As the girls continue to grow we are starting to see more kid (versus toddler) behavior show. Things like morning greetings either fully excited and ready to release from the. Rib in a blast of excitement (toddler) or rolling over and pulling the pillow over their heads at the sight of light (kid). Harper now likes to roll over and put the pillow over her head when she doesn’t want to get up and not move until you make demands that you’ll leave her there while her sisters are up and rolling. Reagan usually stands up and wants to snuggle immediately while Emerie will pull her blanket up over her and snuggle in more to her bed for a few more minutes, asking me to close the blinds because it’s too bright.
Favorite colors are continuing to emerge and it’s notable that at age three the girls are already venturing from their preordained NICU colors of pink, purple, teal. We assigned them at random so it’s not highly surprising. Emerie is on a blue kick and constantly asks for blue nail polish. Her new glasses have blue frames instead of last year’s purple and yellow tipped ones. Reagan is still a fan of purple and trends toward that color on many things; of course this doesn’t change her belief that all things green and blue should be hers. And Harper, my sweet Harper…is still on her black kick! She recently enthusiastically chose a new black swimsuit and was so excited to wear it. She maintains her love of the black marker and black hat, but definitely not the black jelly beans (licorice flavor). And for some reason all three girls dislike the color yellow (referred to as lullo still to my joy!).
My favorite toddler pronunciations include randoms words like marshmallow (sounds like “farshfallow”), four wheeler (“four-lala”), ballerina (“balla-leena)”) and a few others I haven’t remembered to write down. We are also into the toddler story-telling times. Reagan told me a whole story the other day about planting a seed in her water bucket, watching it grow into a tree, and that it became soooo beautiful! There are plenty of moments where all three will elaborate on a story at the same time and that is a LOT of information to process at once! Emerie enjoys telling everyone her first, middle and last name and it’s adorable. If asked she will tell people her sisters names as well; Reagan also repeats the names of people she knows at random- it goes from immediate family to naming off cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles and friends. Reagan also calls the missing, light up peacock in the neighbor’s yard (it was a snow decoration) a moo-cock. Harper is now repeating some of the “less desirable” words that come out of our mouths as we struggle to raise triplets in the day to day. I will leave that to your imagination, since we are trying to break her of it…
The past few months I’ve paid attention to the girls new phrases and cute words. They get a few common phrases backwards and while they say them correctly in a sentence, they opposite intention is intended. For example, slamming a gate in front of someone, when they are on the other side, always comes with a I lock you in! This same sentiment is used when slamming the front or back door and yelling they locked you in, versus out. In the car when someone is sitting in the very back row, they will comment grandma is sitting in front of me or when Craig is driving a I don’t want to sit in front of daddy instead of behind. Music requests are also backwards, with turn it up meaning it’s too loud and turn it down demands to increase that volume. For now these cute things are endearing!
Speaking of music, we have a return of Patty Cake as a favorite. They will all sing it together in the back seat and it’s so cute my heart might burst listening to it! Other new requests consist of the Hairbrush Song from Veggie Tales and Five Little Monkeys, with the occasional Shake It Off demand. We also seem to listen to a lot of Mulan and Tangled soundtracks.
Current movie request in the day-to-day have more variety than this time last year, when the only thing watchable (according to those two year olds) was Tangled, Moana or Wreck-It Ralph. Now that we’ve branched out to other exciting things, requests vary from Abominable (Snowman/Yeti), which the girls refer to as the “sad snowman who has an owie,” Curious George, Blippi (most often the vehicles episode), Leap (a major favorite), and Lilo and Stitch. It usually takes a couple nights to finish one and at this point I’m not sure which is whose favorite.
Now that the ground has warmed up and leaves sprouted, our yard work consists of the children demanding we find new earthworms for them to play with and running around with all kinds of buckets and toys. Harper and Reagan will run around with the worms while Emerie is a little less inclined to touch the slime and immediately tosses them away. All other bugs are referred to as spiders, regardless of the accuracy, so many excited spider, look! shrieks occur day-to-day.
The weather in early June increased into the high 60s (finally!) and even pushing 70, so the tiny pool and water table made their summer debuts. Yes, I poured buckets of hot water from the sink into the pool; it’s definitely not hot enough for hose water yet and they did NOT like that frigid water last year. Throw in the monster wind at our house and the warm water keeps them happy longer. Added vocabulary means they now express their dislike for the water temperament. The first day the girls played a solid two hours without much intervention, simply by playing with buckets and scooping water all over the place. The second day was closer to three hours, after a solid nap with a promise of push-pops if they slept. The sprinkler and tiny, sand buckets allowed the girls to play without fighting for a long time. Throw a few more tea cups and pots into the mix for even more water fun. Who knew how exciting scooping water across the backyard and pouring it into cups could be! And it is extremely thrilling when we have moments of everyone getting along, doing their own thing, and NOT FIGHTING. They aren’t super common (yet) but at least we get them every now and then and hope to see an increase in that time this season.
