The First Year With Twins: Mirai and Taishi’s 1 Year Update

WE MADE IT!

Scream it from the rooftops folks because that is exactly how I feel! The first year with two young babies is HARD to say the least. Managing and meeting the ever changing needs of two babies at once is quite plainly, intense. Add a toddler/young child into the mix and you have quite a test on your hands.

That being said, we did it! And we’ve come out the other end in a pretty good groove. After three kids, I am constantly amazed at how different they are. Even though Mirai and Taishi are twins, I don’t usually see them as that. They are two individuals on two different paths. I don’t even refer to them as twins, but more just by their names. For me, it’s important to encourage the individual strengths of each of my children and support the particular areas they are working on. Two of them may have been born on the same day, but they are certainly not on the exact same timeline.

Here’s our typical daily schedule:
6:30AM – Wake Up
7:00-7:30AM – Breakfast
9:00AM – Take Asahi to school
10:00AM – Nap #1 (Usually around 2 hours)
12:30PM – Lunch then play time
1:30PM – Pick up Asahi from school
3:30PM – Nap #2 (Usually around 1 hour)
5:30PM – Dinner, bath, books
8:00PM – Bedtime

Developments

The big one around the first birthday is, of course, walking. Neither of them are walking outright yet but Mirai does enjoy standing up on her own and has taken a few steps here and there. I think she will be walking quite soon! We just let her do her thing and practice in whatever way she wants to. Taishi just recently began standing on his own as well, but instead of taking steps he seems to be more interested in climbing! He is enjoying testing himself by climbing stairs and even on to our bathroom stool.

Recently, they have been working on posting objects and enjoy using the shape sorter (although they aren’t sorting shapes yet). The majority of their time is spent practicing gross motor skills such as pulling up, standing, and walking from object to object all around the apartment. You can often find Mirai hiding objects under the couch or covering herself with a scarf which suggests she is in an enveloping schema right now. Taishi will often stack objects on top of one another, which is a trait of the positioning schema. It’s amazing to see how many different skills they are working on at a time!

Eating

Overall, these two are both good eaters although in the last month or so I have really seen Taishi starting to eat much more at every meal than Mirai. It could be a growth spurt or maybe that he doesn’t nurse as much at night and needs more calories! Since they are one now I feel like I can relax a bit with the seasonings I use which is nice as well. Since we do baby led weaning they have always eaten exactly what we eat but without salt or sugar, so that won’t really change but I won’t have to be quite as careful from now on especially if we are traveling or eating out.

Mirai loves all her veggies, broccoli in particular, and they both go crazy for any type of pasta. I’m impressed with their ability to eat rice because Asahi wasn’t a big fan at this age. Taishi LOVES eggs and could eat probably 1.5-2 scrambled eggs by himself at breakfast! Mirai doesn’t usually eat much breakfast since she nurses more in the night but she makes up for it at lunch and dinner time. I also sometimes give snacks if we are out, especially when we take Asahi to and from school and they get antsy in the stroller.

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Sleep

I think I can officially say that sleep has settled down FINALLY! For the last few months we have been cosleeping in a huge bed. You can see it in the 10 month update and it’s been working really well for us. We actually got rid of our crib awhile back so we are officially a completely bedsharing family! I don’t think I ever thought we would be but when you follow the child, it often leads you to sleeping with them…ha! Since we cosleep, the night wakeups don’t bother me much because I can just roll over and nurse (usually Mirai) back to sleep. On an average night she probably wakes up 4ish times between 9PM and 6AM but again, I can basically sleep through it. Taishi usually nurses one or two times per night but since he takes a pacifier, he often prefers that method of getting back to sleep. Overall, they are very happy babies as far as sleep goes and this situation is working well for us! When we go to bed at night it’s honestly laughable because they are both crawling around on the bed and snuggling/flopping on to me for about twenty minutes before they settle down. I wonder how it will go when they start talking to one another!

Breastfeeding

Not much has changed regarding breastfeeding in the last couple of months but I will say that as time goes on it just gets easier and easier. Taishi went through a phase where he was difficult to nurse (too distracted) and had a few nursing strikes as well between 10 and 11 months. As of now he is in a good place with nursing, thankfully! He nurses about 4 times per day (before each nap, before bed, and once or twice at night) and Mirai nurses to sleep for each nap and bedtime and then unlimited amounts at night. She accepts my slacky boob for the most part so I am happy to have her nurse a bit more often than Taishi.

I think we are slowly making our way to the two to one nap transition as they are often pushing their morning nap back. We will see how that changes our daily schedule, especially juggling their older brother’s kindergarten drop off and pick up. This age is just the cutest and I am excited to see what other developments come next! I finally feel like I have some energy to get back into Montessori at home again so hopefully there will be some more practical life learning coming up. Perfect timing since they are officially toddlers now!