• “Having twins in your class – and not being able to tell one from the other – is a teacher’s nightmare, so imagine how confused staff were when five sets turned up at the start of the new school year.” Read more on the Daily Mail website.

• “In what is being hailed as a medical miracle, eight month old conjoined twins Joshua and Jacob Spates have survived being separated at the base of their spines after a gruelling 13 hours in surgery.” Read more on The Daily Mail website.

• “11 month old conjoined twin girls, Rital and Ritag Gaboura,have been successfully separated by British doctors. The girls, who were joined at the head, survived at odds of one in 10million, after four complex operations at London’s Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital.”  Read more on The Daily Mail website, and watch a video of the twins on the BBC News website.

• A set of twins have been born in England, one black and one white.  Watch video footage of the twins and their parents on the BBC News website.
  

This week’s Twin Tuesday QOTW is:

Have you taken your twins on a road trip, yet? And, if so, any tips/tricks for making the ride smoother?

Shortly after our girls turned one, Hubby and I took them away on holiday to Wales for a week.  We stayed in a caravan site, just outside Prestatyn in North Wales.  The girls were so well behaved during the journey (which I think took us about 5 hours with a few stops).

We made sure the girls had a selection of toys to play with in the car and, thankfully they actually slept for much of the journey.

Four years on, and we went on a family holiday to Florida last summer.  Our trip involved flying to London Gatwick in the first instance, and then a long haul flight to Orlando.  The girls were patient, relaxed and well behaved throughout the journey.  They had little backpacks with story books, colouring books, puzzle books and a couple of dolls and fave soft toys, as well as some snacks. 

You can link up with TwinHappy Jen on her TwinHappy blog here or join the blog hop below.

On Twitter @TwinParenthood also posed a twin-related question today:

TwinParenthood

Twin Parents: Are tantrums worse with twins? What age is the peak? Tips to cope?

Well, I am very lucky that I’ve never had much of a tantrum problem with my daughters .  Don’t get me wrong, they have had their moments, but they’ve been rare.

When they were toddlers, we used the “Naughty Step” as a way of tackling tantrums and bad behaviour.  It was mostly used after a spat between the girls.  They often used to fight over toys! 

I have never really had to deal with a double-whammy tantrum in the supermarket or shopping centre.  There was the odd ‘wobble’ with them fighting for space in the cramped supermarket trolley seats, but that was all really!

They’re now almost six years old, and I couldn’t tell you the last time we needed to use the “Naughty Step”.  They play well together most of the time now and, though there may be the occasional wee niggle, they rarely come to blows.

I am very lucky that I can take my girls anywhere with me and know that they will behave.  I often take them to the hairdressers, beauty salon or opticians with me, and they wait patiently for me in the waiting areas, reading, drawing or playing their DSi.

I  found a twin story in today’s Daily Mail about identical twins, Ruby and Pearl (great names, huh!?):

“They are so alike that even their boyfriends struggle to tell them apart.

But Ruby and Pearl Day’s other halves can be forgiven – especially since the pair were yesterday judged to be Britain’s most identical twins.

In a nationwide competition, the 18-year-olds were deemed to be most alike in terms of facial likeness, personality and ‘dancing synchronicity’.”

You can read more about this story on the Daily Mail website here.

“A 31-year-old woman has given birth to sextuplets at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxfordshire.

The four girls and two boys, ranging in weight from 1.3 to 2lb, were born 14 weeks early on 14 May.

The mother, from Oxfordshire, is said to be recovering well and all of the babies are in the hospital’s specialist Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.”

[Source: BBC News website - accessed 21 May 2010.]

Congratulations to the family!  I wish them all well! 

You can read more of this article on the BBC News Website here.

I also have another amzing multiple birth story via my friend, Jennifer Miller of Twin Happy.  It’s the story of a family who had twins – one via IVF and the other naturally – and the family will never know which one is which!  Watch this video of the lucky family here.

“Many new fathers experience post-natal depression, yet most cases go undetected and untreated, experts warn.

One in 10 new fathers may have the baby blues, US researchers believe – based on their trawl of medical literature.

