"Special time"

Faith is excited to have mommy to herself.

Our self-taken photo.

A customer kindly takes our picture for us.

Finger-lickin' good.

Faith is proud of herself for stacking blocks.

She's our little engineer.

Grace, the Veterinarian.

The doctor is in.

She's also a pet groomer (notice the blow dryer).

Faith gets creative.

Grace paints.

Child vandalism or a work of art?

Daddy comes to check out their work.

Grace shops in the grocery store, just for kids.

She makes a pizza in the pizzeria.

Then she put it in the oven.

We had our "special time" with each of the girls this morning. We've been meaning to do this for many months now and it seems the older they get, the more necessary and beneficial it truly becomes. Since Faith and Grace do everything together, there are often times when we feel that they naturally fight for our attention. More importantly, being constantly together doesn't allow them that special, one-on-on time that every child craves, needs and deserves. There are many benefits to being twins but having that special and meaningful bond with a parent is not always a given, unless specifically planned. We decided to take the girls out to breakfast for our first special day. I took Faith to a local restaurant/diner and Morgan took Grace to McDonald's. Faith and I had the best time. We were able to talk, relax, and just be together. Other than the initial questioning of where sissy and daddy were, she was quite content after I explained that this was mommy and Faith's special time together and that sissy was going to stay with daddy. Because we wanted to make them feel special, we didn't necessarily tell them that the other one was spending their special time with the other parent. I'm sure that they will figure that out, if they haven't already anyway. Faith and I enjoyed a pancake breakfast with eggs and sausage. She ate her whole plate and even got to try maple syrup for the first time. Yum-O! It was so nice to be able to just talk and share some quiet time with Faith. She is smart, bright, and loves to learn new things. I can honestly say that she thoroughly enjoyed our time, too. In fact, when I asked her what she thought of her special morning with mommy, she replied with a big smile, "I like it." After breakfast, we had a few minutes before we were scheduled to meet up with Morgan and Grace. We went next door to the party supply store just to browse.

I happen to know the owner, who has never met our girls so when he saw Faith, he kindly gave her a balloon. To that she replied, "Sissy, boon?" That meant that of course, she wanted to have a balloon for sissy, too. My sweet child. :)

From there, we met Morgan and Grace and headed to the Children's Discovery Museum for the rest of the morning where the girls got to experience lots of fun and interesting things. Unfortunately, since I had the camera, we don't have any pictures of Grace and daddy on their special day but Morgan's experience with Grace was much in the same, other than the fact that Grace can be a little picky about her food sometimes. He said it took him a while to get her to eat anything but finally, she ate some yogurt, apples, walnuts and bites of his English muffin and egg. In the summer months, we are a little limited on the outdoor activities we can do with the kids but we plan to do this every other weekend from now on.

Regardless of having twins, close siblings, or just one child, I think that having this intentional, special time only helps to strengthen the parent-child bond and creates a confidence and trust within that relationship. It also helps the child to flourish and gives them the freedom to grow and become who they are. I also think that each parent brings out and nurtures different qualities within the child.

I not only loved my time with Faith, I got to experience what it was like to have only one child in my care. Although I've done this a couple of times before, it is on a very rare occasion. What a nice break it was- practically a walk in the park!