Some Days Are Just Hard

I try not complain too much about my "bad days," at least not publicly, but today was one for the books. Jack had a blood draw scheduled at the infusion center at 9:30 this morning. This was the first count since he received IVIG two weeks ago, and we were really hoping his platelets would be up from the treatment. Around midnight last night, though, I woke up to Jack crying and I quickly realized that he had a nosebleed. Jack doesn't usually get nosebleeds, and unfortunately nosebleeds can indicate low platelets, so I slept badly the rest of the night as I was now concerned that Jack's body didn't respond to IVIG as we had hoped (plus both girls also woke up at different times during the night...yikes!).

In the morning everything went relatively smoothly and we got out of the door on time for our appointment. Right around 9:30 we were called back by the nurse. I told her about the nosebleed and after talking to the doctor she said we had to get an IV in Jack just in case he needed platelets. I felt like this was the right call since it's better to poke Jack once to get an IV in and do the blood draw at the same time, rather than poke him for the blood draw and then again if an IV is necessary. In theory, going with an IV is a conservative approach even though it may be unnecessary in the end (sometimes I feel like putting in an IV for Jack is like bringing along an umbrella to keep it from raining...it's good luck of sorts).

The kids in the waiting room at the infusion center. These appointments have become so routine for us that the girls are excited to go as the nurses and other staff are familiar, and there are fun toys to play with.

Although it is St. Patrick's Day today, the nurses and Jack were all having very bad luck. Over the next two hours Jack was poked a total of nine times by four different nurses, just to get the tiny amount of blood needed for a CBC. It was pure torture for Jack as he's usually pretty tough and calm through the process, although he always cries which is understandable, but by the fourth poke he was getting mad and by the ninth poke he was furious. It was also pure torture for me, since it's my job to hold him down on my lap and try to convince him to hold still during the nine pokes. Awful. I wanted to cry along with him. Usually I have a pretty good perspective on Jack's blood disorder since I see so many cancer patients when we go to the infusion center, but today I was feeling really sorry for Jack and myself as it sucked. No one should have to get poked nine times within a two hour window, and no mommy should have to hold her child down during the process.

Fortunately, the girls were keeping themselves entertained throughout this very long process by playing with the toys in the infusion center, watching parts of a movie on my iPad, eating snacks, and people watching. The infusion center only has a few private rooms, so today we were in the more public common area, and there were a few other patients in there as well. At one point I had to run over to the girls across the room to break up a fight (they were literally wrestling on the tile floor and all of the other adults in the room were shocked and staring), but for the most part they were very well behaved.

After Jack's blood was finally drawn around noon without placing an IV (lucky poke number nine!), we went downstairs to Subway since it was lunch time. I was so exhausted and hungry, I don't think I made eye contact with any of the onlookers (we tend to draw a crowd with our wagon). We went back to the infusion center to eat our lunch at a kid table. Jack's lunch consisted of a chocolate chip cookie, but I really didn't care as I felt so bad for him since he had such a horrible morning. Thankfully, the preliminary results of the blood draw came back while we were finishing lunch and his platelets were at 83,000. Not quite as high as I had hoped (normal is 150,000-400,000), but at this point I didn't even care as at least it meant that Jack didn't need a platelet transfusion and we could go home.

Of course, two of the three kids had poopy diapers that needed to be changed now that it was time to leave, and no one wanted to leave (go figure!), so it took us forever to actually head back to our car. Alexis got really upset about the diaper change and being forced to leave, so the entire wagon ride through the hospital, down the street, and through the parking lot she was crying and saying, "Daddy! Daddy! I miss my Daddy!" over and over again. People would start to smile when they saw the wagon full of two-year-olds, but as soon as they heard Alexis crying for her daddy their smiles turned to concerned looks as they were probably thinking her daddy was in the hospital. It took everything in me not to burst out laughing like a crazy person as I pulled the wagon to the car. The morning was just too long and stressful, and this tantrum along with the concerned stares was the icing on the cake.

On the 20 minute drive home I had to alternate between singing at the top of my lungs and rolling the windows down to keep the kids awake. I needed the break during nap time today, and nothing was going to get in my way! Although the nap was an hour late so night time might be difficult again, thankfully two of the three are now sleeping and I'm hopeful the third will fall asleep soon too.

Being a mommy is hard. Being a mommy to three two-year-olds is very hard. Being a mommy to three two-year-olds while at a ridiculously long doctor's appointment where one of the children is basically being tortured while mommy holds him down is unimaginable. Is it the weekend yet?

