expectations with cooking, cleaning and your appearance. There is light at the end of the tunnel once you get through the newborn blur.

• Don’t be a hero – take any help that is offered.

• Unless one baby is sick, I let them share bottles, dummies and once they start solids they share the same spoon/bowl of food – it reduces washing and wastage and they are in each others faces and mouths anyway!

• I wear tracksuits for PJs so I don’t have to change out of my ‘PJs’ during the day when people pop in for a visit or if I get the mail #mumhack

• Try to schedule the babies together – feed tandem or 1 right after another to maximise your rest time between (when one wakes up to feed, wake the other one up to feed).

• Lack of sleep = bad moods in the house = a competition/comparison of whos turn is it for the next feed, nappy change, cuddle, bath, sleep in, clean the bottles, cook dinner, do the laundry, take the bins out etc etc… this time shall pass and you’ll love each other even more after getting through this chapter together! #goteam

• Expect to be a celebrity at the shops. Be ready to swat away peoples hands from touching them or get ready the hand sanitizer gel and baby wipes! Also, don’t expect a ‘quick trip’ to the shops unless you can leave the babies at home!

• I indulge in nice shower body washes, soaps and shampoo as usually shower time is the only ‘me’ time I get in the day and I love to feel a million bucks at least once in the day (and when I actually get the chance to have a shower and wash my hair!)

• I love my Bugaboo Donkey pram (have used the same pram for both sets of twins) but if you have older kids, baby wearing is essential! We used Baby Bjorns for the boys when they were younger and carried 1 each, but now we have a 2 kid per adult ratio! I love tandem wearing the girls (or I baby wear one and carry the other one on my hip). I loved using the Weego twin baby carrier when the girls were newborns to 6 months, and now love the @twingo baby carrier (thanks Things for Twins!). Both are very easy to use on your own, I use them for quick trips, places which are not pram friendly, hanging out the laundry or going for walks with the boys.

• Join up to your local Multiple Births Club and find a local mums group on Facebook. I wasn’t part of any of these groups when I had the boys as my attitude was #aintnobodygottimefordat and ‘I had enough friends and I didn’t need to make anymore friends’! BUT I have found myself to be much happier this time round during my maternity leave, and I owe that to having a mum tribe. Whilst I was pregnant with the girls I joined my local Multiple Births Club and a Facebook group of local mums with babies due the same time and it is LIFE CHANGING. It is great to have an online support network & meet up with mums going through the same stuff as you, you are never alone in this journey. The pros of social media is that there is always someone you can chat to 24/7 – if you’re up at 3am with a 3 week old (or 3 year old!), chances are that someone else is too! Having young kids can be lonely and isolating with the same routine day in day out! #groundhogday I hear mums groups is a lot like online dating (I found my Mr before online dating was around so never got to experience that excitement!) but we are all human so you will click with some people more than others – sometimes it takes a while to find those connections, but it is a great way to find long lasting friendships with people who get it and get you!! (If you’re reading this: you know who you are ?) Lesson: you can never have too many friends! #youarenotalone

• Most importantly, have fun, treasure every teeny tiny baby moment and take lots of photos! It is tiring, hard work, and when people say ‘you must have your hands full’ – well yes, they are literally full!! I enjoyed the newborn stage with the girls much more than with the boys as I knew how quickly that time goes and how fast they grow right in front of your very eyes! And if you’re more organised than me make sure you label all your photos so you know who’s who when you look back at the photos!!

August 13, 2018 By Sophia Brown

Babies/ lifestyle/ Parenting/ Twins

Tips to Relieve a Sick Snotty Baby

Madison

Camilla

Can you believe these happy faces were sooooo miserable and sick that they were in the ER just 4 days ago?

Mr Twins and A Blog received some great tips from a very helpful ER Doctor when he took the girls into the hospital (I was already in hospital with Ethan). We have been using these tips & tricks on the girls & they have both gotten better exponentially in the last few days! We have always used the steam shower, fess & snot sucker with our sick babies, but never thought to do it in this order & routine. This has helped us heaps & I am sharing our success to help your sick bubbas too!

FYI: If you hate snot talk, scroll on by! ??

