A Face to the Complaints

I don't know if everyone is aware, but over the past few days an advocate of the Triplets has come forward. This advocate has voiced his concerns and complaints about pictures of sweet Grandpa Fred and other issues. He has called me in the past concerned that the babies might be watching scary movies with too much blood, and this very morning he told me he found the picture of Perrin's butt inappropriate. Who is this advocate? You can see what he looks like on the left, he is Joey--The Defender of Triplets everywhere! He feels it is his job to watch out for the babies and make sure that they are safe and protected from Monsters and Grandpa Fred.


I've also got a few other pictures to put up of the kids. This first one on the right is Perrin, our resident drama king! He is definitely the most passionate and emotional of the babies; there isn't much gray with him or his moods. He's either extremely happy or really cranky! The transition period for these moods is usually quick. When Meva was attempting to get a good picture of the kids in their Santa hats, she tried to get some individual shots of them which are generally much easier to do. Here is a great one of Perrin. I think he looks like a little elf! He's definitely up to something in this picture, it's just too bad that Meva didn't realize it was the beginning of a cranky episode!


I also have a great picture that I am afraid I will not ever get to take another like it. Sarah and Ryan are laying together in one of their bouncy seats. It seems that in the last two weeks these guys have become HUGE, Sarah specifically. There is no way we can comfortably get them into a bouncy seat together, so this cuddly picture of the two of them taken at the beginning of the month may just be the last of its kind. I'm not too proud to admit that it tugs at my heart that these days are already quickly passing by.


This last photo is part of the soon to be famous holiday baby feast of 2006. Joey the advocate thinks we are trying to eat the babies when he sees these pictures---ahh the imaginations of kids. Think of that it scares me to project what my three will be like all at once with mine and Meva's sick minds passed on to them! Of all the babies this day, Sarah was the most cooperative, which isn't much a surprise. Individually she smiled great as you can see here in all of her salad glory. I call this picture, Sarah Says Lettuce Entertain You! This will definitely help make this a Christmas to remember for more than the obvious reasons.

Baby Shots

Since my last post, the story has spread about receiving complaints about Grandpa Fred. I understand he took it well, but it seems that others close to him didn't----- they seemed to have found it very funny!! Well a funny addendum to this story is that my same nephew Joey is pretty handy with the computer and when my sister lets him see the page, he knows how to scroll with the mouse all on his own!! Guess what he scrolled down to and immediately got upset about again?? This time his comment was "I HATE dat man. Why won't he go away??" Man, that kid is priceless.

Here's a couple of more photo's of what we've done. The one above is Sarah. This is a bit of a prequel to what many of you should have already seen in the Christmas photo's we sent out. She's actually sitting in a lamp shade. It's a really cute picture and she's being a great sport at the moment, which she so often is. The picture to the right is one of the many that we tried to taking of the kids for the actual Christmas card. They were difficult and just weren't in the mood to sit still for the picture. It's a shame to because Ryan hardly EVER smiles that nicely for the camera. He's more the type of guy to give you a sly grin, so that makes this shot more special to me. Too bad Sarah became fascinated with her feet at this time.

Yesterday I put up a picture of Ryan in a pie costume, well this is Perrin's costume. It totally matches his personality because he is a little turkey in so many ways. This photo doesn't do the costume justice, but it's the best one we could get of him at this time. Perrin has become very squirmy of late and he wouldn't sit still.

Speaking of Perrin, we've really been blessed with him. After all the difficulties he has gone through he is progressing at an incredible rate in our opinion. All premies tend to be behind the learning curve of their actual age because they never got their full "developmental time" in the womb. Even though the kids are almost six months old, when you look at their development they are really just four months old.

As a result of this, all of the kids have been paid extra attention to from the medical community due to their preemie status. Instead of well baby visits every few months, our babies are seen monthly by their pediatrician, every few months from the neonatologist, and Perrin will be seeing the neurologist every 6 months, the urologist yearly, and he had been seeing a speech therapist every two weeks. Every check up that the kids get they are given glowing marks, Perrin has even been discharged from his speech therapy! In fact, they are all mostly behaving like six month olds!! This last picture on the right is a good example of what Perrin has been doing---he's leading the pack. Today while I was at work her started a new trick with Meva; that trick is called "You can't change my diaper if I roll all over the floor!" He definitely made her life difficult during this phase as he would flip around back and forth and get into that position you see in the picture. He's obviously ready to go somewhere, we just don't know where that is. It will be interesting to see how much longer it takes for him to actually start crawling!

