So This Is How It Goes...

I feel like half of my day is spent searching for things that the girls need - their clothes, their shoes, their sippy cups, them and the other half is spent cleaning up after them and spinning in circles to keep them from making more messes. I juggle cups of water that they want out of the fridge, I juggle them as they cry, fuss or just want to cuddle, I juggle food. I probably say "please don't throw that on the floor" ten times a day or maybe an hour - it's hard to tell.

I also say, "please don't touch that"; "I said, don't touch that!" This usually refers to my computer or electronics of any kind - you all know about the DS' but there's also the phones, the remote, the computers. Sometimes, however, this refers to their sister's food and person. Which brings me back to juggling whoever is most "injured" at the moment.

In order to maintain my sanity we eat a lot of snacks. Goldfish are a hit especially when you are able to smush them on the table or sweep them onto the bench and then stomp on them with your feet. Of course this also means that both crumbs and whole Goldfish end up on the floor. Which adds to my juggling for the day. Go figure. After all not everybody likes to walk across their kitchen floor and feel Goldfish under their feet... I'm convinced someday the girls will catch on. Right?

This brings me to the funniest part of my day today. Julianna likes grapes, Rachel hates grapes except if she's allowed to pop them. Yes, it's irritating and makes a HUGE mess but Rachel enjoys popping grapes and grape tomatoes - we keep these away from her.

The thing is Julianna doesn't understand so when Rachel reaches out her hand and does her "gimme" motion - you know she wiggles her fingers to say "give me one!" I can't stop Julianna. I tried she just doesn't understand. So after following the trail of popped grapes I caught up to them once again instructing Rachel NOT to pop grapes!

Her solution? First, she fed them to me. After a while I'd had enough grapes. Then she threw them on the floor. While this was great fun to her it seriously isn't fun for me. Again lots of chasing and "no, don't do that's!"

In an attempt at diversion I instructed them to offer some to Alyssa. Which they did and Alyssa responded with an open mouth. This I didn't get on camera but is so funny. Alyssa opens her mouth and goes "aaah" so Rachel shoves a grape in. Rachel finds this fun so begins to follow Alyssa around saying "aaah" and shoving a grape at her :)

But, this isn't the funniest part. I'm making dinner and finding it interestingly quiet so I'd better go find out what has happened to the grapes (of course they're breaking my no food out of the kitchn rule!). But I digress. Since neither Alyssa or I are interested in being fed more grapes Rachel has found someone else to feed:





Just cracked me up! Right now I'm so grateful that Rachel didn't pop them in his mouth!! Have I mentioned that the girls LOVE Elmo?

Sorry about the poor quality of this picture - I was trying to get them in motion - this is Julianna feeding Alyssa. Can Alyssa make herself any more the baby of the family?

Caleb's 1st Day

While this isn't Caleb's 1st year in preschool today was the first day of a new year so of course I had to take more pictures!

This is the "hurry up and take the picture because this backpack is heavy" look:



Yes, it's the same back pack as Kaitlyn's except in boy color. But we got a good deal at Gymboree and I do love that store :) Plus the lunchboxes clip to the backpacks meaning more room in the back pack for stuff! And today's stuff includes more school supplies - I'll be glad when the first week is over and the kids are "moved in" to school.



Caleb at his desk.



So, now that Kaitlyn and Caleb are back at school what does that mean for me at home? A whole day with "just" three kids! This will be less great in a few years but right now they take a good nap and I get a few hours in peace and quiet :) The flip side of this "bliss" is that I must now get the girls up earlier and feed them breakfast while trying to get K&C ready for school. Not an easy task. Compound that with putting the girls down much earlier for nap then they're used to and then waking them up to pick the big kids up from school means much crankier days. I seriously hope they (um, Rachel) gets used to this soon!

But they aren't always screaming - there are a few moments where they are pleasant. Today Julianna said to me, "TV peas" (which is of course, please). This is sad - my girls are asking for TV!!

Julianna is talking so much - the other two are trying to catch up but I think I've said this before that she seems to be 2 months ahead of the other two. I think the next time I'm asked if they're triplets I'll tell them Julianna is two months older :) I wonder how long it will take them to figure that one out...

She has also got into pulling me where they want to go (this they are all doing and boy is it fun) but today Julianna pulled me from my lunch (the same lunch they avoided eating) to the living room, she patted the couch and said "down". We spent a lot of time this morning with me sitting on the couch watching them climb and slide on our small living room slide:



To Julianna's dismay this morning the slide once again replaced the "updown" What's an updown you ask? Well, of course it's a moonbounce! What do you call it? See, she's talking all the time - she can even say "bye-bye Elmos" Yes, Elmo is plural - don't ask me why. But it's really cute.

Kaitlyn's in 3rd Grade!!

My baby is soo old. Well, not really but today was her first day of 3rd grade and I just can't believe that a new school year has already begun. Of course I took 1st day pictures :) She is more gracious then I. I remember my parents making me do this on the way out the door on the 1st day and at the time I thought it was a silly and annoying thing to do but now that I have my own children I completely understand! This is a big deal! She's starting a new school year!! I pray for her all the time but now I pray that she will have a wonderful year and learn lots.



I think this backpack is already loaded down!!



How cute is she?





Caleb's first day is tomorrow...

