In the company of greatness

I'd just like to give a shout out to Chuck, who is a great dad and husband. He manages this household with three babies, cranky lately at that... with an amazing grace. Granted, when I am at home with the babies on the weekend, it is a rough start from work early on Friday through the weekend primarily on my own as Chuck is gone working 20ish hours in two days + running errands after work. Nonetheless, it is all too clear to me that while I do a right out respectable job being home with the babies, Chuck takes it to another level.


The moment he walks in the door he brings such a light to the place. Just yesterday he walked in and said, do you want to clean or hang out with the babies. I opted to clean, and he just sang the most ridiculous songs and played with the babies and they all just giggled and loved it. He's really a great dad... and today I came home to home baked cookies and dinner made, despite him running short on sleep and feeling kind of sick himself. Not many people could do what he does, and he deserves a great big pat on the back and a few hip, hip, hoorahs.

The babies are getting more and more interactive every day. Today Sarah figured out the phone, she was mad when the phone stopped talking to her (Auntie Grandma), so Chuck called me at work on my break and I talked to her. Chuck says she was baffled by it, and knew my voice, but couldn't figure out where I was.

We had a great time when Ellie, Brian, and Heather came out the other weekend. I'd been feeling too punk to comment on it until just lately, so I'm happy to catch y'all up. For starters, it was terrific to see some of my oldest and dearest friends, not to mention FINALLY getting to meet their baby!

Ellie moves so well, it was neat to see her walking all around with support from the couch, chairs, etc. while our babies just wriggled on the floor. We aren't too far from that, and we've decided not to baby proof the place before we move so baby jail, here we come.

When they were out visiting, we all went to Ikea. It was the first time I'd put the triplet stroller together myself, and we picked a good store to venture into... we need big wide eisles and doors, and they have that. Normally we are something to point and stare at, but at Ikea, it kept happening in various languages. Tres?, no Quatro! and about 3-4 other languages I didn't recognize. The babies did well, except little Ryan had been constipated, so I pushed the prune juice and apparently pushed a little too hard. It worked a little too well. In retrospect, I'm not so sure they didn't have a tiny bout of the stomach flu round two as later Sarah and then Perrin had a few puking / diarrhea bouts... but regardless, that was my first experience with a diaper changing area in a public place.

Lastly, I'd just like to share some pictures Heather got of Perrin, Ellie, and Ryan that I think are absolutely adorable. And finally, a video of the napping car (in reference to the napping house) and of Sarah being kissed by Ellie.

I Am, Therefore I Crank

The title says it all, we have cranky babies. A nasty little cold has made its way into the house and taken a hold of all three babies. Fevers, stuffy noses, runny noses, congestion, and coughs have become sites over the last few days, with yesterday being the worse. Just how bad was it? It's now about 6am on Friday and I finally got all three kids sleeping at the same time. Ryan was the most difficult throughout the night, running a fever, crying, and for reasons I don't understand he kept poking me in the throat.

We've got them on a couple of different medicines that Meva has prescribed for them and they go through periods of discomfort and crankiness. There wasn't a point yesterday that I didn't have to hold at least one kid because they couldn't be consoled otherwise, even then I was only successful about 75% of the time.

I'm about to move Ryan from the jumperoo and back into the crib so that I can finally catch some type of sleep. Perrin has an urologist appointment today, so I will be needing to drag all three kids out to this and I will need my strength and my wits about me for that. Wish me luck.

Photo Parade

There's really not too much to report on here, everything is going along pretty well. Other than the everyone in the house being sick with what looks like a weaker version of the stomach flu, we can't complain much at all.

Over the last week we were able to snap a few interesting photos of the kids. Our friends Brian and Heather came out for the weekend to visit. It was a great time because neither they or us had gotten to see the the new babies. They have a 10 month old daughter named Eleanor, or Ellie for short. Ellie is quite different than our three kids, she can crawl and stand on her own while holding on to something, she eats much more solid food, and she can really manipulate her toys. The funny thing is that she is really tiny, I think she weighs less than any of our three porkers! She's quite a charmer though and very active.

