A Pile Of Leaves

We've got some nice old trees in our neighborhood that are just huge and full of vibrant colors this time of year. Their are so many of them on our block that I end up racking and blowing the yard at least three times a season and collecting enough leaves to fill approximately 40 garbage bags. It's not an exaggeration my any means. We recently had a nice warm evening That I thought would be perfect to for the triplets to experience their first time in a pile of leaves. Judge for yourself how well that went:

First one in was Perrin, He definitely wasn't sure about this.

Sarah however was very curious.

The it was time to throw them all in together.

By this point they all decided how they felt about the whole experience, it was kinda scary.

Daddy came to try and tell us its fun. Daddy is a weirdo sometimes, but we believed him that it was safe.


We were really ready to go back in the house and play with our toys.

Although Ryan was amazed at Daddy and his hat, Perrin sad it was over and time to come in. He was mad at daddy for this.

Well, we've got a big thanks giving weekend coming up this week and we hope to have plenty of pictures to share, maybe even while we're there. Stay tuned!!

Changes Are Here

You're noticing the changes I've made as you read this. They're totally seasonal and will change after the Holidays, but I'd love some feedback from people. Please send me your thoughts via email at Triplet Dad.

Sharon The Destruction

In the past we've talked about the destructive prowess of our resident Baby Huey, Ryan "BammBamm" Kennedy, but I fear we've been a bit unfair in our coverage. All of our children are destructive. Period. This is a fact of the stubborn nature they've inherited from both Meva and I, as well as my unique gift of freakish strength that they all possess to a degree. After months of collecting and a few more months of procrastinating, I'm finally getting around to posting the proof. I think the most interesting aspect of these photos is that each destructive act reflects a portion of their personalities, but please judge for yourself:

We don't call Ryan Bamm Bamm for nothing! No Rattle is ever safe!!

For over 6 months I've had the remains of this block waiting for a photo. This occurred at the height of Perrin's paper cravings.


Sarah has always had a love for food, and I think this photo just kinda sums it up perfectly.

Here's an extra little photo of Ryan and his Aunt Sharon during his first exposure to the Arts!

The picture of Ryan and Sharon was taken at my niece Ashley's final high school play. Uncle Louie was the chef in charge of the meals for the dinner theater performance. Ashley's final play was a really a Shakespeare sampler that was a lot of fun to watch. The babies were very awake and curious about everything. Ryan was the most interested in the play, he was actively watching and following along to the best of his little baby abilities. They were laughing and clapping and unfortunately they also got talkative too. Luckily uncle Louie had extra cookies from dinner and that helped to keep them quiet.............for awhile at least. All things considered, they were very well behaved and we both enjoyed exposing the kids to the Theater, even high school drama, at an early age.

Lastly, I wanted to tell everyone about a very annoying little habit Ryan has developed of late. It doesn't matter how much he has ate, how recently he ate, or even if he's currently eating, if he sees Mommy or Daddy eating, he absolutely must have some of what we are eating because even if it's the exact same thing they are eating. If we refuse, he gets mad and cries and sometimes throws a little fit and drops to the floor and kicks his feet. Obviously we must have chocolate forks or glazed plates!

That's it for now. I have some photos of the babies first exposure to a large pile of leaves, so check back in a few days!!

Halloween Picture Parade

My hand is still hurting and I'm not going to be too wordy again, so I apologize for going lite on information. There are a few things Meva and I would like to share.

First thing is that Perrin had his one year follow-up visit with Dr. Hahn, his neurologist, for his hydrocephalus. Dr. Hahn said Perrin was doing fine and he gave him a clean bill of health in regards to all things hydrocephalus. We actually suspected this would be the case and continue to count our blessings that he continues to do well. We were lucky that Perrin had such a great medical team behind his diagnosis and treatment. That's why we appreciate everyone who supported us on our charity walk. On behalf of the parents and people who aren't as fortunate as Perrin, thank you.

Milestone-wise, the kids have started to do some cool and fun things. All three kids are now playing "Sooooo Big", but sometimes Perrin only uses one hand and looks like he's giving a Nazi salute. Meva's also really worked hard with getting the kids to start pointing to body parts and we're seeing some small success, with Sarah of course leading the way. I think all of them will occasionally point to their nose, but Sarah will also point out her eyes and her belly and belly button. (We call them her "Buddha Belly" and "Buddha Belly Button"!)

