Falling Down on the Job

It's been more than two weeks since I last updated this blog.  On the one hand, a lot has happened, but on the other, nothing has.  Just busy, busy times, times three.

Caroline is still climbing:

which does not make Daddy terribly happy.

On the 15th, everyone celebrated their 18-month birthday.  There was not a big festivity, but tradition mandates that they be measured against the door jamb, just as they have been at each six-month interval.  As you can see in the picture below, at the first two measurements, all three were relatively close together, but in the past six months, the boys have definitely out-grown Caroline, who is lagging more than an inch behind them.  On Monday we take them to the doctor for their check-up and we'll have more detailed statistics for them.

Grandpa returned from a trip to New York City with a very cute little dress for Caroline, complete with a headband that she immediately ignored.  Being contrary, Daniel decided he should give it a chance.  Not the most attractive look for him, though we thought perhaps he could use it for Halloween this year to dress up as a '70s-era NBA star.

Daniel did get a chance to try his hand at dressing up professionally this month - he got his very first "fit modeling" gig with Gymboree!  Both he and Max are "the perfect size", but only one of them was needed and Daniel was in a better mood.  It turned out there was another boy there for the fitting - in size 4T - also named Daniel!  We put our Daniel in two different pairs of jeans and a series of sweatshirts, vests, and jackets and he walked around being viewed by four women who chattered about the placement of pockets and the length of the rise, etc.  It was all over in about half an hour and back out to the car.  I think Daniel's favorite part of the the whole event was getting to ride in the car by himself, chattering away the whole time as he looked out the window.

Daniel wearing his Gymboree visitor's pass

Max took this picture of himself (on the left) and Daniel.

Caroline showed off her hair in a little Pebbles-style pony tail up high on her head.

She was trying out new hairstyles to get ready for Colleen's baby shower.  As you may recall, Caroline scored a coveted invite to Colleen's bridal shower last summer, and she was lucky enough to get invited to the baby shower as well.

Colleen showing off her belly

Caroline, enjoying the party favor

enjoying the garlic cheese bread more!

The play-dough was not as tasty

 The shower was at the Old Spaghetti Factory, which has a wonderful children's menu, complete with applesauce appetizer for the children.  Caroline was a big fan of hers.

She somehow managed to eat all that garlic cheese bread, a cup of applesauce, raviolis, spumoni ice cream, and cake, and only got one little spot on her dress!

While Colleen was opening her presents, Caroline decided she should get some exercise, so we exited the banquet room and ran a circuit through the main dining room.  Luckily, it is a family restaurant and nobody was upset to have a toddler in a party dress wandering up to them.  Of course, she wasn't content only looking at the diners, and I had to stop her from entering the kitchen four different times - and once from pushing her way into the men's room!  

By the end of the party, Caroline was DONE.  She was hot and her hair was stringy, but she still smiled for the camera!

Bad Boys (and Girl)

Tell me again - it's the terrible twos, right?  You mean, it's going to get worse?

Don't get me wrong, the Salvateenies are not bad babies.  That being said, Max has developed a somewhat gleeful cackle as he knocks his brother and sister to the ground in frantic running-in-circles bouts of energy late at night, and it is entirely possible that Daniel thinks the word for "floor lamp" is "NO!", while Caroline has informed us that is her name.  I'm serious.  We tell her "no" so often that tonight when I was tickling her, I asked, "What is your name?" and she answered, "NO!" and giggled.

Caroline has become a mountain goat.  She climbs anything she can, first judging the distance by pointing her toe and stretching it up to the top of whatever is there, then bending her knee and beginning a well-planned crawl to the top of her personal mountain.  She will move boxes around to give herself a sort of staircase to ascend.  Changing her diaper the other day, I noticed all sorts of tiny, fading bruises that are the result of her flinging herself at the corners of cardboard boxes during her climbs.

