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!

Babies' First Friend

It's been some time since we had the chance to update things. The babies' cousin David had stayed with us through the beginning of the month, and we were sad to see him go.





As I'm sure you can imagine things have been busy here. The babies turned seven months yesterday. Over the weekend I sorted their clothes out so we moved all the stuff in the dresser to storage boxes and the storage stuff for 6-9 month olds to the dresser. I felt so sad putting away the little doggie sweater vest that I so wanted to fit them and used to just hang off them and now it fits them like most of my clothes. :-) Too tight. I'm sure this is just the beginning of all the mourning of milestones past.



I've had the luxury of having Chuck here one day during the weekend for the past two weeks. The Bears have done so well, that he figured no one was coming into the store during game day and why waste the time since as a part time employee there is no draw. You make what you make more or less and he figured it would be a waste of time. It was great to be able to all be there together. We had the opportunity for the babies to go and meet their new friend, Finnegan Danger Curry for the first time. He's a real cutie, and our babies look like giants next to him. We can't wait for them all to grow up together and get to be great friends.

On the home front, Ryan's hair has continued to grow and he has taken to doing Chewbacca imitations. He chortles like him regularly, and he loves it if you chortle back. Ryan loves to jump in his jumperoo and will do so for hours then fall asleep in it and occasionally jump in his sleep. He loves it if you just talk to him from across the room while he's in there and will now smile if you make kissey sounds from across the room. He is now the biggest baby (where he was born the runt) and weighing in at what I recall to be 17 pounds 11 ounces. I think it's all leg muscle from his constant jumping... that and the fact this little guy was the only one in the household to never get the stomach flu, so he just kept growing.

Perrin is about ready to crawl. He is poised to do so and will rock back and forth. I think once he figures it out he will be off like a lightening bolt. The other day, we were getting ready to go to the doctors and I walked out of the room to get the diaper bag. Chuck walks in the room and can't find Perrin. He'd rolled and rolled and rolled all the way to the front door. I guess he was just ready to go.

As I was downloading some recent videos of the babies today and played them on the computer, they totally captured Perrin's attention. He was mesmerized with this baby that looked and sounded just like him. He is a bright, strong, physically capable baby, it's so cool to see after all he's been through.


Sarah remains the charmer and the thrill seeker. She loves to be tossed into the air like a little cheerleader. She loves to be hung upside down and swung. She loves to be spun around in circles and then sat upright to get all dizzy. Lately she's taken to expressing her joy with squeals. Chuck calls her dolphin girl, and she responds to it. She is also very strong. If you hold her on her thighs, she will keep her balance for minutes at a time and then finally topple over like you've cut her at her trunk or something.

The babies are all attempting to work their podees which is hilarious. They pull it out of their mouths and try to stick it back in. Perrin seems to be the best at this so far, also he has had the most practice. But, in their attempts to fix the bottle's position, they continually bonk themselves in their head. Sometimes they get the nipple turned the wrong way and try to suck on the back of the nipplepiece. If they aren't too hungry they have lots of patience for this, and if not they let you know.

In terms of big stuff going on in our lives, we have figured out that due to the debt we are in, largely in part of this addition gone wrong, and because we are now mostly a one income family, we can no longer afford to live here... so we have begun the hunt for a more modest home, ideally closer to my work. I am currently driving 45 minutes one way. It's quite something to get the house ready, look for a new place, watch three kids, work a regular job plus an extra job of medical transcriptionisting and Chuck working on the weekends. Sometimes I feel like yelling to Chuck, "Jane, stop this crazy thing." (in reference to the Jetsons where George gets stuck on the treadmill). I'm hoping that cutting back and living a little more simply will allow us to live just that, a simpler life.

I'm leaving you with a couple of fun videos, and once again the transfer to youtube has left the appearance of a poorly dubbed martial arts film, but you get the point....

Dolphin Girl.

Typical View from the Rocking Chair.

Scary Wind.

Perrin's Whoop.

'Mater and Chewy.

