This Is What They Don't Tell You.

They don't tell you, when they tell you to pursue your dreams, that your students will look up at you like puppy dogs and ask, "Why are you leaving?" And you say that you are tired, and those stories you tell about your children staying awake too late and getting up too early and sometimes waking up in the middle of the night are all true stories. And they say, "But you're my favorite teacher!"

And you will feel sad and wish you hadn't decided to follow your bliss.

And then you will go pick up the kids, and one will fall down while he's running on the meadow, and his favorite shirt and favorite skirt will get all muddy, and you'll scoop him up (all 40 pounds) and say, "I know. It's not fun falling down."

Before the fall, you will ignore the 5-year-old girl who asks your son, every time he wears a skirt, why he is wearing a skirt. You will resist the urge to ask girls you don't know why they're wearing pants. No matter how cool you think it is that your boy loves skirts, you will feel violently, painfully protective of him, even though it doesn't seem to bother him that other kids ask him why he's wearing skirts and dresses.

After the tears stop, you'll go to your kids' favorite museum, because they've been wanting to go for two days, even though the thing they really want to climb on there will be wet and slippery and not at all fun. So you'll go back inside and do the same favorite things you've done all winter.

On the way there, you'll pull over in the same place you pull over every single Thursday, to let one child pee along the side of the road. Even though you know it will happen every single Thursday, you will find it frustrating and annoying beyond belief. Even if he's just four years old and more interested in playing and running and holding his baby doll than thinking about his bodily functions, the same functions which have consumed astonishing amounts of your energy, focus, and time since the moment of his birth. You might swear, quietly, under your breath.

Nobody tells you that parenting is a constant renegotiation and reconsideration of codes and rules that you'd never known existed. You'll sometimes tune out the children's conversation while you're driving to ponder why the dress code requires 3 and 4 and 5-year-old kids to wear shorts under their skirts, especially when shorts and a skirt and underpants are really just too many layers in the summertime.

You're going to feel like you won the lottery when the kid who never wants to pee anywhere but home agrees to go to the bathroom because he so obviously can't hold it anymore.

When the pee doesn't make a sound, it's because it is slowly soaking your kid's underpants. And the shorts under his skirt. But not the skirt. Thank god. Not the skirt. Nobody warns you that letting your kid go commando in a skirt at a children's museum produces an astonishing amount of anxiety—what rules are you breaking; who will ask you why your boy doesn't have any underpants on; and always the need to justify your choices to everyone else.

And when you finally get home, to the sanctum where anything goes, and you notice a tick on a scrotum (thank goodness we are not so strict about pants in our house), and you have to listen to an hour-long tantrum over the two-second extraction, nobody has warned you about how intense it is, to know that you have to do this unpleasant thing that every time feels like a violation of the secret covenant between you and your child: I will not hurt you. Because he doesn't understand right now that getting that tick out *is* not hurting him. That the fretting and worrying and watching for fever and rashes that starts every time we find another tick has good reason.

When the kids are finally in bed after fifty rounds of back-rubbing and leaking water cups and cries of "mommy, mommmmmmy!" you will lie in the dark with them and soak in the sound of their breathing, the touch of their toes under your body, their warm hands wrapped around your arm. You will lie there in the dark with tears streaming down your face. You will cry silently, feeling conflicted about crying over what wasn't really such a bad day, considering all the things that are awful in the world. And then you might, possibly, go write a blog post about it. In case someone else was wondering: how was your day? Consider yourselves warned.

Setting a New Course

Sometimes, the universe is sending you a message and you refuse to hear it. Sometimes, you hear it and ignore it for a while, until the din is too loud, the message unavoidable. And even then, doubt makes you hesitate, even though every sign points to yes.

A couple of weeks ago, I told my colleagues that I wanted to let go of the unpaid work I was doing at the lovely school where I teach—I'm just over half-time and had taken on much of the extracurricular work of a full-time teacher, including establishing a new diversity program. Then we went on our trip. I thought some more. I feel proud of a lot of the work I am doing. I know I'm a good teacher, and I love working with adolescents, who are so eager to discuss everything. I hope the school is a better place for my having been there. And I know that my kids are better off for having been there. I'm a better parent, in some ways.