All three of the babies enjoy climbing on the couch and looking out the window - especially when they get to sneak peeks around the sides of our expensive shades (let's see how long they last!).  At each edge of the couch, we have a floor lamp to help spread a little light to the corners of the room.  Daniel and Caroline love  to scale the cushions, stand at the armrest, reach over and grab the lamp.  Of course, they don't start moving it around until they've stopped and let us notice them so they can giggle at us as we remind them they're not supposed to touch it.

Max takes great pleasure in knocking Daniel and Caroline down, either tackling them from behind (he's watched the NFL and is expert at grabbing the collar of a pair of PJs and dragging straight to the ground) or from the front (his favorite is an open hand to the face - he uses this one on me as well).  Though he's not quite 18 months old, we are beginning to employ the "time out" method for dealing with this, as he is the only one who doesn't like Baby Jail.  So a quick couple of minutes in the enclosure will sometimes distract him from his bullying.  But not always.

But there is something they can all agree with, and that is how much fun it is to turn the TV on and off.  In fact, it's gotten to be such a fun game for them that we recently purchased a new HDTV and arranging for it to be wall-mounted so they can't reach it.

Of course, Caroline will find a way.

In other news, Caroline is still eschewing hair accessories.  The only pictures I could find with them in are all from November.

Caroline's first attempt at a hair bow - November

The first time she wore a clip out in public (also November)

What she'd rather wear in her hair

Daniel shows off that he can wear something in his hair, too.

Max practices putting a bow in his hair and doing his pageant walk

I think Max has decided he likes hair accessories

Last Sunday, we attended a memorial service at the ballpark for my Guest Services supervisor.  We took over the Lexus Dugout Club so that the babies could roam, hoping this would keep them relatively quiet.  It worked, but Grandma and I were very nervous chasing them all around (including Max's mad dash into the dugout!)

I thought I'd show off how well Max positioned himself to keep this bath photo G-rated

The cleaners set up the Teenies' "laptops" on the table for them.  I think we've figured out where their seats will be when we graduate from high chairs.

Caroline thought it was FUNNY!

Max's favorite book is his A's Baseball 101.  What did I expect? I'm the one who assigned him green as his signature color!

I can only hope that Daniel doesn't take to his signature blue and become a Dodger fan.  I got him these orange-trimmed PJs as a prophylactic measure.

Musings of a Mother of Multiples

The other day Dear Abby had a letter from a woman in her mid-30s who was happily pregnant after she and her husband had struggled through two years of infertility.  She was asking how to deal with nosy folks who asked her if she'd used fertility methods to help conceive.

This is a common lament in the MoM world (that's the first thing you have to learn ... MoM means "Mother of Multiples).  The Triplet Mom groups I'm a member of regularly have some sort of posting to share the stupid or offensive questions you've heard.  The ones that apply to the infertility question range from the trying-to-be-subtle "Do triplets run in your family?" (Seriously! You'd be surprised how many times someone asked me that!) to the blunt "Did you do that fertility thing, what's it called, IV-something?" (more often than not followed by some Octo-mom reference) to the truly atrocious "Are they natural?" (another part of the MoM lexicon - all babies are "natural", none are synthetic, but the ones these people are asking about - higher order multiples conceived without the benefit of modern science - are referred to as "spontaneous").

When these conversations pop up in my MoM groups, I'm happy to chip in and add my own experiences to the conversation, but I've never found myself truly offended by any question anybody asked.  When we first found out we were having triplets and were grappling with the terrible choice of whether or not we would have to reduce any of the fetuses to protect the pregnancy, there was a point when I asked myself if I was really preparing to go through with this because the doctors said all indications were that we'd have a successful pregnancy, we could afford it and handle it, or was there just a little part of me that wanted to do it because it would make us "special" somehow.  Ultimately, the decision was made because we already loved all three of our silly babies, but there is no denying that it has made us "special", and I find I'm sometimes a little disappointed when people don't comment on the three of them when we go out.

