Snowmageddon 2015

We are smack in the middle of a massive snowstorm. School is cancelled for the third day in a row tomorrow. It's 1 degree out and with the wind chill, it's much colder than that.




I get really sick of winter, especially by March. However, there's something about a snow storm that I've always loved. We've been cooped up together for three full days now, not able to go anywhere and it's actually been really nice. Yesterday and today, Colin and Chris were the only ones to get dressed all day. The rest of us stayed in our pj's. I see no reason to get dressed if we're just going to play and snuggle on the couch.

I realized something today too. Something huge and hopeful, about this whole, parenting triplets plus two thing. It might be getting easier.  

I know that we're still in the early stages of parenting triplets (plus two... hate leaving them out) and that new challenges (and joys!) will come with each stage. But in many practical ways, life with our boys seems to be entering a new, dare I say, easier, phase. Each new season brings a little more independence, which makes every day life more manageable.

At one point today, I noticed that Colin and Carter were upstairs playing school, Everett was painting at the kitchen table while talking to me about this and that. Meanwhile, I was feeding Owen a snack and Finn was getting his own snack from the fridge. OMG!!! It seems like just yesterday we still had four or five kids in diapers, needing, what felt like, everything from us.

Don't get me wrong, there are still days I want to run out the front door pulling my hair out! But not today. Today I sunk into the joy of watching the boys grow a smidgen more independent and enjoyed it.

I feel I should also mark this week as the week we've officially entered what I'm dubbing "the potty mouth phase." Do girls go through this phase too?? See, as a boy mom, I don't know these things. All I know is that I've heard "poopy butt" and similar catch phrases about 10,000 times so far this week.

I try hard not to laugh.

Picture Perfect......and Behind the Scenes

Here's what I wrote back in August: I've been thinking lately about our stories and our pictures and what we choose to share or not share with others. I notice that many pictures out there in social media portray the most beautiful parts of life. And that's okay. It's nice to highlight the lovely and focus on what is beautiful. But sometimes, I look at those pictures and wonder if there's more to the story.

At the time I shared this post.

So here we go again. I'll show you a lovely picture, where all is wonderful and calm. Then I'll share with you the real story of what happened just before or after the picture was taken. 

....................................................

You guys. A miracle happened yesterday. We were EARLY for story time at the library. Yes, you read that right. Not only were we on time (instead of flying in about 10 minutes late, and getting seats in the way back where you can hardly see or even hear the story). No friends. We weren't even just on time. We were EARLY.

This was no less than a Thursday miracle. Do you know what it takes to get five kids out of the house, most of whom aren't fully independent yet? It takes a miracle. We are rarely on time for anything.

We had to actually wait, at story time, for the lady to bring out the carpet squares and the name tags. We hung out in the parent chairs, as seen in this picture and eventually made our way to the front row. That's the choice you have, when you arrive, FIRST, thank you very much.

I mentally patted myself on the back. Look. At. Us. We have got our stuff together this week. Well, today at least. Or, this hour at least.

Story time was great and if I only posted the above picture with a capture, "Early for story, just another Thursday", you might think we really do have our stuff together. But that wouldn't tell the whole story.

 Because after story time, things started to disintegrate. Fast. One child got heavily stuck on finding a "mickey mouse book" (God bless the librarian who scoured the shelves finding the very last one available). Then, they boys wanted to go down the snack bar for apple juice which, for a variety of reasons, just was not going to work out today. I said "no" to getting apple juice.

This did not go over well. One of my sweet boys completely, momentarily lost his ever loving mind. Tantrum city.

We got off the main floor elevator and while everything else was pin drop quiet, my child could be heard screaming, "But I wanted apple juice!!!!!!!!!!!"

People were looking.

I however, had my eyes set on the door. One step at a painfully slow time, we made it to the doors. I could see our mini van parked just outside. We were almost home free. It wouldn't be long until we were in the van, and on our way home.

Only, as we walked through the doors, alarms started going off. Let me say that again, ALARMS, STARTED GOING OFF, at the library.

Apparently I hadn't check our books out properly. I thought about just making a run for it and never looking back. Or, dropping the books first, then running. But instead I looked in my periphery and could see concerned librarians motioning me over. And so we went back and over to the counters. And a certain 3.5 boy kept on tantruming.

