2 Years 8 Months

It's funny how I seem to have less time to write blog posts now than I did when our trio was younger. Although in some ways life with triplets has gotten a little easier, I have managed to fill my time with other things. January is always a busy month for me since I am the Treasurer for our church and there are many tax-related forms that need to be completed at year end, the giving statements need to be printed for donors, and the budget needs to be finalized for the next year. But this year, as if I wasn't busy enough being a stay-at-home-mom to three 2 1/2-year-olds, I volunteered to take over as the Treasurer for the Albuquerque Mother's of Twins Club. The current Treasurer had to step down for a variety of reasons, and since my background is a perfect fit since I'm a CPA with non-profit experience, I decided to take on the role. There is always extra time spent getting up to speed when one takes on a new role, so I spent many hours working on that while the kids napped. Although the volunteer work has made for a busy January and beginning of February, I am happy to be helping out two organizations that are important to me and also to be using my accounting skills that would otherwise grow stale as a stay-at-home-mom.

As always, too much has happened since the last blog post for me to give it all justice, but here are some snippets of each of the kids at 2 years and 8 months:

Alexis: 

Lately Alexis has been a "Mommy's girl." She demands that I am the one to take her out of her carseat, not Daddy, and she often wants to sit on my lap during meals or be carried by me when we are at places such as at the zoo. I think her temperament is actually a lot like mine was as a child, which I know because my parents love to remind me of how strong-willed and opinionated I was at the same age. Alexis feels emotions intensely, whether it is something that makes her happy and excited or frustrated and mad. I try to give her a lot of cuddles as I think she needs a lot of reassurance. I've also realized that she likes to talk about negative things that happened as it makes her feel heard. For example, this morning she fell down the last couple of steps when going through the gate and after she cried for awhile I said something about how much that must have hurt and she said, "I fell and went boom, and I hurt, and I cried." After explaining what happened she seemed better.

Alexis consistently has the hardest time waking up from a nap. Although watching a show right after she wakes up temporarily makes her happy, she usually remembers how grumpy she feels when the show is over. I get it since I hate napping because I feel so groggy and grumpy when I wake up, but unfortunately she really needs to take naps to make it through her day. Faith tries her best to make her sister happy at times like this. She will find Lexi's Snoopy dog or try to do something to make her laugh. One day when Alexis was having a particularly hard time after a nap Faith looked at me and said, "Maybe she's hungry!" Faith really wants her sister to be happy and when one of her efforts results in a smile Faith will tell me, "I'm making her happy!" I love that Faith loves her sister so much that she will search her two-year-old brain for solutions.

Alexis continues to love stuffed animals and random small objects. Grammy and Grandpa gave the kids dollhouse furniture and small dolls for Christmas and Alexis loves to play with them in her dollhouse. She also likes to pick out random things from the dollhouse, such as the tiny skateboard and dog, and take them to her crib at nap time.

Although we are definitely seeing "two-year-old behavior" in Alexis, she also loves to play with her siblings. We most often see either Alexis and Jack playing or Alexis and Faith playing (it's always hard to be a threesome so quite often one child is playing alone). Alexis and Jack's favorite game is running around with their toy strollers and "crashing," and then having the other person act as the emergency crew and pick them up off the ground. It's quite comical. Alexis and Faith play games with their baby dolls and they take turns pretending each of them is the baby and covering each other with blankets and stuffed animals.

Playing with the dollhouse furniture

Although she's a mommy's girl, she still enjoys daddy's cuddles too

She really wanted to put on her own bandaid. Too bad she missed the cut!

Playing in the backyard

Where's Lexi?

Lexi definitely doesn't mind getting messy!

"I can do it myself!"

Lexi napping on the guest bed. They are all growing up fast!

Jack:

A couple of weeks ago Micah and I took Jack up to Denver for more doctor's appointments. Micah's mom graciously offered to watch the girls at her house, so we left around 5:00 am, drove four hours to Monte Vista, dropped the girls off and let Jack play there for over an hour, and then Micah, Jack, and I drove up to Denver for two nights. We saw an Immunologist and a Hematologist, and both appointments proved to be very beneficial. 

Through blood tests that the Immunologist ordered it was determined that Jack had Parvovirus at some point in his life and that is believed to have been the trigger for the production of antibodies to his platelets. The test showed that he does not currently have Parvovirus, but at some point he had it. It's amazing what a simple blood test can reveal! Of course I've spent a lot of time thinking about when he could have had the virus, and looking at photos for the distinctive facial rash, but I haven't been able to pinpoint anything. According to the Mayo Clinic website, though, "Most people with Parvovirus infection have no signs or symptoms." (http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/parvovirus-infection/basics/symptoms/con-20023045).