Having four-year-olds is easier than having toddlers, mostly: they can be remarkably independent and creative. Sometimes I get a break—they go into their room, into the brother zone, and play beautifully. And at the same time, they're equally, if not more, exhausting. That two-hour nap in the middle of the day, during which I would daydream, write, get some work done, and drink tea? It's long gone, replaced by wrestling with two energetic chatterboxes who can't sleep at night if they take a nap. "Quiet time" consists of my scuttling from room to room while they try to play on top of my head. Yet this age is so short. In a couple of years, they'll be in first grade, learning to read and write, finding deep interests.

Last Friday, I drove to school feeling certain. I taught my classes, sat down to talk with the high school coordinator about a diversity issue, then closed with, "Well, I guess now is the time when I say I'm not coming back next year." The clarity and lightness I felt stayed there until I told my kids' teacher. I have loved all the teachers my boys have had at this school, and nothing has made this decision harder than having to say goodbye to them. It is perhaps fitting that I'm coming around to this decision while I'm in the middle of teaching The Odyssey for the fifth or sixth time. That text never gets old, with its questions of what it means to be a good human being, and its pursuit of the peace of home in a world full of monsters and disasters.

My Facebook feed is full of everybody's real-life disasters and joys. If disaster visits me, shouldn't I have spent some time stretching away from the easy comfort zone of the familiar into new territories? I'm not sure that I'm quitting teaching—in fact, I'm considering shifting my teaching to a slightly different age group. I'll still be doing some work with teens, this time as a college application essay tutor. So let us say for now that I'm quitting this particular combination of joys and costs.

I don't know what I'll be doing this time next year. I don't know what the kids will be doing.

But I know a few things:

I am choosing rest.

I am choosing to connect regularly, not just on Facebook, with my friends.

I will be writing more, more often.

I will walk more every day, alone, and with four-year-olds to guide me.

I will spend 10 minutes sitting in my backyard every day watching the plants grow, and listening to the boys play.

I will make a Southern-style Wish Tree—call it a Wish in A Bottle Tree.

I will learn new things and find new ways to teach people.

I was on my way home from watching some of my students present their 8th grade projects a week ago, the evening after I'd declared my intention not to return to EWS next fall. As I drove down the winding, dark road from Chapel Hill to Durham, I found an old mix CD, cryptically labeled "Hip Hop," and put it on. A few tracks in, Aesop Rock's "No Regrets" played, with its propulsive refrain:

You can dream a little dream
Or you can live a little dream
I'd rather live it
'cause dreamers always chase
But never get it

It's time to live the dream, not just dream it. Here we go: more smiles, adventures, and joys unknown.

Riding in the Car with My Boys

When you decide to drive 765 miles away from home with two four-year-olds, you take it pretty seriously. We made serious preparations. At the end of the first day of driving, I thought: Hey! This was so easy that I ought to blog about it! And at the end of the return trip, I thought: Hey! This was so hilariously difficult that I ought to blog about it!

Here's what we did: We drove from Durham, NC to Jackson, MS. Here's what we didn't do, not once in the four days total we spent on the road: use a screen to entertain our kids. This wasn't a deliberate choice: We had a backup plan with plenty of videos loaded onto our computers. Our boys love watching videos of garbage trucks and trains. On the other hand, our children also turn into drooling zombies when they tune in to screens, so we thought we'd see whether things ever got so bad that we'd bust out our laptops. We were close. But never really thought of going there. Perhaps we should have.

That first day, we felt like champs. We'd purchased several new items, mostly variations on toys/activities they already had. This had worked for us when we flew cross-country with 2-year-olds. What could possibly go wrong?

Some of the best stuff we tried:

Mess-free drawing pads

Tubes that stretch, compress, and hook together. The BEST toys we bought.

Lift-the-flap books with few words for us to read, so they could "read" them themselves.

We doled out our prizes out slowly over the first day. The children played merrily as we zipped down the road. We felt smug. Some things didn't work, but the boys were happy to play with what they had. This was great! Traveling with kids is so easy!

