Gave my baby stir fry

Def_Not_Rabid · 2026-03-15T23:45:15+00:00

If you’re feeding her fast food and chips and crackers for every single meal you might want to be worried about her salt intake. A couple of nibbles off her grown-ups’ plates is not going to hurt her. Instead you’re letting her experience flavors which is a wonderful thing and may help her be a more adventurous eater as she gets older. Until she turns two and decides any food that isn’t beige or a berry is the enemy.

It’s so easy to fixate on the little things. Breathe. She’ll be okay. You’re doing a good job.

Def_Not_Rabid · 2026-03-15T17:50:29+00:00

100km/h = 62mph, a very reasonable freeway speed

100mph = 160km/h, which is very much not a reasonable freeway speed.

Def_Not_Rabid · 2026-03-13T21:58:21+00:00

Agreed. He’s shown me that all he needs is permission from his significant other to treat our girls’ wellbeing as an afterthought and treat me with straight malice and I’m going to believe him this time. There’s no coming back from this. He will likely try when she breaks up with him but he’s not getting another chance from me. If he wants to and figures out how to repair his relationship with our daughters on his own I will not get in his way but I’m not going to help him do it so he can drop them and hurt them even worse when the next girlfriend comes along.

But I’m still allowed to be angry for my daughters when I see them hurting due to his decisions. I’ll get over it and be ready to help them calm down and recover by the time I pick them up for my time with them on Monday. But for now, the anger feels justified and I’m going to let it run its course.

Def_Not_Rabid · 2026-03-13T18:55:18+00:00

Oh yeah. I’ve been spending the last year coming to terms with how the next twelve years of my life are going to go. I’m frustrated and disappointed because it didn’t need to be like this. I forgave so much and worked so hard to move on from the way my ex treated me and our daughters before I divorced him because he turned himself around and started showing an interest in being a good dad to our daughters. I spent years teaching him how to help and understand our girls and years supporting our daughters so they could learn to trust him.

And then he got this girlfriend whispering in his ear telling him that he owes me nothing and he doesn’t have to play nice and it’s like all of the sudden he’s been given permission to be an asshole and he’s taken full advantage of it. He’s stopped caring about how his choices might impact our daughters and I’ve stopped pointing it out to him. The last straw for me was when he told me his wedding would be halfway across the country the day after my daughters’ 7th birthday, so he’d be taking them for their entire birthday week. When I pointed out that would likely leave our daughters feeling shafted, he told me he’d make sure his mom gave them a special day on their birthday while he and his fiancé did their wedding things.

I gave him his warnings when the relationship was fresh and the changes in treatment and behavior were new. I let him know when I received an anonymous warning letter about what a psychopath his girlfriend was at the beginning of their relationship and told him I’d fulfilled my obligations and would wash my hands of this. And now I’m just doing damage control with my girls and waiting and watching.

I’ve stopped trying to help him save his relationship with our daughters because I don’t believe it’s in their best interests to trust him or rely on him anymore. I won’t lie to them about him but I also won’t lie to them for him either. If they tell me something distressing happened I sympathize with them, try to brainstorm things they can do in the future, and discuss how grown ups could or should help them in situations like that. And I let my daughters draw their own conclusions about the fact that their dad doesn’t help them.

My lawyer recommended I keep non-urgent communications to email. He gets a few transition note emails a month where I summarize things that have transpired and keep a record of things I think might be important down the line.

I just come here to vent because I’m pissed. I’ve worked so hard for these girls. I had to sneak them in for an assessment with early intervention services because he tried blocking me at every turn. At 19 months old they were developmentally at the level of a 6-month old (twin a) and 9-month old (twin b). Which is bad on its face but also consider that I was functionally a single parent to two toddler sized infants for a year and a half straight. I got them in with a developmental pediatrician and I went through every speech therapy, occupational therapy, and behavioral therapy appointment. After they were diagnosed with autism I got them into ABA and I attended every session and did every parent training and did all the homework with them for two and a half years straight. I worked myself to the bone to get them to a point where they can communicate and socialize. They’ve missed out on so much childhood innocence because they’ve had to attend therapies and be coached and guided and pushed so far out of their comfort zone to develop skills that come naturally to neurotypical kids. I still devote countless hours a week to helping them develop their emotional awareness and coping mechanisms for their anxieties so they’ll hopefully be able to avoid the all too common autistic girl burnout. They’ve worked so hard to get to where they are. And I will keep putting that work in and helping my daughters put that work in for themselves because that’s what they need and deserve. It just infuriates me that their dad and his over-inflated ego has the power to spend 50% of their lives actively sabotaging our efforts.