Tips to relieve a snotty sick baby:

??Do all milk feeds in the shower??

✔Spray Fess spray (saline spray) into bubs nostrils & wait for a minute. Even if it is wet sloppy snot just spray it in there to loosen everything deep in their sinus (I used to only use the Fess if it was a drier snot but now use it even when they have wet drippy snot too)

✔Close the bathroom door, direct the shower head to the wall & turn the hot water on in the shower. Whilst the steam builds up, you can feed bubs some milk for a few mins while you wait for the Fess to settle them, or just go right in and suck the sh#t out of their noses with the snot sucker (aka Nasal Oral Aspirator – we use the Neilmed Naspira but I have heard NoseFrida is also great!) Yep the babies won’t like it & will most likely protest and flail around, but they’ll be happy and smiling when they can breathe after it! Just suck out as much snot as you can until no more snot comes out. It is all that yucky snot that us adults can blow out easily into a tissue but drips down into their sinus. The snot is also full of all the gross yucky germs that we want to get out of their body, so the more we can get that sh#t out, the better!

✔Now that the shower is steamed up, either stand inside the shower (@mrtwinsandablog does this) or place a stool in the doorway of the shower (I do this as the girls are too heavy for me to stand & feed for long periods) & feed them their milk whilst heads inside the steamed up shower space. Drinking the milk in the steam forces them to use their nose to breathe and clears their airways. The warm steam is also really comforting and helps them to sleep too.

We have been doing this with every single milk feed, including all the crazy night feeds whilst they’ve been sick and after weeks of snotty noses, they have been snot free & back to their happy selves today!

@mrtwinsandablog has also made a video on his Instagram page about it so check it out especially for those of you who are more visual!

What other tips & tricks have you found that has helped your sick bubbas?

Sick bubba photos from the past few weeks:

July 24, 2018 By Sophia Brown

Babies/ Parenting/ Toddlers/ Twins

Twin Milestones

The first year of a baby’s life is full of milestones – first smile, sleeping through the night, rolling, solids & trying different foods, teeth, crawling, words, standing, walking etc.

When it comes to twins, there are a few special twin milestones:

Levels of interaction ? such as the first time touching, holding hands, laughing together, biting & chatting with each other; and
Game changers ? such as their first bath together in the big bath, sitting in the trolley together, and sleeping in their own cot.

These 9 month old sleeping beauties have been sharing a cot up until the weekend where they finally moved into their own cots! The boys moved into separate cots at 6 months as they were big babies and started their wrestling early ?‍♂️. The girls were happy sharing cots with each other & enjoyed each others warmth until last week where one would climb on top of the other in the middle of the night trying to wake up them up to play!

With the boys, and now the girls we put their cots side by side so their twin is closeby and just a reach away! The boys loved playing with each other through the railings and the girls are already standing facing each other to chat & touch each other through the railings when they wake up ?

What other ‘twin milestones’ can you think of??

June 13, 2018 By Sophia Brown

Babies/ Parenting/ Twins

Dad, daddy, dada

When I was pregnant with the boys, Mr Twins and A Blog was like whatever we do, we’re not going to be ‘that’ couple with kids that calls each other Dad and Mum… that’s just weird… I’m not your dad and you’re not my mum. ??
Today looking at his birthday cake with his cake topper ‘Paule’ on it, it looks damn weird to me! He’s ‘dad’, ‘daddy’, ‘dada’, or ‘darling’ (which I yell out if I can’t think quick enough which of the 5 names in the family I want/need to say!). It’s also ‘babe’ on date nights or in that short space of time at night between the kids bedtime and our bedtime! I once yelled out ‘Paule’ when I was trying to find him in the shops, and the boys yelled it out and kept repeating ‘Paule’ soooo loudly in public it was so weird to hear them refer to him by his name, not ‘daddy’, I have since tried to avoid all ‘Paule’ talk in front of the kids? Oh, and if I ever hear ‘Sophia’ come out of his mouth, something’s wrong or I know I’m in trouble ?

PS. This photo is playing tricks with my mind, it looks like I’m wearing black bike shorts but it’s @mrtwinsandablog’s arm ? Anyone else think it looks weird?

