I don't know how you do it...

This is a phrase I hear on a quite regular basis.  Every time someone new learns about me having triplets, this is what I hear.  My response is usually the same - something about me getting to go to work - it's my husband that has the hard job!  The babies have been doing taxes for the past few weeks.  Tony gets everybody ready and goes over to grandma & grandpa's.  I've been going to PT for the past few weeks trying to get rid of my PITA.  All of the babies are doing well - getting bigger and stronger every day.  They are all very close to sitting up on their own.  They've tried a bunch of new foods the past few weeks.  Tony pureed some turkey yesterday and gave each baby a little taste.  It was not a pretty picture.  Olivia - who will eat anything started crying, little T started puking and Amelia just proceeded to spit it back out of her mouth - pushing it out with her tongue.
We did have another family outing this past weekend.  The babies had their first trip to Point Pleasant.  They went to Jenkinson's and strolled down the boardwalk.  Afterwards, we ate at Charlie Brown's where just the sight of them brought the hostess to tears - a happy cry of course!  Every one was pretty well behaved and fell asleep on the car ride home. 
A few pictures - from tonight right after they were put to bed  :)

Are they really asleep?

I was just reminded of something we used to do to/with the babies when they were younger, so I had to write about it before I forgot.  I was reminded when Tony raised the dog's paw in the air and let it go and it fell to the floor promptly - obviously Buddy was really out cold.  We used to do that with the babies to tell if they were really asleep.  If the arm dropped all the way, they were completely asleep.  Sometimes you'd notice that their arm still had some 'life'  in it and didn't fall down at once.  When this happened, we knew they weren't completely out so it was risky to put them down - as they may wake up as soon as you tried.  I remember at that time, I never thought they'd be sleeping through the night, but they do and have been for some time now.  :)

We had another family outing today.  We finally got downtown and ordered our new fridge (for the garage).  Tony has been hounding me for this for a while now so it'll get him off my back for a little while.  He's been requesting a new one since he's been thinking about making his own baby food.  From what I understand, it's not actually all that difficult (at this stage).  You can just puree everything!  He's done a few things so far, including squash, sweet potato and spinach.  I fed the spinach to them today and as always, Olivia and little T will eat it, but Amelia didn't want anything to do with it.  She basically spit it back right after I spooned it into her mouth.  She even went so far as to push her entire bib in her mouth to wipe the rest of it out!

Ok, back to the outing - we ordered the fridge and of course got a few questions and looks from other shoppers and people working there.  One that I never really know how to answer that I got today is "did you know you were having triplets?"  I'm not really sure what people are looking for when they ask this question, but my response is typically the same - which is "yes, we knew pretty early on that there were three".  After that, we drove up to Sam's Club - a place we've been a number of times with the babies.  It was a windy day and took one of us to just hold the stroller still from rolling while the other loaded.  It was an uneventful trip really - just the normal stares, questions, etc.  I especially love the looks from other people that have one baby in a stroller or carrier.  I often think they think that it's difficult to undergo an outing with just one - and can't even imagine what we go through... and I'd have to agree with them - they have no idea.  One person there - giving away samples of gross gummy vitamins - said to us as we were checking out..."it doesn't get any better".  I was sure to thank her for her optimism.  

We make a great team!

This past weekend, Tony & I were very adventurous and went out twice on Sunday.  Both outings were a bust, but successful as a 'family' outing.  The first was a walk downtown to the appliance store.  We're in the market for a fridge for the garage.  Tony is planning on making his own baby food and we need some place to store it.  The store ended up not even being open and since I Tony pushed the stroller down the hill, I got the pleasure of pushing it up the hill back home.  Let me tell you, it's a work out!  We got home, fed the babies and turned around and went back out.  This time was to the mall.  We're also in the market for a new mattress.  We had dreams of getting a sleep number bed and they were having a decent sale but Tony had to try them out.  The store was a mad-house.  There were people lying on EVERY single bed in the place and standing all around with ONE sales person.  By the end we had all three babies on one of the beds and even changed their diapers on the i8 model.  It's the most expensive thing their butts have been on!  In the end we had to leave before even talking to the sales person.  A funny thing happened while we were there - the sales person - who remembered me from when I stopped there a few weeks ago, had her arms outstretched toward Amelia who was sitting on the bed.  Well, my little skeptical baby smiled back at the lady, but made  no motion to reach out to her.  I'm glad :)  I don't want my babies just reaching out to anyone!  Well here's where the story gets really good.  We're exiting the mall and notice that a Mercedes SUV is completely blocking the exit - so much that there was about one foot from their bumper to the edge of the ramp.  We were able to get out, but not without some special maneuvering.  Neither Tony, nor I can keep out mouths shut about things like this, so as we walked past, we were sure to thank them for being so considerate (oh yeah, and we're both very sarcastic!)  We kept moving and as we passed the opposite side of their car, the woman says "mind your own business".  Well Tony didn't hear her say it, so I told him what she said and well, let's just say he was NOT happy with her comment.  He went over there and engaged in a loud yelling match this woman who told him that she didn't like his attitude, to which he responded, "I got your attitude RIGHT HERE!!!"  A few more expletives were yelled and as he got back to the car, he says to me... " well that could have gotten ugly" as I see SUV drive away.  The whole ride home, we talked about the incident and we both agreed we were right.  What a great team we make.  Actually, we do and that's what makes this whole thing work.
On a side note, I thought I took a picture of all the diapers on the clothesline - what a sight to see! but I guess the card wasn't in the camera so I didn't get it.  I'm sure they'll be out there again some day, but it would have been a cute picture to post.  Oh well...