The Hematologist in Denver was very informative and our appointment was basically a consultation as we spent an hour discussing Jack's history and future treatment options. Both the Hematologist and Immunologist said that Jack should be treated with a two week course of Prednisone or with IVIG next time his platelets are low. These treatment options have been discussed briefly with Jack's doctors in ABQ, but now that we have been dealing with Jack's low platelets for eight months, we are ready to try other options even though there are more known side-effects with Prednisone and IVIG than a platelet transfusion. The hope is that one of these two options will be all Jack's body needs to stop the antibody production and heal his body.

Of course, there is a lot more to Jack than his medical condition and, through his play, his interests are very obvious. First of all, his captivation with guitars, violins, and all things musical continues to grow. Every day he plays one of his instruments and he is getting really good at singing along while he "strums." I've even caught him tapping his foot to the beat while strumming and singing, just like the worship leaders in church. He's a natural! Jack is also a budding artist. He has figured out how to hold a writing instrument properly without any additional instruction, and he often draws guitars that are very good! Jack's play is also evolving as he not only enjoys pretending to be a nurse and drawing our blood, which I know is very therapeutic for him with all of his blood draws, but he also spends time fighting monsters, using his rake as a leaf blower, and pretending to cut down branches on the tree in the backyard. It's astounding to me how Jack's play generally involves things that are more "boy-ish" than the girls even though they all have access to the same toys.

Medical play happens almost daily at our house without any prompting. Jack now insists on wearing his "gloves," which are actually his mittens, before doing any sort of medical work while playing. He often takes his mitten off and taps on our arms looking for veins, just like the nurses do with him, before doing the blood draw.

After his first blood draw in Denver Jack picked out this princess crown as his prize. He may often play like a boy, but he's also influenced by his two sisters (and Frozen)! Jack loved the three days in Denver despite the doctor appointments since he had both Mommy and Daddy to himself.

While in Denver we stayed with Micah's sister and Jack enjoyed playing with his boy cousins. We look forward to our next trip to Denver as our kids are now old enough to play with their cousins. 

"I want to drive it!" Jack was all smiles while "driving" Grandpa's ATV.

"I need my hammer." This boy loves his tools!

Jack's guitar drawing. The bottom two lines were added out of enthusiasm after I told him how great the picture was. 

Jack holding a marker properly

Jack "playing" the violin while watching violin music on TV

I won't name any names, but one of his sisters did this to him during a disagreement

Jack at the zoo

Walking the bricks in our yard like a balance beam. We hope to put the kids in gymnastics soon, but we'd like to get Jack's platelet issues resolved first.

Faith:

Faith seems to be the leader of the kids these days and she is also the one that seems to have the most logic and understand consequences. One day I overheard her assigning "roles" to Jack and Alexis when they were playing: I'm the mommy, Jack is the big kid, and Alexis is the baby. We often use mini marshmallows as a reward for sitting in their car seats without fighting, and she is usually the most responsive to that technique. At the same time, though, Faith is very strong-willed and independent and often says, "No, it's my turn!" when we try to help her with something such as take off her pajamas in the morning. She really wants to be a big kid and do everything by herself.

Faith is also the most likely to let someone else other than me hold her hand or carry her. At music class she sits with the teacher instead of fighting Alexis and Jack for space on my lap, and at outings with the early intervention therapists she is happy to be with a therapist as Jack and Alexis fight to be carried by me. Also, Faith seems to prefer Daddy to me when he's home.

Faith says some of the funniest things. One day she started calling us Mr. Daddy and Mrs. Mommy (although sometimes I'm Mr. Mommy too). The rhyme "one, two buckle my shoe," etc. ends with nine, ten a big fat chicken (instead of hen) when she recites it. And one afternoon when she didn't nap she decided to read to me and she did a fantastic job not only explaining what was in the pictures but also saying something close to the actual words in the book.

Faith had been napping in the pack n play in the guest room for over two years without much of a problem, but last week she decided she no longer wanted to sleep in that. After she climbed out of the pack n play a few times I told her that she could sleep on the guest bed as long as she was a big girl and didn't get up, and she listened! Although she has had trouble staying in bed one of the afternoons, mostly she has done a great job sleeping on a big bed.

Drinking out of a glass mug at Grammy's house

First time sleeping on the guest bed. She insists on bringing toys to bed with her at nap time (the bottle is just a toy for the babies now).

Happy girl in the backyard

"No, it's my turn!"

The girls can now put on their own socks and shoes (when they want to).

All Three:

All three are slowly understanding reason and at night time if they are having trouble falling asleep we can now go in there and talk to them about how it is night time and Mommy and Daddy need to sleep too, and they get it. We thought this day would never come!

