Mommy doesn't take science questions after 8 pm

I usually write these posts while waiting for the boys to fall asleep, often with a glass of wine in hand. It's kind of how I unwind, make sense of the day, cherish the day or laugh at the day.

The boys all still share a room and Colin likes knowing that I'm in the room next door, "working" until he falls asleep.

Anyway, just now as I'm writing, he walks in all serious, stands by the side of the bed that I'm kicked back in, computer on my lap. And says, "Mommy I have a question."

Me: "Sure, what is it?"

C: "Does it take a long time for the sun to come back up?"

Me: "Yup. Until morning when you wake up."

C: "Well, how does that work? How does the sun go away and come back?"

Me: "Uhhhhh.... ummmm.....well......"

In my head: "Darn it, where is Chris when I need him?! How do I answer this? Should I make up an answer or say God just does it? Give him the real answer? Wait? What IS the real answer? I'm having a brain freeze.... I should know this!!! I DO know this.... come on basic science, kick in. KICK IN!!! Wait. Why is he asking me this anyways?! I thought he was in bed and my mind could start to turn off. I just want to drink my glass of wine and chill out finally. Haven't these munchins put me through enough today without asking me solar system questions when they should be asleep?!"


Crap, he's for sure not leaving until I give him an answer.


Me: "Well, you see, this is the earth (lot's of hand gesturing accompanies this complex explanation for emphasis). We're on earth and.... it's like a ball..... I mean it is a ball and it moves. It moves around the sun. Sooooooooo..... sometimes it's light and sometimes it's dark."

We stare each other down for a minute.

He's thinking.

And I'm thinking that I'm a dummy pants. He's NEVER going to be satisfied with this crap-o-la answer.


C: "Oh. Ok. Goodnight Mommy."

And now 10 minutes later, he's fast asleep.

And I'm left here thinking three things:

1. Thank God he didn't have follow-up questions about how the solar system works.

2. I have this sneaking suspicion that the questions only get harder from here on out.

3. I need to brush up on my basic science.

Bathing triplets plus one!

Bath time has always been dreaded in this house. Not sure why, but it's the one thing that I find overwhelming in terms of caring for so many littles. Okay, there are more things I find overwhelming, but bath time is right at the top. It's just such a process and one that often ends with crying, the bather soaked, things in the bath which shouldn't be, somebody splashing in the toilet while someone else is unraveling the toilet paper at lightning speed and near catastrophe. For example, they all try and jump into the bath at once (which they can do) whether still clothed or not. Whether I'm able to help them in that moment or not they don't care. They are going for it! Maybe we're just bad at giving baths but I swear, bathing triplets has been such a challenge for us!

So we just didn't :)

For a while, we got away with bathing them once a week. Yup, I said it. For most of this past year, we bathed them only once per week and I know some people out there are probably appalled. I'm admitting it because it's the truth and because I can't be only triplet mom struggling with bath time. I can't be the only mom who bathed her kids once a week during year one and they survived.

We started with this little bathing device.

It was great! I'd highly recommend it. We had a bather (usually me) and a drier and dresser... usually Chris and maybe a relative if one was around. Sort of like an assembly line if you will.

Then we used these bath chairs, pictured also in this post.

I would moderately endorse these. We were able to fit them side by side in the bath but I found that the clasps broke easily. You can pop them back in but it's a pain. And as I said, we weren't using them much so I was surprised that they would break so easily. When they worked, they did a pretty good job of keeping them contained.

Often we'd just hand them into the shower one by one (if one of us was already in the shower) but that didn't feel ideal either.

Recently, now that it's warmer and we're outdoors more, they're pretty dirty by the end of the day and therefore we can't get away with once a week baths anymore! It's become an almost every day thing. Grrrrrrrrrr.

So we've been experimenting.

We tried bathing one at a time.... sooo time consuming and felt draining especially since bedtime is already the end of the day when Chris and I are both fried. (although I should say that Chris doesn't find bath time near as daunting as I do).

We tried two and two. Two kiddos in our master bath and two in the kid bath.... ehhh. That was okay.

And honestly, we've still been using the bath chairs! As if we were afraid to let them out! Goodness golly, it even says right there on the front, "Don't use when baby starts to pull to stand".

