outfitting twins

With two years under my belt, I have picked up on plenty of tips and tricks for outfitting the girls. The first is finding your favorite brands. My top three are Hanna Andersson, Tea Collection, and Baby Gap. I also looove Mini Boden, but I haven't been able to catch their pieces at a good prices, which brings me to my second tip. 

Set a hard limit for how much you are willing to spend on clothing items. A hard limit ala red room of pain will help you from being too tempted by the pricier stuff out there. Right now, I aim to keep clothing items at $30 or less. The reason for this is two-fold, first I won't cry if something gets ruined, and secondly we only leave the house about once per week, so it doesn't really matter what they are wearing. In fact, when they are home with Justin he will often keep them in their jammies all day long. 

Most of my clothes are much less than the $30 limit though, which brings me to my next tip... buy as much second hand as possible. I am fortunate that I have a few different options for getting awesome gently used clothes, but be sure to check out rummage sales/consignment stores in your area. If you don't have the time or patience to wade through seas of possibilities only to find a few gems, stock up during sales. 

Baby Gap is one of the best places to find great sales. I recently bought new jeans for Claire for $5 a pair. The trick is to buy when they have a 40% off everything sale- better yet is when they 40% off is combined with Gap Cash.

Another trick is give consideration to skipping a size- I bought almost no 24 month tops, instead opting for 2T. I've found that the 24 month size is cut a bit wider, and since Claire especially is rather slender, it works better for her. Audrey has been wearing 2T in many things for about a year. I think Claire will get another year out of that size. 

And a little bit about why I love the brands that I do... Hanna Andersson clothes are great quality- the fabric is much thicker than that of other brands and it washes extremely well. I have yet to have one of their items pill on me. 

The cut is also very generous- the picture above was taken when the girls were about 4 months old. Below, Claire was wearing that same dress at about 19 months. Audrey's matching version was the next size up, which Claire will be able to wear the entire summer.

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The blue dress in the 3 pictures below is also Hanna- it is their size meant for ages 5-12 months, but it still fit Claire great at age 2!

Another thing I love about Hanna is that it is on trend while still allowing little girls to look like little girls. I tend to prefer clothes with prints and patterns and without any writing on them, such as "daddy's princess" and the like. 

My next favorite brand is Tea Collection. The quality isn't as fabulous as that of Hanna Andersson, but there is a greater range of choices of styles and prints. Plus Tea items are also more affordable- especially if you stock up during the Black Friday sale. 

Here is Audrey wearing a 6-12 month sized Tea shirt when she was 4.5 months old. 

Here is Claire wearing the same top at age 2. I realize that having girls on the opposite end of the growth chart helps with the amount of wears I'm able to get out of their clothes, but even if you have just one child you should be able to get a good number of uses out of these brands.

Baby Gap is the most accessible price-wise of my favorites. Above Audrey is wearing 2T jeans (the grey top is 2T as well) from Baby Gap. She was about 10 months old in the picture. She is still able to wear both the jeans and top.

Below, Claire is modeling the jeans at age 2. I'm thinking that they should last her another year or so, which means getting 3 seasons out of one pair of jeans.

Due to my love of shopping and the generosity of family and friends, the girls have a closet that rivals that of any fashionista. However, I am making an attempt at  cutting down the number of items I have for them. In a text exchange with my cousin Amanda, we decided that about 30 items (minus jammies) would be adequate for most toddlers. If I were going to go shopping tomorrow, this is how I would break it down for a spring/summer wardrobe (quantities are per child):

-5 Hanna Andersson Play Dress sets (dress and shorts... technically this might be 10 pieces, but it is my rules and purely hypothetical, so I'm counting it as 5).

-2 pairs of skinny jeans (I love Gap's littlest leggings and HA not so skinny jeans)

-5 Tea Collection Dresses

-4 Coordinating leggings

-2 pairs of shorts

- 5 short sleeved t shirts

-2 long sleeved t shirts

-1 cardigan

-1 hoodie

-1 pair Toms

-1 pair Keens

-1 pair metallic sandals

As you can see, we definitely favor dresses in the summer time. Cotton dresses are my favorite, because they are just as comfortable as a t shirt. 30 pieces doesn't seem like a ton, but with over 15 dress/top options, they could go a little over 2 weeks without repeating an outfit. Also, because the girls are able to wear the same sizes in some items, it would give us even more options.

This outfit collection would assume the need to do laundry weekly, which is our current schedule anyway. Throw in 7 pairs of jammies per girl and we would be good to go. I'm not about to go this minimalistic with their wardrobe, but having it all typed out makes it seem more do-able.

toddler ootd

The girls have a better wardrobe than me. Here is what they wore today:

We have had Claire's jeans for over a year- Audrey wore them at 10 months!

Sending grandma a quick text.

Audrey questioned the styling choice of leaving her shirt unbuttoned.

Claire provided reassurance that she was "so pretty".