Next thing that's cool is each of the kids are using some sign language, specifically using the sign for milk and Sarah has said "shoes!" That's just fricking cool.

The most exciting news is that Sarah is now really talking, but not saying much. She will however call me Da-da when she wants my attention and she's been saying "Hi" to me when I say it to her first. Ryan is occasionally saying "Milk" and his trying to say some heated, crazy, passionate things that escape his mouth in a throaty, baby-deep, garbled stream. We're trying to get it on video so every can see it.

Finally, here are the photos:

Sarah was Dorothy, but she couldn't find Toto anywhere.

Ryan was the Cowardly Lion and Perrin was the Scarecrow.

We loaded the kids into their train and went trick-or-treating around the block.

The Scarecrow never met a chocolate teddy graham he didn't like.

The Same thing can be said for Dorothy!

Then we stopped at a neighbor's haunted house before returning home.

Next year I think this place will actually be scary for the kids, but it's really cool.

Back home again, we put the monsters back in their cages.


But the Lion got out and said he was going to Arizona to eat his cousin Joey.

That's everything for tonight. I've got some more cute stories to tell and hopefully a few more pictures to show or even a video as well. Also, if you're interested in making a donation to the hydrocephalus research fund, it's not too late. Just click on the link at the top left hand side and follow the links to donate. Anything you can contribute is greatly appreciated.

Lastly, I'm looking to change the blog's look in the next week, so if anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them, so send them to me at Triplet Dad. I can't promise I'll use it, but I will look it over. See ya in a few days

A Trip To Oz

October was a very busy month and it came and went before we even realized it was here. I had reconstructive surgery on my hand, my mother spent a weekend on life support, Sarah got stitches in her face, we went to a pumpkin farm, and of course we finished with our first official Trick or Treating! I'm no fool though, no one's coming here to listen to me prattle on, you all just want some pictures of the triplets! Well, I aim to please, so let's get started:

Perrin has started to like wearing daddy's hats!! He'll actually wear them for a minute or two as he crawls away into the land of toys.

Lately when we try to take her picture she always tries to touch the lens, but Sarah wants everyone to know that she's #1!!


Of course, that also meant she was the first baby to get stitches! She got these from getting bitten by our dog Gus. We didn't see exactly what happened, but got ended up biting her in the face. Gus is on his way out as a result---anyone want a dog??


I wonder what was in that last bottle?



Then we all went to the pumpkin farm and got to see a bunch of neat things. Everyone sat on a tractor, but it's hard to see real well because we forgot our regular camera and had to buy a disposable camera instead. Here's Perrin on the tractor.



And here's Ryan


And the baby girl farmer!


We also saw some goats, one of them was named Fred. Sarah thought they were funny.


Ryan thought they were too.


Perrin, well he wasn't so happy.


Little Fudd liked the pumpkins much better!


Sarah, Ryan, and I even crawled around in the pumpkin patch too!


The triplets really enjoyed the pumpkins.


But eventually we had to go, so it was over the bridge and home for us.

That's it for today. My hand is starting to really hurt, so I'll post the Halloween pictures tomorrow!

Old pics of the Balloon Fest

Chuck had mentioned our trip to the balloon fest a few posts back and said we didn't get any good pictures. I disagree. I just think it's where baby pictures in a crowd meet art house. Judge for yourself.

Fun Picture

He's a little cupie doll.
or Superman
but even if it doesn't look the same he reminds me of Edward Grimley.

A Miracle

This picture is Perrin eating the wipee box at his kidney doctor's office. We'd forgotten to pack toys so we entertained ourselves with the wipee box and camera.
Earlier this month Perrin had some tests for his kidneys. If you remember when he was born his kidney had water on it and he had a backward reflux from his bladder to his kidney rated a 5/5. 99% of the time this requires surgery. Our nephrologist, Dr. Nold, had Perrin watched and taking an antibiotic for a year. We went for imaging studies late last month, and I commented to the radiologist how he'd previously had a grade 5 reflux. The radiologist didn't seem to believe me, so he pulled his films. He came back saying, you are right, he did have a grade 5 and it is now completely normal. This is really a miracle. I smiled politely and thanked him but I had asked Dr. Nold about the chances for Perrins to revert to normal previously, and Dr. Nold said something like while most grade 5's have a 99% chance of surgery, preemies, have a slightly better chance for resolution, or at the very least to ratchet down the level of severity, so I'd taken this with a grain of salt. When we went to see Dr. Nold he looked at the films and was thrilled. He also called it a miracle and says while he expected things to improve, that they improved this quickly was truly a miracle, and we have run out of reasons to keep meeting like this.