See:

They started pulling to stand last November!!! Apparently I never noticed that label through my crazy bath time eyes. Must be why they could actually STAND UP WITH THE CHAIRS STILL ATTACHED TO THEM, thereby making bath time even more challenging. We both agreed that it's time to let go of the bath chairs.

Then for some reason, tonight, totally unplanned we just threw everyone in together.

And knock me over with a feather, it was FINE.

Faster.

More enjoyable for them- and us. God bless them, they were probably like, "Thank God she FINALLY got rid of those confining, highly inappropriate for our current development, baby chairs!"


And just when I started to relax, a whole other craziness took over when I realized,


"OH MY GOD THIS IS THEIR FIRST BATH TOGETHER! MUST GET CAMERA!"

In these pictures I'm yelling, "Look at Mommy! Look at Mommy!"

Clearly my children listen to me well.


But then they did.

One

at

a

time.

I'll take it.

Our week

I feel like we're starting to finally get in the swing of things here. We know where the grocery stores are, which farmer's markets are on which days of the week and where. The boys are back to sleeping well and Colin seems happy and excited about life in Holland.

This past week, I took Colin and Carter to story time at the farmer's market. It was outdoors and really wonderful. After story time some guy from a nature center gave a presentation all about animals and brought turtles and a rabbit. Colin was fascinated.

Throughout story time and the animal presentation, Carter kept doing 'trust falls', if you will. If you've ever been to a team building event or ever watch tosh.0 then you know what a trust fall is. Carter will literally just suddenly turn around and then drop backwards, trusting that you'll catch him. He's such a goofball that kid.

Trust Fall!

Other highlights of the week:

Momentarily loosing Everett and then finding him in the pantry. The door was left open because I was cleaning it out. Don't think I haven't thought of climbing in the pantry for a break myself. Unfortunately I don't fit.

Here I am!

On Thursday, Colin and I biked to a local blueberry farm, which also had this cool tractor out front.

We liked it so much that we brought everyone back for ice cream another night!

The playset got finished!

Wahoo! It's been such a blessing to have another outdoor space for the kids to play on and swing.

Tonight, I made pizza in the kitchen while watching Chris and the boys play on it. 

When dinner was ready, I actually had to lean towards the window screen and yell, "Come in! Dinner's ready!" and then I sort of giggled to myself because I remember playing house as a little girl and pretending this same scenario, only I'd never really done it in real life. Never had a backyard to call my family in from. It all felt very domestic. :)

But for sure, the highlight of the week was when I came home from exercising Thursday morning and saw the boys in the front window.

Two were already there waiting. They must have seen me pull into the driveway. As I got closer I could see the other two scrambling to get up on the couch as fast as they could. They were all jumping up and down, waving, screaming, laughing, and slapping their fat little hands against the window pane.



I think they were excited to see me :)

Doesn't get any better than that.

Happy weekend!

Oh- and then as I was typing this, I noticed a rainbow outside. So I went out to look and low and behold it was a full rainbow, right over our neighborhood! I've never seen one like this before and it was really pretty cool.

All I could think about though was, "Double Rainbow!" Have you seen that on youtube? hahahaha.

First Family Bike Ride!

Ahhhh, what a great evening! 

So on Father's Day, I wrote in Chris's card that I thought we should buy second bike trailer as part of his gift (you know, in addition to the chocolate and popcorn) so that we could bring all of the boys on family bike rides. We have one bike trailer already, which was given to us by Chris's parents. It was a great gift but while living in the city we never used it. I'm sure we could have, we just felt too nervous with all the traffic. So it stayed in it's box until now. 

Chris and Colin went out on that very day and got it and today we hit the open road bike trails for a family ride. 

Started here:

Finn's fired up with his new helmet!

Ended here:

With a little stop in between to check out a deer along the path. 

Colin was mesmerized. We don't see deer in the city! 

Colin said, "Do you think that Santa lost one of his raindeer?" 

Love. 

Summer evenings, time with my guys, and new adventures in a town with oodles of bike paths to explore.

With a crinkle of the nose...

Carter and I have a thing going.

We love to give each other Eskimo kisses. He'll toddle over and crinkle his nose and I know exactly what he's asking for.

And I give it to him.

I just love this kid. He's the spitting image of my husband. I don't see any of myself in him, yet I know he came from me. I was there! My husband is kind to everyone, always up for anything, and is able to find joy in the smallest of things. That's how Carter is. Just today as we pulled out of the driveway to go on a walk in the choo-choo wagon, there was Carter clapping excitedly, ready for whatever was to come. That's my Carter. 

