Happy Birthday to Me

Today was my 32nd birthday. It was a great day. It started with a sleep in for me, courtesy of Scott. He took care of breakfast for the girls while I slept... so nice. Then he cooked breakfast for me when I woke up. We took the girls for an outdoor adventure at AnnaRuby Falls after they woke up from their nap. Finally, Mimi brought over a cake and we had a little party with hats and everything this afternoon.


Sarah holds her own spoon and self feeds... as long as there is a sugary treat on the end of it.

Kate doing the same

Maggie alternated using the spoon and her hands to shovel it in!


I'll post the pictures from our hiking trip tomorrow sometime.

Any Blogger Who Can Help?

What is going on with my picture in my header? I don't know why it has suddenly shrunk? Suggestions?

Christmas Season Begins

Scott and I have been working really hard lately to try and make all our Christmas preparations ahead of time so that we will be able to fully enjoy this entire season with the girls.

We had the tree up by the day after Thanksgiving. Of course, we are only using a tall, skinny, fake tree this year... we already have enough living creatures under our roof, no time to water a tree. We placed it between the couch and love seat so that it stands a chance of not being pulled over, and if it is, hopefully it won't land on a child this way. The girls were all pretty excited about it on Saturday morning when they woke up and saw it for the first time. Sarah usually takes visitor over to it, points, laughs, and shows it off proudly. In the morning when they wake up I can say, "Let's go see if we still have a tree", and they all take off running for the living room!

We have lots of our Christmas gifts already ordered and on the way. Ella says that all the babies need is a baby doll (check), and she wants 1- a doctor kit (check), 2-a "booty parlor"(check), and 3- a baby doll(check).

Back in the pre-baby days, I used to always try to have my Christmas cards addressed and ready to send by Dec. 1. Of course, back then I wasn't using adorable photos of the girls as our holiday greeting. Perhaps that is why this year I lost my mind and actually sent most of my cards out the day after Thanksgiving... it wasn't even December! Oh well, we haven't had any complaints yet... not out loud anyway.

As a result of all the pre-planning, I actually had a chance to sit on the couch, sip hot apple cider, read a great book, and listen to my new Michael W. Smith Christmas CD last night while I was waiting for Scott to come home. The music reminded me of some of the great cantatas that our church has presented for Christmas in years past. I put a link on the sidebar in case anyone is interested in listening and trying it out online.

Don't get me wrong, there's still plenty yet to do before we're fully ready for Christmas here. However, I feel great to already be at the point where I can sit back and soak in all the joy and excitement that the girls seem to radiate this time of year!

Maggie, Sarah, & Kate showing off their tree and the new, funky shirts KayKay brought back from her Thanksgiving trip

15 Month Stats

We took the girls for their 15 month check-ups today. Here are the stats:

Maggie: Weight- a little over 21 lbs (25%)
Height- 31" (70%)
Head circumference- 18.5 (80%)

Kate: Weight- 20.5 lbs (15%)
Height- 31" (70%)
Head circumference- 18.25 (65%)

Sarah: Weight- 19.25 lbs (9%)
Height- 31" (70%)
Head circumference- 18 (45%)

The doc says they are all doing great...all right on track developmentally, ahead of schedule with their vocabularies, and just perfectly wonderful! I totally agree. Kelli went along to help again, and Debbie met us down there, so we were one on one. Sarah charmed the doctor by almost toppling head over heels to point out her belly button when asked where it was located. After her turn was over she needed a little snack break and then started signing "more water please". She did that a couple of times before Debbie said, "MaryBeth, what is she saying?". I could tell immediately, and when we gave her a sip of her water she laughed because she knew exactly how she got what she wanted. She even tried to sneak into my lap for a second turn at being examined. Kate and Maggie played shy at first, but they both eventually warmed up to the doctor. At the end they had to have 2 shots. They cried briefly and were over it quickly. Kelli and I agreed that it went much better than the 12 month visit. Unfortunately, due to our mixed up vaccine schedule they will have to have 3 shots at their 18 month visit.

If Mama Ain't Bloggin', She Must Be Sick

I got an email from Gamma today with a subject line that was the same as the title of this post. Sad but true. I finally caught the girl's cold from a week or two ago and they still all have runny noses, but the bigger reason I've not been blogging lately has been the fact that I don't have 3 minutes to myself during the hours of 7am and 6:30pm most days. By the time everyone goes to bed at night I am just too tired to sit down and consider what has happened here that might be blog worthy. Ella has been boycotting naps again for about a week.... today after a serious war that included her winning several of the battles, she ended up falling asleep on the couch with cartoons on in the background and her paci in her mouth! All three babies are presently asleep, but they are in a terrible "in between" stage where they really don't need both the morning and afternoon nap. After tomorrow's 15 month check-up (which was scheduled for 1:30pm so that we can see the doc we want) I plan to start working our way to only an afternoon nap. I hope they transition into it well, and quickly, because I don't know how much more of the sleepless, always have at least one baby and child awake during daylight hours, days I can take!