We are very happy that Perrin is doing so well.

Walking for Perrin and Hydrocephalus

Well, we've had a lot go on in the last week. Grandma Cheri is hospitalized due to complications of COPD and on life support right now. She's doing better, but it's taken its toll on her loved ones, and we are all hoping for the best. In the meantime, Grandma Muriel was released from the hospital Saturday after a long hard fight against Burkitt's Lymphoma/Leukemia. She is going home now after being hospitalized since spring. It's been a long 6 months, but we are glad to see her beginning her road to recovery. We haven't mentioned this much in this blog as we want to keep the focus on the babies... but the health and wellbeing of their grandmothers is a part of their lives, and so it has been a bipolar week in terms of their grandmother's wellbeings.

Sarah also had a rough week. She loves her dog Gus, but she doesn't understand about cornering a dog and warning signs, and she ended up being bit in the face. She had a cut under her eye that warranted some stitches. This all went down at the same time as Grandma Cheri being rushed to the hospital. We opted to stitch Sarah ourselves rather than take her to the ER where the wait would've been problematic in regards to coordinating things regarding Grandma Cheri. [For those of you who don't recall, I work in the medical profession.] Bless that baby girls heart... after her dog bit her, her mom and dad swaddled her so she couldn't move, then held her head and gave her numbing shots and stitched her. She was so mad. She threw up in the process of the whole thing, and I was a nervous wreck doing it. I was so nervous about working so close to her eye and doing a good job as to keeping the scarring to a minimum at the same time it was quite distressing doing this to our little 15 month old baby girl and I wanted to be swift about things so as to not continue to break her heart about mom and dad ganging up on her and doing that to her. I'm sorry Sarah. But, I think the stitching job looks okay and I'm hoping for minimal scarring for you.
After it was all over, we held her a lot and she then finally calmed down and all that adrenaline was converted into a very manic little baby running around the living room squealing with joy, well into the night.

I'm totally going to switch gears here as really this post was to be about Perrin, I started writing this post over a week ago, but it's taken me this long to finish it.

Let me just start by saying how proud we are of our little guy, how much of a joy he is and how lucky we are to have him around. If you don't remember, Perrin has hydrocephalus. This means the spinal fluid formed in his brain becomes trapped and causes lots of pressure on his brain, and as a baby, for his head to swell. This is what he had surgery for last October where a shunt was placed to drain the fluid off his brain and allow him a pretty normal life. The picture to the left here is prior to the surgery. You can see how puffy his head is and the look of discomfort which was there most of the time prior to the surgery. To the right is Perrin that same month while he was still in the hospital, just after the shunt. You can see how much less "puffy" he looked already. The shunt he had put in will need to be there for the rest of his life, or the hydrocephalus will flare again. You can also see how his eyes look downward here, that is due to the pressure on his brain affecting his ability to look up.


We are lucky that there is the option of the shunt to allow him this pretty normal life. Before the development of shunts, this problem was always fatal. That isn't to say that we are in a really great place just yet. Shunts fail. Shunts require replacement if they fail, which means repeat brain surgery. If we are lucky, Perrin will never have to go through this, but most patients with hydrocephalus will. Some need repeated shunts some ridiculous number of times. There is a girl in our parent support group who had developed hydrocephalus at birth, like Perrin, and this year when she was fourteen years old her shunt failed. Then the replacement did and so on and so on. She's had 22 surgeries since December and she's having another one next week. She has developed a thing called slit ventrical syndrome, where the spinal fluid is overdrained which causes the brain to expand and she lives with a horrible chronic headache, which worsens if she stands up and gravity drains the fluid anymore. So, here she is a 14 year old honor student who'd been living a normal life more or less and all of a sudden things took this turn. Another young girl was doing fine and then needed her shunt replaced, and lost her ablility to speak.

