triplets
Daily dose of cute
Too talented
Wow, 1 year old.
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.
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!
Caption: We’re not doing anything!
12 hours from now…
And I will have 1 year olds. 9:18am and 9:19am June 20th, 2011…
T-Minus 4 days…
We had a farewell party for some amazing neighbors last night. The military community is transient enough, but Monterey and NPS are even more so. Everyone rotates every 18-24 months, which is a very quick turn around, even in Navy terms.
As part of it, we had a mini-party for the babies with their first tastes of cake and some awesome lightsaber presents from some awesome friends and neighbors. Enjoy!
[slideshow]
As the first year draws to a close…
In case you are thinking about someone with multiples who might need gear, I wanted to share what we could NOT have lived without this last year (other than the obvious… like diapers and wipes)…
First: Our Space Saver swings. Tiny. Portable. And kept the babies happy.
Next: Boppy pillows. Not just for nursing. But also great for propping, photo shoots, and keeping babies happy!
Blankets. Lots of blankets. But make sure they’re big enough for more than one baby 🙂
Bumbo chairs. Great for first meals, for teaching them to sit, and for keeping them from getting stepped on by their big brother.
A stroller that holds all of the infants in the family. It makes your life a lot easier!
Sometimes those come in multiple forms, though, based on the situation!
High chairs. But in our case, specifically, the Ikea high chairs. They wipe down with a lysol wipe. They stack consolidated in the corner. And the legs come off for easy travel. Brilliant!
And lastly, the choo-choo wagon (once they can sit up). If there was anything that could make triplets just THAT much cuter, it would be this.
Mother’s Day musings
Wow. My 5th mother’s day. Hard to believe. And yet, they keep getting better and better.
You know how some things, the more you do them, the more mundane they become? If you run the same trail 100 times, by the last time you start to not really see what’s around you any more and it becomes just muscle memory. If you drive the same route, you eventually get to the point where you arrive at the destination, and forget having made the right turn or that you had to stop at a red light to get there.
Mother’s day is the complete opposite. The first it’s surreal that you actually get to celebrate it. You find it kind of silly, after all, you’ve only been a mother for maybe a couple months (weeks? days?). The second, you feel a little more deserving. I mean, heck, you survived a whole year. But yet, your child is too small to understand it, or make you a card, or to really celebrate it. Still seems kind of silly.
Dinner out the night before… because 6 people, including 3 highchairs/boosters, is just a bit much to fight the crowds on Mother’s Day proper.
Then they get a bit older. The view changes. You start to realize how much life has changed in the last year. Your now toddler/preschooler might come home from school with a craft they made for you. Or they don’t, because they didn’t want to (yes, that would be my child who didn’t want to make the bracelet because it wasn’t Mother’s day yet).
And you realize that next year is going to be even better. Because by then, he’ll be able to write his entire name himself. And maybe the craft will be made by him with his own intentions without having to be coerced. Or he’ll still decide not to do it. But either way, it’ll be a choice by a child, not a toddler or an infant.
(Not made by the toddler… This was intricately crafted by a local jeweler, James and Company Jewelry Repair, just for me!)
Aiden picked out his own card this year. It was a beautiful card – pink, with a bouquet of flowers, and it played music. Never mind that it was in Spanish and neither he nor I had any idea what was written or what words were being sung. We tried to talk him into a card that we could read, but I guess in his mind, what’s the difference? He can’t read the English letters either, so why is this card any better or worse than any other? So he got it. And it was beautiful. Even if I don’t have a clue what is written (I’m assuming that in there are the words Happy Mother’s Day, but for all I know it could be a graduation card or a “Congratulations on the New House” card!).
Nevertheless, he had a say in this Mother’s Day celebration. He chose when to open the gift (thanks for choosing the day before, Aiden, you win favorite child for that!). When to open the cards. And maybe next year he’ll pick out the gift himself, and we’ll both be able to read the card, together. Wouldn’t that be something?
Today I’m joining Multiples Monday over at Capri + 3 (You should check out this blog, Theresa’s got a great story!)
5/9 – random cuteness
Taking photographs of children can be exhausting (sometimes even more so than raising them is). I honestly don’t know how my photographer friends do it. But, if you take a lot of pictures, which is my method, sometimes you get a gem. And others it’s a bad photo technique-wise, but what it encaptures is such real life that it’s the best photo in the world.
So that said, here’s some daily cuteness for you. And with 4 kids, including 10 month triplets? We have cuteness to spare!
What has happened to time?
I thought time travel hadn’t been invented yet. Boy was I wrong.
Wow, so today we signed up for parents night out here at the daycare on base. You see, this base is AWESOME. They do a FREE drop in night the first night of the month here at the CDC (child daycare center, NOT center for disease control, though the two are easily confused for the other!) and you take your kids (if they get a spot, which is coveted and requires being there within 2 minutes of signups starting) and get a night to go on a date, get groceries, sleep… whatever is more important to you… and they have the kids there with their trained daycare workers. It’s incredible. You only get to use it every other month, and so if you miss a month you HAVE to get in for the next or that’s two months without it.
So part of the trick for us, with triplets, is that we take up 3 of the 8 slots in the infant room. I mean, seriously, how insane is that?? So when signing them up this month we got in just barely (got the last three spots), which will be wonderful for June. And then I realized. This is their last time in the infant room.
SAY WHAT?!
My babies will be 1 before the next month’s PNO, and even then we can’t use it again until August anyways. Which means the next PNO they will be in the toddlers room.
How does that happen??
Today I’m joining Multiples Monday over at Capri + 3 (You should check out this blog, Theresa’s got a great story!)