The past few weeks have just been business as usual. Craig heads off to work and I pull out the laptop for the day. The girls enjoy their weekdays with the nanny while we work, and we try to come up with fun and exciting new activities to fill all the other moments in between.

Spring is finally here and its presence greatly impacts our day-to-day- in a good way. Hours are filled with playing outside, exploring, climbing in the raspberry patch, digging out rocks and dropping them everywhere, pulling each other in the wagon, “flying” on the teeter totter airplane, and playing on the toy explosion that is now the backyard. There are even moments that the adult can sit down in a lawn recliner…not long moments, but they are there!

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Rocks are now in EVERYTHING. Everywhere I turn I find a rock. Could be a big rock, could be a small rock. Could be in the pocket of my jacket or my jeans, in the washer and dryer, under my foot as I step on it barefoot in the living room, or in the mouth of my toddler as they’re polishing one off with their tongue. We are definitely in the rock obsession stage; playing outside mostly consists of shoveling them from one place to another and littering the yard with tiny piles of gravel. I’m pretty sure we will need to refill the base underneath the shed or the hot tub before long! Maybe one day one of them will be an expert dirt worker like their cousins or grandpas! For now, we get to experience the world of tiny little pebbles all over the place and hope that they don’t eat too many of them.

I’ve been jotting down cute or funny things the girls do each day instead of making an effort to come up with larger blog topics. Everyone has their own personality quirks and they are shining more brightly as the days pass. It’s interesting to see how they shift since infancy- for example, we always joked that Emerie was “the diva” as a baby (and she was!), but now that mood has shifted into Harper, who now gives us a little more of an emotional roller coaster some days while Emerie remains more relaxed and independent. Other traits that vanished after a while are back- such as Reagan and her tiny baby smiles, even in the NICU, are now back and in full force, especially if you ask her to say “cheese!” She will give you a big, toothy grin.

My little mimickers now hold doors and baby gates open for me, waiting until I walk through to close them while ushering a few “mommas” my direction. Emerie will insist I pass her before shutting the door and even lectures me when I forget to lock the front door before a walk! Yes, they still slam the door on each other and have epic fights over who should control the back door, but at least they are starting to grow some kind of manners.

Reagan discovered a chore she now does for Craig…it involves harvesting all the leaves off plants and delivering them. Our poor vine plant looks so sad without leaves on half of it and is now relocated higher and out of reach.

The toddler arguing is in full force, and by that, I mean arguing with the parents. When pear slices are provided as an after dinner treat, they insist they are apples and fully disagree when you correct them. At least they eat them!

We’ve pretty much come to terms with the fact that we can’t do everything we want on a day-to-day basis because our children outnumber us; we have learned we cannot let them walk out the front door into the stroller or toward the car yet. The other day this resulted in Harper and Reagan both taking off different directions away from us; Craig followed Harper and I caught up with Reagan before she hit the street. Harper ended up with her first skinned knee and side of her for head as she completely bit it on the neighbors concrete driveway. She took the fall better than I expected and only cried for a few minutes and was then fine. She still points out her “owie” on occasion. It may be the first big scrape but it definitely won’t be the last.

A few days later Harper dropped a metal toy on her foot and sliced it open. We didn’t even notice until the blood was dripping and required a bandaid! While Reagan has done a good job staying away from the upsetting injuries and has the normal bumps and bruises, Emerie has a badly smashed pinkie nail that is completely blue and likely to fall off any day. She tripped over a toy and smashed it against her plastic picnic basket. Poor baby. She also instigated a bite on Reagan’s forearm that is worthy of a photo and caused some major consternation in the moment.

The only improvement on the injury side of toddlerhood is that they can now tell you where it hurts and point; if they smack you in the face with something you also might get a kiss or a “sowwie” out of them.

In addition to that, the girls try to help out one another a little more. Now yes, they are still beating each other with toys, trying to smother a sibling during a diaper change, and constantly finding ways to irritate each other, but they also have nice moments. When someone falls down, like when Harper or Emerie tripped on a root in the woods, Reagan would stop and pull them into a standing position by their arm. Occasionally one will give the other a kiss when upset, and once or twice I even spotted a hug. The handholding is still a new concept but coming along ADORABLY. Emerie favors it the most and Reagan thinks it’s funny. Harper is still not a fan and would rather be out running in the lead of the group.

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They also enjoy chasing each other in the yard and the house and pulling on their hat strings or a piece of ribbon and going back and forth, back and forth. This activity can easily last 30 minutes and provide quite the cardio workout when you participate!

We tried eating at the kitchen table for breakfast once last weekend and it went far better than expected. We’ve had an issue since the girls have been small of keeping them from climbing on the dining table (or anything really), meaning our chairs are always flipped upside down on the table out of reach, end tables are in the garage, and furniture is rearranged to diminish all the “get downs!” we are always yelling. This past weekend we tried leaving dining chairs on the floor and each time a toddler climbed into one, made sure they were sitting on their butt and instructed them chairs are for sitting. I thought this was going to be an epic battle to the death but really they did great and seem to want to sit like big girls like we do. Maybe they’ve seen us do it enough to follow suit. We don’t have booster seats and need to purchase them; instead we are using the portable boosters we take to the park and to restaurants to eat. We also don’t have a dining room table that seats more than four, which is an issue when you have three babies and two adults.

Other random points of interest from the past few weeks…the sight of birds sprouts joy and enthusiasm and a lot of shrieking and pointing. This is also the case for passing airplanes, except for Harper, who now has her first major fear of something and goes running into the house (crying) at the loud sound overhead. We will be working on that because this is an airplane friendly household, in a city that has constant air traffic overhead.

The girls are learning their ABC and 123s quite well for their age. Emerie quoted A through F to me yesterday and then hummed more of the song, Reagan can sing the entire twinkle twinkle little star song in her own little language, and everyone says random blurts of the alphabet or numbers throughout the day. They actually do it better for Nanny Chris than for us! We are also learning the different sounds animals make and the girls are expanding their vocabulary to more than just the basic farm and household animals. For some reason everyone is latched onto monkeys right now and completely obsessed with them. I need to find a couple books that directly relate so that we can continue that enthusiasm.

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All in all, bring on summer! As I’m writing this, bright and early, another beautiful day is on its way. As the girls would say, “sunshine!!”