nth-child() or first-child? how to select first AND second child in one

Your best bet for cross-browser compatibility would be to use jQuery and assign a class to the list item.

• http://api.jquery.com/eq-selector/
• http://api.jquery.com/index/

Something like...

$( function() {

 $('li').each( function() {
   if( $(this).index() == 1 || $(this).index() == 2 ) {
     $(this).addClass('first_or_second');
   }
 });

});

This works in IE9+ but it's not the shortest. @BoltClock's selector is the shortest solution for IE9+. I think this one is marginally easier to understand so I'll leave it as an alternative.

ul li:first-child a, ul li:nth-child(2) a
{
   background: none repeat scroll 0 0 biege;
}

Without the use of js or :nth-child (which I believe is not supported in IE)

ul li:first-child, ul li:first-child + li {
    list-style: none;
}

Here is a demo tested in IE7

For selecting the first and second children, you can use a single :nth-child() pseudo-class like so:

ul li:nth-child(-n+2) a {
    background: none repeat scroll 0 0 beige;
}