Babies

How to carve pumpkins…

~ hunt2005 ~ 1 Comment

… when you have four extra sets of hands.

Step 1) Strip all small children naked. Cut the top of the pumpkins off to ensure full messiness can be achieved.

Step 2) Let the oldest of the children remove the insides of the pumpkin. Have parent #2 finish entirely scooping the second pumpkin out in the time that the oldest child manages to get one seed and a few strings of pumpkin.

Step 3) Let other small children play in the pumpkin gunk. Older son wants nothing to do with the ickiness of it, so let the other three make up for his lack of excitement.

Step 4) Let younger brother show older brother how it’s done.

Step 5) Quickly carve the shapes on the pumpkins and let older son help every few minutes to include him, yet ensure that pumpkins are done before it is too dark to see anymore.

And there you have it. Pumpkin carving with 4 under 5.

October 15th – Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness

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I’m going to borrow the words of an amazing woman that I know, because she is much more eloquent than I. You can find her story here and meet some amazing quads in the process!

The loss of a pregnacy is the loss of a dream…regardless on how many months, days, hours or even minutes you have known there is a life growing inside you.  The dream has begun the moment you see those two lines, you hear those words you have waited so long to hear, you shared the news with those who are the closest. When it all too soon becomes a nightmare that you wish you could wake up from it becomes a memory you never forget.  It clouds your bliss should you ever be fortunate enough to become pregnant again.  It has you waiting for the other shoe to drop your entire pregnancy.  It keeps you from fully enjoying subsequent pregnancies.

Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day is a day of remembrance for pregnancy loss and infant death which includes but is not limited to miscarriage, stillbirth, SIDS, or the death of a newborn. It is observed annually in the United States on October 15th. This day is observed with remembrance ceremonies and candle-lighting vigils, concluding with the International Wave of Light, a worldwide lighting of candles at 7:00 p.m.   In October 1988, President Ronald Reagan proclaimed October to be National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month stating “When a child loses a parent they are called an orphan.  When a spouse loses his or her partner they are called a widow or widower.  When a parent loses their child , there isn’t a word to describe them.  This month recognizes the loss so many parents experience across the United States and throughout the World.  This is also meant to inform and provide resources for parents who have lost children due to miscarriage, etopic pregnancies, molor pregnancy, stillbirth, birth defects, SIDS and other causes.”

According to the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, among women who already know they are pregnant, nearly 15 percent will have a miscarriage. Stillbirths occur in nearly one in 200 pregnancies in the United States every year. Premature birth occurs in between 8 percent to 10 percent of all pregnancies in the United States; it remains one of the topcauses of infant death in this country. SIDS is the cause of about 2,500 infant deaths each year.

An Angel In The Book Of Life
Wrote Down My Baby’s Birth
And Whispered As She Closed The Book
“to Beautiful For Earth”

This is a story…

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Of a boy name Jacen.

He is such a very happy little boy.

He also likes to climb. Now, I’ve never had a climber before. Aiden was cautious (overly so). He didn’t jump until he was like 3 because he didn’t want to fall. And climbing? Out of the question. This boy, however, has guts. Now, he has no desire to walk. But climbing? Oh yeah, that’s totally his thing.


And it’s not just the couch. High chair on to dining table? Yes please. Try to climb out of my carseat and out the back of the car? Absolutely. And the wagon is not very hard either. No matter how tightly mommy straps him in, he can manage to get up onto his feet and some how slide out. And you know that remote you put on top of the couch so we couldn’t play with it? Yeah, you’re funny.

Before

After

Oh, and you know those pesky things called door knobs? Those aren’t so hard either. And they lead to fun places like my brother’s bedroom. Oh, and his bed? That’s a piece of cake.

Guess I don’t have to worry about him getting in and out of a big boy bed when the time comes…

Latest and Greatest

~ hunt2005 ~ 3 Comments

Sorry for not posting much recently!! On a daily basis I run out of time and then get overwhelmed by the twenty bajillion things I want to post about, and with no clue where to start I just don’t.

I did however manage to update the site with a page for each kid with their yearly photos (birth, and then each birthday).

Aiden

Jacen

Jaina

Val

Life is fun around here. The babies are getting to be so hillarious. Jaina almost has hair (finally!). Val is still bald. Jacen is my loveable little teddy bear who needs a haircut but I cannot bring myself to get it done.

Recently the babies turned 13 months. How did that happen!?! Here’s the montly photo of me attempting to hold all three. Not sure how much longer we’ll make it!

The babies pull up like champs now, and *can* walk with assistance (but normally don’t want to). Val will let go of the couch/chair/etc and stand by herself, for prolonged periods, but has no interested in walking.

Jaina, on the other hand, loves the concept of walking. She walks with only one hand holding on now, and managed to take her first step yesterday. She’ll only do it towards the couch, and only when she wants to, but it’s hillarious. We finally managed to get it on video today!

Jaina’s first steps

Currently their favorite food is, well, everything. They especially like blueberries though. They’ll eat a flat of them at a meal if I let them.

We’ve been watching the Olympics non stop and I swear that Jaina is trying to do backflips already! She’s hillarious.We’ve banned her from watching diving and gymnastics because she thinks that we should include couch diving as an Olympic sport and I’m tired of her practicing her 3 1/2 reverse.

She also likes to play with mommy’s hat.