End Of Summer

Can you believe it? This is officially the last weekend of summer! How did it go by so fast? How is school starting in 2 days?!! I am in shock. So, because I felt like we haven't done enough this summer we decided to do a few extra things this weekend to make up for it :)

This morning we had our church service on the lake because our normal building was unavailable - it couldn't have been more gorgeous! Oh my word, beautiful. We had to have all the kids with us which made for an interesting service - not as attentive as I normally would be.

A few shots from this morning:











And then this evening we took the kids to Burke Lake park to ride the merry-go-round, the train, play on the playground and have a picnic dinner in the grass. It was so much fun! I think its the first place we've taken the girls to like this - that we've tried to ride rides and just get out for a few hours - it was nice and the girls all reacted differently to everything :)

Merry-Go-Round:

How perfect is this? Three small "animals" for the girls to ride on! I couldn't believe they had three together...



Unfortunately, we didn't actually need three - Rachel HATED it and Kirk had to hold her the entire time. The other two LOVED it - Alyssa threw a temper tantrum when the ride ended. Julianna just asked to ride it again without all the hysterics - she can talk much better then the other two so usually tells me what she wants.



Then it was on to the train ride and it was just great fun. We had the same result though - Rachel hated it, Alyssa threw a tantrum when it was over and Julianna asked to ride again :) If you're wondering Alyssa doesn't ask she just walks back to whatever she wants and tries to get back on. So funny but not to her.



Before the ride:



During the ride - it went a lot faster then I expected and that made it even more great!



Kirk kept saying Julianna was loving it but... well, what do you think?



On to the playground:







We finished the day with a picnic. We had a little bit of babies stepping on our food but for the most part everyone ate well and enjoyed running around in the open grass:







And what blog post would be complete without pictures from the kids?

Kaitlyn's photography:




Caleb's photography:




At least we got a good shot of the train tracks :) I hope you all had a wonderful summer and that your fall/school year will be a wonderful one.

On a different note - Happy 27th Birthday to my baby brother :) Today is his day! And his first one married. Love ya, brother.

It's NOT Funny

Wondering why the girls are in the shower? Think they're big girls? Nope, Rachel pooped in the girls bathtub. Being covered in soap we quickly shuttled them to the master bathroom to finish their bath and you guessed, Rachel went again! So it was out of the bath and into the shower to rinse off. Such a pleasant evening...



Why are the girls crying?
A. They just realized their mother is getting really old (see below)
B. They have once again been denied access to Kaitlyn's room and thereby don't have her DS





Why is this mom sad?
A. She has just realized that even though its her birthday her girls were still cranky.
B. Its her birthday and she is now one year older



Answer to both questions: A and B

Happy Birthday to me :) Two years ago today was the beginning of my bed rest with the girls. I celebrated my 30th in bed. Today we at least go to go to dinner as a family but otherwise I was a mom! Same as every other day. But I can't complain. I'm still relatively young and very blessed to have five wonderful children, a wonderful husband and a loving extended family. God is good! I pray I have many more years to come and hopefully in that time (better yet in the next year) I'll get a novel published.

More Cool Stuff From Kirk

This is a page he did for Photoshop Creative - its a Scrapbook Layout - you'll have to click on it to make it bigger and read the poem he wrote :) Isn't he so talented?!



Want to know what I've been up to? I am about three chapters away from completing the novel I began in January. After that comes the hard work of re-writing, making it great and then submitting it places. We'll see how that goes!

But I did just get my first article published in MOST's SUPERTWINS magazine :) Yea, that's a start!

Triple The Triplets!

More like fourteen times the triplets :) Today we had the unique opportunity to get together with other triplet families in the area from Virginia, Maryland and DC. Of course this isn't a comprehensive list of all of us (a few couldn't make it) but still it was fun to see so many other moms struggling just like we have for the past almost two years to juggle three babies at one time!!

This picture says it all (we're way in the back if you look real close):



Yes, we were crazy and attempted to do a photo of everyone. Fortunately for you you don't have audio on this picture because rather then everyone smiling it was more like "can we get a shot of everybody crying at once?" I think we were quite the spectacle out there! By some sort of mistake our reserved pavilion was reserved twice so we had to share our space with a family celebrating their twins first birthday. I think they were in awe of all the triplets and for some strange reason were sneaking over to take pictures of us. A bit strange??!! The sadder part? They may have gotten more pictures of us then we did of ourselves!!

How did that many of us, who all blog so often, forget cameras? I really don't know. While I did have my camera I was so busy I wasn't able to take as many pictures as I would've liked.

Here are some that I did get:

We were there not five minutes when the girls wanted out:



Arts and crafts for the big kids - notice Alyssa is joining in :)



The Ratliff boys - yes, they're identical so don't ask me who is who! Sorry Kelli!



My friend Cherie holding Karen's daughter Abby (I got to hold Abby a lot - even fed her - I know her mommy was ready to have her walking but she sure was fun to carry and hold a squishy little baby again):



Cherie's husband, Matt holding thier identical twins Tommy and Jack:



Their fraternal brother, Christian. Aren't they all three so cute! You can't have them though we've already got the girls paired up :) Well, just Rachel - she really likes Jack!



Kirk with Rachel:



Kirk with Julianna and Alyssa:



Okay, I didn't know about the merry-go-round so I didn't have quarters. As you can see the girls were NOT very happy about this. "Can we go on PLEASE?"



More triplets:



Kirk on the cool playground with Rachel:



The Clagett triplets - sooo cute! Just three months old. And they are all identical as well. How sweet are they?



Thanks to Karen for all her hard work getting us together! It was exhausting but worth it if only to meet all these moms in person :)