And this leads me to Tip #1: Never assume that works one day will work the next day. Do buy a few new things. Don't buy too many.

We arrived at our first day's goal, the ACTUAL General at The Southern Museum, with almost an hour to run around inside, take selfies with the train, and enjoy some of the fine playthings there. Our boys LOVE Buster Keaton's film "The General," and we'd carefully planning our trip so that we could go see the real thing. They were delighted. Tip #2: Plan for a destination midway through the drive that will get you all moving/out of the car for at least an hour. Our stop at the General was necessarily at the end of the day, but the kids were so excited to see it that the anticipation carried us through. For subsequent days, having a longer break mid-day would have helped more than having a final destination.

Tip #3: Don't eat dinner at the hotel. There is a well-rated burger joint next door to the museum in Kennesaw. We didn't eat there. We regretted this decision for the rest of the evening as we waited ages for mediocre burgers, wilted salad, and lousy fries.

Tip #4: Book a hotel with a pool. There are people who will drive 12 hours in one day. We are not those people. We like to sleep all night. It takes longer, and costs more, but is so worth it. The pool was extra-pleasant: We got up in the morning and swam before we hit the road. After a day spent cooped up in the car, spending a while moving before we got cooped up again was great. Day Two started off great.

Then came the turn: about an hour into the drive, D asked, "what else did you bring for us?" We managed to put him off for a while. But eventually we went through our whole stash in a couple of hours. We tried audiobooks. Those produced screaming. With another two hours left before we got to Jackson, things were getting serious. We took a break.

The break shifted the air a little bit. We said things like, "Well, you can have the toys you have, or we can just put them all away." It wasn't pretty. Music helped, for a while.  But we arrived in Mississippi with about an hour of whining total over two days. We felt even more smug.

We had a great trip—got to go on walks together every night, spent lots of quality time with the family. The kids slept great, unlike the last time we traveled.

For the return trip, we aimed at Chattanooga and its many wonders (trains, aquarium, Lookout Mountain) as the endpoint of day one. Day one found the children totally onto our strategy: imagine colossal amounts of fussing and whining and frustration with every new variation on drawing/coloring/cheap stuff to play with. At one point we were walking around in the rain trying to calm down screaming children. That novelty addiction is serious stuff. We survived, thanks to an emergency, yet extremely frustrating, toy purchase (not pictured because it was so annoying. Instead, please look at this cute picture of the boys with those spinning sparking things. These were a brief, glorious hit.)

Tip #5: Always double-check that your "halfway point" is really halfway, possibly a little more than halfway. Also, please refer back to Tip #4: we took a swim as soon as we'd parked our car. It totally changed how we all felt about each other. Very little about driving in cars with small children over long distances is fun: they don't want to play I Spy, they can't read, and even the truck-obsessed become jaded about all the tractor-trailers. The boys didn't take a nap until 3:30pm, which led to a cranky wake-up and a late bedtime. But swimming with small children is a delightful opportunity to connect—no requests for food; no help with LEGO; no sibling fights. We didn't know, during that swim, just how unevenly we'd divided our days of driving.

As a side note, I would absolutely drive through Chattanooga again—the scenery was fantastic and there were plenty of fun things to do, had we chosen to do them. Chattanooga to Durham is just under 7 hours on Google Maps, but I can promise you it is a much longer drive than that at 451 miles: the scenery is amazing, but there are windy roads, tons of trucks, and a lot of stops to make. The kids continued to play with their frustrating toy, with varying levels of success. We were all wiped out from going to bed too late. We did mention to them that we would not be giving them new things every five minutes; perhaps I will look back on this trip fondly as the time they learned to deal with delayed gratification. Perhaps I will look back on it as the trip that made me give away all the toys.

The best rest stop I've ever been to we discovered just over the North Carolina border. This stop saved our sanity. I wish we'd had a picnic lunch to eat; we could have spent an hour playing here. Instead, we were looking for somewhere to stop for lunch. Tip #6: Pack lunches, or plan ahead for a stop you can tolerate. Don't hope to stumble upon a great place at the next exit. It doesn't exist.

