Another Snowy Weekend

It seems that the only day of the week that it can snow here in Virginia is Saturday. I have no idea why but Saturday seems to be the best day! The downside is that we don't miss any school - big bummer for the kids but the upside is Kirk doesn't have to work (he works from home during weekday snowy days) and that leaves us free to clean the house!

Okay, that doesn't sound that fun but for some reason on snowy weekends we get a LOT of work done inside the house :)

Such as cleaning up Kaitlyn's room:

Sort of before - more like in the middle of rearranging.



After:



The girls got in on the act:



Caleb's "after" - no "before" but believe me it was hard enough to walk in there!



But we still had some time for enjoying the snow.

For Rachel that meant eating it.



For Julianna that meant snow angels and "throwing" snowballs - today she seemed to like the snow better than last time.



Alyssa enjoyed the snow again - mostly playing on the deck and if I called her name her immediate answer was "cheese" - hmm, maybe she knows me too well :)



The other favorite activity was walking along the fence and making tracks in the snow. They all seemed to thoroughly enjoy messing up the perfect white snow - they are my girls! I love that too :)



The rest of us made it outside today too.







The snow didn't buy us a day off from school but it did buy us a school delay so at least we can all sleep in a little bit :) That I will take!

Where Have I Been?

Feels like forever since I've posted but I hardly know what to say where I've been. Mostly because I've spent the majority of the last 2 weeks in the bathroom and that is NO fun to blog about! No one's been sick - Julianna is just potty training - still. She's doing really, really well. She's about 90% there - overnight and everything but still requires me to be with her every time. So you can imagine just how often I'm sitting on the bathroom floor waiting to help her.

Just another reason that I'm not fond of potty training. With diapers you just change 'em when they need it. So, what's the big deal anyway?

Other than that we've been cleaning and organizing the entire house - so we've been busy - just nothing exciting to blog about.

But that's life right? Often it's dull and boring and you just go one day at a time :) No complaints there! For now I'm going to enjoy my family and the snow! Write again soon...

What's In A Name?

I have belonged to the community Multiples... and More! ever since the girls picture was in one of their contests but I don't often participate in their post questions or polls but this one seemed to fun to pass up.

The big question is: How did you choose your multiples names?

Oh my word, this was so hard for us! One thing I knew from the outset is that they would either all have K or C names or none of them would. I was certainly leaning towards none of them since I had/have a hard enough time with just saying Kaitlyn and Caleb :)

I also knew I really didn't want any 2 kids to have the same first letter. Maybe it's a strange nuerosis of mine but there are 26 letters in the alphabet and I'd like to use more than 1 of them for my kids.

How do you feel about "matchy" names? I don't care for matchy names. We decided not to even work on names until we knew what we were having - although we did make a list of names we liked. But I didn't want to come up with 12 names and then pick which ones were better or worse than any other. Then we had a dilemma where Kirk liked Jacob for a boy and I liked Julianna for a girl but didn't want to use "J" for 2 names and not 3.

Did you worry about their names "coordinating"? Yes! Kirk would joke that we should name them Faith, Hope and Susan just to be difficult. For me, just being triplets is "unit" enough - I didn't want to add to it by making their names rhyme or start with the same letter.

It's a serious load of issues when you name multiples! Since they were born we've been asked hundreds of times what they're names are - I'm sure out of curiousity as to how we named them.

Did you name your babies before you met them, or wait until you saw them to assign names? We named them long before they were born. At 18 weeks we found out they were all girls. I was shocked beyond belief but it solved our dilemma about Jacob and Julianna :)

I knew I wanted the name Julianna immediately. It's the girls name I've liked for years. When I was pregnant with Kaitlyn, the name Julianna was in the running but I worried it might be too long (of course I also worried that Kaitlyn was too popular but we decided to go with it anyway and I still love it!).

I had wanted Julianna Abigail - I just liked it. But then I decided I liked Abigail so much I wanted to use it.

Now you're thinking, "but you don't have an Abigail!"

Well, we did for a few weeks in utero :) Alyssa was Abigail.

That was until I had a conversation with a good friend of mine. She mentioned that she liked the name Alyssa and I commented that Alyssa had been on our original list of names we liked. I mentioned it to Kirk and as you can see we decided to go with Alyssa instead.

Alyssa Elaine - Elaine is a family name - it's my mother's middle name.

Alyssa Elaine 11/16/06



Alyssa Elaine 11/16/09



As for Rachel - Kirk picked Rachel.

Rachel Gabrielle - not a family name - daddy chose it for her.

Rachel means "Little Lamb" - she was baby C in utero and her name couldn't have been more fitting - she was always the smallest so we made sure the doctor told us who was who as she took them out of me. Rachel should have been 3rd but she was 2nd but the doctor was sure to tell us that it was still Rachel.

Rachel Gabrielle 11/16/06



Rachel Gabrielle 11/16/09



Julianna Mabel - Mabel is a family name. Kirk's mom's name was Mabel June - she died when I was pregnant with Caleb. It seemed fitting to use her name for one of our daughters and I am glad that we did.

Julianna Mabel 11/16/06



Julianna Mabel 11/16/09



Did you consider the popularity of a name as a deciding factor? In some ways, yes. I prefer less common names - after all my name is Dorinda - talk about unpopular! I probably didn't break the top 1000 the year I was born :) But being popular didn't rule it out for us - we went with what we liked.

