Thank you! It is helpful to hear what others do...sometimes I feel weirdly insecure about starting something new to us. :tongue_smilie:

Do you just read it to/with them? Is that fine? This is probably a dumb question, but my ds7 balks at reading a lot of text (as his reading skills are still developing) but I think he'll enjoy Life of Fred. I just ordered the entire set to use as part of our summer school.

Creativish, thanks for your BTDT words of advice. I am planning on continuing with my homebirth midwife (she's considered THE twins expert in the community, so that's nice) who delivered my sister's twins 10 years ago. I know there may be some unforeseen issues that require me to go to a hospital, but we are going to work towards a healthy twin homebirth. The tips about the carseats and stroller and nursing are great. Thank you! :001_smile:

AprilMay, the workboxes can work great, depending on how much "independent" work your kids have. This past year we have used ours to keep kids' stuff organized, but they haven't been in charge of getting the stuff out. Not sure what I'll do for this upcoming year. And yeah, I bought some 6 cup muffin tins to use after a little while. We haven't done it as much this last year, but I think I'll do it again starting in the fall because the kids love it! :001_smile:

Thank you, all!:001_smile::001_smile: It is good to hear from so many twin moms (and a triplet mom!), and I appreciate all of the good wishes from everyone. I can honestly say that since I first had ONE kid, I never wished for twins, as I knew how hard it was taking those babies one at a time. :D As a kid, before I knew anything, I thought it would be fun, but I was pretty clueless as the youngest of six...I had no idea what it took to care for a new baby. Thanks again! I'm kind of glad that I found out this late (especially since things look good) as it is LESS time to stress and worry, and we are past the most vulnerable period, I think.

Thanks! I came across the 100 grams of protein thing in my research over the past couple days. Glad to have it collaborated by a BTDT mom. I started today and BOY it'll be work to get that in every day, but anything to get these two healthy and big. And thanks for your honesty. A neighbor friend of mine just called and said to be sure not to overthink everything--she said that you just DO. You do what needs to be done and then do it again.

:lol: Hahaha! I'll hope I can hold on for that first year and a half, then. That's fun to hear. :001_smile:

Amber, thank you so much for sharing your experiences. What you wrote when they were 6 weeks old made me cry... (though it's only the 20th time in the last two days!). I do look forward to all the neat things about having 2 at once. Thanks for your words of encouragement. And how funny, I have a small photography business, which will likely be taking a long term hiatus soon!

I'd say box 'em up by category/type/genre and type up a list of each box contents and put it on the front or the lid (or both). It doesn't seem worth the effort to try and figure out a solution when you are trying to show your home. And it can be really hard to make even good bookshelves look non-cluttery (speaking as the book clutter queen). Good luck!