June 11, 2018 By Sophia Brown

Babies/ Craft/ Parenting/ Twins

Slime Putty and Bath Time!

Slime Putty Day!!

Today I made the boys my 2 Ingredient Slime Putty! Best thing about getting gross and sticky from the slime putty is that I chuck the boys into the bath with their trays full of slime putty and bits & pieces to wash themselves (as it’s made with kids shampoo!)! So that’s craft time, clean up and bathtime all-in-1!!

I made 2 batches and added a tablespoon of glitter in each batch. I added pink/blue food colouring in 1 batch to make purple putty (Harley’s fave colour) and an extra squirt of kids shampoo to make it slimier (so they had 2 diff textures to play with). The girls joined in with the excitement and got to watch the boys get their slime on!

Very quick & easy 2 ingredient recipe *Thermomix & Regular Methods* CLICK HERE for the recipe!

June 1, 2018 By Sophia Brown

Babies/ Parenting/ Twins

I grow twins. What’s your superpower?

This day exactly one year ago, I found out I was pregnant. When that ‘pee on a stick’ came out positive, I was excited to go through a singleton pregnancy. I thought it would be amazing (and easier) to experience a singleton pregnancy after my twin pregnancy with the boys.

A day after I found out, morning sickness hit me like a tonne of bricks. I was morning sick when pregnant with the boys but not even remotely close to how sick I felt this time round. The way I explain it to my husband and friends who haven’t had babies or experienced bad morning sickness before…is that it feels like the WORST hangover in your life, where your head is spinning, your heart’s beating out of your chest, & you want to spew 24/7 even with an empty stomach. After 2 weeks of hardly eating or drinking, I ended up in hospital and was diagnosed with HG (Hyperemesis Gravidarum). I hadn’t had an ultrasound yet, and I remember the doctors and nurses joking that I was pregnant with twins again…and we all laughed and laughed and laughed!! Well, a few days later I went and had my dating scan (the first scan of a pregnancy). @mrtwinsandablog didn’t come with me because we thought it would just be a standard scan showing us one baby. As the radiologist was about to do the ultrasound, I told him that I have twin boys, and that we only found out they were twins at 10 weeks (at our 6 week scan the report said there was 1 baby and a shadow showing indications of a blood clot or failed twin pregnancy). He was really quiet for a while and then he said I was having twins! And I laughed and laughed and laughed. I seriously thought he was joking, until he showed me the actual scan and I was like WTF! I didn’t even have the words in me to tell my husband on the phone that we were having ‘twins’ again – I just cried (and laughed) and said there were 2 babies in there! He was jumping up and down screaming in excitement, and was the one excited for all of us for most of the pregnancy (since I was mostly sick and feeling sorry for myself!)

Fast forward a year, and even now, looking at both sets of our twins before my very eyes, I still can’t believe it!!! And I just laugh and laugh and laugh!!

January 21, 2018 By Sophia Brown

Babies/ Twins

The difference between DCDA and MODI Identical Twins

Up until Ethan & Harley were 10 months old, we thought they were fraternal (non identical) ‘DCDA’ twins – as they were in separate sacs/placentas. We could always tell them apart as to us they had a different head/face shape (Ethan’s head was more cone shaped after a natural birth as he was stuck there for a while clearing the path for Harley ) however our family/friends & strangers couldn’t tell them apart always asking if they were identical, and we kept explaining to everyone that they are siblings so of course they are going to look very similar!

Their milestones, height, and weight were eerily always nearly identical since birth so we decided to get a twin zygosity DNA test by EasyDNA when they were 10 months old just to be really sure. And what do you know, we found out they were in fact identical twins with identical DNA!

30% of ‘DCDA’ Dichorionic Diamniotic twins (separate sacs/placentas) are identical twins and the only way to confirm this is via a DNA test after they are born!

In comparison, Camilla & Madison are ‘MODI’ Monochorionic Diamniotic twins (2 sacs/1 placenta) so we knew very early on in the pregnancy that they were identical twins.