Baby Fanmail

The previous post had a very nice picture of the Grandpa Fred holding Ryan in the recliner. We all love Fred and thought it was a cute picture, but it hurts me to say this---I've received complaints about that photo. Apparently the objections stem from the fact that Grandpa Fred is in the picture, and I've been asked to "get that man out of da piture."

This request comes from my little nephew Joey in Arizona. He is only three years old, but he really enjoys seeing the pictures and videos of his cousins; but he doesn't seem to find Grandpa Fred as exciting, but we all know that just means he hasn't had a chance to meet Grandpa Fred yet!

So, since Joey really wants a new picture to look at, I thought I would dig around and find a few new ones to share. This one on the left is Ryan, and he is dressed up in a very festive "Pie" costume that Meva made herself. She got this idea from Martha Stewart, possibly in her magazine, but I think they also had it on her daily show too. You can click on the link to see the original. Meva decided to go with making Ryan into a Lemon or Banana Creme Pie, I can never remember which (and I don't think it's that big of a deal). This costume is part of a group of costumes that Meva wanted made for the kids. If you've gotten our Christmas Cards then you've gotten to see the final result. For those of you that haven't gotten one yet, I will hold off until Christmas morning before posting them for all to see and for now we have our little "beasty pie" Ryan. I'm sure this picture will come up at some point when he brings his high school girlfriends over to the house to meet his parents.

Meva wasn't the only one wanting to get into the festive holiday mood and take some seasonal photos. While I wasn't anywhere near as creative, I did try to focus on the natural cuteness of the kids and try for a more traditional and classical looking picture to send out as our X-mas cards. Just like with the picture above, I won't put up the actual photo from the cards until Christmas, but I do have a few other good ones from the session that are worth sharing. This one was actually the last one I took, but looking at it makes you think that the babies were all staring at the hats and saying, "You want me to put that on my head?" Meva and I both thought we would get some great shots like this, but the babies have been less cooperative lately and they were pretty crabby and uninterested in just about anything we did with them. I guess the teething is about ready to hit it's stride.

Remember, click on the photo's to see a larger version of it if you'd like.

November Stragglers

I was just going through the pictures we had from last month and had a few favorites I'd like to share. My folks, as I had mentioned had come out for Thanksgiving, and my mom brought lots of baby Christmas stuff... including these ridiculous Santa slippers, which Ryan ended up wearing. For some reason Ry always ends up wearing ridiculous stuff... anyway, here is Grampa Fred and Ridiculous Ryan.


These last two are just pics of Sarah and Perrin that I like a lot.

Sarah Ziggy Piggy

The babies' appetites are on the rise. Miss Sarah last night was enjoying a rare treat of being the only baby fed at the time (she'd slept while the other two were feeding) and she had her dad's undivided attention... nonetheless, she felt he wasn't feeding her fast enough and would cry and cry for more sweet potatoes... Chuck remarked how he was shoveling it in so fast, and she still wasn't satisfied that maybe she should just eat the sweet potatoes right out of the jar. So, he set the sweet potatoes up like a drink, which she then actually did drink and for the first time that night was satisfied at the rate she could get the food down. Here's a picture of the end result
followed by a video of... Miss Ziggy Piggy.



The babies are now all up in separate cribs.
Ryan and Sarah were sharing a crib as they were the soundest sleepers, we would start off the and we would start out night with them sleeping seperately laying across the width and in the morning, we would find them bumping into each other - here's our little Ryan (the cuddler) cuddling Sarah in their sleep. So now the almost 10 x 10 nursery is crammed with three cribs and a dresser and a swing. It's pretty tight in there.





Lastly is a picture that I really like. It reminds me of a dream Chuck had nearly a year ago now... where he was playing in a pile of babies... that's exactly what we have here...

Entertaining babies

I think we have three little baby time warps... It's amazing to me how quickly time gets away from us. Things continue to go well. The babies are getting stronger and starting to roll over a little more and Ryan although he isn't really 100% crawling - gets around a little when they have tummy time.