While this rate is lower than in new mothers, it is more than currently recognised, they told the Journal of the American Medical Association.”

[Source: BBC News Website accessed 19 May 2010]

You can read more of this article on the BBC News website here.

Personally, the prospect of not having the option to fly off to sunnier climes for a fortnight’s holiday fills me with dread.  There’s a beautiful big world out there and I want to see as much of it as I can!  Furthermore, I have family over in Canada, who I wouldn’t get to see very often if we had to rely on travel by boat.

I also use Send Out Cards to create unique personalised greetings cards.  I create them online, but then a physical greeting card is printed and sent from Utah in the United States.  These cards usually take a week to arrive to my recipients in the UK.  If they were to come via the sea, instead of by airmail, they would take a lot longer!!

From time to time, I purchase items from Etsy, Ebay or Amazon from the other side of the Atlantic.  I like having the option to widen my search when looking for things to buy!

What about you?  What would you miss about air travel?  Or do you live in a flight path, and therefore relish the idea of a little peace and quiet?

You can read more on this story on the BBC News Website here.

An extended Easter break may be appealing to many, but what happens when your employer seeks to dock your wages for failing to return to work?  It hardly seems fair to be penalised for something which is outwith your control.  Nevertheless, a local authority in the West Midlands has stated that it will dock pay from teachers who fail to return to work today.  It advises teachers to claim their travel insurance for lost earnings.

You can read more on this story at the BBC News website here.

“Boys naturally gravitate towards cars and girls towards dolls from the moment they first crawl, a study suggests.

City University researchers put a range of toys a meter from 90 children – aged nine to 36 months – and recorded what was played with and for how long.

They found boys spent more time playing with cars and balls, while girls spent more time playing with the dolls.”

(Source: BBC Website 15/04/10)

You can read more on the BBC News website.

As a mum of twins, I like to participate in the Twin Tuesday meme on the Twin Happy blog.

TwinTuesday QOTW:

What kind of fun ideas for twin birthday parties have you tried out in the past, or have been thinking about trying?

Here’s some photos of the girls on their 5th birthday last summer.  We were at an Olive Garden restaurant in sunny Florida.  We had bought a cake from Walmart to surprise the girls, and we ended up sharing it with the diners in the surrounding tables, as a thank you for joining us in singing “Happy Birthday” to the girls! 

The girls are wearing their lovely new Minnie Mouse dresses – a birthday gift from Granny & Grandpa, purchased at a gift shop in The Magic Kingdom.

A couple of days after we returned from our fantastic Florida trip, the girls had a Princess & Pirate birthday party at Cadwinkles – a local soft play centre – with a large group of their friends.  The girls looked gorgeous in their Cinderella outfits – a birthday gift from Mummy & Daddy, purchased (again) at The Magic Kingdom.

(I had wanted to post a picture of the girls in their Cinderella outfits, but my computer is playing up this evening, and I am quite honestly ready for hurling it out the window!!)

Twins in the News

I came across this story of a lovely family of multiples in today’s Daily Mail.

Hazel Bowden is the mother of not one, but two, sets of twins, who were born in the space of 12 months. She is thought to be the only woman in the UK to give birth to twins twice in a single year.

Read more about this unusual family on the Daily Mail website here.

“After 90 years, one of Canada’s oldest magazines, The Beaver, is changing its name.

Its publishers say it was only natural that a Canadian history journal should have been named in honour of the industrious dam-building creature which is the country’s national emblem.

But in recent times the magazine’s attempts to reach a new online audience kept falling foul of spam filters – particularly in schools – because beaver is also a slang term for female genitalia.”
(Source: BBC News website 29 March 2010)

Read more of this article here.

The Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) says pupils and parents should not feel pressurised into buying end-of-term gifts for their teachers.”
(Source: BBC 26/03/10)

You can read more of this article on the BBC News Website here.

Do you buy gifts for your childrens’ teachers?  If so, what do you give?  Do you only give a present at the end of the academic year?  Or do you also give at Christmas and/or some other time?

I tend to give only at the end of the academic year.  I usually give toiletries from Vie At Home.