The way the placenta/sacs form for identical twins is determined at how early on the fertilised egg splits (ie. the boys fertilised egg split earlier than the girls).

Identical twins are not genetic, each pregnancy has the same random chance of creating them! The statistics for 2 sets of identical twins is about 1:100,000 and for 1 set of ID boys/1 set of ID girls is 1:200,000. And with that, we now have a complete family of 6! ?

January 17, 2018 By Sophia Brown

Baking/ Non Thermomix/ Snacks/ Thermomix/ Twins

Lactation Cookies

This is a delicious recipe for lactation cookies which can be easily modified to change up the flavours (as the one type of cookie tends to get boring after a while!!). This will be my last recipe before giving birth to twins #2 as I prepare for their arrival! The key ingredients for lactation cookies are brewers yeast, flaxseed and oats which helps with the production of breastmilk. The are packed with goodness so these cookies are also great to satisfy the constant breastfeeding tummy rumbles! You also don’t need to be breastfeeding to benefit from these cookies – the whole family can eat them!

Add butter, white sugar and brown sugar to bowl.

Melt 3 minutes/60 degrees/Speed 2.

Add brewers yeast, flaxseed meal, self raising flour, oats, chocolate chips, vanilla, egg and salt.

Mix 10 seconds/Speed 4.

Spoon teaspoon sized balls of dough onto a lined baking tray.

Bake for 9 – 11 minutes or until browned.

Lactation Cookies

Print Recipe

Serves: approx. 30 cookies Cooking Time: 11 minutes

Ingredients

150 grams butter
60 grams white sugar
60 grams brown sugar
60 grams brewers yeast
60 grams flaxseed meal
80 grams self raising flour
100 grams oats
150 grams dark chocolate chips (or choice of flavouring/s)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 x egg
Pinch of salt

Instructions

METHOD (Thermomix):

Preheat oven to 180 degrees.

Add butter, white sugar and brown sugar to bowl. Melt 3 minutes/60 degrees/Speed 2.

Add brewers yeast, flaxseed meal, self raising flour, oats, chocolate chips, vanilla, egg and salt. Mix 10 seconds/Speed 4.

Spoon teaspoon sized balls of dough onto a lined baking tray.

Bake for 9 - 11 minutes or until browned.

METHOD (Non Thermomix):

Preheat oven to 180 degrees.

In a medium saucepan, add butter, white sugar and brown sugar - stir until melted on low to medium heat. Once melted, remove from heat.

Add brewers yeast, flaxseed meal, self raising flour, oats, chocolate chips, vanilla, egg and salt. Mix until ingredients are well combined.

Spoon teaspoon sized balls of dough onto a lined baking tray.

Bake for 9-11 minutes or until browned.

Notes

*Mix up the cookie flavours by using 150 grams of/a variation of different types of chocolate, nuts, seeds, dried fruit. **Once cooled, cookies can be frozen and defrosted when needed (you can also make and freeze the dough, and bake when needed) ***I love making these cookies in mini muffin pans - really easy to spoon in, bake, and store. ****You don't have to be breastfeeding to enjoy these - they are packed with goodness and great for the whole family (you can tell your hubby he's not going to start leaking milk if he eats this lol!)

August 10, 2017 By Sophia Brown

Christmas/ Craft/ Twins

Christmas Paddlepop Stick Ornaments

I LOVE craft and I LOVE Christmas! It’s exciting that the boys are at an age where they can enjoy craft! The boys really enjoyed making these and it was the first time they used PVA glue to stick things on!

This is an easy Christmas ornament which I have been giving as presents to my friends and family. The size of the loop is a perfect size for the boys to be able to place the ornaments easily and proudly onto the tree themselves. 🙂 🙂

YOU NEED:

Paddlepop sticks (coloured or plain)
Hot glue gun and glue sticks
String (cut into the length of a paddlepop stick)
Scissors (to cut the string ^^)
PVA glue (for the kids to use)
Buttons, wooden shapes and pom poms to decorate

ASSEMBLY:

Adults/older kids

Stick together 3 x paddlepop sticks with a hot glue gun to form a triangle shape.
Loop the string together and stick on both ends of the string to one of the corners of the triangle.

Kids