This past weekend was full of so many toddler adventures and amazing weather that I feel it should be documented. Some weekends we stay home and play, play, play…other weekends (like this one), we see how many fun filled activities we can cram into two days of Alaskan sunlight.
Sesame Street themed birthday
Craig took the girls to dad’s group on Saturday morning, and for the first time the girls decided to give in to stranger danger, with Harper and Reagan clinging on for dear life. Eventually they toned down the rage a bit and played. We were really hoping we made it past that development stage and overall I believe we have.
After Saturday’s nap time we loaded the girls up and headed to the park for another twin birthday party. With the sun hidden behind the impending clouds, the weather turned out to be perfectly warm and not too bright. It was ideal for baby adventures.
The girls did pretty well, giggling on the swings and exploring the park and the huge sandbox. William and Craig took turns taking them down the slides, which was not met with giggles, smiles, or rage- just no reaction at all! Everyone played in the sandbox and surprisingly, didn’t eat the sand! We had one baby bonk with Emerie getting a mouthful of sand, but other than that it went fine.
The 8 panel Regalo playpen greatly helped corral the children so we could eat a few bites. Overall the girls had a fun afternoon and play date!
The gorgeous weekend continued through Sunday. We are starting to get a bit daring on the outside adventures, so we broke out the swimsuits, water table AND the mini swimming pool. While the girls are definitely water babies and love bath time, we opted to fill the pool with warm water from the bathroom faucet instead of the freezing hose water. With the sun shining it stayed quite warm and pleasant and no one shivered at all. Give it another year and these Alaskan triplets will love the freezing cold hose water.
The girls thoroughly enjoyed climbing in and out of the water. It was a rare moment when all three were actually splashing in their together. Typically someone was off running across the yard while another was splashing at the water table and the third in the pool.
After backyard fun we let the girls cool off a bit and play inside before the next adventure…the Potter Marsh boardwalk and bird observatory. I’ve been meaning to take everyone down here all summer. What better place to take mobile children than a boardwalk they can’t escape from, and on such a beautiful day!
Everyone walked all over and I think we tired them out. The sun is still high at five PM since June equals 20+ hours of daylight here. Next time I need to remember the sun hats, but otherwise think it went well. Overall a very busy, but fun weekend, with mild grumpiness from shots but nothing compared to their pre age one grumpiness.
Summer solstice means we are hitting the 15 month mark in the Douglet household! It also means the girls’ youngest cousin turned one this week! An update for everyone on the current day-to-day chaos that is triplet toddlers…
Health: While we continue to grow, grow, grow, surprisingly the girls remain on the smaller end of the weight scale. Emerie weighed in at 19 pounds, 3 ounces (29%), Harper at 21 pounds, 2 ounces (49%), and Reagan at 21 pounds, 4 ounces (51%). This puts us solidly in the middle of the weight spectrum for their age (based on actual age, not adjusted). Their heights, on the other hand, show we have some tall ladies! Emerie is 31.25″ tall (74%) and Harper and Reagan are 31.5″ (81%).
Everyone has individual personalities that continue to emerge. I need to look back on an old blog noting who did what the most and see how different six months makes the answers! Everyone also knows their name as well as their sisters’! If you say “hey Reagan”, the other two will look at Reagan. It’s pretty cool.
Miss Emerie is often the instigator on climbing and getting into things and is a fearless daredevil. Eye surgery is scheduled for next week to remove the cataracts from her left eye. We are told she is handling the daily hour of eye-patching like a pro, and we should be very happy with her “good” attitude. And we thought she was grumpy…apparently we are very blessed in that arena and it could be far harder. That’s encouraging! She still goes by Em, Emerie, Emsy, or Peanut, depending on the moment she will even answer to all three, and can say Mom, Momma, Dad, Daddy, and Baby.Emerie likes both mom and dad right now, but not Uncle William. She gives him funny looks and will not take a bottle from him. If he throws her in the air, well that’s another story. Then she seems to be okay with him
Miss Harper is still the hardest one to get to giggle, but will definitely chuckle if you tickle her tummy! She still responds to Harper and Hay Hay and has such a big smile. She is our only eater that enjoys meat (for the most part) and is highly skilled at getting through the dog door and across the back deck as an adult frantically tries to reach her sneaky butt. She’s done this several times and now we block the door.
