From Fans to Curtains

As we enter into Month 14 the girls are moving (get it?) right along toward their toddler milestones.

Everyone figured out the food pouches this week, which is a great win to getting more fruits and vegetables into tiny tummies. While all three now understand to suck on them, they also tend to fiddle and play with them and squeeze the guts out over their heads and down their backs (Emerie of course…). Harper’s first job is as a table wiper; by that I mean she uses her arms as “windshield wipers” and pushes all food away from her seat, at almost every table feed. Once she does it, the other two usually do too and then no one is eating! She also likes to take a piece of food from Craig or I, look right at us, and hand it to the dog with a giggle.

As we increase food intake we are finding that they still want a decent amount of milk. In fact, on many occasions they will casually eat food but then insist on a bottle afterwards, especially Harper and Emerie. Reagan is a little less bottle enthusiastic than her sisters but I also think she is distracted by all the fun things she could do instead of eat!

Constant interactions are now occurring; not quite to the secret baby language yet but definitely sounds and giggles and staring into each others’ eyes for periods of time.

It’s really cute when they try to give each other kisses!! Makes your heart melt…like here- Harper is in pink and Reagan and Emerie (purple) are giving each other kisses.

Remember when everyone’s first love was the ceiling fan? This discovery was about a year ago and lasted far into 2018. The fan is now replaced with window/door curtains. This past weekend we opened up the living room, taking part of the baby prison wall for a few minutes each afternoon so they could all wander. This was quite the hit and the curtains were discovered to be amazing. Everyone played in the dog water bowl (before we put it outside), and enjoy standing at the back door, balking at the dogs and playing peek-a-boo with the curtains. The kitchen is also fair game. For the moment we are enjoying they do not understand how to open the cabinet doors.

Funny how I wrote that sentence a couple days ago…since then Reagan has figured out how to open them. I find it incredible how quickly they pick up on new things or try to mimic something you do. I constantly see mini hide and seek games or turn around and one of them is wearing something on their head and peeking out at you.

Reagan has her outfit and two dresses on her head for peek-a-boo

We also went to the elementary school park down the street and our twin/triplet outing overtook the play equipment! It is definitely a bit of chaos (and added anxiety!) when you have multiples. The girls certainly polished off some playground rocks before we pried them out of their mouths. Everyone enjoyed the swings and the sunshine.

I think I foolishly thought I could handle taking all three to the park at this age. After our outing I don’t quite think so, especially when they go three different directions all the time. Maybe once we are past the rock eating stage?!

What’s up, Chuck!?

Another triple parenting adventure to share with you all. Who doesn’t love to read about upchuck!?

Everyone on a moveable toy!

This past week we’ve been cruising on getting good, uninterrupted sleep at night. By that I mean, for the first time in over a year, the girls slept through the night FOUR days in a row, without even a peep. I attribute this to their new found walking skills tiring them out, and we’ve been very dedicated to ensuring they burn as much energy as possible each day.

Apparently we started getting overconfident. Last night was the complete opposite of good sleep, but not something we can really blame on the girls. I can’t blame the random thunder either; thankfully that didn’t wake them up!

I’m not sure exactly what food caused the issue, but my guess is the stuffed pepper Costco dinner was either undercooked or bad altogether, and my tiny little babies took the brunt of it. It doesn’t appear to be a flu related illness (thank goodness!!). Harper puked up a bit as we were playing at bedtime, but we didn’t think much of it, figuring maybe we pushed on her stomach picking her up or she had a gross burp. She went down fine at bedtime.

At about midnight the crying started. I grabbed Reagan and luckily the other two settled back down on their own. I set Reagan on our bed as she started puking and hadn’t realized her crib was covered in it. We changed her clothes and snuggled in bed and she threw up more. Nothing like some delicious rice and hamburger, fully belly cooked, all over our bed, my pillow, the baby…

It took over an hour to settle her enough to fall asleep, and she insisted on being very close to me (which is unusual). I ended up off and on sleeping halfway off my king sized bed, with my pillow on my end table, as to not wake her up!

About two hours into this joyous puking fest Emerie freaked out and Craig grabbed her and went into the guest room. I was pinned with a sleeping Reagan and didn’t want to move, but could hear Emerie puking on the only clean bed in the house. And she didn’t want to go back to sleep for several hours…so today is definitely a coffee day for Daddy at work.

It is also a laundry day. Lots of laundry from every bed in the house. As I’m writing this, Harper is the only one keeping food down. Reagan thirstily drank two bottles this morning and then sat up and puked all over me, the nursery chair, and Harper. She’s eating a bit of cereal so far. We tried some milk for Emerie and she puked it up too. Gonna be a long day!