A 99 cent bag of decorative glass beads resulted in grand entertainment as well. I threw all these decorative beads away last summer with the fear the girls might find them and choke; this year is a whole new ballgame and they LOVE to collect them, carry them around in backpacks and containers and boxes, and randomly holler at you when they can’t find one, which is all. the. time. Other than those grumpy moments, the girls really enjoy collecting and toting around.
Craig removed yet another baby gate, the one allowing blockading our main level from downstairs, leaving only two more in the house (one to my office and one to upstairs). We’ve talked about doing this for a while but some evenings it was needed to keep everyone contained downstairs regardless of their desire to be there. Removing it went smoothly and so far no issues destroying the half bathroom when out of sight! The best part is, since it spent more than two years in that location, we are so used to stepping over the bottom bar that we are practically tripping down the half-flight of stairs because it’s no longer there. That muscle memory is strong!
It feels great to open the house up more and get back to a semi prior-to-kids setting. Warm weather allows bigger toys to go outside on the back deck, meaning no play kitchen or Home Depot tool bench resides in the living room for the moment. It feels strange to have both recliners, the couch and our coffee table in the room; that hasn’t happened since before the baby jumpers stage! Cabinet locks are removed from the pantry area and some of the kitchen and either the girls haven’t noticed or don’t see anything interesting to get into.
House projects are back in full swing- Craig is busy busy getting things around the house caught up. This includes small projects, paint touch ups and gardening as well as removal of the unused hot tub. The yard feels so much larger without that monstrosity blocking the view from the kitchen window; it also gave more space to add a minor deck addition to better use the space. He removed the custom deck gate that we used so much the past two years to keep kiddos contained and pulled out a railing- not something we could have done in the past two years without it messing with the toddler containment and survival mode.
Warmer weather also means we have entered the “band-aid season” like a hurricane! What is this? Well, if you’d really like to know, it’s that time during the summer when the kids legs look like red, spotted polka dots against tan skin. This isn’t just because you can see said injuries while in shorts, but it’s the time when the toddlers are so busy running amuck, away from you, across playgrounds and into new adventures and wilderness; backwards, upside down, and all over the place that they have tumbles, falls, collisions and general moments of disaster that result in crying, bleeding and demands for more band-aids. Wow, that was a mouthful!
It’s that time of year when toddlers are so busy running amuck, away from you, across playgrounds and to adventure, backwards and upside down that that they have tumbles, falls, collisions and general disaster resulting in crying, bleeding meltdowns.
said every mom ever
Counting those injuries is good practice for the kids, with Harper currently winning with SIXTEEN scrapes/bruises/scratches on her hands and legs! She takes the cake on this because of one main injury over the weekend, falling on a metal grated ramp and producing a good set of bloody scratches on her leg and hands. She now asks Grandma to count her owies. Reagan managed to step backwards and fall over a rock at the conservatory, producing a little ouchie, and Emerie tumbled forward into the gravel and her glasses scratched her nose up to match Harper’s legs! A lot of band-aids and “lotion” seem to fix this for the most part.
Grandma Sue and I visited the wildlife conservatory this week on a sunny, daytime adventure. It’s been a while since I’ve felt like we had a GOOD day with the girls, with things going smoothly and attitudes obedient and happy, but this was definitely one. They did great on both drives, with the way back a decent nap for all three once they settled down. I might also mention we made it through construction (rock blasting) both directions without having to stop at the flagger, which is very rare and much appreciated.
The wind was gusting at least fifty the entire visit and while the animals didn’t seem to mind too much, the girls didn’t appreciate it but remained good sports. We redressed in hoodies, coats and sunglasses to stay warm and keep the kicked up dust out of our eyes and adventured on foot. Emerie’s new glasses have attachable magnetic sunglasses so I finally pulled out the hidden sunglasses for the other two and everyone was excited. The favorite animal of the day was definitely the first one visited, the three-legged porcupine named Kit-Kat. Shock, awe and immediate discussion was held at the sight of him peeing in his water bowl. TMI? Maybe but the girls observed it and out rightly wanted to know why he did it! The only other notable comments from the trip were the exclamation that the fox has a fireplace!, which was more of a electrical box in his cage, and the bison play basketball! because an irrelevant purple ball was out in the field with them. Random observations are likely one of my favorite parts of outdoor excursions.
Everyone insisted on collecting massive sized rocks to lug around the place. We did not discourage this since the goal of sleepy toddlers is always on our mind; by the time we made it halfway across the exhibits the girls backpacks were filled up with a few nice-sized rocks in addition to their juice, snack and dandelions. Harper carried a bouquet of dandelions well over an hour, citing they were for daddy. It is so wonderful not carrying a “house-full” of supplies in a diaper bag or backpack now that everyone is more grown up. That, and they LOVE wearing those backpacks. The wings flopped in the wind the entire time like little angel wings.
Harper Anne 
Emerie Faye 
Reagan Jean
Summer is off to a good start and now that they are a bit older, I feel like going new places is much more doable. It still contains a major level of stress for me, especially when more than an hour away from home, but is also much more doable than the past two summers and much overdue.
❤
The Douglets 