The first picture is of all four of the babies in onsies that say "Born in 2006" to commemorate the year all of them were born. Ellie was a bit difficult during the taking of this picture; she just wanted to explore and play, no time for sitting around thank you very much! There is so much for her to see and do in a new place. She especially enjoyed taking Gus' toys and playing with them herself. You can see her to the left chewing on his yellow rubber duck! Luckily we were able to clean it off and sanitize it so that she could play with it without the adults worrying that it was dirty. Although she just kinda looks like her parents never feed her, I can honestly say that's not the case. She doesn't eat a lot, but she is feed regularly despite what this picture might say!!

Speaking of hungry babies, we often joke about Sarah being hungry all the time. I know its just the age she is, but of the three babies she is always tasting things and putting things in her mouth with much more frequency. We've already got pictures of her trying to eat my shoes and my toes, but this was a new one. You can see on the right that she is so hungry she can't wait for her daddy to finish making the bottles and had to chew on something, it may as well be the jumperoo legs! If you double click on the picture you can actually see her tongue out and licking the blue leg of the jumperoo! She is insane and we always find her in the most unusual spots looking for food. That's how we came upon her for the next picture.

To the left is what we found the other morning when we got out of bed. We heard some scurrying and rummaging in the pantry and when we opened the doors, look at what we found trying to get into the baby biter biscuits!! If she's able to get out of her crib and climb up a couple of shelves in search of food now, what's going to be happening when she's 2 or 3 years old? I think I'm going to have to start locking the cabinets or caging her at night so she doesn't get out. Too bad she doesn't get up and vacuum! Not to be outdone, Sarah isn't the only one with issues when it comes to eating. Perrin is quite a handful in his own way.

Always active and wondering about what's going on around him, he is a challenge to feed even with the Podee. Not only do I try to restrain his arms and pin them down, I have gone one step further. It seems Perrin just gets real excited when he's eating and ends up pulling the nipple out of his mouth and then can't get it back in. He then proceeds to cry and yell because he's hungry and not eating. We go over and put the nipple back in for him, only to have him do it again, sometimes only 2 seconds after we help him out. The other trick I've developed? I take the caps from the podees and put them over his hands so he can't grab the nipple with his fingers! Sadly, it's not a long term fix as he can get out of them quicker than you can blink.

That's all for now, if you want to see a bigger image, click on the photo. And don't forget to visit Meva's video gallery on iTube by clicking it at the beginning of each post!

Sarah In The Land of The Lost

I think I recently mentioned that Meva and I haven't been taken as many pictures as we normally do of late. Sure enough, I go and say that and then we take a barage of photos! First off is the funny one of the bunch, and that's Sarah with her "Sleestak: hairstyle. It's a little hard to see from the picture, but it was coming to a point in the middle of her head just like the reptile from 1970's Saturday morning TV. Yes, that means my daughter looks like a Sleestak, the creatures from the kids show Land of the Lost, and she acts like one too----hissing and growling as a way of communicating. She got that hairstyle as a result of always licking EVERYTHING! She had been particularly bad one day and had totally drenched my shirt in multiple spots. She thought this was funny when I pointed it out to her, and then she proceeded to drool over me as I tried to explain this. So I thought it would be funny to give her a big, wet, giant lick of my own on the top of her head. That new doo was the end result! The funniest thing about it is that it wouldn't go down after awhile. We tried combing it and it stayed, we even had her wear a hood over night, but when the next morning came, she was still a Sleestak.

These next two photos are hilarious. They show Sarah in all of her sad hungry glory. When she is hungry, which is all of the time, she will eat anything in site---as you can see nothing is safe. I was changing one of the boy's diapers and getting them dressed when I felt something on my big toe. When I turned to look, there was Sarah chewing on my big tow. When I asked her what she was doing, she gave me the look above right, shocked that she was totally busted. It was all in fun though because as I started to kid her about it, as you can see on the left she realized it was silly too! As of the last two days, first Sarah and then Perrin have been growling like monsters. It's a very low pitched, raspy growl like you would imagine coming from a creature feature type monster. Grandma Muriel was lucky enough to hear little Sarah squeaking in the background and commented on it. She then immediately started her growling so I held the phone to her mouth and let Grandma hear that too. Quite a dichotomy.