Courtesy of Georgetown Cupcake. Yes, the one in D.C. Did you know they ship across the country? Yes. Yes they do. The sticks are just from shipping, don’t pay any attention to those.

We are 100% off of bottles, they drink everything from sippy cups now. We wash a total of three sippies a day (just refill it as needed) and it is miraculous. I almost couldn’t remember what it was like to have the top of the dishwasher mostly empty at night!

Sippy cup babies, oh so cute!

 

One year ago

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We were on the road. With three newborn babies. Driving over a thousand miles from WA to CA to begin the next part of our military journey.
I cannot believe we’ve been here over a year. I cannot believe that the babies have been with us for over a year. I cannot believe they were every this small.

imageI tried putting them in a friends’ infant carseat the other day and yeah… let’s just say that it didn’t exactly fit!

The drive itself was manageable. Best part of having 6 week olds? All they do is sleep. And eat. And then sleep some more. So it was 2-3 hours of driving, stop to feed babies, drive some more. I remember stopping at a rest stop around 2 am thinking that if we could just get all the way to Monterey we would sleep for a week at that rate. But it sure beat dragging out two suitcases, portable baby beds, and all the other stuff that comes with having children at a hotel!

And then there is always the fun of staying in a hotel! At least back then they stayed on the bed where you put them!

Packing out in a new house with four children is a lot of fun. Boxes are the best (and cheapest) toy that you will ever find.

As much as people look incredulously when we say that we moved with 6 week old triplet infants who had been out of the NICU for less than two weeks and were still nursing every 3 hours on the dot and a 4 year old… okay, now that I put it that way, it does sound a *tad* insane… I just laugh at them. Because, really, what other move will I ever have where I can put three of my children in carseats buckled in and keep them out of the way, and have a child who enjoys unpacking boxes and putting things away for me, and is still too shy to run out the door while it’s open?? Wish me luck next time. I think with a 6 yr old and three 2 year olds I’ll laugh and look back thinking triplet infants was easy!

Camping in Yosemite

~ hunt2005 ~ 9 Comments

What do you get when you combine a mom, a dad, a 4 year old, and three one year olds with thousands of acres of woods, no electricity, and only tents to sleep in?

A LOT of fun. And a LOT of stuff.

I mean, really, what 4 year old boy doesn’t like dirt, bugs, fire, the dark, flash lights, and the possibilities of scary animals? Oh wait, that would be mine. Thankfully he learned to appreciate some of those (the bugs and dirt mostly, thanks to some fellow older kids at our campsite), and to manage the rest (namely the dark and the animals).

We learned a lot. Such as the fact that baby trees grow into big ones. Have you ever done a 5 mile hike with a 4 year old where the conversation is one about how baby tries grow bigger into big trees and then drop seeds and those become baby trees… and continue?? Yeah. Fun. Not. But at least he learned something??? He also learned that bears like to eat berries. And mommies. But not babies or big boys.

We also learned that no matter how cold the water is, a 4 year old is going to want to get in. And no matter how steep the rocks are, he’ll want to do what all the 5 year old boys are doing and climb down.

Luckily he didn’t know the rules of splashing yet: You splash mommy, and she gets you back!

All in all, the camping itself wasn’t even that bad. I wish I’d taken pictures of the interior of the tents. We brought the peapods (little popup tent things) for the triplets and so they were in those inside my tent. They’ve used them on all of our trips, so I think it helped to have that bit of familiarity, and it kept them contained in their own little spaces while we sat around the campfire at night after they went to bed but before we were ready to.

The Ikea high chairs were also amazing. Completely plastic, so easy to wipe down, and the legs come off for easy travel. (Insert free advertising for Ikea here:)

Aiden learned the magic that is a marshmallow on fire, when it is combined with a piece of chocolate and some graham crackers. I think we all ate WAY too many of those, but seeing as we have more left and a gas stove, we might have to enjoy a camping night at home here soon.

All in all, we survived. Thrived. Enjoyed every minute. Well, except for the 20 minutes following Aiden tripping and falling and requiring a bandaid. Because his leg was so injured we were sure it would need to be amputated. Or not. But if you had heard him screaming? You’d have thought we were doing surgery without anesthesia only using a dull spoon.

But who goes camping without at least one injury??

Wow, 1 year old.

~ hunt2005 ~ 1 Comment

Sorry it’s been over a week! It’s been crazy hectic busy to say the least!

The babies are now over one year old. My little tiny 4 pound (plus or minus a few ounce) babies are a year old. How crazy is that??

We had their 1 year appointment today and stats are as follows:

Jacen: 20lb14oz
Jaina: 18lb2oz
Valerie: 18lb13oz

We’ll redo the lengths when they aren’t as cranky, but they are about 29 inches each. The girls are about 50% for height, 30% for weight, and Jace is around 50% for both.

20120629-181447.jpg

(Photo courtesy of Aiden)

Crazy when you think that at birth they weren’t even on the chart!!

Other than that, we’re enjoying the summer break here. We survived our camping trip to Yosemite, enjoyed laughing at babies eating cupcakes, and are just settling into a new routine with “big” kids now.

Have I mentioned how much cheaper whole milk is than formula? And how much easier it is to deal with?? Other than practically needing a new fridge simply to store the gallon of milk per day we go through!

 

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Caption: We’re not doing anything!