There are a number of people out there who go through life with hydrocephalus and minimal implications in there life, but there are also a great deal of them who aren't so lucky.

We walked this past Saturday to help support research to figure out what can be done to make sure people are living with minimal implications. If any of you out there who follow this blog and are fans of Perrin and would like to help him to avoid these scary stories, please feel free to support us at Team Fudd. You can click on the link here and also in the left column called Team Fudd Fundrasing to donate, and you can count this as a tax deduction.

Better Form

Here's a better video of Sarah Walking

And here's a video showing how much better Ryan is walking!

And Then There Were Two

First and foremost, Perrin had his eye surgery today and he is doing fine! He and Meva should be home shortly, they had to stop and get him new glasses on the way home. When things settle down a bit more today, I will update with more details about the surgery. Anyways, here's some pics from the past weekend.

Meva took the kids in their wagon to a Balloon festival. She said it was hard to keep them together and not run all over, so this was the only real good picture we could get.


Sarah loves to sit in my recliner and play the drum!

She's Not The Only One Either! Perrin Is a Big Fan

Ryan used to be the baby that hardly smiled when we took out the camera for pictures! That sure has changed, he's now the biggest ham and smiles like crazy for the camera.

And Speaking of Ryan!

What's Going On!

It goes without saying that we're busy, busy, busy. I feel bad about not updating this more, so I'll try to be more productive here in the future. That will probably mean less writing and more posts that are just photo's---which depending on how funny you think I am is a good thing or a bad thing.



IF I've done this correctly, you can start the video here above this will show you what has been the biggest news and development so far. I'm new to using this feature on blogger, so it may look odd or out of place on your screen. Please let me know as I'd like this to look nice. Anyways, for those of you not able to view this video, Sarah is walking!! She started little by little taking steps here and there away from mommy and daddy's support, and then a few days later she was off and running! She's been going ever since. She still walks like a little drunk, but her form is much much better, as is her balance. While it's great and all, it also increases the amount of trouble she can get into!

The boys are not yet walking. Perrin really doesn't show much interest in it yet, but he can easily cruise, or walk along an object (sofa, table, daddy laying on the floor) when he so chooses. Ryan on the other hand is almost there. First and foremost, his biggest challenge remains controlling his super-strong baby muscles. What Ryan does isn't really walking, he gets excited and tries to run-- his powerful little legs just start pumping and leave the top part of his body behind! He also does this thing which, the best way to describe it is, walking with one leg or as Meva has named it "Half of the Russian Step Dance." I've been trying to get that on video, and as soon as I can I will share it with everyone here. But the cool thing is that he keeps trying to stand straight up on his own without help, and then he takes anywhere between 2 and 5 steps on his own before crashing. I think by Halloween he'll be walking also!

Like the walking, I've mentioned before that Perrin has something called Strabismus, which in layman's terms means his eye cross. I had it as a child and had to have surgery, and that's what Perrin will be doing this Monday morning. He has an early morning surgery scheduled for 7:45am and should be home later that morning/early afternoon. It's a more common and minor procedure as far as surgeries go, so we aren't overly concerned about this other than the anesthesia's effects on such a young baby. He should be fine and I will post an update here on Monday as soon as I get time.

This weekend they are going to see a Balloon festival with Meva and our friend Colleen and her son Finnigan. I of course will be working and I have to miss this unfortunately, but Meva will take plenty of pictures for me, which I will share sense she hasn't posted anything here in months. Maybe me and the kids are just working her too hard, the poor thing. Speaking of little Finn, I am now watching him on Thursdays from approximately 9:30am until 6PM. Yesterday was his first day and it was a lot of fun....for me. I think he was just in awe of the three giant babies that moved real fast and kept taking his pacifier! I think he did really well though and being with other babies for extended times will be good for him!

That's about it right now. Below are some of the pictures from the kids trip to the zoo. It was kind of fun, but mostly boring as they are really a bit too young to understand it, but we're glad we went.

Perrin actually enjoyed petting the goats!


Sarah, who loves Gus, was terrified of the goats!











Father and Daughter! Can you see the resemblance??


Sarah fell asleep after seeing the monkeys!


Ryan joined his sleepy sister and it was time to go home!