This is winter?

I wrote the title of this post before I went down into my basement where it's really cold.  I used to have a space heater that I used down here, but just remembered that it's upstairs in the babies' room.  Anyways, I was going to comment on how mild this winter has been and how it was nice enough to go out and take the babies for a walk.  That said, I didn't take the babies for a walk - I had a bunch of things I had to get done at home, but now I wish I had.  I think tomorrow might be just as nice and I'll definitely go tomorrow.  So what did I do today?  What was so important - well, nothing really important, but Tony was over at his mom & dad's working so I was on baby duty.  I feel like I have something to prove when I'm with them by myself.  Basically to show him and others that I can do as good a job as he can and I don't fall apart without him.  So, I got 2 loads of laundry done, dishes done, bottles done, formula cups filled, and played with the dog outside.  I know it doesn't sound like that much, but all of that plus taking care of three babies - well it is alot - and I'm tired.  (I'll be going to bed shortly after finishing this.)  The day went pretty well.  Nothing out of the ordinary, but they did eat sweet potatoes.  Everyone, but Amelia appeared to enjoy them.  Another notable thing the babies are doing is alot more reaching for things.  Olivia reaches for her bottle and reaches for you if she's in the exersauer, and this morning reached for the papers I had in my hand.  She ended up with the Toys-R-Us ad and proceeded to rip it up.  It then was promptly brought up to her mouth.  Oh yeah, that's another thing - everything gets into their mouth (if they can lift it up).  I can't tell you how many times I see them with their bibs in their mouths.  It's really funny, but hopefully they'll grow out of this stage of everything going into their mouths.  I'm sure there's more I could write about, but I have to load the washer with dirty diapers.  We're hoping it'll be nice outside tomorrow so we can sun them. 

Not my baby

Another weekend is almost over and I have to say, it had its rough moments.  Specifically with Amelia.  She's gotten to the point where she'll only eat for Tony.  She's definitely 'daddy's little girl'  I've known for a little while that she won't eat for his mother or father, but up until recently, she'd eat for me - slowly, but she'd eat.  Well this weekend, she wouldn't eat for me unless she was really hungry like at the 6am feeding.  She would start to eat, but then start wailing and couldn't even be calmed down until Tony came over to pick her up.  It was sad for me to see my baby not want me.  So as a joke, I said that I didn't know this baby -my baby  ate for me, so this could not be MY baby.  My Amelia did come back today at the 3pm feeding, but I had to go upstairs (away from T).  I think if he's in the room, she wants him to feed her, but if he's not around - within earshot or view - she'll eat.  T is going to try out my theory tomorrow with his parents or at least his mom.  We need her to be able to eat for others because we're going away in May and I can't bear the thought of her not eating because she's stubborn.  Oh jeez, she really is like me.
Here's a picture of everyone getting ready to eat.  I have them on the table to help save my back from bending/twisting - I start PT this week.

We also had an few outings this weekend.  It was the babies cousin's birthday party on Saturday.  We were there for a few hours, but left early because it was feeding time/bath night and we remembered what it was like on Christmas when the babies got way too much stimulation.  We also went out this morning for breakfast.  Here's a picture of everyone ready to go in their stroller wearing the knitted hats that a friend's mom made for them.  The hats even got the thumbs up from T because even though they may come down over their eyes, they are 'holey' enough that we don't need to worry if they get pulled down over their mouths.

Here are a few more pictures of my HAPPY babies.

Super what?