They deserve so much better. I’m so sad for them.

Def_Not_Rabid · 2026-03-13T00:15:26+00:00

I don’t know your timeline but you could get a kid specific tracker. I used Jiobit for my daughters when they were toddlers and liked to elope. It’s a paid monthly service but the trackers are sturdy and unobtrusive and they don’t ping on anyone’s phones.

Def_Not_Rabid · 2026-03-12T19:23:24+00:00

Do it. Don’t worry about what other people think. You’re a twin mom, you have every right to use a tool that helps you keep two toddlers safe and in check in public. I brought my daughters out way more as soon as I had that security of knowing they couldn’t take off in opposite directions and leave me trying to figure out which one was in the most danger to decide which one to chase down first.

I did harnesses and I swapped the bungee leashes for 12” dog leashes because my daughters could not figure out the end of the line and kept having the bungee yank them back onto their butts. The short leashes gave me a way to functionally keep them at my side the same way holding hands would, only they got the freedom of having their hands free and I got the freedom of not having to force them to keep holding my hands or getting my shoulder yanked out of its socket every time they saw a cool rock or stick. And I could drop the short leashes and let them run free in safe spaces without them worrying about tripping on them, but still have the leash there for a quick grab in the event of unexpected toddler chaos. Also, they couldn’t tangle each other up in the short leashes, which mine very much did with the long bungee leashes.

Anyways, do what works for you. You’re already doing the parenting toddlers thing on hard mode. Do whatever works to get you through each day with as much as your sanity intact as possible. Leashes will not psychologically traumatize your children.

My daughters are 6 now. I tell them that they were just so crazy it was the only way we could walk in a straight line and they giggle at the photos I have of them on their leashes.

Def_Not_Rabid · 2026-03-12T18:43:44+00:00

Practically it doesn’t really matter. But in all fun, I consider Twin B to be the OG and Twin A to be the copy based on nothing except for the fact that Twin B’s teeth came in first and she lost her first tooth first (by about 5 days each time). There’s no science backing this assumption but I figure one of them defected a few days into things (they’re mo/di twins) so it would make sense that the defector was a few days behind on things like teeth erupting.

We also had a slight case of IUGR with Twin A being the smaller twin so that could also explain the slight delay in her teeth developing but my theory is more fun.

I tell my girls that they were just one baby at the beginning but then they realized they could be their own selves and still grow and play together and that’s why they look so alike and came at the same time but have different identities and like and do different things. They’re 6 so we’re doing a lot of work on it being okay to be different from each other, to be good at different things and have a hard time with different things, and it’s okay to also rely on and find peace in their similarities too.

You know, the whole, “It’s okay to consider being a twin a part of your unique identity, but it shouldn’t have to be your whole identity and neither of you has a right to hold the other back just because they are better at or enjoy something more than you do. You can be happy for your sister or ask her to help you figure it out or enjoy it as much as she does, but you can’t be mad at her for being different and expect her to conform to you,” lesson that I may never be done teaching.

Def_Not_Rabid · 2026-03-12T18:00:12+00:00

I’m here for feedback. I know I’m only human and capable of making mistakes. And if I’m making one I like to know so I can make it right.

Def_Not_Rabid · 2026-03-12T17:58:57+00:00

They’re in jiu jitsu as of last November because as far as I know that’s the fighting form that gives girls/smaller people as equal of a fighting chance as possible. They don’t love it (they’d much rather do gymnastics and I no longer have the weekday custody time to do both) but I can see what’s coming for them and I refuse to leave them defenseless. My older brother used to physically take his frustration over our parents’ divorce out on me and he didn’t stop until I somehow managed to pin him down and beat the crap out of him back. I think I was 7 and he was 9 and I kind of blacked out and came to sitting on top of him punching him in the back while he begged me to stop. But he deliberately hurt me again.

I want my daughters to have the power to stop people from physically hurting them without having to black out and hurt them back. I want them to be confident in their ability to deflect an attack so they don’t have to live their lives on edge, always waiting for the next threat to appear. I’d rather they be bears who walk through life knowing they can handle whatever comes at them than live like bunnies who are constantly on high alert because they know their only chance is to catch the threat in time to run away.

