Where have the last six months gone? It honestly feels like the last six months have slipped through my fingers as I spent about half of the time not feeling well due to the first trimester of this pregnancy and various sicknesses (that I caught from our preschoolers). Although I would say the first six months of our babes' lives were about survival because we were so sleep deprived, and it is so much work to take care of three infants, this past six months has been about survival as well as I've spent a lot of the time feeling exhausted and / or sick and Alexis, Jack, and Faith have tons of energy. I'm hopeful that I'll stay healthy during the next half of my pregnancy so that I can savor these next 19 weeks with Alexis, Jack, and Faith before our family changes drastically with the addition of our new baby boy.
Anyway, this post isn't about me being pregnant (I plan to write a different post about that soon!). This post is about Alexis, Jack, and Faith and how much they have changed over the last six months as they are creeping closer to age 4 than 3!
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| These are their first ever school pics and we were shocked with how well they turned out. They also look so old! |
Three-Year-Old Stats
We actually had all three kids weighed and measured at the doctor's office today as Jack was due for a growth check. Since Jack is small for his age, the pediatrician wanted to make sure that he stayed on "his curve," so at his 3 year well check she asked me to bring him back in six months. Today she was happy with his growth and although he is barely on the chart for boys his age, she isn't concerned. I was happy to see that he is growing at about the same rate as the girls.
WEIGHT
Alexis: 28 lbs 10 oz (gained 2 lbs 3 oz in six months)
Jack: 26 lbs 3 oz (gained 1 lb 9 oz in six months)
Faith: 28 lbs 6 oz (gained 2 lbs 3 oz in six months)
HEIGHT
Alexis: 38.5 inches (+1.25 inches in six months)
Faith: 39 inches (+1.5 inches in six months)
Jack: 36.5 inches (+1.5 inches in six months)
Size clothes: The girls are growing out of their 3T clothes and into 4T. I seriously can't get over how long their legs are as most of their 3T pants are an inch too short! Jack is finally growing out of his 2T clothes and is wearing a lot of 3T, although there is room to grow and they will fit for awhile.
Eating: None of our kids are big eaters, but Alexis and Faith seem to have become less picky over the last six months. In fact, if I make something for Micah and I that I assume they wouldn't touch, they usually end up asking for bites of our meal. Jack is still the most picky, but he is willing to tolerate many more foods now than he did six months ago, even if he doesn't necessarily like it. I have to admit that we often use treats as bribes to get them to finish their dinner and we often ending up feeding them bites (especially Jack), but it works most of the time, and since we are always stressed about how little our kids weigh we feel like a few chocolate chips is worth giving to them if they finish their meal. Fruit is still a favorite food. Vegetables, as Alexis likes to say, "Are not my favorite," but they are usually willing to eat the few bites that I put on their plates.
Naps: Six months ago we were struggling to get the kids to nap, but I could almost guarantee that Jack would sleep and the girls seemed to take turns sleeping. During the past six months, though, the girls gave up napping completely and it got to the point where I didn't actually want them to sleep since that meant they wouldn't fall asleep at night until 9:30 p.m., which isn't helpful. And, in the beginning of October, Jack stopped napping and he hasn't taken a single nap since. Unfortunately for me, Jack stopped napping when I was 9 weeks pregnant and I could hardly hold my eyes open in the afternoon, so there were many afternoons that I turned on the TV for the kids and put myself down for a nap. I'm sure this didn't help Jack want to nap since he felt like he would have way more fun staying awake!
Quiet Time: Although I've accepted that the kids aren't going to nap, I am trying to enforce a "quiet time" most afternoons. I haven't been as consistent with this as I should have been for a variety of reasons, but I do think it's important that the kids learn how to entertain themselves and look at books quietly since they spend so much of their day playing with each other. Right now I am having them go in separate bedrooms and I sit in the hallway in the middle of them. I turn on music and set a timer for 15 minutes, but if anyone comes out of their room or talks to me the timer either stops or is reset. Right now, Jack is fine with this but the girls have a much harder time and they seem to think it's some sort of punishment. Hopefully they will figure out how to do quiet time soon as it's nice for me to have at least a short amount of time to myself each day too!