The next picture to the left is our little Fudd, he's rolled himself into the blanket we use to cover the floor while the kids are having tummy time. Fudd is showing his cousin Joey what happens when Uncle Chuck is ready to fix a baby's but and make sure it is working the right way. At this point they are all over the place, investigating everything, even what's under the blankets. When he was spotted, he tried to hide. Even though his mother is very strict with her Robert's Rules for correct crawling protocol, he is still doing a good job of it, even though to me it looks like he's doing an Army Belly Crawl behind enemy lines. I think that once they all realize their bellies don't need to be on the ground, the crawling will be in full force.

Not to be out done by her brother, over on the right is sweet little Sarah again. She is such a Daddy's girl it isn't even funny. Now if you've seen me with her, you know that is so true. No matter what's going on or what she's doing, if I come into the room I am often the only thing that she is interested in (must be the shoes!!). I didn't realize what degree this went to until I woke up yesterday morning to find that she had crawled over to my snow shoveling pants and curled herself into them and fallen asleep! Thankfully I only wore them for about 5 minutes the night before while I was digging Meva's car out for work the next morning. Hopefully she didn't chew on them too much, but this is the girl that has fallen asleep with her tongue hanging out like a basset hound.

Sarah wasn't the only one with a unique look or hairstyle. Little Ryan woke up from a nap today with this very nice Mohawk and a pair of seriously puffy eyes. You can tell how thrilled he was to have the camera flashing in his eyes after he woke up crying for some strange reason. I didn't want to miss the chance of getting this photo, so I didn't turn on the lights behind him to help with the picture. However if you click on it twice, or any of the pictures here for that matter, you be given a larger picture to look at. It took me 12 shots before I got one even this good, Ryan kept rolling away from me and trying to go back to sleep. Today he's been more crabby than playful and that look has been pretty common throughout the day.

Lastly is our future chef, little Fudd. This hat of his is part of an outfit, but when Meva showed me this picture she took, I thought he looked like Chef Boy-Ar-Dee Jr. It sounds ridiculous until you compare the photo of him with an actual picture of the original, Hector Boiardi. I know it's mixing commercials, but I laugh hysterically when I look at Perrin in this shot and imagine him saying in a bad Chico Marx type accent "Now dat'sa spicy meat-a-ball!!"Even though it's only been about 8 months, I already have a quite a menagerie of critters; a kids show monster, a pasta chef, and a punk kid with a Mohawk! I can't wait to see what happens when they become teens and actually start driving and doing other things

It Moves!

Sunday I had to spend my day working a sales event from 11am until 10pm and I wasn't able to do much of anything with the kids. I have a better understanding of how Meva feels on Mondays since she is gone from 8am until about 9pm, you're basically giving the kids a kiss goodbye and goodnight on your way out the door.

To make matters worse, Sunday Perrin crawled a few steps, and he did it twice!!! She wasn't able to get it on video, but we will in the future. Of all the kids he's the one who shouldn't be crawling first, but it doesn't surprise me at all that he is. I was feeling a little down about now getting to see this, then we had an explosion yesterday. I put all three of them down on the floor for some tummy time and moved all their toys away from them. It only took a few moments and then Perrin got frustrated and crawled a few steps over and got his plastic key ring. Not missing a beat, Ryan saw this and almost immediately went after this giant weebel that we have!! That was pretty cool to see how they feed and work off of each other, almost like a gestalt.

Sarah on the other hand was a little bit more stubborn (naturally). None of the usual toys worked with her, she just wasn't that interested. I had to pull out the big guns (literally) and got out Sarah's favorite thing in the whole world to play with. It's going to sound strange, or even gross, but for whatever reason she just loves this thing. Meva was shocked the first time she saw me give this to her to play with. Her eyes grow REAL BIG like saucers and she often gives out a squeal and hugs this thing before becoming totally engrossed in it. I always makes sure I've cleaned it before I left her play with it, so don't fret there. This favorite thing of hers in my white gym shoe! She's totally nuts, but she's really into it!! I don't know if I have a miniature Imelda Marcos on my hands or if she just really digs her daddy, but my shoes are number one with her at the moment.