And people kept staring.

"Did you even check these out??" she asked accusingly.

"No, I was actually trying to steal Pete the Cat." (okay so that's just what I said in my head). In real life I tried to hold back tears and said, "Yes I did check them out but maybe amidst everything going on, I did it wrong"

This is the point where I turn to search for the hidden cameras because maybe just maybe I'm on  candid camera.

Nope, this is really just my morning,

Finally, we properly checked out our books, waved goodbye to the library and made it to the van. Eventually, we all re-calibrated and life was smooth again.

And you know what? Darn it all. We were still EARLY to story time. We'll always have that.

12 Month Photo Project- September

Finny. I know I posted this same picture in the previous post but I don't care. I love this picture of him. He's so sweet. And shoeless. 

Everett, having a ball picking apples!

Owen. This is a picture taken with my craptastic, shattered i phone. But I like it because it's so Owen, right now. We'll have a morning adventure with the trips and on the way home, he just can't help it, he always falls asleep. 

Colin, loving life and obsessed with wanting to build a tree house in the back yard. He talks about it all the time and occasionally will take a piece of wood and start hammering it into the trunk of his chosen tree. Today, Chris and Colin looked at options on the computer, you know, to get a sense of what he's thinking for this treehouse. As a side note, this is the one he said was most closely aligned to his vision:

Yeah, I'm turning this one over to Chris. 

and this.... this is such a Carter look. I found a few pictures on my phone and one on my big camera of this same face. In this picture, he's at the ready! Ready to help Colin build that treehouse. 

Thoughts on Blogging and Our Week in Review

This post was written on Saturday but in the midst of life, I didn't have a chance to hit the publish button until now :) 

I've been struggling a little with this blog lately. There are weeks that I want to recommit to writing more regularly and then there are times when I think about closing this chapter and shutting the blog down completely. The "keep writing" part of me is the part that loves to write and document pieces of our life in this way. But it used to be easier, both the finding the time to write and the what to write about parts.

The boys are getting older and there are no more times when everyone is napping and no more super early bedtimes. Those used to be the times when I'd get on my computer and blog away. The boys are up and active as ever, morning until night. They eat more. This means that I'm cooking more, which takes up a lot of time (at least for me, I'm not the fasted cook in the world). Most evenings, you can find me cooking in our kitchen, preparing for the next days inhale of food. I refuse to feed my family crap and in turn, meal planning and prep takes time. Time I used to spend blogging.

Also there seems to be SO MUCH going on day to day. There's so much good, so much busy, and yes, there is still so much that's challenging about parenting five young children. Teasing out what to put on paper (err, computer) seems overwhelming at times, especially when I'm not writing regularly.

And then there's this. Those times when I consider closing this chapter in our lives stems from the fact that our boys are getting older, and as they get older I become less comfortable putting their stories and pictures on the Internet. The boys might grow up and appreciate the fact that I've blogged parts of their lives and stories here. They may enjoy reading it. That's my hope. Or, and this is my fear, they might grow up and resent it. I'm trying to find a balance between not putting too much out there (in all forms of social media), yet wanting to document our days together. I'm trying to balance wanting to write honestly from my heart about my experience of motherhood (the good and the hard) but at the same time, not putting too much out there in this medium. I'll always write but which outlet is best at this point in my life, I'm not sure. I am not a mom who is great about creating baby books or even hanging pictures. Only my oldest has a semi thrown together baby book. So blogging works well for me as a way to capture our days. And when I look back over posts, I personally enjoy remembering days spent together, days that I'd almost forgotten. But it's not about only me and in turn, I'm thinking through where to go with this blog.

Bear with me as I sort through my thoughts about this.....

In the meantime, here is our week in review!

I mentioned in a previous post, that we do not have as much help with the boys anymore. In fact, I think that we have the least amount of help we've had since the triplets were very young. We still have our nanny and she's like family to us by now and phenomenal with the boys, so we're so thankful that we were able to work out a schedule that keeps her in our life and yet fits with the level of help we need right now.