Kate, pictured above, when I went in to get her after 45 minutes of supposed morning napping today. She went to bed fully clothed, and somehow managed to take off both her jeans and t-shirt... she's only 15 months old, I don't remember Ella starting this phase quite so early?!? Help?

Wordless Wednesday Fall Outdoors

Kate

Maggie

Sarah

Ella

Free Christmas Music for Bloggers!!

I love, love Christmas music!! This morning I discovered that the people at Provident Music were giving away free CD's to bloggers in the US.... a new one from Michael W. Smith. Hooray!!

I've signed up for mine and can't wait for it to arrive so I can test it out. I'll be breaking out all my Christmas music on Thursday!! Hurry here if you would like to get one because they are only available to the first 150 entrants!

Ella, Wow!

About a month ago Nanny C. gave Ella a treasury of fairy tales called Once Upon a Time. The book is awesome... it contains almost every fairytale I've ever heard and several I'd never had the pleasure of reading before. At bedtime each night we've been making our way through the book two stories at a time.

The lessons they contain are really sinking in... well, sort of. One day this week I took Ella to her room and requested that she stay in there until she could be sweet because she was taking toys from the girls and hoarding them. I told her to just come on out when she was ready. A few minutes later she came out, apologized to Maggie for snatching a toy away, and said, "Mama, I was feeling kinda selfish in there all by myself.... like the Lonely Giant."

Mimi told me just today that she had recently been corrected by Ella for improvising when reading her stories from this book instead of reading word for word. In Mom's defense, she said she was only changing things when she thought the words were too difficult for Ella to understand. Who knew she was capable of taking it all in and making sense of it with context?!?

Because fairy tales are written differently from the way we talk now, Ella's daily use of language has changed. An example was today when I told her that she couldn't put my makeup on after she had her bath she said, "I am sad, and then I began to cry." I almost laughed out loud!

Her favorite story in the book is The Ugly Duckling. I am certain that it is her favorite because we've had to read it every other night since we've been home from Spain and maybe even before we left. I've heard her throughout the day reciting parts of it to her baby sisters and baby dolls. Tonight my voice was beginning to give out by the time we got to the second story because I now have the cold that the girls have been sharing for a week. I flipped open to the Ugly Duckling, and to my surprise Ella began reciting the following, word for word from the book: "One shine summer day, a mother goose watched her eggs begin to hatch. "You are the sweetest little yellow duck-ings!" she cried pwoudly. "Are you all here?"But the biggest egg had not yet hatched. The mother duck settled back down on the final egg and waited. After a time, that shell, too, began to cwack. And out tumbled a cwumsy gray duck-ing." From that point on, I read a little and she filled in as needed.

All I can say is, "Wow"!

Thanksgiving 2007

Thanksgiving Then & Now

Tonight we had a family Thanksgiving dinner at Janice and Tom's. I think there were ~40 people there. At this same event last year we took this wonderful picture that we used as our Christmas card photo.

So, I had in mind dressing the girls all in outfits that were very similar to the ones they wore last year and putting them back into this same comfy couch for a 2007 photo... I wanted everyone to be able to put the two side by side and marvel at the differences! However, we were completely unable to get anything better than this.....

After I got over being frustrated with herding cats, I decided to aim for individual photos for our card this year. Scott took some really great ones, and we managed to get a couple of other shots with people besides our four kids in them... but not many.

I will try to put my favorites into a slide show to put on here tomorrow.

Farmhouse Kids Contest

One of my blogging friends Tanya is having a little contest on her blog for a piece of handmade jewlry. Check it out! It looks like it would make a wonderful Christmas gift!

Just a Little Cold

Okay all you multiple's moms out there.... when one of your kids gets a cold what do you do to make it go away? I stopped trying sometime last winter to keep it from spreading because I realized that I was only prolonging our agony. When one of them gets something, it is only a matter of time before they all have it...why drag it out?

Here are Ella & Sarah "sharing" toothbrushes back and forth

Now all four of the girls have had snotty noses for just under a week, and I can't figure out how to make them better? I can't help but wonder if we will keep this one little bug until it has made it's way through all of us, just in time for the next one to hit?!? I certainly hope not, but I am eager to hear any suggestions from moms with several kids all chewing on the same pacis, sippy cups, toys, etc.