Right now she is a momma’s girl, and comes to me most of the time. She has a new game that if you call her over, she will come part way, giggle, turn around and run the other way. She’ll do this several times in a row, especially when she needs a diaper or clothing change and sometimes for snacks.
Miss Reagan, also known as Ray Ray, is still our smiler and giggler. You can find her hanging out in the family room playhouse giggling with either of her sisters or dancing to any type of music. She’s a great dancer! She is also winning the hair contest at the moment, and has one tiny curl behind her right ear.
Reagan is a daddy’s girl right now and is all about Craig. For a while every time he walked into the room she would squeal in excitement. She doesn’t have stranger danger yet but will pick Craig over anyone else every time! She’s also a bit shyer when it comes to adventurous things, like a slide or riding backwards in the wagon. Like me, she has to ease into the new activity and then she is good to go!
Food: The girls typically eat less when they are cold-ridden. This holds true for the past two weeks, but also shows us what foods they really like and will eat when stuffy. Now that we are back to healthy and happy, current favorites include bananas, fresh avocado (ate a whole one at dinner the other night) and blueberries, green beans (straight from the can!), breakfast sausage, and udon noodles. Favorite snack foods are veggie straws, cheese puffs, and stringed cheese. One of the girls is sitting in another highchair at some meals, as opposed to the triple table, because they tug on each other and irritate one another to the point they don’t eat as well.
Sippy cups are not the girls favorite, but we are starting to learn them. For now everyone is still drinking quite a lot at bedtime and a dream bottle at six am so they will sleep until about 8:30 AM, give or take. By 18 months our goal is full use of sippy cups and whole milk, so I can get some time (and SLEEP) back from pumping!
House Stations: Having a living room and family room play area greatly helps the girls stay busy and happy(ier) while at home. We are planning on redoing the living room setup in the next week or so- I am comfortable letting everyone roam the main floor, even when I’m solo, as long as the stairs and dog door are blocked. The girls love running around in the living room, outside of the baby prison, and looking out the windows, playing with shoes or cooking utensils, or chasing around the animals. They all seem to enjoy window licking also…
The next step is to convert the dining room to be more kid friendly and give us more space. A third “station”, the new, rebuilt back deck, is also quite the hit and allowing us to enjoy some of the beautiful Alaska sun! The baby lawn chairs are out and the walkers are used to climb on and run back and forth with. We still need a better gate to block the deck stairs, and will get that project started soon when Grandpa Cliff visits next week.
Sleep: Bedtime routine is still going fine. For the most part, other than a few outlier nights, everyone goes to sleep in about 10 minutes once they are down at 8:00 PM. By about midnight we almost always have someone with us for a couple hours; although putting them back in their cribs has gotten a bit easier and they don’t have to be fully asleep for us to set them back down. The consistent thing remains it’s nearly always a different baby. One night Harper will be the grumpy one, and the next night it will be Emerie, or Reagan, and then switch! They are consistently inconsistent about it. And I also find the better sleep we get, the crankier the day seems to be. Try to figure that one out…
Playtime: Playtime continues to become more rambunctious as the days pass. We now have three “pint sized explorers” that want to check out anything and everything around them.
This week the girls discovered how to climb onto the couches downstairs, with Emerie leading the charge and making it all the way onto the window sill after a few tries. They are so very proud when they walk across the cushions, clearly showing they have no fear and don’t realize they can fall off. We enjoyed a solid two months of brief relaxation at night where the girls would play on the floor in the family room and we could attempt to watch an episode of television (slowly marathoning Parks and Rec and some of The Office) while sitting on the couch. Those days are gone. Now the girls all want to climb up and explore their newfound skills.