Everyone was up early so fingers crossed they will take a good nap and start feeling better. While everyone is puky, their spirits are pretty good; not a lot of fussiness or crying. I will hold on to that and be thankful I don’t have puky babies in general.

I did not take photos of this joyous adventure so here so some cuter ones to enjoy.

We figured out pouches this week!

Mother’s Day #2!

My first Mother’s Day was wonderful, but very vague in my memory now (we were a bit tired last May lol). We left the girls for the first time last year to go get pedicures together for an hour. For my second one, Craig made all the stops!

They were so tiny last year!!

We bailed on work a few minutes early on Thursday and picked out a new wedding band for my ring. Is there really anything better than a request by your husband to leave early to go buy jewelry? Yeah not that I can think of lol.

I came home from work to a wonderful gift from Nanny Chris and the girls. They decorated a flowerpot for me to enjoy, in the girls’ colors, with tiny baby fingerprints. So very thoughtful and sweet! Also quite impressive she did arts and crafts during the day…that takes a lot of effort!

Craig took the girls to Dad’s group on Saturday and did another little project that I adore. It’s definitely going up on the wall once I get a frame on it! Emerie apparently made him work for it…she does not have a giant foot.

The other amazing present in honor of being a mom? The girls slept alllll night in their room (on Saturday night), with barely a peep! That means we both felt rested and I was able to enjoy a cup of coffee bright and early with some Netflix and my feet up. A rare occasion.

Of course, the girls ended that present with a very grumpy day and only a 40 minute nap for the day. Thank goodness we had a decent night’s sleep. They were still cute in their dresses, even through the grumpiness. Oh well!

Interaction Update!

The past two weeks or so have been very exciting! The girls are all figuring out their legs, balance, and coordination. It is crazy to see how fast they learn it, especially when you consider they were just learning to crawl a little over two months ago and earlier this year Harper wouldn’t even roll, let alone move crawl or walk!

It’s pretty typical for first time parents to be super (overly?) excited at the bigger baby milestones, such as rolling, crawling, HOLDING BOTTLES, and walking. I’ve been asked several times, “why are you pushing them to walk!? Do you realize how much harder it will be for you?”

Maybe I’m wrong, but I think this situation is a bit different for those of us with multiples. Why? Because we are excited for them to walk, to be more mobile, while still containable. We are excited for the additional independence, because it makes our lives a little easier, albeit harder is a different way. The girls now entertain themselves for periods of time, we catch them giggling in their playhouse together or playing peek-a-boo with one another (without us!). Yes, we have to keep track of where they go, which is usually three different directions, but we also get the freedom to put them into the play areas and know their safe and having fun.

Harper is a pro walker after about a week of effort. She tries to walk places now as opposed to making that “in the moment” decision that crawling will get her to her destination faster. She ops for walking now over crawling! Her balance is greatly improving every day; she can walk around with toys and at a pretty quick pace!

Emerie believes crawling is still her fastest form of transportation. She will takes steps here and there, but overall drops down to all fours. She adores the singing puppy walker and practically runs forward when she pushes it. When it hits any roadblock, whether that is furniture, the dog, toys on the floor, whatever; she gets so angry, turns and looks back at us and shrieks. It’s pretty funny…and shows off her impatience to figure out how to move around the obstacle.

Reagan is somewhat in between the two. She can walk across the room, or to you when you call, but she often gets SO excited that she loses balance in a big giggle and flops to the floor. After more giggling, she will get up and try again. Her giggle “cackle” is pretty cute.

Once again we are rearranging the house. Last night we moved our china hutch out of the dining room and into the garage, with the hopes we can have use of our kitchen table back by the end of the weekend. It is rather impressive how much smaller a house appears after the arrival of children, let alone three of them! Outgrowing our house will be a real reality in another year or two, and ensuring we stay caught up on maintenance and other house projects is still important, even in our busy, everyday lives. More to come on that later.

For now, we should have a new and improved play area in the living room in the next few days. The family room, or now the playroom, will remain the same for a while and is mostly good-to-go for baby mischief.

Oopsie-Dais…er Douglets…

Funny story, something we’ve either done a bunch of times and never noticed or just did for the first time. Take a close look at this picture…what is wrong with it??

It’s a great photo right?? Everyone is looking, almost smiling, and in their matching Minnie Mouse pajamas. But if you look a bit closer…

You are right…we are swapped! We aren’t sure when that happened, either at bedtime or after the early morning feed (more likely), but I definitely picked up Harper from Reagan’s crib, thinking nothing of it. After putting on sweaters and settling everyone for breakfast, things just didn’t look quite right and they weren’t! Unlike when they were smaller, Craig and I can tell looking at them who is who (90% of the time), at least when we are paying attention! But it definitely doesn’t help when we dress everyone in matching pajamas…

Or maybe we just need some more sleep 🙂