Little Drummer Boy/Girl

Yeah!!! a drum set for Christmas.  They like it :)

It really is different.

A few weeks ago Tony needed to go out and run a few errands.  He offered to take one of the kids with him to lighten the load.  We haven't typically just taken one out anywhere - we usually travel as a pack! In the past when we've tried to, it results in a bunch of crying - from the other ones because they don't get to go.  Olivia got to go with daddy and little Tony - right on cue - started whining.  I asked him if he wanted to make cookies with me and Amelia and he happily agreed and calmed down. 

So once Amelia was up from her nap, we headed into the kitchen, washed our hands and opened the pantry to see what we could bake.  I had a mix for snickerdoodle cookies and planned to make Jello too.  Both Amelia and Tony got to measure, pour and stir/mix.  They LOVED it.  I had done some other baking/cooking with them, but it was alot more difficult with all three.  Tony was really good with rolling the cookies into little balls and he and Amelia got along really well.

In the past, when talking to other twin moms and 'how I do it', I've always just said something about being nearly the same as twins - but with just one more and made it seem like it was no big deal.  Well, I was wrong.  It's a lot more difficult with three than with two.  It could be related to personality differences between my three, but two was so much more manageable!  I'll have to test out different combinations with my own to see which is the best.  So far I've had Amelia and Tony - they got along great!  I've had Amelia and Olivia - they were pretty good, but got into a few arguments.  I need to get Tony and Olivia for my final test, but my overall conclusion will be the same - Two are easier than one and I'll never again minimalize that fact.

I don't have any pictures of our cookies, but here are some sleepy baby pictures.

Christmas (part II)

The afternoon of Christmas was spent at Tony's mom's house with his family.  They all got a ton of stuff - most of which consisted of a million tiny pieces which will drive me nuts trying to keep together!  They had a ton of fun opening all of the presents and then we had a grand time packing it all up in the car to cart it all home. 

Tony trying on his new bathrobe.

Amelia opening a gift from Aunt Lori and Uncle Steve

Olivia opening a gift from Aunt Natalie and Uncle Kevin

Tony posing with his new Play-Doh set saying "CHEESE"

Olivia eyeing up her new cup.

 

 

 

 This picture needs to be explained... toward the end of the evening, Olivia, Tony and their cousin Thomas decided to play 'secret agents' and their hide out was under the dining room table where they proceeded to take every piece of fabric from the living room and put it under the table.  I'm talking about every throw pillow, blanket, arm chair covers, stockings, etc.  There was alot of stuff under there.  One time I looked down there I saw Olivia and Thomas holding hands and it appeared that she was giving him a kiss!  I snapped this picture of them under the table.  (Later on I asked Olivia if she gave Thomas a kiss - she said yes but was just one on the cheek!) 

All of the cousins (minus 1 and a half)

Merry Christmas!

The months have flown by and here we are at the end of the year and Christmas.  I have to admit that having three three year olds has been a challenge, but Santa found his way to our house.  We started reading The Elf on the Shelf a few weeks ago thinking it would curb some of the 'naughty' behavior, but it feels like they may have gotten worse.  We named our elf 'Herbie' and he found a new home every day but they're still at the age where we had to remind them to look around for him. 

The big gift to all the kids was the train table - which they all loved.  It was the first thing they all went to and kept going back to.  I have to admit it was an ordeal to get it.  It started with Black Friday online shopping where I bought a small train table from Toys R Us.  After about 2 weeks of waiting for it to arrive, I received an email that they cancelled my order and thanked me for being understanding.  Well, I wasn't very understanding and they ended up sending me another email that was for $40 off my next shopping trip.  In the next week or so they had a different train table on sale which was double the amount of the original one, but with the $40 off, I figured why not?  I thought it would be an easy order - I'd order it online and then pick it up in the store.  It took a little time and patience to find a store that had it in stock - or so I thought.  I thought that I'd be able to go to the store within a few days and pick it up and I ended up getting an email in a few days that said that the train table shipped from the warehouse to the store that I chose.  Wait, what?  shipped from the warehouse? Why would I have chosen a store 35 minutes from my house when there are at least 3 other ones closer if it was shipping from the warehouse???  I was annoyed and worried that I wouldn't get it in time and no one at Toys R Us seemed to care or have any explanation.  In the end, it arrived at the store on Tuesday afternoon and Tony was able to go and pick it up.  He had to wait because it was still on the truck when he got there, but we got it.  It took a few hours to set up on Christmas Eve, but seeing them play with it, made it all worth it. 