A couple of days ago I took the mattress springs out of the girls' cribs and put the mattresses back in the cribs on the floor. Since they could easily climb in and out of their cribs they were having a hard time going to sleep, so we decided to try this for awhile before switching to big beds. We just aren't ready to deal with the sleep regression right now if we don't have to so we bought ourselves some time.

Like I mentioned above, all three are engaging in cooperative play and they can spend quite awhile doing this together, although I still end up breaking up fights as it's hard to play cooperatively at any age. Last Sunday we went to a friend's house for a Super Bowl party and our three and another two-year-old entertained themselves for most of the game! It truly feels like we've turned a corner here as we could actually hold full conversations with the other adults at the party. I almost didn't know what to do with myself!

The kids love to sing songs and recite things, and I love hearing them do this without any prompting as they play. They do watch shows with a lot of singing, but they've also learned new songs from music class that they love to sing at home. Lately I've realized that they are getting much better at identifying colors too! I've worried about this for awhile as they know so many things but colors have been hard, but as my mom pointed out, there are many shades of each color so it might just be a harder thing to learn.

We've decided to enroll the kids in a Tuesday / Thursday morning preschool program in the fall. It ended up being a hard decision as there are many great options near our house, but I am very happy with the program that we chose and I think the kids will love going to school. It's starting to feel like their 3rd birthday is just around the corner!

We had some really cold days in January, but we still got outside to play a little bit as fresh air helps us all sleep better. Jack is a few inches shorter than the girls, but this picture is a bit deceiving.

Choo choo!

Sharing a blanket on a Saturday morning.

For some reason they like to sit on each other's laps

Sleep sacks and turning the cribs around didn't matter. These girls could still get out of their cribs!

So now the mattresses are on the floor inside of their cribs (and the baby mobiles are down...tear!)

Even though they are toddlers, we have to buy a lot of food! I no longer go to Costco without help as I can't fit all three kids and the groceries in one cart, so now we meet Daddy there after work.

Big Milestone: The booster seats are gone! I'm so thankful that I don't have to clean the collection of crumbs that accumulated between the boosters and the chairs every day.

I love that activities capture their attention for so much longer these days. The rice play is messy so we don't do it often, but when we do they love it!

Three toddlers in a box!

Only two out of three thought it was funny when they fell over

Try #2: Alexis, Jack, and Faith

Faith said, "Mom, take a picture!"

Christmas 2015

As expected, Christmas with 2 1/2 year olds was much more exciting than Christmas with 1 1/2 year olds. Although they don't understand what Christmas is all about yet, there were glimpses of them putting the pieces together. And of course they definitely understood how to open presents, so that part was more fun than last year. Here are some highlights from our Christmas season:

• TREE DECORATING: Micah and the kids helped me decorate our small tree. Of course we only put up kid-friendly decorations and in some ways it was much more work letting the kids "help," but it was fun to spend a few minutes decorating as a family. The kids loved the lights on the tree and if I forgot to plug the tree in they would attempt to do it for me (yikes!). Although they were really curious about the ornaments at first, once we moved them all above their reach they were great about not touching the tree itself.

• FELT TREES: I made everyone their very own felt Christmas tree complete with decorations that they could put up themselves, but after the initial excitement they seemed to enjoy playing with the decorations in other ways more than putting them up on the tree. Maybe next year they'll enjoy decorating more.

• RIVER OF LIGHTS: We went to the opening night of the River of Lights at the ABQ Botanic Garden with Micah's parents when they were in town for Thanksgiving. Although it was a bit crowded, we all enjoyed looking at the variety of lights.

• CHRISTMAS LIGHTS: Two different evenings we loaded the kids into the car after dinner and drove around looking at lights. They really enjoyed it and we'll have to make this a family tradition.

• SANTA VISIT: We didn't say much about Santa as we haven't decided how we want to handle this in our family yet. We want Jesus to be the main focus of Christmas, not Santa, but Santa does bring a different element of fun to the celebrations and he is everywhere at Christmas, so next year we'll have to talk about him more. Because of this I didn't plan on taking the kids to the mall to visit Santa, plus I didn't want to deal with the crowd and I was pretty sure the kids would freak out once it was their turn to sit on his lap anyway. One day we ended up at the Infusion Center for Jack (an unplanned visit as he was sick), and we just happened to be there when Santa came for a visit! Apparently he had arrived at the hospital via helicopter and he spent many hours visiting patients. We were in a private room at the Infusion Center so while Jack was getting antibiotics through an IV, Alexis, Faith, Jack, and I got to meet Santa! He gave the kids stuffed animals and candy canes and posed for a photo. Although the kids were pretty scared by him (he was a super tall Santa), I was excited for the visit as it brought an element of fun to an otherwise sad part of our Christmas season. Jack never smiled when Santa was around, but he had had a pretty traumatic day already so we can't blame him.

