Proud momma moment

So this weekend I was in the kitchen making bottles and I look up to see Alexander reading to the boys!

Sooo cute. I dropped what I was doing and grabbed the camera. I have been trying to engage him in that way for a few weeks now but he has just been giving me blank stares. That's always the way it is. Blank stares and then one day he just decides he will cooperate. Same thing (all this week!) with pedaling his tricycle, counting  from 1 to 3, and finally identifying colors. We have been working on colors forever and kind of gave up recently because I felt like we were pushing him too hard. Then the other night I was reading to him and he started pointing out, "Green truck! Red bus!" I was so excited, you would think he started speaking chinese. Anyway, this was a proud moment. Another proud moment was when Alexander declared "No more diapers!" and signaled he was ready to start seriously potty training. Since last week, he has either pooped and/or peed in the potty every day. The challenge is really ours, which is frequently and consistently putting him on the potty. It is just hard for a team of caregivers like he has to all be on the same page. One thing that has worked so far is that I instituted Potty Treats. I got some semi-healthy treats and put them in a jar near his potty so if he goes, he gets to pick out a treat. This works well if you have a chowhound like ours who always responds to food. Who knows, maybe we will have him trained by the time he is 2 years old!! One less child in diapers is a very good thing.

By the way, time is flying by. I can literally see it being sucked out of the day and fly out the window at warp speed. This past week has especially been a whirlwind with selling our house and having to pack up all of our belongings and put it into storage, on top of the daily rigor of taking care of the kids and work. Nate did the majority of packing this weekend, which meant we were a man down at the house, plus my mom left for NYC early on Sunday and won't return until later this week. Fun times. I thank my lucky stars every night for my extremely functional and physically strong grandma.

More pictures for your enjoyment...



Sweet Theodore



Theodore & Winston - the rollers



Benjamin getting attacked by Theodore "Hands" Evans



All in a morning's work

Running a family of 6 is like running a business, even with family(support staff) help too. This morning starting at 7am, I conducted employee orientation for our new nanny (HR), disposed of a dead mouse (operations/facility management), and woke, fed and played with 3 babies (Customer Service). Alexander was being clingy so I had to divert him and get him excited about eating breakfast with grandma, which was not hard (marketing/sales). It's all in a morning's work before 8:10am, when I left to do my day job.

On a positive note, Theodore and Winston started rolling over this past weekend! Benjamin tries but gets frustrated. He's pretty thick and a little more stiff than the other too. I'm sure he'll get around to it soon. He remains the best bouncer. More pics soon. Maybe I can figure out how to post a video. May have to put in a request to daddy (Tech Support).

5 months!

We started spoon feeding the boys cereal this weekend - pretty much a big flop but we will press on because practice makes perfect. They are getting better each day and actually Theodore seemed to enjoy it today and opened up wide for food. The other two still get frustrated and cry after 5 minutes or so. I don't remember it being so hard with Alexander. He devoured whatever we gave him, even at the beginning. Feeding these 3 at the same time really brings it home that we have triplets. I know you may be thinking, "Um, how can you not be constantly aware that you have triplets??!" Well, you kind of get used to feeding and holding them, and them all fussing during the witching hour at night. But feeding all three is something new for all us, something else to get used to. I can not wait until the day that we can all sit down and eat the same food!!


Feeding time!

  

Theodore





Winston



Benjamin

Daddy got to spend some QT with the boys this weekend too. I have been taking Alexander to the Little Gym on Saturday mornings and daddy hangs with the trips. I walked in and caught him singing something about broccoli to them (I think it was the broccolee-broccoli song from SNL). Anyway, they were all captivated and smiling- it was very cute.



Daddy with the boys - they loved it.

And finally, Alexander got some "snow" so he could wear his new snow bib overalls and coat. It was really just a light dusting but he had fun with grandma in it. Poor guy looked like the little boy in The Christmas Story all stuffed in his snow suit.



Morning commute

Nate and I's limited interaction this morning, on my morning commute to work this morning:

Nate (in a text): "Luv u."

Me: "I should hope so. I'm holding Winston's poop in a plastic bag up to the a/c at full blast so it stays cool on the way to the hospital. Luv u too."