Bedtime: Six months ago I wrote about how much better night and morning was going since we put the girls in separate bedrooms at the end of March (Alexis was temporarily moved into the guest room). Since it was going so much better, we didn't have any plans to put them back in the same room, but at the end of September / beginning of October we had a string of family and friends visit so we put Alexis in Faith's room for a couple of weeks. Now that the girls aren't napping, they are completely exhausted by the end of the day, so being in the same room at night wasn't a problem during those two weeks. Instead of moving Alexis back into the guest room when our visitors were gone, we moved her twin size bed into Faith's room for good and the girls have been sharing a room ever since. It ended being about six months that the girls were in separate rooms, and I'm glad that we had the extra space at the time we needed it, but I'm also glad that they are able to share agains since it's nice to have a designated guest bedroom.
When our kids were still napping, bedtime was at 8:00. Now that naps are gone completely, though, we have moved bedtime up to 7:00. This has been nice for me since I'm so exhausted at the end of the day, but it does mean that Micah sees the kids for an hour less each day and that evening activities are more difficult since the kids completely fall apart if they are up past their bedtime. We are using "OK to Wake" clocks for the morning (a green light turns on when the kids may get up the morning...we have this set for 7:00 a.m.) and, although they don't work 100% of the time, the kids do try to stay quiet in their rooms until they see the green light (and they are so proud of themselves on the mornings that they see the light turn on!).
Unfortunately, it seems like Micah or I (or both of us) are waking up to someone crying about 4-5 nights a week. It's usually one of the girls that is having a bad dream or needs to go potty (they have a small potty in their room but they usually want help with their pants in the middle of the night). Jack occasionally wakes up crying because of a bad dream. There's not much we can do about the kids waking, but at least it usually doesn't take us long to get them back to bed and I fall back asleep the second my head hits the pillow (Micah tends to have more of a problem getting back to sleep so I try to be the first to pop out of bed when I hear a noise).
Words: Many people have commented on how well our kids speak, so I guess they are fairly easy to understand and they definitely have a lot to say. These days they all love to ask us what letter things start with as they have become quite interested in the alphabet since they started preschool in September. Now if we could just get them to talk over each other less, since it's quite chaotic when three 3-year-olds feel like they have something important to say at the exact same time!
New Things:
- Everyone is potty trained! Woohoo! When we started potty training at the end of March I had no idea that it would take us until the end of October to be *almost* 100% day-time potty trained, but since Alexis, Jack, and Faith are individuals they all trained at their own pace. The girls both wake up dry most of the time at night too, so we plan to focus on that next.
- Sharing is still hard, as it is for most kids, but they are getting so much better at it and this Christmas we aren't buying three of every toy! This feels like a huge step.
- Another reason we aren't buying three of every toy is that the differences between the girls' interests and Jack's interests have become even more apparent in the past six months. Although the girls really enjoy playing with cars and trucks, they often pretend that they are characters such as a mommy, daddy, and child. Jack often talks about "bad guys" and he is interested in swords and fighting invisible enemies. Jack loves doing "guy things" like hanging out in the garage while Micah works on a project, while the girls like to rock their baby dolls.
- Jack has an imaginary friend that he occasionally talks about named "Howard." He will randomly say that his "boy" or "friend" is doing something with him. We think it will be good for him to have a little brother since he might be getting this idea from watching the girls play together, but for now the occasional imaginary friend is amusing.
- Jack refers to his grandparents as the "Jeep grandparents" (Micah's parents) and the "golf cart grandparents" (my parents). This is very telling of his interests.
- 3.5-year-olds are wild, silly, and loud, and our house feels like a madhouse sometimes. We have found that when we do something one-on-one with a kid they are much so much easier to handle as they feed off of each other when they are together.