Being able to parent my boys without help has given me renewed confidence and enjoyment in parenting. There was a period of time when the triplets were younger, I was pregnant with Owen and Colin was no more than 3 or 4, where felt impossible (and unsafe) to go anywhere with my children alone. That was hard and again, thank God we found wonderful help to get us through. But we're through that period now and on the other side! I can take all of the boys to drop Colin at school and then the triplets, Owen and I can go have adventures and then pick Colin up again at the end of the day, all together. The triplets can now follow directions, put on their own shoes, and almost buckle themselves into their car seats. When we're out, they stay by me. They can tell me with words how they're feeling and what they need. This all makes life a lot easier!

The boys started soccer this past week! Chris is the coach and on a six kid team, we take up four of the slots!

Colin in the red pants, Everett to the right, then Carter

Finn decided to watch, this time. Owen, reluctantly watched, but wanted to play in the worst way!

Finn, Carter and Everett attended Nature School on Thursday morning. It's a once a month program put on by our local nature center. I decided not to send the boys to preschool this year so it's nice to have these little school type experiences every now and again. They loved it!

 Art, art, art!

The triplets love doing artwork and so we do a lot of it these days. As soon as Owen goes down for nap, the art supplies come out and they create, create, create for hours. It's becoming one of my favorite times of the day.

And today, kind of on a whim, we headed up to Grand Rapids to check out the West Michigan RV outlet show. Basically, lots and lots of RVs, pop-ups and Motor Homes were lined up and ready to be viewed. The boys thought it was so fun to run from camper to camper checking them out. "Let's get this one!" they'd say, after every single one. We'd love to buy a camper so it's fun to see what's out there and dream about adventures we'll have together camping as a family. Hopefully someday!

Afterwards, we hit up Potbelly's. Yummmmm.

I love being a boy mom

Colin, Chris, Everett, Carter and Finn in what's left of the fort

Now I don't know a thing about raising girls, but I have noticed something about boys.... or maybe just my boys.

They like tasks.

Jobs.

Projects.

Today it was cold but sunny and when the wind stopped blowing, you could almost sense that spring was on the horizon. Oh I hope so!!! We even heard and saw a few birds which almost made me cry for joy because I'm SO ready for spring! (have I mentioned that yet??)

Chris and I took the boys outside and they immediately chose shovels to "play with" and started digging. This is a common theme in our outdoor play. They dig dirt. They dig snow. They move dirt and snow in the wheelbarrow to various places in the yard. Always on the move, these boys. Digging, moving, digging, moving.

Colin of course has his digger which is even cooler than a shovel and so today he spent a lot of time on that. He'd fill a wheelbarrow and then run it across the yard yelling, "Dirt coming through, everybody watch out!" (even if no one was even close to being in his way)

Finn

I mostly sit back during this sort of play. I figure they'd rather do this kind of stuff with Chris. Plus, I feel a bit out of my element even though I love watching them all in action.

Then today Colin yelled over, "Mommy, wanna be my helper?"

I jumped my pregnant self up off the deck stairs and waddled over to him. My enthusiasm was genuine because if Chris is around, he'll usually ask Chris for help thinking that I don't know as much about this "worker stuff".

"Sure! I'd love to be your helper!!"

"What can I do?"

"Okay Mommy, help me move my digger..... no this way.... yup, that's it..... now pat down the dirt.... nooooo, not there silly mommy, around the digger..... can you move the wheelbarrow closer to catch the dirt? Hold it steady....okay, let's move the dirt to the work site".... etc etc.

It was great.

I can honestly say that I love being a mom to boys. True, I don't know any different, but I know this is good stuff. When I was younger and pictured my life as a mom, playing with my children, I often pictured tea parties, barbies and dress up (things I enjoyed as a child). So far, my life as a mom has involved a lot of dirt, tools and digging. I swear that I've learned more about tools and trucks over the past four years than in my previous 32!

Whenever I get overwhelmed about being a mother to five boys, wondering "what the heck do I know about raising boys??" I try and remember that they will show me what they need. We'll learn together.

And slowly but surely we are.

I mean, who knew I liked to dig in dirt??

Finn, Everett, Carter and what's left of our snow fort

Finn, off to do some digging