Carter, you are also quite the little jokester these days. You love to tease us... I wonder if you'll be into practical jokes as you get older. Whenever we change you, you'll try to squirm away and then look at us and laugh. Or, you'll go over to something you know that you're not supposed to play with, like a case of wipes. You'll open the lid and sort of pretend to pull out a wipe, the whole time making sure I'm watching of course. Then you'll look at me and laugh as if to say, "What are you going to do about this mom?!?" 

You also love to play peek- a- boo. Any where. Any time.

You have a newfound spunk. As I said before, you've always been patient, so patient in fact, that I sometimes worried if this meant that you'd become too agreeable with your brothers. Maybe let your brothers take toys from you or be too passive in other ways (I have all these crazy "how will being a triplet effect _____." fears, which seem to be more my issue than any of yours). Anyway, not a problem! You have developed into quite an assertive little 15 month old! You know what you want and you go after it. This has caused a few squabbles over toys, especially between you and Everett but I'm proud of you. I like seeing this spunky side!

I love your silliness Carter! I love your joy and the kindness you radiate. And I love that by watching you, I can imagine how your Dad might have been at this age.

Father's Day

While Chris slept, the boys and I carefully wrapped our gifts for him with big pages ripped out of a trucks and dinosaurs coloring book.

• Popcorn- butter lover's. (Chris and I are in this routine where almost every night after the boys are asleep, the house is semi-picked up and it's quiet and dark, Chris makes a bag of popcorn and I grab my chips and hummus and we watch 'the killing'. The show is a little scary but we're addicted. We gotta know what happened!)

• Chocolates. The Miller's love their chocolate, what can I say?

• A magazine about outdoor spaces and renovating them. Because we were going to bring him coffee in bed and thought he should have something to read while sipping it.

Colin was sure Chris was just going to LOVE these gifts. He couldn't wait until it was finally time to wake him so that he could open them.

Presentation of the gifts. Everett has already stolen the magazine.

And he did, he loved them. Mostly because of the scribble marks all over the wrapping paper, which Colin explained read, "To my friend Daddy."

The trips also participated in coloring but were mostly interested in eating the crayons and/ or coloring on the walls and/or throwing them everywhere.

Every day I'm thankful that I have Chris beside me parenting these boys. That my boys have him as their model for how to be men of integrity in this world.

I also have a wonderful father. He knows how I feel about him.

Lot's of thankfulness flying around today.

And half eaten crayons.

The start of something great?

I hope so!

We started a garden.

After days of watching the sun hit the yard to see which areas got the most sun and then factoring this in with where made most sense to plant a garden, we picked a spot. Back corner of the yard. Then I realized that you can see it from our dining room table where we eat all of our meals (so far, we've opted out of having a table in the kitchen simply because we need more kid space!). One area/ room for eating is enough for us right now. The window pretty much exactly frames the garden space.

I kind of love the fact that as we eat, we can look out onto the garden. And I hope eventually, a lot of our veggies can come from there.

The only possible thing that could thwart this plan is that I do not at all have a green thumb! But my mother in law is a fantastic gardener. I'm not sure that I'd have the courage to start up a garden if I didn't know that I'd have her to consult with and get some hands on tending from.

So here we go!

Breaking ground

Tilling it... or something like that

Everett and I supervised

 Colin and I picked up a whole bunch of veggies at the farmers market and voila!

Our own little garden.

Let's see if I can keep these veggies alive.

Building a backyard play set

So while I was taking a much needed break with my girlfriends last weekend, Chris and my in-laws held down the fort. They even found time to start our next little backyard project:

A play set for the boys!

I'm SO excited about this!! While there are playgrounds relatively close by, it's still not always easy (for us at least) to safely manage four kids at the playground, especially when three of them are 14 months! I find it especially difficult when a playground is crowded and each boy wants to go in different directions and/ or eat wood chips and sticks.

A swing set in our backyard just made sense.... plus, we may have kind of promised c one as an enticement on those days he was sad about moving. "We're going to get a swing set at our new house!" we'd say and hope it somehow softened the transition.

Turns out though, they can be quite expensive! Oops, didn't really know that before hand.