A Few Subtle Changes

This is just a quick post to show off a few changes that I made to the blog which aren't immediately noticeable. I updated the nicknames of the babies to reflect what we are currently calling each of them. The only name that really seems to stick with Sarah at this moment is Baby Girl. It's not a conscious effort on our part, but it's the one that does seem to be sticking and she responds well to it.

If you haven't talked to us about it or seen us interact with the kids, Perrin has completely become Fudd! I came up with that name because he looks like Elmer Fudd. All he needs is a toy gun and giant brown hunters hat and he'd be a spitting image of him.

Ryan is really still The Beast. He is always making grunts, growls, and snarls to express himself. It's really adorable and lately he has taken on the new sound effects of Chewbacca from Star Wars. He gives out these little yawps straight from his throat. Considering how large, hairy, and stubborn he is it's really funny. From time to time we also just refer to him as Ry-Ry.

The last change I made concerns all of the videos Meva has been posting on YouTube. These little videos have been very popular with many people and I've heard people like to go back and watch them from time to time. So to that end I have provided a direct link to Meva's account on YouTube for you to check out at anytime you'd like. This link should appear at the beginning of every post if I've done this correctly. Although we will still be providing direct links to new videos when they've been posted, you now have the option of always accessing all the videos at any time.

Lastly, what's a post without some more pictures of the kids? Here are some individual shots of the kids in their early morning Christmas outfits(before the peeing and puking forced the changes). I have to admit we've taken some creative license with these photos; they were taken just a few days ago and not on Christmas. Meva and I were so busy with entertaining guests and trying to put on a fun Christmas evening that we never got any pictures of the kids in these outfits, so we redid them when we had time!

Of all the outfits my favorite was Perrin's little tuxedo. I think it's the bowtie, but he looks completely ridiculous and cute at the same time. I wish we would have had a second one to put on Ryan too, but he looks fine in his little teddy bear vest. As usual, click on the photo to see a bigger shot!

Just past Christmas

Well, it's now mid January, and I'd like to take a moment to back here and re-visit Christmas. We had a pretty wild one.

Chuck's sister Teri flew into town on Christmas eve from Arizona. She'd not seen her family in a while, and not yet met the babies. Chuck picked her up near midnight and drove her to his other sister's house and hour and a half north of us. Chuck's other sister had promised to host Christmas dinner for his family, but then a series of unfortunate events meant they were unable to swing it. Since the babies were preemies meant we needed to do Christmas at our place. As many of our loved ones are smokers, and until the babies are stronger, they need to stay in a smoke free environment. So, we had plans for the Cicerellos to join us (if you don't recall, we consider the Cicerellos to be family even though there is no blood connection.) Anyway, when things with Chuck's sister fell through, we didn't have the space to host dinner for everyone... so we offered to get dinner for them and ship it up with Chuck when he dropped off his sister who flew in. So, on the day of Christmas eve we were straightening up our place, wrapping presents, preparing part of the Christmas dinner for us and Chuck's family, packing dinner for Chuck's family, setting up our place to host, being chauffers, and caring for 3 six month olds. Whew!!

Chuck and I have had a tradition where we sit and read The Night Before Christmas to each other on Christmas eve. We had looked forward to doing that with our children on their first Christmas. Unfortuantely we were unable to do that until about 3am Christmas morning, which thankfully the babies were already nestled snug in their beds. So, Chuck and I snuck into the nursery with a flashlight, sat in the middle of the floor and whispered the book. The babies would coo and snore every now and then, they were so cute.

Christmas itself came all to early, but it was a lovely day. The babies had many very cute Christmas outfits. Really, they were swimming in so many of them through the various donations we've received through freecycle and gifts - turns out it worked out okay, because every time they wet their pants, they switched into a different Christmas outfit.

We had a lovely dinner and afterwards opened presents, where the babies were royally spoiled. Much of this spoiling then went into finally getting an account to start saving for college, which is a real concern for us. I'm not sure how we are going to be able to swing this, so it's nice to even begin taking the baby steps to get there.

The following week, the babies got to meet Grampa Lou (Lou Cicerello) for the first time. Lou was unable to join us for Christmas with the rest of the gang due to obligations at home, so it was especially nice to have him come up. Here's some pics of the babies with their other Grandpa. Sorry Joey, it's another old man to look at.