Audrey added a hat and shoes to complete her look.

the anatomy of a tantrum: aka why the barnes and noble kids section should not be free range

Pre kids Justin and I were convinced that our future children would never act like monsters in public. Even after having the girls and with multiple successful outings under our belts we would exchange glances when we saw other people's children in full on beast mode and whisper "aren't you glad our girls aren't like that?"

Well fast forward to the terrible twos. Our outings have become brief and infrequent. The girls no longer are content sitting in their stroller as we wander the aisles of target. I should have taken that as a sign, but I thought today would be different.

So I decided to go to barnes and noble. Without the stroller.

Our outing started out positively lovely. There was only one high chair, but Audrey sat nicely in the regular chair. The girls said please, thank you, and you are welcome as we discussed if we preferred red velvet cupcakes or triple chocolate cookies.

After we finished our treats, I decided to go check out the kids section against my better judgement. 

It started out quite nice actually, with the girls showing me different books and toys and putting them back. The spent some time playing with the legos too. Then Claire decided that she was going to run. And then Audrey ran too, but in the opposite direction. I used what can only be described as a herd dog technique to get them in the same general vicinity. Then Claire decided she wanted more treats, so I was able to grab them both n their way up the stairs. Exhausted, I just wanted to put their safety harnesses on and get out the door. But Claire managed to break loose. She giggled and ran up to the front of the store. Looking like a crazy person, I positioned myself on the floor and did a bit of a tackle maneuver, got them both leased and ready to go. Mind you this was in the very front of the store. In front of everyone, high school kids; sweet old ladies, you name it. Which I why I think the kids section should be fenced in. That way the epic tantrum would only be seen by other parents. Ones who could relate. Or judge me silently. But I digress.

Now we were ready to make our way out the door. Twin toddlers, their overwhelmed mother, and two sips of a venti chai tea latte. In hindsight, I should have just thrown away my tea in the store, but that would have meant 1. finding a garbage can an 2. throwing away $0.23. So I did what any respectable mother would do in that situation and let Audrey carry it.

I'm not sure if you've ever tried carrying two tantruming toddlers, but I imagine it is akin to walking around with a 60 pound octopus. We made it out to the parking lot where a sweet man was walking in with his wife and 2 orderly children and commented that I needed an extra set of hands. Yes sir, I do... Is that an offer? 

Justin was just telling me the other night how he thinks twins are soooo much easier than two different aged kids. Clearly he has never attempted to take them out in public alone. At least a baby could be strapped to my person (hmm... perhaps I could try wearing Claire?)

We made it home, with some dignity inact (only because I'm not a yeller). After we were all inside the house, Audrey gave me the biggest unprovoked hug. As if to say "thank you for taking us out for a treat, sorry we were so wild".

Hmmm, perhaps we should go to the mall tomorrow?

my little big girl

Claire decided that she would rather cuddle with me than take a proper nap. I didn't mind one bit.

claire and audrey are 2!

We celebrated the girls' golden birthday over the weekend. We had so much fun celebrating with family. 

The girls received lots of great new toys and clothes. One of their favorite gifts was new water bottles from Aunt Katelyn- Audrey wants to take it with her everywhere, she even requests it at bedtime.

Speaking of bedtime, the girls have been consistently sleeping through the night since they transitioned to toddler beds. We did the whole cry it out thing at bedtime when they were younger, but could never really handle the whole screaming at 3 am thing. It was so much easier to just give them some milk (or cheese) and have the ordeal stop in 5 min versus crying for an hour plus. Bedtime continues to be 6pm- they seem to wake up at 6am regardless of what time they go to sleep, so the earlier bedtime works well for us.

The girls amaze me everyday with their vocabulary. Typically Claire starts the day by calling out "mommy up". We were having breakfast yesterday morning and I told Audrey that I was having an Asiago bagel- Audrey repeated Asiago. Later in the day, she was playing with her new car and she proclaimed "go for a ride in the car car".

Claire is rather talkative, but seems to have her own special language. However she certainly makes demands known. Yesterday, her first request of the day was for broccoli. Keep in mind we had plenty of leftover treats from the part sitting out, but no, the girl wanted broccoli. I have no clue where she got that from.

The girls remain adventurous eaters- we haven't encountered anything that they refuse to eat yet. They love their fruits and veggies. They received an awesome game called "Seek-a-boo"- the girls can identify what is an almost every card. They were going through them this morning and could identify apple, banana, and broccoli. They got to cookie though and were stumped. Oops.

The girls went swimming in an indoor pool for the first time yesterday. We went to visit Nanny and Papa at their hotel. The girls were definitely not impressed. We stayed in the pool for maybe five minutes. Claire cried pretty much the whole time. Audrey enjoyed it a bit more, but we decided we would have more fun playing at home.

One of their favorite activities is reading. They will bring books over and say "read to". They do a great job of reading to us. They received the book "The Goodnight Train" for their birthday and that is a new favorite. It has all of their favorite things- trains, pigs, and owls. Claire is especially enamored with the owl page- she looks at it for several minutes, says "pretty owl", and pointed out the different body parts.