After a little perusing over on craigslist (with four boys we've learned to embrace second hand gems!), we found one being sold by someone who'd never even opened the box! Can you believe that? So we got it for less than half of the original cost. Chris had to drive about an hour to pick it up but we think it was well worth it!

Here are the guys- Chris, his dad Marv and Colin, hard at work on Sunday:

Colin, "cutting" the boards for Chris and Marv.

Carter likes it!

Antsirabe girls do Chicago!!

There are some friends with whom no matter how much time has passed, you just pick up right where you left off. That's how it is with my Antsirabe girls. Always will be.

We had SO much fun catching up, sleeping in, shopping, eating sushi, reminiscing and laughing.

I came home feeling so rejuvinated and I was only gone for less than two days!

Time spent with great friends is just plain good for the soul.

Mom (about to be) on the loose!

Holy moly did this week kick my butt. Here are a few highlights:

I spilled red wine all over our white linen curtains. One of our few "splurge purchases" a few years back. The curtains were laying on the ground waiting to be hung and I somehow managed to drop an entire glass so that it hit almost every panel.

The babies have been SO fussy, having trouble sleeping, clingy, just not themselves. We hired a lovely high-school age young woman to help us for the summer but the kids are.... let's just say... having trouble transitioning. I think the thought bubble above their heads would read, "Who the heck are you and where is our Amelie?!" I know they'll adjust but until then it's been so hard. It breaks my heart to see them so sad and confused.

In a moment when all the kids were needing me and I couldn't immediately grow more arms, Finn managed to climb up on the couch and spill my coffee off a shelve. I thought it was high enough. It wasn't. Luckily it was cold but it went all over the couch. Again, cream linen (obviously these color choices were made pre-kids! haha)

Colin threw up 8 times in the car- and then was fine. Not sure what happened there.

Colin and I went to the Farmer's Market with a huge list and I couldn't buy anything because I'd forgotten cash. Then I came home and realized I had sixty dollars cash in my pocket.

The babies threw my slipper into the bath tub during bath time. I find bath time to be sooo hard to manage alone. It really takes two people, no? Anyone with triplets in agreement??

Lastly, Colin keeps occasionally saying, "Get this guy out of my house!"  in front our new, lovely, young mother's helper. Please God I hope she stays!

We're still adjusting and our week reflects that.

But in the meantime, I am meeting up with three of my dearest friends from my days in the peace corps for a girl's weekend! It's been in the works for about six months. Some of us haven't seen each other in years. Once upon a time we all lived in villages close by each other on the high plateau of Madagascar and now we all have children/ families/ jobs in different parts of the country. I can't wait to catch up with them and laugh while re-telling old peace corps stories over wine.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Shuma, me, Candace and Shelli.... wow.... this almost seems like a lifetime ago now

Musings of a tired, old-ish deck

As I said before, our new house needs work. Lots of work. Not as in the move walls, change layout kind of stuff (like our other house did), but just lots of cosmetic updates. I think this house was built in 1990 and I'm pretty sure it hasn't been updated since. So every room needs love which is fun for us... but also daunting because with four littles we don't always have the time or energy to choose finishes and make the updates.

But one thing that Chris and I knew had to get done asap, was putting a railing on the back deck.

The deck looked like this:

not the best picture but you can kind of see the deck.... and more importantly see the lack of railings!

Kind of sad looking we thought. Also unsafe. I'd give the triplets about 2 minutes out there before they all went running in different directions and right off the end. It's not crazy high but high enough that it's not safe.

What we love about the deck placement though, is that there are two sliding glass doors, one that leads into the kitchen area and one that leads into what we've deemed, "the playroom". This is perfect both for back yard bbq's and for moving in and out of the playroom during the day.

Since the deck was so tired looking, we debated whether to tear it out and just build a new one (as always, when I say "we" I mean Chris! I am NOT handy!) But that would either cost a lot of money (hired out) or cost a lot of time (Chris building a new deck from scratch). So we decided that the current deck wasn't so bad! haha. Just needs a fresh coat of stain and some cement reinforcement that Chris was able to add pretty easily.

So- after being here only three days, Chris went to Menards, got materials and put up a railing. For doing this on the fly, I think he did such a great job!

It's safe. I think it looks nice and the cost was very minimal. At some point we'll jazz it up. At some point I'll take of the pillow tags (haha, did you catch that? I was still deciding whether to keep these when I took the pictures). At some point we're going to stain it all for sure! I'm thinking of staining the floor a dark color and then maybe painting the railings white. I'm kind of digging that look lately but we'll see. Even if we don't get to the staining/ painting this summer, at least we can be outside with the kids!