One good thing about SuperBowl Sunday this year is that there were very few people at the Quakerbridge Mall today.  We had booked the triplets 6 month pictures at "Picture People" in the mall today and typically the weekends are NOT the days to go because it's a madhouse.  I missed the Christmas photo shoot and was sad about it so this time, I was determined to go.  Getting out of the house of course was stressful - making sure we had everything, everyone and leaving on time.  T called his mother and she decided to come along.  I thought we would be late, but we ended getting there right on time, but was made to wait 20 minutes.  These places schedule people every 10 minutes - which is insane - especially when they know they're going to be working with infants - let alone three of them.  They had a back drop right out in front of everyone and then some other rooms in the back.  We watched the photographer and an assistant try and get a cute little 11 month old girl to smile, but she just crawled back over to mom.  After a few minutes, they stopped and moved over to the side.  We asked her if they were done, and the mom explained that her daughter just woke up and they were going to wait for a room in the back and she if she perks up.  We were then discussing that we didn't really want to be the ones out in front - where everyone can see you - would just feel weird - and of course we ended up taking our pictures there.  I explained to the photographer that the babies cannot sit up on their own and she put down a bean bag type of pillow on the floor and covered with a white blanket.  We then propped the babies on it but I had to hold up little T and Amelia an Tony held Olivia in place on the opposite side - all while covering our arm underneath the blanket.  They took some other shots while lying on their bellies, but that was NOT working.  In the end, every baby was annoyed and whining and we had only gotten about 10 photos taken.  They didn't even offer to try again later...  We sat down for a few minutes and then they showed us what they got.  Most of them, Amelia had a sad look on her face (she had used up all of her smiles on the drive there, then fell asleep, then woke up to a room full of strangers).  We had ONE smile from ONE baby the whole time... from... Little T.  We ended up purchasing a few sheets of ONE shot with the three of them.  It was really the only shot that they all looked pretty good.  The guy showing us the pictures was trying to get us to buy more - and of shots where some of them were clearly unhappy.  If I wanted a picture of an unhappy baby, I wouldn't need to dress them up, drive 1/2 hour and pay someone else to take the photo!!!  We used our gift cards and our entertainment book coupon so it didn't cost us anything, but I think the guy was annoyed that we didn't buy more. 
Afterward, talking to T and his mom I learned that JCPenney did a MUCH better job with the babies than this place.  So, long story short, we'll continue to go to JCP for our special pictures. 
Other than that, both T & I are having back problems.  Mine started hurting early in the day and is still bothering me.  I hope it subsides soon. 
On another note, the NY/NJ Giants won the Super Bowl 21/17.  The best part was the half time show (Madonna) and as good/cute as some of the commercials were, I can't even remember one at the moment.  I probably could, but that would take too much mental effort right now.

Almost 6 months old!

Tonight's installment is just a quick update on how everyone is doing.  I'll start with me :)  I'm doing ok.  The new job is going well.  There's always going to be people that you like and some you don't end I'm already figuring out who's who!  I've learned that it's frowned upon to have a "competitors" water bottle on your desk.  I was given one from this company and then given some opaque tape to put over the "competitors" name.  I probably shouldn't have said this out loud, but I actually said this when given this piece of tape - "Well, you will all know my last day here, because I'll be wearing all of my Oti shirts, sweatshirts, fleeces, coats, jackets, carrying my Oti umbrella, laptop bag, lunchbag, etc."  I need to learn to keep my mouth shut!  I'm still having sciatic nerve pain, but hopefully the medication will help and I can get in to see the PT to start some therapy.

Tony - is doing great - as far as I can tell.  He's asleep right now and usually is by this time at night.  He's alot more adventurous than I would likely be, but I guess if I were stuck at home most of the time, I'd do anything to get out, even if it's just a trip downtown to pick up a prescription.  It's been unseasonably warm this winter, so Tony has been going on a few walks.  One was to CVS, one to the barber shop and to pay the property taxes!  He's doing a fabulous job - one I don't know I could do as well.

And now onto the babies...

All babies are basically sleeping through the night.  We still have occasional 'wake-ups' earlier than we'd like, but for the most part, they go to sleep around 8pm and wake up around 6-7am.  We do baths every other day now rather than every 3rd or 4th day.  Tony has been introducing new foods every few days.  So far, they've had applesauce, pears, bananas, rice, oatmeal and barley.  They all eat pretty well, but it's a messy time.  The first few times, I was getting grossed out.  I never thought of myself as a clean freak, but seeing oatmeal all over their faces and stuck to their bibs, was just gross.  I'm a bit better and don't get as frustrated about it as I did when we first started the oatmeal.  They all like the bouncers - exersaucer type jumpers.  They don't really jump around in them, but they all don't mind being in them at least for a short time.  Only on occasion, do I see any of them in the swings.  I think they all like to spread out, roll around until they find a comfortable spot and being in the rocker/swing, that isn't a possibility.  Lately they all go to bed very easily.  I don't have to re-wind the mobiles 5 times like I used to.  Maybe only two times for my little man. :)  I don't have any new pictures.  I get home around 6:30pm and they eat and go to bed so unless I make a point to take a picture, it doesn't happen.  Speaking of pictures, we're having their 6 month pictures taken this weekend.  I can't wait.  I missed their first one back in December - hopefully they'll all cooperate and we'll get some great shots!