• CHRISTMAS MOVIES: Although the kids don't watch a ton of TV, we decided to let them watch a couple of Christmas movies this year so one night we watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and another day we watched "Curious George: A Very Monkey Christmas." We also had a couple of family movie nights, one with Micah's parents and one with my parents and we watched full-length movies that were kid friendly.  

• MY BIRTHDAY: My birthday is December 22 so it always gets mixed in with Christmas activities. Micah went to work a little late that day as we originally planned on going out to breakfast as a family, but for some reason the kids were extra cranky that morning so we decided it would be better to get takeout breakfast burritos instead. After Micah went to work I took the kids to the Botanic Garden, which is my favorite place to go with the kids in ABQ. Although there isn't much to look at as far as plants this time of year, it is a great place for the kids to run around without me worrying about them getting lost or hurt, and it's peaceful. For dinner Micah picked up pizza, which was my request since we hardly ever eat pizza at our house. Instead of baking myself a cake, I bought cupcakes from the store when I picked up the burritos. All in all it was a nice day, even though we didn't do anything extra special. We tried to get the kids to sing Happy Birthday to me throughout the day but they weren't very enthusiastic about it. In the days following, though, they sang "Happy Birthday to Mommy" repeatedly, and it was adorable. 

• NATIVITY SCENE: Micah's parents gave the kids a toy nativity scene at Christmas when they were six months old, and that was definitely a hit this year. The people and animals were played with daily. Alexis was particularly attached to Baby Jesus and she often brought him to her crib at nap time and she even spent a little time "feeding" him. Once the kids realized that there were songs related to each of the people in the nativity scene, we sang or played videos of those songs often (We Three Kings, Silent Night, Angels We Have Heard on High, Mary Did You Know, etc.). Alexis particularly enjoyed "Mary Did You Know" by Pentatonix and she literally teared up the first time she saw the video and heard the song. It was quite amazing for me to witness her heartfelt reaction to that song. 

• PLANS CHANGED: For months we planned on going to Monte Vista to be with Micah's parents for Christmas. Unfortunately, Jack's platelets took a huge drop a few days before we were supposed to go and he had to have two platelet transfusions only a couple of days apart. Because of this, his doctors were not comfortable with Jack traveling four hours to an area that didn't have a Children's Hospital so they recommended that we stay home for Christmas. Although this was extremely disappointing as we were looking forward to getting away, we all wanted to make the best decision for Jack so we stayed in ABQ and Micah's parents drove down to us for a long weekend instead. 

• JESUS IS THE REASON: We decided to keep the kids with us during the Christmas Eve service as until we got there we didn't realize there was childcare and we were thinking that the service would be shorter and filled with more music than a usual Sunday service. Overall the kids did great, although Alexis lost it towards the end and she had to be brought to the nursery. During the first part of the service, though, when a Bible passage was being read and the reader said Jesus' name Alexis exclaimed, "Jesus!" I love that the nativity scene made it easy to talk about Jesus daily and that Alexis was truly excited to hear the familiar name, even though she doesn't understand what it means yet.

• PLANS CHANGED AGAIN: On Christmas Eve after church we had the kids open gifts from Micah and myself. They enjoyed it, although they were a bit tired since it got to be so late. The plan was to wake up Christmas morning and open gifts with Micah's parents. Instead of a fun morning with Christmas PJ's and presents, though, we were surprised to find Faith extremely upset in her crib as she had just vomited. Micah and I spent Christmas day taking turns hanging out with Faith in our room while Grammy and Grandpa helped entertain Alexis and Faith. By the evening Faith seemed better and miraculously no one else got sick, so we were able to enjoy the honey baked ham dinner that we had planned and the gifts were opened in the evening.

• MORE TIME WITH DADDY: Micah's employer always closes between Christmas and New Year's so we were able to enjoy extra time with him throughout the week. Between grandparent visits we did some things that I can't do alone with the kids, such as go to a story time and take the kids to the mall to run around and burn some energy. 

• NYE MORNING: My parents arrived on December 30th around midnight, so we were able to celebrate Christmas with them on New Year's Eve morning. The kids were very excited to open another round of gifts, and I was thankful that we were able to celebrate in the morning instead of the evening this time as the kids are generally so much happier at that time of day.

• NEW YEAR'S EVE: We made sure to get the kids to bed on time on New Year's Eve so that the adults could enjoy a couple of hours before midnight EST. My mom and I played Scrabble, Micah joined us for a game of Banagrams, my dad watched football, and we all ate snacks and sweets. Just before midnight we poured the champagne, turned on the TV, watched the ball drop, and then said goodnight. My parents were tired from traveling late the day before, and it doesn't make sense to stay up until midnight MST when we have to get up at 6:30 with the kids no matter what. Although it was low-key, we enjoyed our evening.