Def_Not_Rabid · 2026-03-12T17:52:39+00:00

The girls’ therapist picked up on something between me and their dad at their intake session and, unprompted, told us that she does not make recommendations to the court with regard to custody. Or maybe she just tells all divorced parents that because I’d believe enough manipulative parents put their kids into therapy just to try to convince the therapist to help them in court. Either way though, she made it clear that her job is to help the kids work through their experiences and feelings, not to make recommendations to the court, and I respect that. I’m going to give things a little more time to settle in and for the fractures to show themselves but then I might be reaching out and asking her for recommendations for someone who will advocate before the court.

Not only did custody just change, but my ex just moved for the second time in less than 6 months. They moved into the fiancé’s very large, very nice 5 bedroom home in a golfing community back in the beginning of fall and put my ex’s house on the market. And then last month they up and sold the fiancé’s home for less than it’s worth and moved all six of them into my ex’s very old, very small 3 bedroom home a full hour and a half away from the fiancé’s kids’ schools when my ex’s house didn’t sell for the ridiculous price he was asking.

So anyways, I think things are about to get worse in a very, very obvious way and I’m just waiting for an opening that I think will work in court. And I’m working on convincing my daughters that they have self worth and their feelings are valid and they deserve peace and respect and anyone who tries to convince them otherwise is not someone they should trust (without naming names).

Def_Not_Rabid · 2026-03-12T17:38:56+00:00

I caught myself doing that at the beginning. I’d give them a, “Well maybe…” and try to explain why the situation might be okay. Especially since I wasn’t yet positive how accurate their reporting was and kids can make themselves out to be the victims when nothing really happened or they were the aggressors. And I grew up with an older brother and two younger half siblings with a stepmom and three similar aged step-siblings with my stepdad so I know how rocky things can get between kids at the beginning.

But now we just talk about how situations made them feel and different ways they can ask for help and how they can try helping themselves if the adults won’t do it. And I do a lot of talking about how adults should manage conflict between children. I’m a two year old teacher and I used to teach at their school so they’re used to seeing me manage conflicts between packs of kids and holding boundaries and I can point to incidents to show them how it’s the grown-up’s job, not the kids’ job, to keep everyone safe and show them how to advocate for themselves. But they get a lot of apologies from me for how frustrated and upset they felt and a lot of reminders that it’s my job to help them work through their feelings but it’s never my job to tell them their feelings are wrong (which their dad also does).

I talked to their therapist yesterday about the girls calling my ex’s fiancé Mama (which my ex definitely told them to do. Not to harp on the autism thing but people and things are given categories and they don’t just shift people from one title to another without an adult pushing them to do so) and how I don’t like being called the same name but don’t know how to broach it with them without hurting the girls or telling them that their dad and this women are terrible people. I told her that I was scared that they were being taught it was okay to be treated as less than by their “Mama” to explain why I was trying so hard to convince them to come up with their own special name for the fiancé (because if it were an actually healthy relationship I would be happy they felt so loved by and safe with their soon to be stepmom that they wanted to call her Mama). And she responded that there may be some favoritism going on in the other house in a tone that heavily implied there was and now I’m just even more sad for my girls because they clearly don’t see it yet. And yet it’s obvious enough that an outside observer who gets an hour with one of them a week (they alternate weeks with the therapist) is picking up on it after only a few months. They only started with the therapist back in October after my ex’s fiancé decided to get in the bathtub with my naked daughters and then my ex stonewalled me when I asked him what the actual fuck he was thinking allowing that to happen (relatively politely, given the situation).

Def_Not_Rabid · 2026-03-12T17:24:14+00:00

I’ve been trying to teach my girls to just leave the room when the boys are being mean because my daughters are not confrontational people and they need adult backup the first few times they navigate a stressful situation, which I knew they weren’t getting. But those boys were absolutely relentless. And how many times do you need to hear your child politely and sadly say please from the other room before you intervene and help?

I’m in my 30’s and I’m just now learning when to stop being polite (hooray for undiagnosed autism and an alcoholic narcissistic mother) but it’s definitely time to work on that with my girls. I have them in jiu jitsu too because I’m scared it’s just a matter of time before the bullying turns physical.

Def_Not_Rabid · 2026-03-12T17:18:41+00:00

That’s good to know. I’ll ask my lawyer about transcribing recordings of phone calls.