Fresh air and room to run. 

We climbed trees.

All of us climbed trees.

Peace and bliss were achieved when the kids finally took a nap at 3:30 and slept until we were only an hour from Durham.

Tip #7: Keep your sense of humor and drink plenty of coffee. Happy travels!

Summer Thoughts

Ah, summer. For the first time in 3.5 years, I am almost beginning to remember what summer should feel like. Until now, summer has meant more work than the school year, in some ways—more logistics, more exhaustion, more efforts to be patient. Moving last summer surely didn't help. But now here we are, in a place with real summer. Thunderstorms. Cicadas during the day. Crickets and treefrogs at night. Fireflies. Katydids. And mosquitos.

Three-and-a-half is not an easy age: nobody *wants* to take a nap anymore, no matter how tired he is. An increased ability to explain one's emotions in words means tantrums have been mostly supplanted by whining, a far more difficult thing to endure. But is easier so far than two-and-a-half.

Besides, we've discovered the swimming pool.

We swim almost every day. Here's what's so great about the pool: I love swimming and always have. So when I'm in the water with my boys, I am totally happy. They are also totally happy. Never mind the chaos of getting from pool to home. The hour or so we are at the pool in the water is total bliss.

This summer, as they (mostly) play together happily, and as I'm (mostly) able to let go of the idea that naps will happen daily, we (mostly) have fun.

Sometimes, we actually go places and do things.

But not often. It's too hot for the park, and too crowded at most of the indoor places we like to go—even the library is packed. One nice side effect of still feeling new to a place is the luxury of just staying home.

Sometimes fun means lining up crayons in the couch cushions (only permissible on the junky old couch).

Sometimes we check out what the back porch brings us.

Sometimes fun means painting. Sometimes the paint doesn't stay on the paper.

Sometimes we venture far afield. That's gotten much easier, too.

This summer has been so lovely. But part of its loveliness is where summer falls in the rhythm of the year—it is so lovely because it is so fleeting. I wish it were longer. I am loving this time with my boys. And I'm looking forward to seeing what this fall brings.

In This Moment

Some days are hard. Sometimes, it's hard to be at peace in the moment. Some days, there's one meltdown after another. Some days, I'm exhausted and just want everyone to be quiet. 

Eno River

So often, in the grind of work and tending little ones and tending to a home and adults who need feeding, too, it's easy to get caught up in what isn't going right—no nap, not enough time for yourself, not enough time to do everything, no way to do anything with two cranky three-year-olds. And then there are other days, days when even though one kid doesn't nap and it's hot and I'm tired we somehow manage to putter along happily all afternoon. Those days, I'm living as much in the moment as my kids are. I'm able to feel contented with this moment, with this life, with this place. 

What happens when he's having a hard time sleeping.

Usually, that feeling of ease emerges when we're able to spend the afternoon oscillating between backyard and kitchen, when I'm able to accomplish something I need to do, but not under pressure to do it all. When I'm able to pay attention to what the boys need, able to be unruffled. The backyard is a naturally peaceful place, full of birds chirping, soothing breezes and an unending variety of creepy-crawly life. 

Checking out some worms.

I have a master plan to plant a bunch of stuff in the yard, which is at this moment a total blank slate. But a knee injury has had me sidelined since February, and while I'm almost all healed, I'm still not up for digging a bunch of grass up for hours every week. 

Yep. The whole yard looks just like this.

Still, dirt is good. Soil on your hands is grounding (ahem). I want to say something profound about how slowing down and working with the earth and watching plants grow makes me a better mom and a better person. But I've kind of said that already, before kids. So, I found a few pots at garage sales, and spray-painted an old file cabinet that our neighbor was giving away. The afternoons that we've spent loading dirt into pots, planting, and watering have been absolute bliss.

Not shown: sleeping brother.

We dug together, planted together, and now I look outside and can enjoy the sight of things growing.