Life Lessons with Triplets: Sharing is Not Always Worth the Battle

Trying to teach triplet two-year-olds to share is an uphill battle. Since they don't fully understand the concept of sharing, I am really just dealing with the aftermath from taking a toy from a toddler. There is crying. Lots of tears. And screaming. And although one child is happy because he or she now has the prized toy, there are one or two others that are throwing a fit. When sharing is absolutely necessary, I use the timer on my phone to make it "fair," but honestly it doesn't help much since it seems so unfair to the two-year-olds. So, although I know it is very important for children to learn to share, sometimes it is simply not worth it for me since I deal with sharing issues all day long.

There are certain things in life that triplets must share, such as their mommy. Today in music class I had a lot of "triplet mom guilt" as all three wanted to sit on my lap and they weren't very happy sharing my lap with each other. All of the other children in the class were there with one or two caregivers, and no siblings, and of course those children were mostly content participating in class and they didn't really care about sitting on a lap. But Alexis, Jack, and Faith almost never have their mommy or daddy to themselves, and some days that is really hard for them to handle.

For the most part, we make sure the kids have three of everything and that those items are assigned by color whenever possible. This cuts down on a lot of fights, which keeps me sane. But last fall I bought the kids one small train set from Ikea thinking that would be sufficient, but I was wrong. There are simply not enough pieces in that train set to share, so we weren't able to play with it for months. For Christmas, Micah's parents bought the kids a couple of more train sets to supplement the original set, but that didn't solve the sharing problem since the kids wanted all of the train pieces to themselves and they would hog the tracks. So when I went to Target today I bought three small plastic bins, I put an initial on each bin, I divided the tracks equally, and I assigned each child a train color. This solved the problem! Tonight Alexis, Jack, and Faith happily played with the tracks and trains from their own bin. Plus, they really seemed to enjoy putting away their personal train set at the end of the night since they had special bins. Triplet mommy win!!

Faith putting away her train set. Look at that organization! She gets that meticulousness from her daddy.

Jack happy to have his own train set.

Lexi trying on her train bin as a hat.

Three kids, three train sets. Life is good.

Kids Say the Darndest Things: Part 1

As of yesterday, our trio is 33 months old! We are only three months away from their 3rd birthday!

Alexis, Jack, and Faith are truly talking in full sentences. I can't necessarily understand them 100% of the time, especially if I'm driving and they're trying to tell me something as they are still rear facing in their car seats so they aren't facing me and they seem to talk so quietly in the car, but most of the time their words are quite clear. I have been trying to write down some of the funny things that each of them has said over the past few weeks, although some of it probably sounds much funnier when said by a two-year-old than when written.

Faith:

• What's going on over here? (Said to Lexi and Jack when they were fighting.)
• Who are you texting? (Said to me when I was looking at my phone...and she should have been napping.)
• I liked it last night? Really Mom? (Referring to last night's dinner that she didn't want to eat for lunch.)
• I think I need ice cream to help me. (After she bonked her head and I opened the freezer to get her a Boo Boo Buddy.)
• Mommy! You did a good painting! (When she saw her newly painted bedroom for the first time.)
• I'm going to turn around like a puppy and slide down. (Said when getting off of Daddy's office chair.)
• Did you sleep well little sister? (Said to Lexi after a nap, but I've heard her refer to several of her peers as "little.")
• You're a good helper mommy. (Said to me when I was pulling the painters tape off of the walls and she was gathering it into a pile for me.)

"I love my doggy" is something Faith says often. She loves to give her doggy kisses. 

Jack: 

• Here are your marshmallows. (Said to me after I pretended to buckle up when playing a game with him. Yes, we use mini marshmallows as an incentive to get in their car seats.)
• Can I change Charlie's diaper? (He is currently obsessed with "changing" Charlie Brown's "diaper," which really just involves pulling 100 wipes out and wasting them.)
• We have no cream! (Said after "changing" his stuffed dinosaur's diaper.)
• I have keys, phone, but no rings. (Said when playing outside and driving his "car." Apparently these are the requirements to be a grown up to Jack.)
• I'm making music! (Said when waving a stick in the air like a conductor.)
• I want to drive. (I hear this several times a day, and he is usually talking about my 4Runner.)
• I'm a nurse. (When he plays with medical stuff, he tells me he is a nurse, not a doctor.)

"Hi Grandma!" When we were at Costco a few days ago Jack picked up the block of cheese and pretended it was a phone.

Alexis:

• You did a nice job. (When she saw her newly painted bedroom for the first time.)
• I have a leaf in my shoe...in my toe! (We just got new Crocs and she isn't used to stuff being in her shoes.)
• I miss… [Fill in the blank]. (This is said about any object or person, whether it's actually gone or about to be gone.)
• It sounds like: [insert baby crying, bird noise, dog barking, etc.] (Her interpretations are quite amusing.)
• I don't want. (The lazy way of saying she doesn't want to do something. She speaks in full sentences most of the time, but this phrase has stuck around.)

Alexis has talent when it comes to drinking! She often holds her cup in her mouth and drinks while doing stuff with her hands.

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.