Emerie figured out how to climb up to the window sill…great…
Everyone LOVES peek-a-boo and patty cake. We are working on a few new songs now too like “head, shoulders, knees, and toes.” The girls instigate peek-a-boo to us and each other, often using a blanket or random pair of pants or shirt that is on the floor. This creates a lot of giggles from everyone.
I am anxiously awaiting the “triplet talk” to begin. Everyone interacts a lot more since their birthday, but we don’t yet hear the baby chatter. There is a lot of giggling between them, but no gibberish yet. Here’s a video from last night with quite the commotion in the kitchen. Silly babies.
Dancing: Everyone enjoys a little hip and butt shaking now. While almost all music triggers at least one kiddo to dance at a time, other specific songs have great affect on everyone. Current favorites include Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off, Patty Cake, a few Ariana Grande songs Craig keeps playing, and of course some Baby Shark melodies.
Much more to come as the mobility continues. I can say month 12-13 we probably the easier months for far in this triplet journey and we are edging back into a bit harder. Why? Those two months everyone started walking, but not climbing. So they were mobile enough to move decently and play and learn new things, but not so good at it that they could climb on the couch or take off full sprint in three different directions like they do now!
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?!
While we continue through the current snotfest, the girls are quickly picking up new skills and traits. I would say the parents are as well…I’ve accepted the fact that I am constantly covered in snot and used as a human tissue (I should add that to my resume lol. I’m pretty I just wipe the snot on my pants and shirts now instead of getting up to grab another tissue every time a tiny tot’s nose drips.
A couple nights ago everyone slept ALL NIGHT in their cribs…for the first time in 2019!! In fact, I didn’t wake up once the whole night to a shriek or a cry and it was oddly refreshing.
Sleepy Harper
Sleepy Reagan, butt in the air!
Sadly, that success only lasted one night. We had three grumpy babies by 11:30 PM the next night, with Emerie ending up with Craig, Harper with me, and Reagan eventually settled down in her crib and went back to sleep, after quite a fight!
What I’ve found is lack of sleep is relatively survivable, as long as the first 2-3 hours in the night result in straight, uninterrupted sleep. Last night was one of those nights, where I slept solidly from about 9 PM to 11:30, and probably back to sleep with Miss Harper by about 1:30, and then getting up at the typical 4:30 AM wake up time. That first chunk of sleep really helps me stay awake for the day!
As we continue in the second week of the cold, the girls are off and on grumpy snot factories. Their most hated thing in life right now is the tissue, or anything that might go near those little noses. For the most part I believe we are out of the previous teething rage, so moods are improved from that. Everyone has four top teeth through the gums, and are much less slobbery. You will notice that the girls aren’t wearing their amber necklaces in pictures now; not because teething lulled a bit, but because they try to rip them off each other (not themselves tho) and cause a great deal of angst with each other. We may not be using them anymore, at least until they understand not to pull on them.
I hope you are enjoying the lovely photo of Reagan, proudly displaying her snotty nose before I brought the rage to wipe it off…
I realized this weekend that I passed the 13 month milestone without posting anything! Now that we are over a year, I’m not sure people still do monthly photos. But for your enjoyment, here is a nice photo of the girls in their matching Minnie Mouse pjs.
A few new cute things for you…such as Reagan dancing to a video. She is definitely the dancer of the group so far!
One of my coworkers gave me a play “puppy walker” and we tried it out with the girls earlier this week during Emerie’s therapy session. As predicted, the only one that figured out how to walk with it (figured it out a little too well) was Harper, who discovered how fun it was to push forward while she walked! Reagan and Emerie were more than happy to sit on it while we pushed it forward, but not walk behind it. Not sure I am quite ready for walkers yet…a few more months of crawling works for me!
Within two days the girls are all attempting to walk with it! Reagan is the least excited about it, and Harper is the wing leader. Emerie is really good at climbing into it and now is walking forward too.