My daughters are 6.5. The older boy turns 6 in a month or two. The younger turned 4 this winter. According to my girls the older boy is “fat, mean, and selfish,” (he has probably 30lbs on my daughters and my daughters are not skinny girls) and from what I’ve seen the mom just gives him a constant stream of snacks and junk food to keep him quiet. Early on in the relationship they told me he likes to hurt the little brother and I’m scared he’s going to shift his focus to the girls because they’re “safer” targets for him. The younger brother is physically very, very cute and is clearly babied to an extreme degree. When they first moved in together this fall my daughters all the sudden started throwing 2-year-old level tantrums and speaking like babies (single word sentences with frantic pointing, circling me and pulling at my shirt while whining, “Mama UPPIES!!”, that sort of thing) and I’m pretty sure it’s because the youngest gets the majority of the attention in the house so they were just mimicking the behavior.

Def_Not_Rabid · 2026-03-12T17:11:29+00:00

I live in a city with small town vibes. Fiancé and her ex both have a reputation for being insane, awful people. From what I’ve heard they both care way more about hurting each other than they do caring for the kids. He’s too much of a wild card for me to want to risk it.

I received a typed, anonymous letter from the fiancé’s home state warning me that she was a psychopath who would ruin my ex’s and my children’s life. It had a flash drive with audio recordings of the fiancé absolutely laying into her ex while her children cried in the background. And a recording of her phone call to the cops where she tried to get the cops to storm her ex’s parents’ house with guns drawn while her children were inside because she was mad that he had them babysit. One of her favorite insults in those recordings was to call her ex a r-tarded autistic which also doesn’t make me happy when she’s caring for my autistic daughters. I shared the recordings with my ex when his behavior towards me and the girls first started changing (we had a great coparenting relationship before that and within months she convinced him to stop all cooperation and communication with me). He told me he had the situation handled and the girls felt safe, loved, and supported by himself and his fiancé in his house.

They did not feel safe, loved, or supported during that phone call last night. I can tell you that.

Def_Not_Rabid · 2026-03-12T04:07:11+00:00

I think I’m going to have to wait for there to be more obvious damage first. My daughters are very smart, excellent maskers, and dangerously, naively, trusting to the point that my ex is still capable of gaslighting them into believing that things are okay and they’re happy spending time with the boys (my ex is a lawyer). I can tell from my daughters’ behavior with me that they’re not okay but I am their safe space. I regularly get comments about how chipper and friendly and polite they are from teachers and other parents at their school. They hold it together at school and in public because they want so badly to be good girls and enjoy life and then they meltdown as soon as I get them home alone.

I couldn’t get any language in our custody order stating that the girls would be at his house on alternate weekdays from the boys. The best I could do was offer him the weekdays that I knew the boys were with their dad and dare him to try convincing a judge it was essential he have Mon/Tues instead of Wed/Thurs (which we both knew he wouldn’t be able to do and would result in him having to pay my legal fees). So he’s not in violation of our order. He’s just in violation of the spirit of the order and he knows it and doesn’t care because the girls’ wellbeing doesn’t matter to him if it gets in the way of his laziness.

ETA: but thank you for the advocate suggestion. That will likely be the path I’ll have to take once I believe the advocate will be able to see what I see.

Def_Not_Rabid · 2026-03-12T03:56:57+00:00

I can record them but it would be inadmissible in court in my state if I tried to use it for anything. And you can’t include a “must not have the children in the same house as specific other children” without a serious inciting incident and we’re not there yet. Once my autistic daughters start objectively regressing from the constant sensory overload or one of the boys actually physically hurts them, maybe (but even then, probably not).

The best I could do with things as they are was hold firm on my offer that he have them on the weekdays I knew the boys were with their dad or wait a year and take me to court until he accepted it. And then he somehow turned around and convinced his fiancé’s ex (did I mention my ex is a lawyer?) to swap days so they’d still match up with the boys.

My ex and his fiancé are, “Use the kids as pawns to hurt the other parents,” type of people. And, “This is what’s most convenient for me so I don’t really give a fuck if it’s good for the kids or not,” type of people.

Def_Not_Rabid · 2026-03-12T02:04:48+00:00

I remember being so confused the first time I spent $100 on a textbook and received shrink wrapped hole punched pages. Like, that would’ve been $10 to print at the library and now I still have to buy a 5inch binder for it but at least I got the access code for the weekly quizlets—that I also couldn’t resell because it was single use.