Gardening with my kids is much less stressful than cooking with them. No matter how patient I try to be, I can only cook with the boys about once a week before I get frustrated with the legos in the batter and the hands in the raw meat. Outside, there isn't much harm they can do aside from too-vigorously separating root balls or overwatering. Outside, where nothing can break or spoil, not really, is heaven. 

Maybe it's their wonder at the green and growing world.

I am happy to make the shift from grass to garden one day at a time, to stretch out the hours my boys and I spend digging and patting and tending and exploring. I miss our old garden, but this new space gives us the infinite promise of tomorrow's work. We have plenty to do. 

Rituals

People have been writing about how family dinners are Very Important for quite a while. And lots of my friends have family meals every night with their kids. I'm sure we will one day, too.

But for now, our dinners at home go something like this:

Offspring 1: I don't *like* this soup.

Me: You don't have to eat it. You can eat your bread.

Offspring 2: I don't *like* bread.

Offspring 2: [makes gagging noises]

Me: Can you just chew it up? I don't want you to spit it in my hand.

Offspring 1: I'm all done!

Me [after consuming a total of three bites of food]: Ok, let's wash your hands!

Sigh. Our dinners out are much better; our kids have always enjoyed restaurants in moderation and only rarely have we wished we hadn't gone out to eat. But at home, none of us are quite so patient.

So no family dinners yet; the fellas eat at their little table, usually with several trucks. We often eat with them, but aren't trying to have a proper meal. 

Anyway, this isn't really a post about dinner. It's about what we do to connect instead of having family dinner for now. As most of you know, practicing gratitude is really good for kids (and adults), just like family dinners are. 

Back in December, our kids brought home these groovy, gnomy gifts for us from school:

We decided to light the candles after dinner, before bedtime. And we just never stopped. On the second night, we started asking, in the manner of Rabbit's Bedtime, "What was good about your day?" We all go around, each taking turns. The boys sometimes remember to ask each of us or each other and sometimes ask themselves. If they don't remember, then we ask.

And now Candle Time is sacred. I can't imagine a night without it. We offer some bedtime snacks (usually fruit and cheese), and sit around all enjoying each other's company. No one is fighting. No one is doing something else. We're just listening and hanging out. 

Here's a list of some things my kids have been grateful for over the last few days:

one time, I picked up this orange digger and digged in the snow.
I played with Dashie.
Daddy took me park.
Mommy, you came and picked me up after nap I was sad at naptime said where's my mommy and then you picked me up after nap.
We went out to dinner! and had burgers!
[in late December] We woke up and the stockings were ALL FULL!
[after a particularly tough day] I don't have anything.

I love hearing what they have to say. 

I love the neatness of the transition—we have to make the house relatively dark for the magic to take hold, and we just don't turn up the lights afterward. Everyone knows what comes next. 

We blow out the candle and do a little chant, raising one arm with the smoke: Up. Up! UP! WAY UP there!!

And just like that, it's bedtime. And that's its own set of rituals, equally sacred. 

Talking to Kids

I'm thinking a lot today about how we speak to people, and even more, how we speak to kids. Now, I'm certainly no saint in this regard—my whole life, I've been told (mostly by my parents) that my tone of voice gives away my true feelings. But I'm working hard especially with my kids to be aware of what I say, why, and how I say it. The book Simplicity Parenting offers a lovely set of guidelines to consider before speaking:

Is it true?
Is it necessary?
Is it kind?

Not everything I say in my children's presence meets all three of these criteria (and certainly not when I'm eye-rolling to a friend about the woman I saw telling her 2.5 year-old to "use your core!" when lifting a heavy toy). But I do try to keep them in mind when I'm speaking to my kids. Why? In my experience, our kids understand everything we say, and internalize the messages we send with our tone and our body language, even if they don't actually know what all the words mean. 

Here's the gist of what it means to communicate with your kids (from Janet Lansbury's lovely post explaining the basics of RIE):

Be clear. Be honest. That's what our kids really need.