New Years weekend, the babies and myself went to Ohio. Chuck stayed behind since he had to work, biting his nails the whole time, but also enjoying a much deserved break. During this trip the babies got to meet their Great Grandma Dixie for the first time. This particular meeting made the trip entirely worth it. Here's a pic of them all together. I love how Sarah, when propped, will stand for an incredibly long time. If she just had her balance down better, she'd stand all day. These days are coming soon.
Click here for a video of the 3 generation interaction.

Vomit Everywhere

I think Meva unintentionally downplayed the events of the last few days here. With my nephew David staying with us, we have a total of six people in the house and as of this writing Ryan is the only one not to have come down with any symptoms.

The most telling symptoms are vomit and diarrhea. Basically the kids are doing the vomiting and the adults get the diarrhea. With Perrin it lasted about three days and at it's worse I went through 4 shirts that he totally soaked. This is so much more violent and worse than when he had the acid reflux at about 3 months. Sarah started her vomiting today, and she did it in style, spraying the front room from her swing....she got puke 4 feet from the swing!! It must be the father in me, but I was kinda proud at the distance she was able to get....atta Girl!!

So with the kids being sick they've all been pretty crabby at times. Luckily there has been someone around to hold them or lay with them in bed so they feel safer and more secure. In fact on Tuesday night they were so cranky we ended up with all three of them in our bed and they chased Meva out by crowding her with their auras! So I ended up sleeping with all three of the kids spread out in a little blanketed enclosure. It was actually pretty cool.

It's been just over a year since we learned that we were having triplets and as we've chronicled here it's been an exhausting and exciting ride. Despite everything we've been through there are still times when the entire novelty of the situation comes back to me and snaps me out of the regular rhythm of raising them. Tonight I was holding Ryan and getting him settled down for bed when I was just overwhelmed with how special it is to have three little babies all at once! They each have their own distinct personalities and quirks and I love them all, even when I am drenched in vomit! It's a bit beyond me to convey this feeling, but it's just too incredible not to share.

And speaking of sharing, here are a few photos my sister took of the kids when she was visiting for the holidays. It's becoming much harder for Meva and I to capture them smiling since they recognize the camera and know that something is going to happen, They're pretty quick to catch on to that at such an early age. Anyways, here are some great pictures and smiles from all the kids.

Hooray!! Everyone's sick.

We've been unusually busy lately. We've had the good fortune to have our 13 year old nephew, David, staying with us for nearly a month. It's been nice to get re-aquainted with him. He hates to hear it but he reminds me very much of Chuck. He's been so great with the babies, and I know they especially will miss him when he goes back to Arizona.

Today Sarah gave David the gift of projectile vomitting, after which she shot him a grin like she'd just swallowed the Cheshire Cat. David was pretty grossed out, but really took it all in stride. He did better than most adults handling being absolutely drenched in it. For me, not so much seeing David covered in vommit but just seeing Sarah throwing up that much made my day. You see, Perrin was the first to get sick, and of course when Perrin is vomitting, that can be a sign that his shunt isn't working and he needs repeat brain surgery. The vomitting has been about the only symptom for him, then Chuck got sick, then Sarah, and tonight I felt the call of the bathroom myself. It seems weird to be grateful for the stomach flu, but I'll take that over brain surgery for my kid any day.

We've had an eventful Christmas and New Year's and I will tell you more about that another day. It's currently 1:13 am, and I have just finished up my second job of medical transcribing. I'm grateful to have this opportunity to work at home so I can still be near my babies and yet still be able to try to make ends meet. But, it is yet another time sponge, so there you have the wee hour entry and promises of Christmas Tales another time.

In the meantime, I will leave you with some fun videos that our resident video producer, David, arranged. Unfortunately, some of them when they get transferred to Youtube have some sort of delay between the sound and the image, so it ends up looking like some bad Kung Fu movie... but you'll get the point. So click on below for....

Ryan the Defender Against Evil

Sarah and the Shark

Gus and Ryan

Ryan in the Jumparoo

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!