by When your twins are ready to start eating solid foods, you’ll need somewhere for them to sit.
Traditionally, this means buying high chairs.
Since you’ve got twins, you are already used to unconventional methods, so here is another tip:
Buy booster seats that fit on your normal kitchen chairs instead of buying high chairs.
Eventually your kids will need booster seats anyway. So if you skip the high chairs, you save money and can use what you buy for a longer period of time.
High chairs are great when you have one baby at a time. However, with twins, here is why you want booster seats instead of high chairs:
- two booster seats are cheaper than two high chairs (and many times even cheaper than ONE high chair!)
- two booster seats take up less room in your dining area than two high chairs
- high chairs have more surface area to clean than booster chairs
- you can leverage the chairs you already have in your kitchen with booster seats
- booster seats are easier to transport if you need to eat at Grandma’s, a friend’s, or if you take a road trip–anytime you are away from your kitchen for a meal
We purchased some Fisher-Price Healthy Care Booster Seats and have loved them. We covered our existing kitchen chairs with a towel and then put the booster seat on top.
The seat’s tray can easily be washed by hand or stuck in the dishwasher.
The hard plastic seat can easily be wiped down. When too much of a mess built up on the towel under the chair, we simply swapped it out, threw it in the wash, and put a new towel in place.
Another advantage of buying booster chairs instead of high chairs is that you’ll save money. Saving several hundred dollars for baby seating is totally worth it.
(RELATED: Still expecting twins? Will you be having two boys, two girls, or boy/girl twins? Answer these quick questions to see what several old wives’ tales claim you’ll be having….)
Here are the booster seats that worked great for our family.
If you’re looking for a dedicated twin high chair you might consider the Table for Two while your babies are little.
I talk more about feeding solids to your twins in Chapter Four of my book, the Dad’s Guide to Raising Twins: How to Thrive as a Father of Twins.
My partner and I are very lucky to have 5 months old twin boys, I am just wondering about the importance of teaching them how and when to share, what items should I only get one of for them to share and what sort of things they need to develop their own individuallity?
@Ricardo – It is important that you help your boys develop their individual personalities. That said, it is OK to share many things like toys, clothes, movies, a bedroom, etc. However, they will also want something that is just their own thing. For example, our girls each have their own blankets that they love. They also have a few other toys that they claim belong to one or the other.
Since your twins are so young, it is probably fine to just share most of what they have. As far as logistics go, there are many things that they can share:
https://dadsguidetotwins.com/twins-dont-need-double-of-everything/
Being a young couple with identical twin girls, we’ve become very creative and inventive with respect to making our baby furniture multi purposed. I feed our 6 month old twins in their car seats or in their strollers. I make sure to lay down a towel in the seat before for easy clean-up, put on a bib, and keep a rag nearby. We feed them in their strollers when we are having dinner at the table so they feel included. To me the booster seats are unnecessary because before you know it, they would have outgrown it. Just a suggestion…
@Sarya – I admire your creativity. We skipped the high chairs because we knew they would outgrow them. You are just leap frogging ahead of even the booster seats. As your kids get bigger, they won’t fit in their car seats so you’ll need to get creative again to make it work.
I have one year old twin boys, what would you recommend for feeding. I used to feed my boss in their walkers but since they are walking, they throw fits to get out. And when they throw fits they don’t eat.. So it’s hard trying to figure out ways to get them to sit down and eat. We are on a tight budget, and it send expensive to get TWO high chairs.
@Aileen – we found the booster seats a lot more affordable than full high chairs. So as I mentioned above, you might want to try that first. Also consider how you reinforce behavior. Positively reinforce when one of your twins is doing what you’d like. We found that this helps keep them in line and the other twin often wants to do good to get the same praise.
Hello!
Does anyone have any experience with the Stokke Tripp Trapp?
http://www.stokke.com/USA/en-us/seating/tripp-trapp/1444.html
I consider buying one for each of my twins (Boy and Girl)
They are highchairs that “grow” with the children.
They might have a high initial prize but spread out over 12 years it´s not that much. (You can even sell them after 12 years for half the prize)
Besides that, they made of wood. I am not as keen on keeping the environment nice as I maybe should be, but for furniture I think sustainable is the way to go.
@Jan – you shouldn’t need a high chair after a few years so this might be too much. If you get a hard plastic booster seat, they can be recycled later if you don’t just donate it to a thrift store or another family.
Stokke TTs were one of my must-have splurge items! I LOVE THEM. I used the baby set and cushions at first (~5 months) and then ditched the cushions (but still use the baby set) once they started feeding themselves (8-9 months) because they get food everywhere and it’s easier to wipe down the wood. I LOVE that they are always able to be at table height. Once they can eat with a plate and utensils, we will ditch the tray and all eat at the table. And if we decide not to use the chairs in our kitchen or dining room, they’ll become their desk chairs.
They were expensive, but I think they are lovely and well made and I enjoy getting to use them. My other splurge items were a stroller (I might consider something else if I were starting over, though I do love my stroller), and car seats (infant and then convertible, but we haven’t quite started using those yet at 10.5 months). I went as cheaply as possible for:
clothes
swings
cribs (IKEA Sniglars are $60 each)
I didn’t end up using the twin Z to breastfeed much, but enjoy it as a “baby couch” – it was a soft spot to put them down when they were tiny, and have them sit when they were a little bigger, and they still crash there to feed themselves their bottles now (I also use it to frame our monthly photos since you can see how much bigger they are getting relative to the pillow as they grow).
Feel free to bug me about any other product Qs if you want since I’m still in the thick of it (also b/g twins).
@Rebecca – thanks for sharing your experience with these products!