We had a nice Thanksgiving. My parents and my sister Missy came over and had lots of QT with the babies. The babies all had a little Thanksgiving dinner too... they had their first sweet potatoes, and I gave them all a bite of pumpkin pie. They all enjoyed that... the boys were very sweet with the pie, liked their few bites and moved on. Sarah INSISTED on having more... she'd thow a little fit if she didn't have some and ended up eating a whole piece of crustless pumpkin pie.

We have lots of cool pics lately, and another time when we have more of a chance I will post some more pictures but for now... a little bit on Ryan...

Ryan is the only baby with a decent head of hair at this point. Sarah is starting to fill in her male pattern baldness, and Perrin will probably end up with some sort of skater look when his half a head of hair grows in, but Ry has hair long enough to style. So Chuck and I were fooling around with ... The Many Looks of Ry...


First, is Classic Ryan with a slightly toussled look.


















Next is Nerdy Ryan with all his hair combed forward,






then Professional Ryan,
and lastly Cupie Ryan. We were going for a punk look, but he turned out looking like a cupie doll.

As I mentioned before the babies are starting on baby food. Today we did applesauce again, and it was funny watching their reactions. Here is a video that cracks me up with all the babies eating applesauce. Applesauce Video

Dinner Time

Things at home continue to go well. Perrin has a speech therapist that comes to check on him twice a month and he's passing with flying colors. The babies are all getting so big lately, they seem like giants to me anymore. They are getting strong and rolling over more often - although I don't know that they are doing it intentionally.







We are introducing more and more baby food.
We've been making much of it ourselves in the food processor. They are especially fond of bannanas - we often can't shovel it in fast enough. They are quite messy and Perrin especially gets angry if we can't feed him fast enough, so he throws his little arms all over the place, running them across his mouth and across the food there then rubbing all over his head. It's quite an ordeal. These pics show their first taste of carrots. (the second course after bannanas)






The babies still conk out pretty well after dinnertime, and Chuck thought it would be funny to have this picture of Perrin asleep like he'd been pigging out on potato chips. The line on his chest that looks like a straw under his skin is a part of his shunt. His wounds are all now healed over finally, and we are looking forward to our dog returning to us where he can lick a baby without worry of infection. `

Smilest Baby

I've got a brief moment here before the babies wake and my work day starts, so I thought I would share with you an e-mail Chuck sent me last week...

Baby,

It's been too quite here in the house. Babies are all sleeping and not
making any sounds, laundry and housework is getting done, but now I hear a
stirring. First it's from one baby, then another, and then still another.
Grunts and moans, and little cries and yawps. The frequency is increasing
and moving together almost as one!!

I fear the worst, a concentrated attack. I do not think I am long for this
world, but I wanted to tell you that I love you should I not make it through this inevitable onslaught.

Know I am with you while you travel your geriatric path. Wish me well.


Finally, here's a little video of the babies hanging out and all in a really good mood.  Click on, 

Smilest Baby to see the video.

A Sad Day

I'd like for Sundays to become a very good day for us as a family to get to spend some time together when the kids are older. As they get older this will be a day of attending church services and bonding over NFL football.

The babies have been blessed with their first football season as the Ohio State Buckeyes are undefeated and the top college team in the nation, and our beloved Chicago Bears have been dominating during the first half of the year; until yesterday that was.

Meva doesn't have the same sense of fan support for the teams as I do, so I have to really beg her to dress them accordingly for game days. Since I was home this weekend due to my vasectomy I was able to get the kids in their proper attire for the Bears game. Although it was a sad day, here is how they were at the beginning of the morning prior to kickoff.


And then our darling Sarah had a thought about the results of yesterday's game.


I can't wait until they are older and can really get into watching the games with me. There's not too much new to report today, but there are some great pictures so I thought we'd share them with everyone. The only thing of real note that happened was last night Perrin began talking up a storm out of the blue. He's been the most vocal baby since his surgery and I thought to capitalize on this by calling someone and just having him talk to them when they picked up the phone.