Harper took four steps on Saturday, teetered and balanced herself, and took two more. No I did not get it on video, was way too in the moment for that. And after only two practice tries… a little TOO quick!
I predict by the end of May we will have walkers. Everyone’s coordination is improving so rapidly and they definitely watch and feed off each other as they learn new things. I cannot handle how mature Emerie looks in this photo!!
A few other fun new things include Harper raspberrying my leg (and thinking it was hilarious), Emerie gaining great coordination with moveable toys and doing things on her own, and Reagan is a speed crawler! Everyone enjoyed the gorgeous sun this weekend and we set up the new Regalo playpen. It’s light and useful at both the park and in the front yard as we start spring cleaning the garage. I also figured out it folds up perfectly to fit across the stroller bars so I can single handedly bring it with me somewhere and let the girls out to play.
This week our busy little bees have hit a few new…eeerrr……milestones?
Hearing Craig exclaim from the playpen, stop licking my belly button! And then a moment later seeing Reagan licking Craig’s leg hair. Such wonderful memories to share with the girls when they are older…
Reagan received her first swollen lip last week. It is undetermined if she was smacked in the face by a sister (likely) or if she bit it falling down on a toy. Either way, she wasn’t excited about it; but it hasn’t stopped her from climbing on things and testing out her boundaries.
Napping is finally improving, it only took about a year! The girls were never great nappers, starting when we defined specific nap times to now. They still need some daytime sleep to continue being happy and pleasant babies; some days it is very difficult while others are much smoother. We are down to one nap, having lost the second one at about 11 months and Reagan a little before that. It was too much of a battle to get them to go down for another relatively short nap, so we stopped trying and now focus on getting one good one. Typical naps are around an hour, but recently that is getting better at two or more. We try to be as physically active as possible throughout the morning so everyone is tired and ready to settle down. Once the girls are in their cribs, we give them about 10 minutes to settle down, whether they are screaming, giggling, or otherwise, before we will go back and intervene. Lately we haven’t had to go back in. When they were smaller, there was a great deal of pulling out the one keeping the other two awake…and that varied between all three.
The end of last week and the weekend schedule worked like a charm. The girls napped about two hours a day, ALL THREE OF THEM, each day. Major progress!! After going through more clothes, we tried on some “big girl pajamas” too! Don’t mind Reagan’s face in the picture…she was ready to eat, not smile for the camera.
Big girl pajamas!
Harper and Emerie had their follow up ear infection appointments on Friday. The office was running late and man…it is really difficult to entertain two one year olds in a tiny, boiling hot room for 40 minutes. Reagan stayed with Grandma, and napped the whole time, so at least we only had to entertain two!
The doctor told us the next few appointments are exceptionally difficult at this age. We are thinking we might split them up and take one at a time to make things less stressful. My other idea is to pack up and bring the pack-and-play with us. Then we can at least set them each down where they can play while we spend two hours there.
One other change in the Douglet household is no more tracker chart! As you know, I like to write things down, memories, silly antics, and definitely the daily schedule. We made it through three Triplet Time books (off Amazon) and once they were no longer available for purchase, I made my own customized Douglets version. We used this for a few more months, keeping up on the day-to-day eating habits, diapers, and funny things throughout the days.
After hitting the year mark, the tracker started to become more effort than help, unlike previous months. We relied on it greatly when the girls were smaller, as schedule was EVERYTHING, and without it we couldn’t remember who ate how much when, let alone get any sleep. It may seem like taking the time to write things down is unneeded effort, but when you are feeding three babies every three hours each day, your mind very quickly jumbles who had how much when. It will also be fun to look back at the first few months of life and see some of the funny notes. For example, there are definitely a few “Emerie peed in her hair!” notes (she’s going to kill me for that someday) or “no one slept in their cribs last night” type of things.
Another transition is away from the baby jumpers. I am sad to see them go; I could watch them giggle and laugh and bounce all day long. We are now to the point they just want to explore and play; and they see the jumpers as confinement. No one has tried to climb out of them yet, but if we continued to use them it would probably happen. Our living room looks so huge now…three jumpers take up a lot of space!