Here are some other pictures of Santa's loot piles for the kids...

It's funny to think about what they've told us they want from Santa... everytime we asked them  - Amelia would say she wants a purple present, Olivia wanted a pink present and Tony wanted a blue present.  I'll have to remind them of this when they're older and asking for iphones and and $300 game systems, and other things yet to be invented!

We spend Christmas morning at our house and then later on went to Tony's mom's house.   That can be in a Christmas part 2 post (after I get those pictures loaded).

Instead I'll share some pictures from our session at JC Penney.  I thought the pictures came out pretty well.  We decided to do the girls hair up (braided) since that's what they always want thanks to Frozen's Anna and Elsa. 

Halloween and fracture!

Halloween came and went very quickly.  The day started off with my work crew dressing up like the Scooby Doo gang.  I've never been to keen on Halloween myself but I chose to go with something easy.  I'm the goul/alien in the back.

As for the kids, well they've been into Frozen for a while now and it just made sense to have Olivia be Elsa and Amelia as Anna and it didn't take too long to convince little Tony to be Olaf.  At first, he told me he wanted to be a Monster - he was into that movie for a while, but he was easily swayed.
I was trying to get out of work early to get home to go out trick or treating, and I ended up getting stuck in traffic, it started rain and I got all upset!  I ended up getting home in the nick of time and it stopped raining.  Melanie did the girls hair - Anna (with two french braids) and Elsa with one french braid down one side.  The looked so cute and were so happy.  I caught up with them just coming out of Grandma's house and moving down the road.  We were out pretty late - went to several houses.  We got plenty of candy, but soon realized that because we weren't home, no one came to our house to disperse candy to - so we had double the amount of candy.  Normally that should sound ok, but not when you're trying to lose weight.  (it's a daily battle). 

It was a chilly evening so they had to wear some clothes underneath the costumes - but it all worked out well. 

Another October happening is that I broke/fractured my pinky finger on my right hand.  It's not a great story, but here goes - little Tony was getting out of the shower and went to throw the always soaked bath mat over the top of the shower door.  Well I was moving around too quickly and ended up jamming my finger in the door jam.  It hurt really bad.  It got swollen and bruised very quickly and looked really ugly the next day - so much so that people at work were insisting I leave to go to the doctor and get an x-ray.  The x-ray showed a fracture and I kept a brace on it for about two weeks.  After that it got to be a burden to wear it so I just stopped.  It's been ok, until I smack it or it gets squeezed to hard.  I did end up going to an orthopedic physician (hand specialist) who said that it could take alot longer to heal and to expect some swelling for another few months.  Here's a picture of how it currently looks. 

notice the swollen knuckle...

The rest of September...

Once again it's been a while since I last update this so I'll attempt to catch up a little at a time.  A day or so after we returned form vacation, it was cousin Katie's birthday party.  I don't have any pictures from the day, but it was a Frozen theme and all of the decorations were really cute and cake was gorgeous.  It was Elsa's ice palace - several tiers high!  All of the snacks were really cute... Elsa's wand - pretzel rods covered in chocolate with ice blue sugar crystals covering the tip, melted snowman sugar cookies, jello 'ice blocks', snowman noses (aka carrot sticks).  There were some crafts that the kids got to do - making Olaf goodie bags to take their snacks home and cookie decorating.  I had to leave early to prep for my colonoscopy, but from the sounds from my bathroom window, I know they had a good time.  I have to admit that I'm a bit jealous of my sister-in-law and of all the time she had to be able to put something like that together.  Oh well... that's just my working mommy guilt coming out.