It was 11:00 our time which made it too late to call anyone near us or in Ohio, so I called my sister in Arizona who is an hour behind us. I called and my niece answered, but by this time Perrin's talking was turning into full out crying! Determined to go through with this, I still put him up to the phone and let him talk charge. Well, my niece Amanda answers the phone and it was hysterical. She was initially stunned and then recovers and starts talking to the baby. Here's a transcript of the conversation:

Perrin: "WAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!, WAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!, WAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!"

Amanda: "Hello Baby!"

Perrin: "WAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!, WAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!, WAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!, WAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"

Amanda: "You don't sound very happy."

Perrin: "WAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"

Perrin: "WAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"

Perrin: "WAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"

My niece didn't really know what else to say and since she never really made any comments to me or about anything else, I figured it would be funny to just hang up the phone and make the whole experience seem as though Perrin called on his own!

I guess crying babies must call them often because they never called me back! Apparently it's such a common event there that they knew what Perrin was saying and didn't need to call me back at all. It was just funny. Anyways, that was our weekend.

Montage of Cuddles

Things at our home are going well. Chuck is home recovering from his vasectomy which makes today the 3rd day since the babies have come home that Chuck and I have the day off together. I am enjoying his company since our time is so limited these days.

I'm hoping we can find the time to get those thank you notes written to all you wonderfully generous people out there. Sometimes one adult and three babies doesn't allow you to get much done. Overall though, I think we are doing remarkably well all things considered. It helps that most of the time the babies are very good.

I thought I'd share with you this little montage. Ryan tried to cuddle with Sarah. He actually did this on his own. Most of the time, the babies prefer to be with Chuck or me, but don't care to cuddle with each other. So, it was very cool that Ryan wanted to do that. Here are the pictures as the process went...

Halloween Picture Parade

The first major holiday for the triplets has come and gone and I think it was a blast. Although we had more fun in the days leading up to Halloween, it was fun to actually have a nice understated day with them that was just a little bit special.

Perrin is having his post surgery check-up this morning with his nuerosurgeon, which I expect will go perfectly. As I have said before, he's like a whole new baby, so I am confident that there isn't anything to worry about. That being said, I will post another update later today after they come home.

Did I mention pictures somewhere? Here they are!


The photo on the right is Sarah in her little witches hat. I had a hard time actually getting this picture because she was smiling and laughing so much that she was pulling her hands up and in front of her face. To the left is Sarah dressed up as her middle name, Flower. She is becoming more and more photogenic and she is always quick with a smile when ever we try to snap a photo of her. As you can guess Halloween is a great holiday for us to play dress up with her.


The next photos here are of Ryan. On the right is a happy little fellow during his feeding. The little black mustache he is sporting on half of his lip is acidopholus, which is a powder we put on the nipple bottle that helps with his digestion. We just thought he looked cute with half of a Snidley Whiplash mustache. The other picture is from Halloween night when he was a cat. He was in a pretty mellow mood that evening and that was the best smile I could catch from him.


Perrin spent his Halloween mostly as a pumpkin, but he did take a stab at being Mickey Mouse. A few days before the holiday Meva had the kids play dress up in some of our extra costumes and she took pictures of them. Perrin didn't look to thrilled about playing dress up, but as you can see from the right photo he was all smiles and giggles for both Meva and I. He has a matching orange onesie that goes with it, but he had a little accident that day and he spit-up all over it, so he was to change it. For some reason when he wears this hat he reminds me of Elmer Fudd, so when you see him remember to be vewy vewy qwuiet!


I really try not to favor any one child over the others, but sometimes its hard to do that when one of them is so photogenic. As you can see on the left, we've been trying to get the kids started eating cereal. Sarah tries to be neat, but she just can't seem to get this down pat. The kids have not been very successful with this and they usually seem a bit confused whenever we try to put a spoonful in their mouth. This picture of Sarah is typical of the results from one of these such attempts except she's much nicer than her brothers, Perrin in particular throws a royal fit and tells us that he doesn't have time for this crap and that he wants his bottle NOW! For the most part we are supplementing by putting cereal in their formula bottles at the end of the night so that they might sleep better.