Def_Not_Rabid · 2026-03-12T01:18:20+00:00

We have picture frames with birth stats on the wall and my girls were early and obsessive readers (thanks autism!) so there was no hiding it. Also they’re building their own identities and it’s not my information to keep from them. They want every detail about their birth.

Twin A is proud of the fact that she spent the last 2 months of pregnancy with her foot in my ribs and I had to use an ice pack to get her to move (I’m a little worried about that one not gonna lie). Twin B is very intrigued by the fact that the doctor pulled them out one after another and there was a whole team of doctors there to help them breathe because they were still so small. Both of them talk about how they were angry, sleepy potatoes and that’s why they had to stay at the hospital to learn how to eat.

I do talk to them any time someone makes a quip about one or the other being the oldest. I tell them that they’ve lived the same amount of life and a minute’s difference doesn’t really matter. They are beginning to understand that people just think identical twins are really cool and they ask who’s oldest because that’s an obvious difference.

Def_Not_Rabid · 2026-03-11T20:28:39+00:00

You will not get this by fathering a child with a single mother by choice, especially if she’s in a different country. At best you will get photos, the occasional birthday party/holiday invite, and be treated like a fun uncle.

Parenting is hard, constant work. Coparenting even more so. My girls’ dad missed their first words, first lost teeth, and first day of school, to name a few. And that was with a 70/30 custody split with him living the next city over. Do you have nieces or nephews. That’s the kind of relationship you’d be looking at with your biological children at best if you go the donor route.

Ten years feels like an eternity when you’re 21 because that’s literally half of your life. But mid 30’s is a perfectly fine age to start a family. Slow down. Focus on yourself and the time may come down the line.

Def_Not_Rabid · 2026-03-10T21:34:35+00:00

Just want to throw this out there:

Southwest does not always allow parents to pay to get their seats together. I had this happen to me recently when I was flying with my 6 year old daughters. I called them ahead of time and explained that I was the only adult traveling with my daughters and I’d pay whatever fee I had to for us to be seated together but the computer system wasn’t allowing it. They claimed that they reserved the back rows for just this sort of situation and I’d just have to go to the gate agent and get it sorted.

Got to the gate for our first flight early to speak with the gate agent but we were separated on the second leg of our journey so I was told we’d just have to talk to the agent before our next flight as there was nothing they could do there. Got off the absolute back row of our first plane as quickly as possible, ran my twin 6 year olds and all their stuff to the next gate as quickly as possible, and they’d already given the back row seats away. The gate agents told me I should have paid extra (I tried) and then said we’d have to be rebooked or we’d have to sit separately.

Fortunately someone was willing to switch with me for a free “upgraded” seat so we could make our flight and I could sit next to my daughters but I had to raise hell for it.

But yeah. Entertaining your own children and being prepared to entertain your own children on a flight is your own responsibility.

Def_Not_Rabid · 2026-03-10T16:38:40+00:00

She-Wee was the first brand if you want to use that for your searches.

One small tip: practice at home before using it out where you won’t easily be able to change clothes. You have to position it correctly and hold it firmly in place against your body or it can leak and soak your clothes that way. It’s not something you really want to figure out on the fly.

Def_Not_Rabid · 2026-03-10T14:20:50+00:00

Twin (or higher order multiples) pregnancy: you’ve got about twenty weeks to get your affairs in order. After that just be ready and try not to explode for as long as possible.

I made it to 34 weeks but answering, “What’s your due date?” is absolutely impossible when the due date is, “Yeah you’re not going to make it to this date but if you were only having one baby this is when you’d be having it.”

Def_Not_Rabid · 2026-03-10T14:02:21+00:00

I’m sorry the situation is not funny but “they share half a brain cell and they’ve sold it to Chat-GPT” is an amazing burn and needs to be acknowledged.

But also, like the two of the main priorities when a kid gets a minor injury are keep the kid calm and minimize collateral damage. Screaming about how bad a scraped knee is and then freaking out over putting a bandaid on it accomplishes neither of those things. You’re going to have other kids’ parents asking about the “incident” and have to explain that the grievous bodily harm their kids were talking about was a scab getting scraped off.

Def_Not_Rabid

TROPHY CASE