My colonoscopy went well and revealed that my Crohn's is in 'remission'  Yeah!!!

A few days later, Tony had his second cornea transplant.  The first eye (right one) was done in January and healed pretty well and we decided to have the left eye done before the end of year and sooner than later due to possible changes happening at my job and the health insurance.

You're getting sleepy....

The surgery went well - the unfortunate part is that I didn't have as much time to take off of work as I did the first time around but I tried taking the kids out of the house as much as I could to let Tony rest and recouperate.  My first outing was to the mall where Miss Amy has a little 'show' for kids.  She sings kids songs and plays the guitar and dances around.  We got there a little late and it was just a mob of kids and moms and they mostly just wanted to cling to me the whole time.  I wasn't expecting that, but at least they weren't crying or screaming!  Afterwards, we walked around the mall a little bit and took some pictures inside the barnes and noble.

A few days later, I took the kids to the library for their kids program and afterwards we went shopping and ran errands.  It was great getting things done that needed to get done, but it was very draining - having to get all three in and out of the car - but it was empowering for me - just to know that I can handle and control all three on my own!

Also in September was the Mercer County Touch-A-Truck event.  The kids got to climb  into and around a bunch of different trucks like mail trucks, garbage trucks, fire trucks, airplane de-icers, ambulances and more.  It was fun but after a while it became just another truck to lift them into and out of and very noisy - kids were honking the horns on all of these trucks simultaneously!  I saw one family walking around with ear plugs - next year I'll know!
Here are some pictures of everyone in the trucks!

Afterwards we hit up a food truck competition that was across the street.  There were about 1-15 trucks featuring all types of foods from gourmet hot dogs to whole pizzas and brazilian bbq entrees.  It was fun but wish we had the stroller for our tired out kids!

Other random pictures from September include these ultra cute pictures of the girls doing each other's hair. 

Vacation!

At the beginning of September we took our first family vacation (not visiting family).  Tony's mom was part of our entourage and we started our long drive at midnight.  We drove through the night stopping every now and again to wake myself up again.  It was difficult but we made it in one piece.  We didn't reach our condo in Garden City Beach (just south of Myrtle Beach) until about 2 or 3pm.  After we arrived Tony and him mom ventured out to find a grocery store to get provisions, while I dealt with the kiddos.  Mind you, I drove MOST of the way there while Tony and him mom slept.  I wasn't too happy, but just went along with it.  I actually got us all ready to go in the pool and the rest of the days all blended together with swimming in the pool, playing in the sand and surfing in the ocean amongst other things.  Many pictures were taken - I'll try and post some from each outing...

 These pictures were from this tourist area.  We stopped to use the bathrooms - get them changed out of their pj's and stretch our legs.  I recall Amelia having quite a hissy fit in the bathroom and getting on my last nerve.

 We stopped for breakfast at a Cracker Barrel.  They were still in their pajamas.  I felt a little white-trash bringing them in there like that, but please cut me some slack... I had been driving for 8 hour at this point and dead tired. 

We had a few rainy days and one of them we spend at the aquarium.

One of the really nice days, we went to this area called 'Boardwalk at the Beach' They had a bunch of amusement park rides and tons of shops/restaurants to try out.  It was hot, but they had a blast!!!

Another outing included this GIANT ferris wheel.  Tony's mom is scared of heights so she didn't go up with us, and even though the ride was short, it was fun.

Picture from across the street - all lit up it was really quite a sight!

waiting for our turn...

Daddy and Amelia

Mommy with Olivia and Tony

It's a looooong way down!

view from above

Grandma (wearing pink shirt and white hat) waiting for us!

Olivia lounging

Tony lounging

sisters lounging...

We had a good time despite a few disagreements with Tony's mom about a few different topics and I'll admit that it's a heck of alot of work to take three three year olds on vacation.