So, I place my shoe in front of her, about a foot (bad pun, I know) out of her reach, and she giggles, wiggles and squeaks when she sees it. After about 3 minutes of not being able to get to it, she does the tiniest little crawl and gets about a third of the way there. Once more, then a third and final time and she's got it! The last one to crawl and we owe it all to my ridiculously large feet!

Another cool thing that is happening of late is how well the babies are interacting with each other when they play. The will frequently share something large and chew on it from both ends simultaneously, or hold hands and play with each other, or just look at another baby and touch them and "talk" to them. And poor Ryan, he of the longest hair, sometimes they pick on him and pull his hair. He really doesn't like that. Perrin is by far the worse offender of this as I think he is just very curious about hair. I know it's just curiosity and instinctual movements, but sometimes it looks like Ryan is slapping Perrin right after this happens. It's pretty funny. To the right is Ryan in the middle of one of his "explorations." Of the three, he's the most curious about the rest of the house and he often goes all over the place, towards the door, under the tables, or in this case under one of their vibrating chairs. Once when I got up to go to the bathroom, I came out and he was half-way down the hall as though he was looking for me. Anyways, this is Ryan in what almost looks like a little cage that he completely got himself into all on his own.

Well, time to go back out and shovel some more snow after I get the kids put down for their afternoon nap

Snot Fun At All

Yes, the first real case of the sniffles have arrived! Despite having colds, the kids have all been in what I would call exceptional moods. Sure they're cranky from time to time, but no more than mommy and daddy are. If I've noticed anything it's that they are much more extreme in their moods. When they're cranky, they are exceptionally cranky--crying for longer periods and with greater urgency; when they're fussy---they cry because they're hungry and then refuse to eat, but they will chew on everything else (teething sign, I know); when they're tired---the sleep a lot more and a lot longer. And of course, there is snot EVERYWHERE!!! They are like machines. Sometimes they are so slimy and nasty that you hate picking them up.

Meva and I are working on getting them to take extended naps during the afternoon. It might be a bit early, but the worst that will happen is they will cry in their cribs and not sleep. We've only been doing this for a couple of days, but I am seeing positive results. It's mostly been happening in a catch-as-catch-can manner, but I believe we will be starting a firmer schedule early next week once we're convinced that this is working well for them. Basically we've only been putting them down singly or as a group in our bed. Tomorrow I'll be trying them together in their room. I'm almost ashamed to admit I am really looking forward to having a few hours to myself in the day if this works.

I think we are becoming a bit more selective in our picture selections as of late since we really haven't taken that many new pictures in awhile. The one up top is just the kids in these incredibly cute and warm outfits they got for Christmas from my sister Teri (Aunty Gramma). They really came in handy with this cold spell!! The best part is that when we stand them up the little pointy hoods make them almost look like some kind of doll or puppet. This next picture is of Sarah. The babies are really getting into Tummy Time and enjoy playing with their toys and each other. Despite all their different rattles and electronic toys that flash, sing, and play music, I think their favorite toys are the bouncy chairs and the jumperoos. This one shows a common theme as Sarah has rolled completely under a jumperoo while Ryan is still in it and jumping away! Just seconds after this was taken he began jumping on her head. My tough as nails little girl took it without a whimper!

The next one is just a quick photo of the boys in some matching onesies they have. I like the look of that one piece and I think the boys look adorable in them. Perrin was in a real good mood for this picture and his covering up a great little "Fudd" smile laying next to Ryan. The last two are the results of the kids having a father who partly views them as toys. As Meva was walking out the door the other morning for work, I had them hop on each other's back and make a Triplet Train. The best part of this is that they stayed with it the entire time I was snapping pictures and I had to pull them apart when I was done.

Of late they are eating more solid foods in one sitting and I think you can really see how smart they are becoming as they are visibly getting used to what all the circumstances are around a feed time. Whether its looking directly at a bottle or spoonful of food, or watching mommy or daddy leave a room and then crying, to chewing on everything they can get to, they are pretty amazing. They are so used to the microwave oven's sounds that they will get a bit fussy once they hear that. The other day while I was sitting on the floor and changing diapers on the boys, Sarah squirmed her way to me and started trying to chew and eat my foot. That's a hungry child right there for you!