On a much happier note, Mimi, Kelli, and I took the girls to Babyland General's Appalachian Christmas this morning. Maggie's laughter was both priceless and infectious. In every new room of the "Hospital" she found something worthy of her giggles; she is very into babies and baby dolls these days. It was lots of hard work keeping up with them all, but I think Maggie, Kate, and Sarah all had a great first visit to Babyland. I've included every single photo I managed to get of all four of them... all two of them, even though neither was very good! They are harder and harder to catch these days!!

We're Home from Madrid...

Yes, those of you who know that we have been planning a parent's get away to Venice, Italy may be confused by the title of this post.... long story short, Scott and I were bumped off the Venice flight on Thursday evening and found ourselves with the children taken care of until Tuesday night and no place to go. So, our first reaction (probably because we DO have 4 small children at home) was to run from one end of the airport to the other and get on a flight to Dublin, Ireland because it was the last flight out that night. Then, moments before the flight crew prepared to close up the plane, we came to our senses and realized that not only did we have no reservations or plans for where to stay or what to do in Dublin, but we also DO have 4 little people with an army of folks caring for them who would be unable to get in touch with us for quite a while if need be...... so we hopped off of that flight and went to Janice and Tom's to regroup. Their home is beautiful, and our welcome was very warm there, as always. The overnight away from the girls seemed to make the stress of international travel planning at the last minute melt away. On Friday morning we awoke refreshed and began searching the flights to European cities that had the most available seats for that afternoon. After a little bit of deliberation we settled on Madrid and then headed for the closest bookstore. We spent a couple of wonderful, relaxing hours in the Borders Bookstore reading over everything they had on Madrid and Spain. We purchased a Lonely Planet Guide to Madrid and headed back to the airport for Take Two. This is where the story takes a giant turn for the better- First Class is the only way to travel. We watched movies, read books, played games, and managed to sneak in a couple of hours sleep, because when we arrived in Madrid it was 9:05am local time, 3:00am home time.

Saturday morning we found the metro, our hotel, hot showers, fresh clothes, and headed out for our first days adventures.

Madrid was full of parks and gardens with wonderful outdoor venues for families. Here we are in one of the only decent pictures we got of the two of us, in front of a man-made lake, in the middle of the Parque del Buen Retiro.

By some miracle, I happened to remember on the way to the airport Friday to call Kari ( she was somewhere in Spain for a summer 10 years ago) to see if she had any suggestions for things to see/do. She reminded me that we have a friend Whitney, who lives in Madrid where her husband Tom plays professional basketball. So, Kari emailed Whitney for me while we were traveling, and I had her phone number by the time we arrived. Whitney and Tom invited us to come see one of his basketball games out in Fuenlabrada, and it happened to be on Saturday night.... our first night there. We found our way to the train station and made the 25 minute trip. It was a great time catching up with an old friend, meeting her 3 beautiful boys, and watching some exciting basketball.

Can you tell who the pro basketball player is in the above photo?



The fans were amazing... screaming, yelling, beating home made drums and blowing horns the entire time. We were absolutely beat by the time we made our way back to our hotel for the night. That night we slept from midnight to noon the next day!!

After we woke up on Sunday, we went to El Rastro, a huge flea market open on Sundays in one of the sections of Madrid. The streets were closed and there were thousands of booths with the typical flea market wares. We hit a few more parks and gardens for the rest of the afternoon, and then got ready for our evening tour with Stephen Drake-Jones, the self appointed Chairman of the Wellington Society, of which we are now members. We did a tapas tour of old Madrid with 6 other Americans that lasted well into the evening, and on Sunday night only ended up getting 9 hours of sleep.... still tons for people used to 6 or 7 hours max. The photo above is in the Plaza del Sol below the horse where we met The Chairman and the others for the beginning of our tour at 7:30pm. It was a little more difficult than we anticipated to find them because there was a protest of sorts in the plaza right where we were supposed to meet... something about communists, fascists, and skinheads?!? It was difficult to understand what the problem was, but it was clear that there was something bad going on.

Then on Monday we took a high speed train to Toledo for the day. The architecture, cathedrals, paintings and just everything there was amazing! It was an awful lot of steep climbing/walking, but well worth it.

Overall, we had an amazing trip, and when we came home it seemed the girls had all grown up so much. I think they missed us as much as we missed them, and life has settled back into normal again. The rest are some of the other wonderful pictures that Scott took while we were in Spain. Enjoy!!

