T W I N S
If you have two small children, as I do, you have an innate understanding for the NEED of reliable transportation for them. By transportation, I don't mean a car but rather what you would need to transport them in once they are OUT OF the car. This can sometimes be a tricky matter, depending on what your needs are. I have two children; one who can't walk, and one who can walk but doesn't want to all the time = dilemma. A typical toddler/ baby stroller which has a little seat on the back for the toddler to sit when she/he is tired was just out of the question because Malina doesn't just rest when she's tired, she lounges. And until recently Ella had been too little for any regular type of double stroller, not to mention the fact that they are big, bulky and hard to handle (or I so previously thought). My method of transportation involved Ella, while seated in her infant car seat, (yes, because she is still that little) being clicked into our single stroller and Malina walking next to me with a leash on. Yes, I said a leash. She wore it like a backpack, it was in the shape of a monkey and the "leash" was the monkey's tail. Does that make me a horrible mom for treating my kid like a dog, maybe but I didn't make her eat out of a dog dish or anything. : ) And it allowed me to keep her from running in the street in front of a car or being abducted by some pedophile while I was attending to Ella. (Just FYI you can go on-line to find out how many registered sex offenders live near you at www.sexcriminals.com/regs/1328.html. In a 25 mile radius from my house there are 100. And that doesn't include the sex offenders who didn't register. SCARY)
This travel arrangement didn't work out so well whenever Malina decided she was tired of walking and was going to throw a massive fit. My only option was to leave the store immediately and drag Malina (literally) kicking and screaming the whole way to the car. Needless to say, we made our trips as short as possible. But I decided Ella was big enough for a double stroller and I went on-line and found one that seemed to meet our needs. And WAH-LAH!! We tried it out today, and let me just say that it is amazing! They both can be strapped down, there is cup holders, it is not too big and it maneuvers quite nicely!
Although the first person we spotted while taking a stroll in our new transportation device was a woman in her mid-30's who cried out, "oh my, can I look at them?" That would seem like a weird question to someone who doesn't have kids, it makes it sound like they are carnival freaks or something. But what she was really asking was, "is it okay for me to approach your children and while respecting your boundaries and theirs, look at how adorable they are and talk to you about them a little bit?" This I have no problem with. I could probably talk all day about how adorable, smart, terrific, etc. my kids are. But then she said "are they boys?", this is the one thing that gets under my nerves. Not so much about the fact they think my children are boys because let's face it, as babies, we have no distinguishing marks of either femininity or masculinity, that is what puberty is for but typically in our culture, pink = girl and blue = boy. That is just common sense. The picture above is EXACTLY what the girls looked like when she made that comment. And then I got the feeling by the way she was looking at them that she thought they were twins. So I said, "uh, no they are both girls but they aren't twins, they are 13 mo. apart". She said "oh, really? OK", like she still didn't believe me but wasn't going to argue the point and then kept on walking.
The next 10 people we passed weren't interested in their gender but they did want to know if they were twins. By the 8th person, I just started saying "yes".
If you have two small children, as I do, you have an innate understanding for the NEED of reliable transportation for them. By transportation, I don't mean a car but rather what you would need to transport them in once they are OUT OF the car. This can sometimes be a tricky matter, depending on what your needs are. I have two children; one who can't walk, and one who can walk but doesn't want to all the time = dilemma. A typical toddler/ baby stroller which has a little seat on the back for the toddler to sit when she/he is tired was just out of the question because Malina doesn't just rest when she's tired, she lounges. And until recently Ella had been too little for any regular type of double stroller, not to mention the fact that they are big, bulky and hard to handle (or I so previously thought). My method of transportation involved Ella, while seated in her infant car seat, (yes, because she is still that little) being clicked into our single stroller and Malina walking next to me with a leash on. Yes, I said a leash. She wore it like a backpack, it was in the shape of a monkey and the "leash" was the monkey's tail. Does that make me a horrible mom for treating my kid like a dog, maybe but I didn't make her eat out of a dog dish or anything. : ) And it allowed me to keep her from running in the street in front of a car or being abducted by some pedophile while I was attending to Ella. (Just FYI you can go on-line to find out how many registered sex offenders live near you at www.sexcriminals.com/regs/1328.html. In a 25 mile radius from my house there are 100. And that doesn't include the sex offenders who didn't register. SCARY)
This travel arrangement didn't work out so well whenever Malina decided she was tired of walking and was going to throw a massive fit. My only option was to leave the store immediately and drag Malina (literally) kicking and screaming the whole way to the car. Needless to say, we made our trips as short as possible. But I decided Ella was big enough for a double stroller and I went on-line and found one that seemed to meet our needs. And WAH-LAH!! We tried it out today, and let me just say that it is amazing! They both can be strapped down, there is cup holders, it is not too big and it maneuvers quite nicely!
Although the first person we spotted while taking a stroll in our new transportation device was a woman in her mid-30's who cried out, "oh my, can I look at them?" That would seem like a weird question to someone who doesn't have kids, it makes it sound like they are carnival freaks or something. But what she was really asking was, "is it okay for me to approach your children and while respecting your boundaries and theirs, look at how adorable they are and talk to you about them a little bit?" This I have no problem with. I could probably talk all day about how adorable, smart, terrific, etc. my kids are. But then she said "are they boys?", this is the one thing that gets under my nerves. Not so much about the fact they think my children are boys because let's face it, as babies, we have no distinguishing marks of either femininity or masculinity, that is what puberty is for but typically in our culture, pink = girl and blue = boy. That is just common sense. The picture above is EXACTLY what the girls looked like when she made that comment. And then I got the feeling by the way she was looking at them that she thought they were twins. So I said, "uh, no they are both girls but they aren't twins, they are 13 mo. apart". She said "oh, really? OK", like she still didn't believe me but wasn't going to argue the point and then kept on walking.
The next 10 people we passed weren't interested in their gender but they did want to know if they were twins. By the 8th person, I just started saying "yes".
posted by Amber Howard @ 12:49 AM
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