A lot of people dislike jumpers, saying they are bad for babies. Looking into this topic, they can be bad for development, but that is if you leave them in for long periods of time allll the time. Another complaint is it causes children to walk on their tiptoes. In my experience, both are non issues as long as you pay attention to your kids! Harper and Emerie didn’t do tiptoe very much, but Reagan did for a while. As soon as she became mobile, the tiptoes went away and she stands fine now. It’s all about moderation! I will miss those jumpers…
We took advantage of Grandma Sue’s visit and made a few more efforts to baby proof the house. Our tri-level house has extensive staircase area. The house was originally designed with a 7″ gap between the railings; big enough I can stick my head through, so a child can fully hang through it. We have a loft area at the top of the stairs in the living room and it is quite high up. Our cats have always liked they can easily escape the dogs by running through the openings, and the dogs used to sit up in the loft and hang their heads through the railing, surveying their surroundings or to take a nap.
This weekend we ruined those joys for our pets, but made our stairs kid safe. I would love to completely demolished the existing railing, but because…well triplets, we don’t have time for that and just added metal spindles, centered in the 7″ opening and now to municipal code! I believe it turned out really nice, and while we aren’t quite finished with the loft, the girls can go from the living room up to their bedroom (monitored) without fear of falling off the sides.
We are still working on food. The girls love to give Grandma Sue a hard time about her cooking, refusing to try things or eat them. Harper is really a stickler for refusing to enjoy her concoctions, Emerie and Reagan are more easily coaxed. They do, however, all like her chicken noodle soup, vegetables and all! Watching them slurp noodles is literally THE cutest thing.
Because the girls can be a bit picky, we still use baby food as well as whatever we are eating to make sure they get the calorie intake they need. They often refuse to eat the food plopped down in front of them on the table (Harper and Reagan more than Em) and are more willing to try it out if you eat a bit and feed them with your utensil. Silly babies.
They seem to be picky sometimes and other times starving little monkeys. Cheese puffs and yogurt melts are still the favorite; mango slices, green beans, crackers and vege-straws are a hit, and of course french fries are a great snack every once in a while, that’s in their genetics like their mother. They liked our homemade coleslaw the other day too, as long as it entered their mouths from my fork! They enjoy Cheerios if they are off someone else’s spoon. Apparently they aren’t as good as a hand to mouth snack (yet).
We are transitioning from bottle feeds to food intake pretty well. The girls get breakfast, lunch, and dinner each day in the triple table, with a bottle in the morning, afternoon, and right before bedtime. Everyone has three or more teeth coming through, which greatly minimized the amount of milk everyone drinks. For a few days I was bagging a bunch for later this year because they weren’t drinking it. Once the teeth popped through the gums, everyone started drinking their bottles better.
Reagan and Emerie briefly still to drink their bottles
Spring is here (or at least it looks very promising!). The few recent walks feel warm and sunny and like the leaves should appear at any moment. We are excited for Easter next weekend and might do a few bunny photos and play dates. I can’t wait until it is warm enough to sit outside and play with the girls in the sun!
Emerie likes both mom and dad right now, but not Uncle William. She gives him funny looks and will not take a bottle from him. If he throws her in the air, well that’s another story. Then she seems to be okay with him
Reagan received her first swollen lip last week. It is undetermined if she was smacked in the face by a sister (likely) or if she bit it falling down on a toy. Either way, she wasn’t excited about it; but it hasn’t stopped her from climbing on things and testing out her boundaries.
It may seem like taking the time to write things down is unneeded effort, but when you are feeding three babies every three hours each day, your mind very quickly jumbles who had how much when. It will also be fun to look back at the first few months of life and see some of the funny notes. For example, there are definitely a few “Emerie peed in her hair!” notes (she’s going to kill me for that someday) or “no one slept in their cribs last night” type of things.
The Douglets 