Wordless Wednesday

Forty Little Toes.... and Lots of Polka Dots

Maggie & Kate

What Was I Thinking?

Scott broke his glasses at Reserve Drill on Sunday, and Mondays are just about the only weekday that we don't have anyone around to help out with the kids. So, we decided to load everyone up after morning naps and head to the mall yesterday. Scott had an appointment at the Lens Crafters there to find some new frames at 12:30pm, and of course, we barely arrived there in time. That meant that only minutes after landing in the food court at a table and beginning to hand out lunch to our hungry little mass of people, Scott had to leave me ALL BY MYSELF with the girls, in public! Amazingly, we did just fine. When everyone finished eating, I loaded them back into the Runabout and had Ella grab hold of her "leash" as she calls it, and we took off to explore the mall. We were stopped a fair amount of times so that I could explain that they are triplets and all girls and my hands are still full. However, I think the funniest comments I overheard yesterday while I was looking like Supermom were the ones where one person turned to the others they were with and said in a hushed tone... "I don't think I'd ever try to get out by myself with four little ones!" Yeah, I heard them say it, but they weren't saying it to me, so I didn't bother to explain that my dear husband was with us and otherwise occupied at the moment. For a little while I was even beginning to feel like Supermom... until Ella had to go to the bathroom and I realized that the Runabout doesn't fit into any of the restrooms in our little mall! After a quick trip to Lens Crafters to leave the trio and their gigantic stroller with Scott, Ella and I made it to the bathroom just in time....for a small battle over whether she would actually go in the public restroom there in the mall because of the loud shushers. I convinced her to go by promising not to flush (and to think I used to wonder who in the world was leaving those public potties un-flushed!). We finished our business and headed back for the girls. Scott was still waiting for someone to help him, so the girls and I rolled out once again on our own. The entire time we were dining I had been promising Ella I would take her on the Carousel. I decided that we should all ride while we were waiting on Scott. Hence this post's title, "What Was I Thinking?!?". It was a mini train wreck. I first got all the tokens. Then removed the girls from the Runabout and pointed them in the direction of the entrance. The lady taking up tokens was neither annoyed by the incredible amount of time it took us to all board, nor was she helpful in any way. Thankfully the other patrons of the Carousel didn't seem to mind at all! We eventually made it into one of the circular seats. I didn't recall Carousels going so fast, but boy did that thing ever spin. Ella enjoyed the ride thoroughly, and I spent the entire time trying to keep Kate from climbing over the edge and falling face first to the floor and keep Maggie and Sarah inside the little car. Getting back off when the ride was over took about the same amount of time, and we attracted quite a crowd of gawkers... what mother of triplets plus all under 3 would consider riding the carousel by herself with all her children?!? I can name one for certain who won't be attempting that again for a long, long time. Meanwhile, Scott was STILL waiting for someone to help him with the new frames, so after I had everyone safely loaded back into the Runabout and moderately under control again, we headed back to Lens Crafters to "hurry Daddy up". He was helped rather quickly when Ella began pushing every pair of glasses back on their stands, putting fingerprints on the glass doors, and swinging the sign that was hanging in the window. Of course, I was trying to keep up with her, but the Runabout doesn't maneuver as quickly as a 2.5 year old. I did the best I could, and it turns out that my inability to keep Ella's hands off things likely got Scott the help he needed even quicker than he would have been able to get himself. Glad we were able to help!!
All in all, we had a great day, and I'm glad we ventured out.

Daylight Savings?!?

Tonight we reeled a little bit over our bedtime routine and the fact that daylight savings has changed everything and temporarily "rocked our world". I mean we were up at the crack of dawn, I couldn't decided when to put them down for morning nap, and afternoon nap was late and only took for two of the four. I finally decided tonight to just feed them when they were hungry and wait to put them all to bed when they seemed tired... what a novel concept. For this scheduled, scared-y mom, it was a big deal. However, some real good fun came out of it too. Kate spent her extra awake time putting on hairbands and pushing all the pillows off the couch. Sarah made good use of her time by carrying around the lotion bottle asking everyone to "help, please" her get some out. Mischief Maggie was into everything as usual... spilling bottles of milk, falling down on purpose and accident, and dancing up a storm. Finally, Ella took honors for funniest this evening by carrying around an old plastic camera asking us to all stop and say cheese. She then proceeded to go to the computer, wave her hands in front of it, and declare that she was putting us all on her bog.... ummmm, I guess she means blog?!? Here they are... captured in the last couple of days.