I’m such a bad blogga’ momma! But I’m assuming folks will cut me some slack since I do have 3 6-month old babies and an 8 year old I’m homeschooling!
Let me try to give you some summaries and hit all the high points since my last post.
AUDREY
Audrey is doing amazing with her school work. She is still loving Bob Jones Press distance learning program. She is pulling in all A’s and we couldn’t be more proud of her. God has given her a very creative brain! She continues to spend the majority of her days with the triplets. I know I say it in every post, but she is the best big sister and helper! At times I just have to chuckle in disbelief that she’s actually only 8 years old! She’s so consistently wonderful that I fear I’ll come to take it for granted. At times I almost fret over how little she requires discipline. I wonder if I’m overlooking something. Or maybe that I’m just in for it when she become a teenager. Or just maybe those tremendously trying years of so much discipline in her 3-5′s actually is resulting in the mother-load of joyful reaping!
ALAYNA
Alayna’s biggest accomplishment has been screaming. I do mean SCREAMIING! She’s spent hours honing in her skill of sounding like someone’s sawing off an appendage of hers. It’s astounding that her little round face, pudgy cheeks, and great big eyes can be the source of such vile sounds. Love her – don’t love the screaming. She still screams out at least 2x each night. There is never a lead up of fussing. Instead she bursts into shrill screams that terrify us. She just figured out last week how to roll from her back to her tummy. She still is more observant than the other two. In fact, we joke that one of these days, she’s going to turn her head an entire 360 degrees so she doesn’t skip a beat! She nurses the quickest and is the most easily distracted. She also likes to stand (with assistance) more than the others. She wants to do everything from a standing position – even be burped. She is dreadfully afraid of unfamiliar faces and can’t seem to warm up to friends and family with any amount of time. She has got quite a bit of eczema on her legs and head. Poor baby has learned various methods for itching her head! Last week at their 6 month check-up she cut her first tooth and weighed in at 13lbs even. She is the longest of the three.
CALEB
Caleb is the MOVER in the group. Holy smokes can he roll and roll. He rolls in both directions very quickly. Last week he began getting up on his hands and knees and rocking. The last couple of days he’s gotten onto his hands and knees and propels himself forward with a big thrust smack into a face plant on the floor. We’ve had to stop swaddling his arms in his swaddler at night since he can roll so much. We’ve also instituted the stern ‘Be Still!’ when we change his diaper or get him dressed, otherwise it’s an impossible task, or I fear he’ll fling himself off the changing table. Caleb really loves our dog, Sadie. Strangely, Sadie really only pays attention to Caleb. Every now and again, Sadie steals a little lick on his hands or toes and Caleb coos back at her! Caleb is happiest right before bed time. He loves to laugh and be tickled and talk right after he nurses, just before Doug puts him in his crib. He is still the best sleeper at night, rarely if ever, cries out at night. Most of the time we have to wake him in the morning for breakfast. He is the first to discover tags on toys and blankets! Caleb is still very afraid of things being near his eyes – blankets, shirts, hair, or water. We have to plan and time precisely getting his shirts on and off very quickly so that he doesn’t freak out. Of all the kids, Caleb most enjoys his feet. He’d prefer his toes over any toy, guaranteed. Last week, Caleb surprised us with 2 teeth on the same day, without any warning or usual signs of fussiness. He weighed in at 13lbs 3 oz. Because he is so mobile/active, he looks the leanest.
CHARLIE
Charlie is still my big smiler. As soon as that boy is half way awake, he starts flashing smiles. He’s not discriminatory with the smiles either – family, friends, strangers, you name it – Charlie grins! He seems to enjoy his toys more than the others and smiles at them all the time. He is more social than the other two. He loves to reach out for, smile at, and coo to Alayna and Caleb. He is more fair skinned than the other two. He can sit up for about 20 seconds, which the others cannot. Charlie likes to nap on his back now. That was kind of a painful process – for so long he could roll from his tummy to his back and would then scream not knowing how to roll back over. My mom calls him a little ‘rolly-pollie’ because he stays all balled up when you pick him up. Often he nurses in the foot ball position with his little knees pulled up to his chest. Last night Charlie finally rolled from his back to his tummy! He still snorts from time to time, potties while you change his diaper, burps like crazy, and makes us laugh. He responds most to music. The last 2 1/2 weeks have been pretty rough for Charlie. He’s been fussing a bunch, lethargic, enjoying much cuddling, and not napping well. He has yet to cut a tooth, so I’m wondering if this is his problem. Charlie weighed in last week at 13lbs 6oz. He is also the shortest.