There's a world of difference between being frustrated and taking out your frustration on your kids. And learning to be kind and clear is hard, especially when you're trying to help your two toddlers brush their teeth and go to bed. Sometimes, you catch yourself turning into the Monster Mommy (you know, growly and cranky), and you have to stop and go in another room and take a breath. Or five breaths. And then you sit down with that toddler and listen, really listen to what he has to say (even if all he has to say is screaming).

Every day is another chance to practice.

My Two Are Two!

Today, my boys turn two. They walk, talk, run, wrestle, snuggle, giggle, make up games, dance, and play music. They love trains, anything with wheels, and anything round. They love each other.

Wonder. 

We hear things around the house: "One, two, nine, nine." "I dunnooo! Crocodile!" There is a running commentary on everything around them as we walk, drive, stroller around town: "two blue car!" "cement mixer! loud!". It is always at high volume, shouted in case we can't hear. Or maybe it's shouted from excitement. If the first year of having twins is about survival, the theme of the second year seems to have been wonder and delight. I am amazed every single day by their persistence, creativity, and curiosity.

These are "lawnmowers," also known as leaf blowers. The sunglasses are sometimes optional. The sound effects are not.

This year, I've had to keep relearning that my agenda means little, whether it's my plan to grade papers during a nap or my hope to get out of the house quickly after a nap. I've had to learn how to help resolve conflicts without over-interfering, and I'm learning techniques for connecting with both kids simultaneously to ward off a post-nap tantrum—and my agenda then begins to be achievable. I've had to learn how to say "I'm overwhelmed, and I'm taking a break" both to my kids and to myself. I've learned more about the beauty of repetition, the importance of routine, the freedom to be found in limits.

Yes, he knows where the edge is. No, he's never fallen off.

Every parent has to learn these things. With twins, that learning comes fast and furious. I have two amazing, adorable, enthusiastic teachers.

Here's to another year of learning!

Being, at the park.

You've found the perfect park for your outing with twins. You have your bag packed with diapers, snacks, shoes, drinks, and a well-charged smartphone for snapping pics of your adorable offspring. You will *only* use your phone for occasional photos and checking the time. (See this New Yorker piece for an eloquent argument against even snapping photos) The rest of the time it stays in your bag. 

You have spare clothes if you're going somewhere you're likely to need them. You have jackets if it's going to be cold. You have sand toys for sand parks, and extra balls just in case. And you know that the park is going to be an easy place to keep track of your kids.

Friends are good, too—I try to meet up with one or two other moms a few times a week, especially other moms of twins. Being at the park with other people who know you and know your kids means that you have an extra set of eyes and ears. And there are likely to be fewer conflicts (in my experience, at least) because the kids know each other. After months of seeing the same people, the boys look forward to seeing their friends—and I look forward to seeing mine!

Sharing a snack with good friends

Even with all that, you need to bring a few more things: for starters, trust and patience. 


Trust is about believing that your children have their own interests and their own agendas. Do they want to go up the stairs? Great! Do they want to spend 30 minutes pushing a truck around? Great! Maybe they're into pouring sand. Maybe they don't want to use the shovel the way that you think they should use the shovel—that's ok, too. Don't force them to do what you think they should do—free, unstructured play is children's work. Just because you think your kid wants to swing or slide doesn't mean s/he wants to. Lots of times, kids like to climb the stairs to the slide, but not slide down. That's ok, too. They're working on climbing and enjoying feeling up high. When they want to come down, they'll figure out how. Your job at the park is to reinforce the boundaries that do matter: no hitting, biting, pushing. Use words to describe what happens when conflicts seem to be mounting; offer other choices when conflicts escalate. Acknowledge the problem, then see if your kids can come up with a solution.

11 months old, enjoying some stair play. Notice that they are in charge of how high, how fast, and how they go up.

I love this paragraph from Lisa Sunbury about play:

So what is your role as a parent or teacher of young children? The idea is for the adult to create an environment that invites play and then allow the child to explore and experiment within that environment to his heart’s content, without showing him how it’s supposed to be done. This leaves your child in control, and preserves his natural, inborn desire and ability (intrinsic motivation- from within) to play. When your child plays, he is not only learning, he is learning how to learn!