We are all LOVING the ease of indoor/ outdoor playing!

Oh and I had to include this picture:

Whenever Colin wasn't directly helping with the deck, his favorite spot was sitting in a chair in our room and watching Chris work. :)

Goodbye Amelie

Dear boys,

Last Saturday we said goodbye to Amelie. She helped us transition here to Holland, hung out with you guys while we directed the movers on where to put furniture and got ourselves a little bit unpacked. As always, she was invaluable.

Colin, you will probably remember her. Babies, I know that you won't. Not explicitly at least... but implicitly.... you will remember. In some ways, she was an extension of me, holding you, soothing you and meeting your needs when my arms were already full. Such an important job and not one that I could trust just anyone with. In this way, she was just perfect. 

Amelie had a way about her. She was always careful not to step into my role as 'the mom', yet she always there with open arms, a smile, patience and love, to fill the moments I could not. Or to give me a break when I felt frazzled and tired. She did a lot of the background 'dirty work'- washing bottles, doing laundry, stocking diapers ect, all of which freed me up to spend more quality time with you boys.

I knew she was right for our family almost the moment she stepped into our house for an interview. The boys were 9 weeks. The children were all napping, except for Finn who was fussy. For some reason (and Chris would tease me about this later), I handed Finn over to her mid interview. My little preemie Finn, who had a heart issue early on, who was fussy, and whom I was super protective of.... I handed him right to her. And he snuggled right in.

She made our days brighter and made life easier. She was fun to be around. Oh how we'll miss her.

When she left, she placed a stuffed animal in each one of your beds. She also wrote you the most beautiful note telling each one of you what's so special about you and what she'll miss about each one of you. I was so touched. Boy did she really know and appreciate each of you. I think I'm going to frame this note and place it in your room so that you always have it.

I also wrote her a note... and then re-wrote it perhaps a half a dozen times. It's hard to write a thank you when someone has made such a difference in your life, as she has.

And I know it's not really goodbye. We'll always keep in touch. She can't wait to see and hear about you boys growing up! And I can't wait to hear where life takes her next! We hope she'll visit.

In the end though, I mostly thanked her simply for loving you. What more could a mom want from a caregiver??

and she even lets you stick your grubby fingers in her mouth!

******* From a logistical perspective, because I know that people preggers with triplets read this blog and because I get asked, I'll explain how/ why we decided to seek out help and my advice for what to look for when you're choosing someone. First, we didn't plan on hiring anyone! We knew money would be tight with triplets especially and frankly, I wanted to be the one home with my boys. I wasn't sure how I felt about a "stranger" coming into our home to help in such an intimate way with my babies. We also had amazing family help. Still, our families lived four hours and two hours away and it became clear that the day to day caring for newborn triplets and a two year old while my husband was at work, was A LOT (at least for me). I felt like I wasn't able to enjoy them so much as just run around like a chicken with my head cut off doing bottle feedings, trying to breastfeed, keeping my two year old entertained and feeling secure (he was adjusting to my being around again after bed rest, to three new brothers, and just simply two!), washing bottles, soothing, throwing in loads of laundry, changing clothes etc etc. It began to feel overwhelming and we NEVER left the house, which for the babies was fine, but for my two year old, well, I just felt like he was missing out in a way that he shouldn't have to a two years old.

So we took a hard look at the budget. We cut out as many expenses as we could and we made room to hire some help- two mornings a week. This was at least a start. We could at least get out of the house on those mornings! This is when we met Amelie. I realized quickly that she wasn't taking over my role as the primary attachment figure (one of my crazy fears before hiring someone) rather, she was allowing me to be a mom to my fullest capacity with four little boys. It was so helpful to have her around, that gradually, we increased her hours until she was with us mon and fri 8:30- 1:30 and tues. wed. thurs. 8:30-3:00.

When people ask me what my advice is when hiring help, I repeat the advice I was given before we hired Amelie. "Find someone who is a match for YOU." Someone who you feel comfortable being your complete self with- on the good days, the crazy days, and everything in between. Yes, it's important that they are good with kids, of course. But, if you find someone who you are a match with, that makes you as the mom happy and what do they say? Happy mommy= happy babies!********