This last picture just cracks me up. Sarah was in a fantastic mood and I thought she would look adorable with this little bunny hat on her. She was all smiles and laughs with me and then I put this hat on her. Almost as soon as it touched her head she began throwing a fit. We get spoiled with how much a charmer she is most of the time, but she can put on a tantrum with the best of them. I sat her on my recliner to get this picture and what you can't see is her kicking her legs to go along with this screaming. She sounded like we had really hurt her, but the moment I took the hat off she went right back to smiling for me. The hat must be haunted.

A Long Overdue Update

I planned on doing this update yesterday, but the website was down for maintanence and I didn't have a chance later on. Now that I believe I have this thing working well, it's time to fill in the gaps from the past three weeks we've been away. I think the easiest way is to just spotlight each kid individually.

Ryan Our little Beast is doing just fine. Like all of the kids, he has started taking some rice cereal in his formula at least once a day (subject to daddy's schedule and fleeting memory!). He had his first baby shot from the pediatrician yesterday, a simple RSV (I think?) shot right in the tush! He was sleeping soundly and then was rudely waken, stripped to the diaper, and then stabbed in the check with a needle. If you've spent any time with Ryan, you already know how ticked off he was with that! Dr. Klipfel was wonderfully gentle, but I doubt Ryan would agree.

Ryan, and all of the babies were weighed again. Ryan now weighs 11 pounds, 12 ounces! He is getting so big. Unlike the other two babies, he is less fat. Don't get me wrong, he still has baby fat, but compared to the other two, he is a solid little guy. Meva says she can see the way his body is growing that he will be very much like me. That poor child will never find comfortable shoes!

Developmentally he is coming along fine. We are working with him and strengthening his legs and back by getting him to stand and sit. He lacks the balance to do either on his own, but he is working hard to get there. It's funny to watch him try this as he gives out plenty of his trade mark grunts, snarls, and growls. He is also responding to our voices and he will smile a warm little, tight lipped smile for us. Meva calls it a cowboy smile, which I figure he does to try and keep the trail dust out of his mouth. He's also been known to give some giggles to his father from time to time.

Sarah If I had to choose just one word to describe her, it would have to be happy. Sarah is always smiling and grinning. She has several different smiles and she uses them often in a way that makes you think she knows what's going on around her and she's privy to the conversation. She is still holding on to the title of Biggest Baby as her current weight is 11 pounds, 14 ounces! She is huge!

Sarah is developing at a great rate. Like her brothers, she's holding her head up almost constantly. The most impressive thing she does is the duration of time she will spend standing upright with our support only for balance. I swear she can do it for over 2 full minutes at a time, I expect she will be crawling and trying to stand on her own by Christmas. Girls truly do develop faster than boys, which makes me excited to think about her in football pads!

The other bit of news about Sarah is that she is experiencing what I call pre-teething. Her hands are constantly in her mouth and she is drooling more and more each day. It's cute to watch he gnawing on her little fists, but I know the dark times are coming.

Perrin I almost don't know where to begin with him. On October 5th he had a regular check-up with his pediatrician and he was given a great report card. The next day however Meva and I saw signs that his Hydrocephaleus might be returning and we brought him to the ER right in the middle of my urology exam. He had thrown up unrelated to feeding, his soft spots were firm and bulging, he was crabby and his eating had been on the low side the previous few days. After getting a CT scan, the doctors determined he had considerable swelling in his brain and they elected to do brain surgery the very next morning.

Like the tough little guy that he is, he pulled through it amazingly well! We had a brief scare when he developed colonic spasms that had us take him back to the hospital as a precaution, but they passed once he had a giant bowel movement. Otherwise he is awesome. In fact, in many ways he is like a totally different baby.

Prior to the surgery he wasn't very interactive and didn't smile very often. A few days after the surgery he started smiling and laughing more than we had ever seen him before. Ryan and Sarah has been smiling on command (interaction) for sometime now, but Perrin never really did. That is no longer the case as he is often just smiling and laughing and overall giving very happy faces to everyone. In addition his appetite has returned to tremendous levels and he is often in need of reigning in when we feed him. He will regularly try and drink 7 or 8 ounces at a feeding. It is his appetite that prompted Meva and I to introduce the cereal as a way of supplying him with more food and calories.