After #3 was born, I felt like there was probably one more child that was supposed to come join our family. This was an odd feeling, as after both #1 and #2's births, I was so overwhelmed that I felt very comfortable NOT thinking about any additional children for quite some time. We weren't in any rush to conceive #4, and as it turned out, it happened about 10 months ahead of what I'd decided was a good time. David had requested that I finish up with pregnancy by the time I was 35 as a safeguard to my long-term health, and I thought that was wise. We both felt good about the addition of a fourth child and the timing seemed pretty good, even though it wasn't according to our tentative plan. At my 17 week appointment, my midwife's assistant measured my uterus and the fundal height was measuring about 4 cm ahead. After having birthed 10+ pound boys, this didn't seem that unusual to me. I remembered having growth spurts during past pregnancies. And, in all honesty, as it wasn't my midwife doing the measuring, I felt there was some room for error as I didn't know how skilled the assistant was with that sort of thing. Last Thursday I went to have my next appointment, and was 21 weeks 3 days along. The fundal height measured 34 centimeters! And I'd gained 20 pounds (which I knew from tracking at home). I was really frustrated as I've been diligently making an effort to eat healthfully and not an excessive amount of calories. Plus I have been exercising quite regularly. I had some thyroid issues likely caused by too much weight gained when I was pregnant with Sprout, so I am hoping to avoid that this time around. My midwife suggested that I might want to consider having an ultrasound to check things out. Tuesday evening we went in for the ultrasound. As soon as the tech put the device on my belly, we saw two bums and knew what we were in for. It was surreal. I can't even accurately describe the variety of feelings that washed over me. There was excitement, relief at it being two and not one with any problems, gratitude, and I think around the edges of every emotion there was a bit of panic. David and I grabbed hands and held on for the rest of the ultrasound, which takes a fair amount of time when there are two babies to inspect! They call the baby closest to the cervix Baby A as it will be born first, and the other baby is Baby B. When she told us (and showed us) that Baby A is a girl we were delighted. We had been hoping for a girl to help balance out the ratio of boys and girls around here. About 20 minutes later we got around to Baby B (we had to take a break in there as the reclined on my back position makes me feel light-headed after a while). And Baby B is a boy! Both babies are growing on track and look healthy. Baby B is actually about a week ahead in size. Well, here's where the irony comes in. David and I have long agreed (ever since my sister had twins almost 11 years ago) that "Twins are God's way of saying you can stop." Since we've been very clear about this being our final child, it was obvious that it was our plan to stop at four. I guess this means God approves of this being our last pregnancy, but he didn't agree with us stopping at four. I guess we should have said we were going to have six, then pulled a fast one and stopped at four!:tongue_smilie: In all earnestness, though, we are excited to have both of these little ones join our family in a few months and are feeling pretty amazingly blessed. But still overwhelmed! I finally was able to fall asleep at 3:30 the next morning morning, only to be wide awake again shortly after 6. Last night I could only sleep 5 hours. I feel like I'm wired on an insane amount of caffeine, but it's just my brain going into overdrive trying to process everything. (I copied and edited the above from my blog, so I apologize if anything doesn't make sense.) Any other twin moms out there? I would love advice, suggestions, words of encouragement, just knowing I'm not the only crazy homeschooling mom who thinks she can do this with twins. Okay, right now I don't think I can do it, but I'm hopeful that I'll get things under control. Maybe. Someday?

Ooh, this may be just the thing to help my right brained dd9 master some of the fact families that have been eluding her. :001_smile:

Awesome, thanks all! :001_smile: I hadn't even come across the pockets, so I will look into some of those. I am glad to hear good things about the Beginning Geography K-2. I think I'll pick that up for summer and use it with both kids, as dd9 hasn't done much in the way of actual geography work, though she's picked up some just from us working with the map in the kitchen.

This was our first year using any, and I did Grade 4 and Grade 1 math with each of my kids in those grades. We call it "Morning Math" and it was a good chance to go over different types of problems from what we might come across in their math lessons, and for me to see what concepts they might be failing to understand at this point (this was especially true for dd9, as she does Teaching Textbooks, so I don't closely supervise her math work). I am considering doing the Evan-Moor Geography for next year, as we never seem to get any geography study in and I'd like to incorporate it, and think we could do it if it was just 10 minutes/day. Then I glanced at their science and thought it looked pretty good, too.... Maybe I just want all our subjects to be 10 minutes/day! :tongue_smilie: So I'd love to hear what you have used, and either liked and kept with or rejected. Thanks!

thank you, all, for your encouraging words and suggestions. Yesterday we only did science and history, which we seem to not get to often enough. Today we went on a field trip to a science/art/technology museum. Tomorrow I think I will just do some review with dd9 for her state testing on Friday and call it good. And I appreciate the "permission" to take time off. :001_smile: That is hard for me to do. I do think a few days of really taking a break and working out a new strategy/schedule would be really beneficial.