Nate: "That's an image. Pay attention to the road and stop texting."


Just another day at the ranch for us. Winston has been showing some fussy behavior when eating for a while now, so we had to do some lab work this week to check for allergies. We were supposed to collect some poop and keep it cool which I forgot about half way on the way to the hospital. So, the rest of the way was pretty frigid and I'm sure the morning commuters got a kick out of me holding a clear plastic biohazard bag up to the console while driving.

Oh and don't worry, I was at a stop light when I replied to Nate.

Here we go!!

Alright, that's it. I have been saying for months that I would start a blog because some of this stuff is just too good to be true. Between the chaos of having four kids under 2, working full-time, and living among four generations of amazing (and comical) family characters, we have a reality show in the making half of the time. I will start by explaining our situation for those of you who may just now be joining us and to remind those of you who have been paying attention that time flies!

A little over a year ago we found out we were pregnant with what we thought was our second child. Turns out, they were triplet boys! I will never forget the moment that the doctor turned on the ultrasound screen and proceeded to show us three dark circles, each containing a fetus! I laughed hysterically (literally, I was hysterical and didn't know what else to do at that moment) and Nate stood stunned and silent, white as a ghost. After the initial shock, we realized that we needed to quickly figure out how in the world we could pull this off. Our families rallied around us and my parents insisted that we move in with them when the time was right temporarily until we could handle it on our own. That turned out being May of 2011 when I was put on "couch rest" and couldn't drive anywhere. So we packed up a few belongings, including our clueless 16 month old, left everything at our house, and moved into my mom's house, where our gracious hosts included my mom, my second dad who I lovely refer to as Nashie, and my grandparents who used to solely occupy the downstairs level of my mom's house.

As I worked from home and carried the babies over the summer, gaining a lovely 85 lbs., we settled into life with the parents and grandparents quite nicely. Then in mid-August, the big day came. We scheduled a c-section at 34 weeks 5 days and our relatively quiet nights of dinner and taking turns putting one child to bed soundly were gone forever. Theodore, Benjamin, and Winston were born 1 minute apart in that order, weighing 5lbs1oz, 4lbs7oz, and 5lbs8oz respectively. They were all healthy and ended up spending their first night in the hospital room with me and going home with us after only 5 days in the hospital! This was good news but also terrifying to think we would be coming home immediately with 3 brand new babies.
The first week or so was especially hard because Alexander was recovering from hand, foot, and mouth disease that he had caught in daycare so we kept them separate and delayed their meeting until he was finally healed. That means I couldn't really see him for a week either. The first six weeks home with the babies were very hard because among other things I was breastfeeding/pumping, feeding every 3 hrs around the clock, and our night nanny hadn't started yet. For that entire period, I think I slept 3-4 hrs a day, not consecutively; it was 30 mins here, an hour here, etc. To put it simply, I was about to lose it. But Linda our glorious savior, otherwise known as the night nanny, started coming 5x a week and allowed me to get some rest. While things are never "easy" with triplets, they did get easier after that and we got into a pretty good routine. It took about 7 weeks or so for Linda to train our guys (and us!) to sleep through the night without eating, at which point I decided it was time for me to return to work. So return to work I did, right before Christmas. Every day is a struggle to get ready, get the babies up, feed them, get out of the door, do my day job, then rush home to start my night job of tending to babies and making sure all 4 get enough attention and kisses. Dinner time is chaos and then bedtime comes, after which we rush around trying to clean up and prepare for the next day when it starts all over again. All of this is done with the amazing help of my grandmother, without whom I would go crazy and probably breakdown a lot more than I already do. My mom and Nash obviously play a big role as well, but my grandma has truly saved us.

That pretty much catches us up to date. Although there were funny stories, major holidays, birthdays, and milestones over the past 4 1/2 months that I breezed right through, I am sure there will be many more times ahead. Like the time I ran into my grandpa in the kitchen in the middle of the night (I was making bottles and he was thirsty). I asked, "Hi Grandpa, can I get you something?" He said, "No, I'm good. Just a little thirsty," and proceeded to take a big swig of an open bottle of wine sitting on the counter. Good times. Many more to come, I'm sure.

Jenn