- They find humor in things such as movies, silly things older kids do, and things each other do. I love to hear them laugh, and for some reason understanding jokes and such makes them seem older.
- Phrases we hear around the house include, "You're being rude" and "Don't be mean to my sister." They love to parent each other and stick up for each other. I'm sure it's only the beginning.
- This isn't something new yet, but we plan to turn Alexis, Jack, and Faith's car seats forward facing when we get our new family vehicle (our current vehicle doesn't safely fit four car seats). Although they technically could have been turned forward facing once they reached 20 lbs, I have read that it is safer to keep children rear facing as long as possible and that it is ideal to leave kids rear facing until they are 4 years of age since that is when their bone structure is ready to handle a head-on impact. For the most part, having them rear facing hasn't been a problem, but it is hard to referee conflicts and they often put their legs in each other's space which becomes problematic. I think it will be good for everyone when they are forward facing.
Current Schedule:
Of course we still have our general mealtime and bedtime schedule, but I can honestly say that this is the least scheduled we have been since our trio was born. In some ways this is so freeing since we don't have to worry about being home for nap time and such, but in other ways I feel completely lost as there is a lot more time to fill in a day without naps. Our general schedule is as follows, but it can change quite a bit from day-to-day:
7:00 Kids wake up
7:30 Breakfast
8:00 Help kids get dressed, brush teeth
8:30 Kids watch a show while I shower and get ready (unless it's T / TH since the kids have school and I don't want them to watch TV before they go, so I try to wake up early to take a shower before they get up)
8:45 / 9:00 Leave our house (we need to leave around 8:45 on school mornings, but we generally leave later on non-school days)
9:00-12:00 Preschool on T / TH, or Botanic Garden, Zoo, Park, or errands on non-school days (morning snack while out)....or we just stay home (on Fridays we have gymnastics from 10:45-11:15 so we can't do much that morning)
12:30 Lunch
1:30 Quiet Time
*After quiet time I'm a bit lost, especially now that it's getting colder outside. They usually play inside for awhile, sometimes we run an errand or go to the park. We also will do more structured activities like baking or play doh. I also usually end up turning on a show at some point either to give myself some rest time or to stop the kids from acting so wild and crazy.
5:00 Start making dinner
5:45 Eat dinner (as soon as Micah gets home)
6:15 Change into PJ’s, snack, read
6:45 Brush teeth
7:00 All in their rooms ready to be tucked in (Micah and I used to tuck in each child together, but now we start in opposite rooms and then switch since this helps them all to stay calmly in bed)
The hardest part for me about the current schedule is that I don't have much time to get stuff done around the house like I had when the kids napped. Although I can usually clean up the kitchen and do some laundry while the kids play, I never know when a disagreement will come up between the kids or when someone will need help in the bathroom. Preschool mornings are great since I can do errands that I don't want to do with the kids along, and I sometimes spend time at home cleaning / picking up, but I definitely miss the days that I had a couple of hours to myself every afternoon to tackle my "To Do List." I know that the kids will only get more independent from here, but I'm finding this stage difficult since I don't have much energy in the evening due to pregnancy.
Soon to be "Big Brother and Big Sisters:"
Maybe it's the pregnancy hormones, but thinking about the fact that this is my last post like this before our family changes completely with a new baby has me a little teary. The next time I'll write a post like this the kids will be turning 4 and there will be an infant taking up a lot of my time. Alexis, Jack, and Faith are our babies, and it will be strange to think of them as being a big brother and big sisters since we still so clearly remember how tiny they were when they were born. We know that they will be great "bigs," but our lives have been so consumed by the three of them for the past 3.5 years, so it's hard to imagine life any other way. I know that our hearts will grow with a new baby, so I'm not worried about splitting my love for my kids with another child, but everything from the pregnancy to preschool has been so intense with Alexis, Jack, and Faith so it will be strange when our "triplets" aren't the center of our focus anymore. I'm sure that in time we will say we can't imagine life without the new baby, but until then I want to savor the moments that we have with our three firstborn children as they made us a mommy and daddy.