DAILY LIFE
I did something I thought I’d never, ever do. I let the babies have ‘lovies’. You know – those little 12 inch square blankets that basically serve no purpose. They all loved to pull burp cloths, their jammies, and blankets up around their faces. Since someone had given us 3 super-soft tiny blankets, I went ahead and gave them to the kids. Sometimes I wonder if they’ll be 8 yrs old, dragging some nasty, crusty, frayed blanket around with them. But for now, they sure love them.
Our schedule has remained the same for the last 6 weeks or so. The babies get up about 7:30am. They nurse 6 times a day, every 3 hours. Since we still cling to the eat-play-sleep cycle, they all nurse, play for about an hour and 15 minutes and then sleep for an hour to hour and half before waking to repeat the cycle. Our last feeding is about 10:45pm each night. It still takes a good hour to hour and 15 minutes for me to nurse, burp, and diaper all three babies.
Yesterday we introduced solid food! I wanted to wait until between 7-8 months. But since the babies were again not really on the growth chart, I decided to go ahead. They seemed content with just breastfeeding. None of them are ‘really’ sitting on their own. And none of them have a clue that I have a mouth, eat food, or use utensils to deliver yummies to my mouth. But, I know I’ve always been right on the edge of having enough milk for them. So, I did it! We’re not going the route of cereal. I didn’t want to fill their bellies with carbs; instead, I desired to fill them with nutrient-dense food. So, we chose avocados first. I smashed avocados with breastmilk and all seemed to take to it better than I was thinking. In fact, they seemed to enjoy it even more on day 2! Soon, I’ll be introducing bananas, egg yolks, sweet potatoes, homemade whole milk kefir, meats, green veggies, and squash. And yes, I plan to make all of the babies’ food just as I did with Audrey. Along with my views on breastfeeding, I believe homemade by Momma is best and much cheaper (especially x3!). I will thin out all of the food with pumped milk. Since about 3 months old, when they moved to about 5 hours of sleep at night, I began adding a late night pumping so that I’d have a good stash for this.
Doug and I are still feeling very busy and sleep deprived. I suppose it’s better than it was those first 2-3 months. Maybe. Although we are getting about 4 1/2-5 hours of sleep now, we are just so ‘tired’ of doing this for so long. Just this morning, we talked about how we have GOT to get more sleep. It may mean skipping some of the things we try to get done late at night once the kids are all in bed and me skipping that late night pumping. Between the tremendously physically taxing pregnancy and the care of the triplets over the last 6 months, I’ve not had 1 night of more than 6 hours of sleep in over a year. That’s pretty crazy considering my fibromyalgia really requires I get at least 10 hours of sleep each night.
11-11-11
Last Friday was 11-11-11. All my life I though that 11:11 was the niftiest time on the clock. I know, silly. Then I thought it was cool when, as a teenager, I discovered on my birth certificate that I was born at that time. Then, 16 years ago, on 11-11, Doug and I had a massively long date to discuss our intentions/future/marriage! So, Doug and I couldn’t let 11-11-11 go by unnoticed. My folks kept all 4 kids and we got a cabin in Gatlinburg, TN for 2 nights. We had so many hopes for the quick get-away. Although it was nice to be together, God had planned for us to have things go much differently than planned. Our cabin didn’t have curtains on the vast amount of windows, so it was hard to nap and sleep in with the sun shining on my face. The head of our bed was slightly lower than the rest of the mattress. Headache. Traffic was wretched, causing a simple ride to a restaurant to take over an hour. Our favorite restaurant had a line down the sidewalk just to get in, so we opted to ditch it. And most aggravating, was all the pumping. Although in the first 17 days after giving birth, I pumped a TON, I’ve not had to exclusively pump. I quickly came to understand all the meaning behind why they say babies are much more efficient and better at emptying a mom then a silly pump. Although I was able to pump a fair amount, I could never come close to emptying myself. So it was sort of a scenario of 1 step forward, 2 steps back. I kept getting more and more full every hour until I was in agony. I couldn’t hardly sleep. I woke up and pumped – hold on to your seats – 22oz and was still super full and rock solid. I thought for sure I was going to be the first woman to die by means of milk engorgement! So, plans changed and we ditched the plans we were most looking forward to, in order to come home and feed babies. We went home early, me in tears. We arrived to babies, happy to nurse. Quickly, they all became quite milk-drunk. I finally had relief, but was bruised for days and still sad at how our trip had gone. Oh well, just part of life. Life as a grown-up!