His scars are healing well and once we see a bit more improvement we will let him go without his bandages, but right now we are keeping them on because he likes to rub his head against things. Yesterday he weighed in at a whopping 11 pounds, 12 ounces just like Ryan. Those two have been going neck and neck trying to catch up to Sarah for weeks now, but my money is on Ryan being the biggest (But probably not the tallest) of them all when it's said and done.

This last picture of Perrin is from Monday night when he finally got a regular room in the Pediatrics wing. The picture doesn't do justice to how small and tiny he looked in that room. I felt so horrible when I got there because he was just laying there all alone. I was thankful that Meva and I were able to spend almost the entire time with him, only being away long enough for one to leave and the other to get there. Luckily the Bears were playing that night, so Perrin and I wore our Bears stuff and watched the game together, which was one of the most incredible games we've seen yet.

Considering how the blog site has been going down for maintanence and such I am going to end this here and take the opportunity to update this now.

The Return

We've been gone a long time and much has happened. For those of you who weren't aware of what was going on, we had our account disabled by google and they have been just horrible in responding to our please for help or assistance. It's been almost 3 weeks now without word from them, so I have decided to take things into my own hands.

Presently I have set up a brand new blog, but if all of my work has been successful you wouldn't know this is a different blog by looking at it. I'm not really much of a programmer with HTML code and these templates, but I think I did a pretty good job of tweaking with this template to allow anyone to access the old one directly from here.

I know that there are far more people checking this blog out on a daily basis than I even know of as people have shared the URL to this site with others, and we are both thankful and appreciative of this. The one wrinkle this causes is that we can't possibly send out invites to everyone, so if you have ever sent the link to this blog to someone in the past I would ask you to take a few minutes and do that again. To make it easy, it's:

http://kennedytriplets2.blogspot.com.

If any one has any trouble sending a link of this to someone, please let me know with an email. You can reach me directly at Chuck's Email . Thanks for that help!!

Today is Wednesday and the kids all have appointments to get their first shots at the pediatrician's office. Once we get back and I set Meva up with what she needs to do to post on this, we will fill everyone in with all of the exciting events of the last few weeks.

But before I go, I know everyone loves to see pictures of the kids, so here are a few new ones that we haven't yet had a chance to share.

The first picture here is of Sarah and Ryan. They were both a bit crabby this day so I sent them to bed early with their binkys. Once there they immediately calmed down and I decided to see if I could get a picture of them holding hands. Ryan held onto Sarah's little finger really well and they seemed to be getting on fine. About 10 minutes later Ryan started screaming bloody murder. When I ran in to see what had happened, Sarah had taken his binky away from him and was holding it in her two little hands and wouldn't let him have it back!! It was priceless and I wish I would have thought to get a pciture of that.

This next one here is of Perrin. He's a changed little boy and he was in a very good mood for me here, smiling and playing on him lambskin rug. We used to go days without a smile from Perrin, and even them they weren't really very big smiles. Now he smiles several times a day and laughs and plays like the other two kids. IN fact I was able to get him to smile for me today by talking to him and asking him for it, just like I do with Ryan and Sarah! With everything that little guy has beed through and overcome, I'm not ashamed to admit that I feel like crying because I am so overcome with joy!!

Speaking of smiles, here's our smiliest baby! It was one of the more recent bath times and I was trying to get a picture of Sarah smiling in her little duck towel. This picture was difficult to take because one; I was afraid Sarah would move real fast and slide off of the kitchen counter, and two: she was punching me and swinging her little fist around. I didn't even have to ask her to smile, she just thought it was funny to be punching me and basically doing her best to make my job more difficult. Yeah, her teen years are going to be a real treat!!!

This last one is Ryan, and it's actually our current desktop wallpaper on the computer. Despite how nice this picture turned out, I almost deleted it because I missed so much of what I was trying to capture. First off, he's actually dressed as a little pumpkin! He has an orange "onsie" on and the hat he's wearing is actually a pumpkin top hat! Perrin and Sarah were screaming their heads off about 3 feet away and I was very distracted trying to snatch a few photos before I began the feedings and changing of diapers. It's a great photo regardless and the way his hat looks on him reminds me of his great-grandpa Robert McKibben.

Well. that's it for now. You can see any of the images larger by clicking on them. We will both have more to write about in the coming days, so check back with us soon.