I will preface this by saying that today was an unusually bad day. But I'm feeling so $%* tired of trying to get everything done, and that everything includes keeping the house livable, doing school with the kids, working with ds7 to try and improve his reading, helping dd9 review for the state testing, feeling like I never have any time to spend with ds3 and that too much of his time ends up being screen time, planning and making meals, exercising... Lately I don't feel like there is any advantage to homeschooling for us, or at least not enough of one to justify the fact that I am so drained. I think of next fall when we will have a new baby in the mix and wonder if it wouldn't be better for everyone for the kids to be in school. ::sigh:: I just want to crawl in a hole today.

My ds7 is doing well reading Ricky Ricotta books (with a small amount of help) and recently finished up all of the reading lessons of Reading Eggs. We are currently working through the Blend Phonics reader and he is moving through ETC 2 with little to no difficulty. I am looking for more supplemental items that he can do on his own. Any suggestions? I'm open to online games or other workbook type things as well, though I am trying not to overdo the writing at this point. Thanks!

thanks for sharing! I love it! :001_smile:

My visual daughter would get overwhelmed looking at MM as well. She is now doing Teaching Textbooks and the one problem at a time approach works for her. Alternately, knowing that he doesn't have to do ALL of them sometimes, or at least not all of them by himself, helps my ds7 who is in MM1.

I was wishing that the color scheme could be adjusted to match the MUS rods, as I thought it could be beneficial for my son (we aren't using MUS but do pull out the rods on occasion). I think there is value in the countability, personally, as it allows for a "check" mechanism. But to each their own. If you do make changes to the app, perhaps allowing for a color change or making a "MUS color scheme" an option would make it very usable for a lot of homeschoolers, I think. As it is, I won't use it because the different colors would be a challenge for my kids who are familiar with the MUS scheme. It's a neat app, though, and I had fun playing with it for a while the other day.

this looks really good! Great for my 3 year old, thank you!:001_smile:

I really like having a computer program that ds7 can work on to reinforce his reading skills independently (he is making good steady progress, but needs more reinforcement). He isn't quite ready to independently read groups of sentences (mostly because he lacks confidence) which seems to be required for Reading Eggspress. Any programs to recommend? Or iPad apps? He quite enjoyed Reading Eggs, so something along that vein would likely be a good fit. Thanks!

I could be wrong, but I feel like somewhere SWB mentions allowing the child to read the dictations while you dictate. That can help some kids. My dd9 (almost 10, end of 4th grade) is just finishing up WWE3 as well and has a hard time with some of the longer dictations, though she has made good progress and can often surprise me by keeping two entire sentences in her mind. Sometimes I dictate them into my iPhone and allow her to replay them if necessary, since I get tired of doing it. My WWE4 just came yesterday, and skimming through it, the dictations are going to be a challenge for sure. But I am hoping she will continue to grow and get better at it, which I know she won't if we don't keep moving forward. Another thing we have done is to jot notes of key words in order when that is appropriate to the type of sentence. With the longer ones in WWE4, I am going to try having my daughter sketch things if that is relevant, as she is a very artistic kid. One more thing that seems to help is if I read the sentences with a LOT of inflection and variation in my voice. It seems to link the words to something so they aren't just long strings of words. I don't know if any of this is helpful. I know that SWB advocates doing what is necessary (even if you are repeating more than 3 times or whatever the text specifies. You might even just "trim" the dictations for a while so they are more manageable. As long as you can keep him making incremental progress, I think that is the main goal.

I don't know if it is great or not, but it is free today and a friend linked to it. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007OC4J2M/ref=cm_sw_r_fa_ask_0HNTD.0V1MP6Q :001_smile:

I have an Otterbox case for our iPad2 and have been pleased with it. It has taken a few drops with no problems. I wanted something that I could let the kids use without stressing, and it has fit the bill. We don't use the cover that came with it much anymore...it is currently misplaced, but the case is good and tough.

I bought the whole set last year through the Homeschool Buyer's Coop. I am glad to have it, as there is SO MUCH there. Great to be able to pull things out for additional review.