So trust your kids to find interesting things to do and see and explore. Trust them to know the limits of what their bodies can do. And trust that they will push those limits, too. You'll be there to catch them; you won't be holding their shirt while they walk and constantly telling them to be careful.


Janet Lansbury says it best:

The key to fostering an “I can” mentality is simple… Accept, appreciate and allow whatever children are able to do in that moment, rather than expecting or encouraging them to do more.

Patience: You have to learn to be patient with yourself, to let yourself sit back and watch. It's hard to do when you have two toddlers running in opposite directions. I've found that I'm most able to sit back and watch if they're running on the ground. Up high is hard. You want to help. I try to just stand close then, not interfere too much. My boys know that I trust them to know their limits, and usually, they're right. It's almost always when I second-guess them or try to "help" that they seem to falter and get frustrated. So, I try to remind myself to wait, wait, wait before stepping in. I don't always wait long enough, and I really don't wait long enough when I'm nervous or distracted. But doing this stuff is a practice. It takes time. It's really, really hard not to explain why they fell, when they do fall. My personal resolution is to do a better job of asking questions like "Would you like to try that again?" It's so easy to want to protect and direct. What you have to to is help them persist and discover. 

Yes, even 18-month-olds can share...if you let them work it out and don't yell at them to share.

And that's the thing about babies and toddlers: they take lots of time to do things. A four-block walk can take an hour. You can't have an agenda; if you do, you'll be frustrated. If you have plans, you have to be ready to listen to some complaints as you attend to the business of getting there. Plan to hear some crying, some screaming, plan that you might have to be firm about getting in the car, changing diapers, whatever. This is part of living with children. We adults are thinking five steps ahead. They're thinking about now. Slow down, take a look from their perspective. Part of many of our park outings these days is the walk to the park from our car. This can take up to twenty minutes. And that's fine.

Sometimes we stop to check out holiday lights. 

Here's what you really need to know about being at the park: it's about being, at the park. Take the time to watch your kids explore and learn. Follow their lead. Your job is to get them outside. Let them show you the rest.

Twice a Day.

Or: How to take twins to the park when you're outnumbered.

Kids need to be outside. For my kids, pretty much any kind of outside will do.

From a walk down the street...

...to hike in the woods.

On the other hand, I find it hard to constantly split my attention between them, to grab one or put one down to attend to the other, to badger one to keep up with the other who is sprinting ahead. In a couple more years, they'll understand things like holding hands and sticking together. But for now, they move at very different paces and have very different interests. So while a walk down the street might be fine on occasion, we mostly go to parks to get our outside fix. We go in almost any weather—if it's just sprinkling, we go. If it's cold, we all bundle up. If it's hot, we find a shady park with an easily-accessed water fountain.

Sometimes we go in the stroller, sometimes we take the car.

I find myself writing the same email about these outings to the members of the parents of multiples club I belong to. So I thought I'd rehash those points yet again, with pictures to help illustrate my points

When your twins are small, and not yet crawling, you can go anywhere that's pleasant, preferably a grassy spot with fresh air, some shade, and nice views for you to enjoy. Take some friends. Bring a big blanket. Watch how the babies engage with their environment. Don't rush to sit them up and make them look around at what you're interested in—Nick spent *months* on his back kicking with glee at the clouds and the trees. 

The same place can be good once they start crawling and sitting up, though once both are crawling you're better off looking toward the next stage: two babies on the move. Both of our boys were crawling by around 10 months. And for a while, we kept going to all kinds of parks. Then Dash started walking, and suddenly, being at a park with a walking kid and a crawling kid got really, really hard—Dash would wander off toward the street, while Nick would cry because I had to leave him to run after Dash. Gradually, I learned what made for a safe, happy experience for us all. Of course, once Nick started walking, things got even more split. Thankfully, by then I'd figured out what good parks were for us.

Here are the things I've figured out are important to a pleasant park outing with twin toddlers:

1. Gates. 

Our neighborhood park has gates that don't latch, but it's big enough that the boys rarely want to leave. The gates serve as a visual boundary. At 15 months (and probably before!), both boys knew the difference between in the park and out of the park.