When it comes to questions about fertility treatments, I find I'm happy to share our experience.  Maybe I'm more willing than others because ours was less painful than so many others' - we were successful (some might say more than successful) on our first attempt.  I have met people who went through as many as ten rounds of IUI and IVF without a successful term pregnancy and so many others who had major complications and scares during their pregnancies.  So we were lucky.  But I also was able to make it through the hormone shots and procedures and waiting because I have a friend who'd been through it three years earlier and who hadn't been shy about the fact that she was excusing herself from a meeting to go to the bathroom and inject herself.  She was there to answer all the questions I had as I lived through it, and I can't imagine not doing that for someone else.

Once we started telling people about our pregnancy, I was actually approached by five different people interested in IVF.  I talked to all of them and answered all their questions to the best of my ability.  Amazingly, given the percentages involved in fertility treatments, three of those couples got pregnant using IVF and another friend who was able to conceive with the last round of IUI just before they moved to IVF, and three of them have welcomed babies into their families in the past year,   I like to think that I helped them make the decision that brought them their children, and that's worth all the stupid, invasive questions from strangers and passing acquaintances.

In case you're wondering, here's the consensus on other things you shouldn't say to a MoM:

• "Wow! Looks like you have your hands full!"
• "Do you have a lot of help?"
• "Better you than me!" 
• "I don't know how you do it!" / "How do you do it?"
• "You must spend a fortune on diapers!" (The formula actually costs more than the diapers)
• "Were you trying for triplets?" (Can you believe people ask this???)
• "Are they identical?" (especially with mixed-gender groups - basic biology tells you boys and girls are not identical)

I'm sure there are more, but these are the ones that pop up most often.

Another nice thing about having triplets is knowing I'm done having babies.  Early on when I was pregnant, I read a blog by a mom who was incensed that strangers would see her mixed-gender triplets and proclaim, "So - two girls and a boy - I guess you're done, then!", livid that strangers felt they had the right to decide that just because she had covered both genders that meant she shouldn't have more children (or implying that if she'd had all boys it wouldn't have been enough and she should've tried for a girl).  In fact, you'd be amazed at how many triplet mommies have another one - there's a woman in one of these groups who has TWO SETS OF TRIPLETS.  But not me, I'm done.  I figure we spent $15K on them, and we got a bargain.  I even introduce them as "First, second, and last"!

But now that they're almost 18 months old, I think of all my friends who have kids spaced just around 2 years apart and I realize that means at this point in their older kid's life, they were already pregnant again.  I can't imagine that.  Or the ones who weren't pregnant yet at 18 months but were already starting to think about when they wanted another - not wanting them to be too close together, but also not wanting to wait too long.  It just seems like so much to deal with while you're chasing a toddler around.

Then again, maybe it's not as overwhelming if you're only chasing ONE toddler around...

Catching Up

It's busy, busy, busy with a houseful of triplet toddlers, and yet there's nothing remarkable to comment on, really.  Just going through the normal paces of the day!

The big development at Casa Salvateenie has been the discovery of bath crayons.  I remembered reading about them on a Triplet Mommy forum months ago and finally bought a set.  They sat on the table for a while until one day when the 'Teenies all settled in to read their bath books.  I'd tried bath books ages ago and nobody was really terribly interested in them.  Then one day, they loved them, eschewing all the other toys they normally throw at me.  With the bubbles from their bubble bath all around and Caroline intently peering at her book, I was tempted to grab her a little glass of wine to complete the picture.  But I resisted.

Once they were reading in the tub, it seemed an obvious progression to get them writing in the tub as well. As I may have mentioned, they hadn't used crayons much and were still adjusting to holding them, but once they saw the colors on the tiles and sides of the tub, they were all in.

The other thing they still love to do is mug for the camera.  Here they are in the tub:

That's Max making sure his face stays front and center in the camera. :)

And, speaking of Max, he's still definitely the dancer in the bunch.  Here he is boogying to the Pajanimals theme song:

(Please pay no mind to the terrible parental sing-along!)

And with that, Caroline and I would like to wish you a pleasant good night, and blow a kiss to you all!