What were your second choices? For girls we really didn't have any - 6 was enough to come up with! Though we did have the name Natalie on the list - we haven't had a Natalie yet.

For boys - we had a number of names: Logan, Micah, Tyler and Jacob were all in the running just in case any one of our girls was actually a boy :)

And that's how we named our babies! Three years later we still like their names - I'm happy with our decision not to rhyme their names or use the same initial especially when we need to label things! For Christmas we got them pillows with thir own initial on it - if they'd had the same there would be no telling them apart!

But more importantly than still loving their names we still love our girls :) We still love Kaitlyn Brianna and Caleb Ralph too (yes, Ralph is definitely a family name!).

This was fun :) Want to read more naming stories or share one of your own? Head over to Multiples...and More!

Way Back When-esday: Happy Birthday Michael

Timeline: Summer 2009

Okay, not that long ago but it's a great photo of my brother and all my kids. It's proof that he can tolerate children! And I wanted to wish my "baby" brother a very happy birthday tomorrow.

Brother, I hope you have a great day and that this year brings you much joy, happiness and love. Love you :)

Play along at Twinfatuation.

Pretty, Pretty Princess

My original title for this post was Potty Princess but I decided I didn't want that in any searches :) Julianna is moving along very well in potty training. I am so proud of her and sooo thrilled to be using less diapers every day even if it's by 1 kid!

Julianna is a girly-girl. She was thrilled to dress up in her pretty dress, her shoes and her crown.

She asked me to take a picture of the back - check out those shoes!


And then she wanted me to take a picture of the sleeves. A natural model :)



In an interesting turn of events Alyssa has taken an interest in potty training as long as there are treats involved :) Treats are Smarties in our house - a few for each trip make it all worthwhile. Rachel still wants nothing to do with it. And given her stubborn streak she may take till Kindergarten to catch up to her sisters. I echo my previous post - I hate potty training. I will add, though, that I am so happy when it's over :)

I Hate (Loathe) Potty Training

Few things bring me great dread when raising children like the thought of potty training.

I hate it. I really do.

I also hate the stories of kids who are potty trained at 18 months. Who are these children? I have 5 and not a single one of my kids was potty trained before 3.

If you remember we started potty training a while ago but it didn't go anywhere. The girls didn't care and Pull-Ups are a joke - at least for my girls. We have Pull-Ups that has some design that disappears after they get wet. Yea, they don't care. Mostly they think it's funny.

For Christmas they got underwear. Exciting I know but come on they needed it :) They loved them but not to wear just to look at until Friday when all three asked to wear them.

Yea, progress!

Alyssa quit after a few hours. She hated it - didn't do it, she was done.

Rachel lasted till Saturday but spent all day today begging for a diaper and not going. But wanting to wear underwear all at the same time. What the heck? Make her stick with underwear? Go back to diapers? I hear it's confusing to go back and forth so I don't want to confuse her but I don't want to make her. Aagh! Crazy frustrating.

And Julianna is doing great. In a day she's now day-time potty trained and quite happy about it. Although more than anything she's happy about how many times she gets to wash her hands. Yep, that's her reward - hand washing. So she tries to go every 3 seconds just to wash her hands. It's cute but annoying because while she can do everything else she can't turn on the water or turn it off.

So that's potty training triplets at 3.2 years. Crazy hard.

But on the plus side 1 down 2 to go right? And someday the chance of NOT having diapers in my house. I can't even imagine - we've had diapers in our home for the past 9 1/2 years.

Counting down the days...

Found Cat and Field Trips

Thankfully Lollipop has returned home and Kaitlyn is back to her normal self. I am so grateful for answered prayer even when it comes to a missing cat! He came home late Wednesday night just after Kaitlyn finished crying herself to sleep. I had spent hours worrying that something may have happened to him and wondering how in the world Kaitlyn would cope. Having him show back up on our doorstep was a huge relief to us all!

And thankfully he showed back up before our light dusting of snow on Thursday and before Kaitlyn's field trip on Friday allowing her to have a wonderful time at the museums in DC.

Our first stop was the National Geographic Museum to see the Chinese Terra Cotta Warriors. It was very interesting though I can't say the kids were overly impressed. No cameras were allowed in so you'll have to go HERE to see what I'm talking about if you're interested.



Then it was back on the Metro, across the mall:



And into the Museum of Natural History where Kaitlyn ran away from crazy dinosaurs (hey, I saw that movie I bet they DO come alive at night!)...



Looked at real but dead Giant Squid and enjoyed some very life-like mammals.







But Kaitlyn's favorite stop by far was...the Gift Shop. Aaagh! The whole museum was right there - lots of other stuff we didn't have time to do but what she really wanted was to buy something in the gift shop.



And with that cute face who can deny her?

Missing Cat

In our house we have one animal and that is Kaitlyn's cat, Lollipop (yes, she named him). He's more of an indoor cat - he'd prefer to go outside but we try to keep him in. Occasionally he gets out and comes right back. But yesterday morning he got out and we haven't seen him since.

I know he's just a cat but Kaitlyn loves him and she is such a wreck. Lollipop was a birthday gift to Kaitlyn when she turned 6. It's her cat and she loves him.



I would so appreciate prayers for Kaitlyn and that our crazy cat would come back home!

Happy New Year 2010!!

And goodbye to 2009...

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