Also, the park has dirt. Very important stuff to have around.

If they do leave, we go get the stroller and head home. But usually gates keep them from venturing out, even if they know how to open the gate.

I know it looks like he's escaping. But he actually closed the gate when I said it wasn't time to go yet.

2. Good lines of sight throughout the park. Sometimes you won't be able to see a kid because he's behind a play structure. But in general, you should be able to spot both kids from wherever you are. Lots of green space is helpful for this—plus it provides plenty of opportunities for engaging with the natural world.

The photo below is NOT a good place to take twins by yourself—the much-beloved Totland Park in North Berkeley. People love this park because there are a ton of toys. I find it incredibly overwhelming on my own. With a partner, not a problem. Here's why: Nick is in the foreground, drinking water. Dash is invisible in this picture. I can see him on the far side of the ramp to the play structure, digging with a yellow truck in the sand. But if he were on the other side of the slide, or at the top of the structure, I wouldn't be able to see him at all.

Can you spot Dash?

There's just too much going on for this to be fun for me. Maybe when they're older, I'll enjoy it more. But fortunately, there are lots of other great parks, most of them closer to my house.

For example, the park below: With a small structure, low tables, and plenty of space (and not a huge crowd!), Bateman Park is a much easier place to manage solo. There are hazards, if you don't want your kids to get wet or sandy, but for the most part, it's easy to redirect them from stuff you don't want them getting into. And with fewer kids around, there are fewer conflicts over toys, space, etc.

The rest of the park is mostly grass—great for a blanket for pre-crawlers, but also great for tossing balls and pushing toys.

Here's another of my favorite parks—mostly good sightlines, totally fenced in, lots of room for the boys to explore.

And a rainbow!

I love that this park is hidden in a city block. There's green space, lots of room for wandering, enough stuff to climb, and no crowd. I often meet up with a friend or two so that it doesn't feel lonely. Same park, different angle:

A third example of good sightlines: San Pablo Park in South Berkeley is my absolute favorite park (except for hot days). Lots of very clean sand (a rarity), two great play structures (see below for one of them; the City of Berkeley link above has a really great photo of the whole park), and swings! We can spend 2+ hours here without the boys getting bored.

Taken from next to the swing. I think Nick is in the swing.

3. Good play structures. I don't necessarily mean low, over-safe play structures. I mean equipment that's easy to look around, under and through so you can see your kid. Ideally, there are only one or two big drops, so that you only have to watch one spot for dangerous falls (my kids have fallen off the lower sides of play structures, but never from terribly high). In the best of playgrounds, you can easily scoot under or around a structure to go from the kid trying to climb off the high edge to the kid fighting another kid over a toy. The structure below is on the small side, but is fantastic for crawlers to preschoolers. My guys got really goot at stairs on this structure, well before they were walking:

Easy to spot a kid on these stairs!

This is the one dangerous spot—but it's very narrow, has great places for kids to hang on, and is easy to reach if someone wants to get down and refuses the slide or stairs. Only one child can fit through the opening at a time, too.

This structure (below) is old, but great—only one dangerous edge (you're looking at it), and a tunnel on the other side that is lots of fun for twins in particular to play with.

The train at San Pablo park is a big favorite; while it's not exactly easy to sprint from one side to the other, a fall from most parts of it is harmless, if upsetting—they land in the sand.

Those are the basics in terms of choosing a physical location. To get your kids from your house into the park, you can choose any of a variety of methods. If I drive, I often use(d) a stroller to get from the car into the park itself—it can hold the diaper bag and the kids; if you're going to a park with sand but no toys, you'll want to pack sand toys as well). I've also put one child on my back in an Ergo carrier and let the other walk. These days, we mostly walk in because the boys really enjoy it. I suspect that with one child, I would almost never use a stroller to get from car to park, but I don't really know. I usually take a stroller to go to local parks too—again, my boys love to walk, but it's easier to pack them in the stroller for at least one direction of the trip.

Coming up: Part 2: How to enjoy the park once you're there. (What? You thought just getting to the park was enough? There's so much more!)