Duct Tape....A Triplet Parent's Best Friend

Over a month ago now Scott and I celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary while Ella and I were visiting him in Hawaii. Nine years, really?!? Just a few weeks prior to that we finished off our first roll of duct tape. By now you are certainly wondering where this is going....? It just seemed very surreal to me that we made it through an entire roll of duct tape in our lifetime. I mean, I suspect that if we had not become the parents of triplets, that one single roll of duct tape would have quite possibly lasted for our entire married lives.

Having triplets certainly brings out the "resourcefulness" in a person. We started working our way through our rather fat, severely underutilized, probably-part-of-a-wedding-gift, roll of duct tape at the beginning of the summer when our three little stinkers wouldn't stop taking off their diapers at naps and bedtime every single day. I had read on the message boards about other triplet parents having to tape their kids diapers on and thought it just sounded awful, but after a day or two of cleaning sheets, beds, and children covered in pee and/or poop, we made the plunge.

All summer long at bedtime you could hear the girls saying, "No dup tape, no dup tape, pease." But it had to be done in order to keep those little tushies covered. Until I was forced to try it for myself, I couldn't even imagine how duct taping a child's diaper would actually work to keep it on... or how you'd keep from hurting their skin with it, for that matter. We ended up tearing the tape into strips and simply covering the tabs of the diapers. That was all it took, and they were unable to, or more likely uninterested in, removing their diapers.

Somehow, since the time that Scott left, they have become big girls. They may still be wearing diapers while sleeping, but they are so much more aware of what is going on with their little bodies that they wouldn't think of removing a diaper with poop in it. "Poop's yucky and smells yucky!", they now say. I don't know exactly when I stopped taping their diapers on them.... I just suddenly realized a few days ago that I hadn't taped anybody for quite a while.

I realized the change had been made when duct tape once again seemed a logical solution to a small problem here in our household... and I couldn't locate it anywhere near it's usual spot by the changing table.

Now that they are in big girl beds Sarah has realized that she can stretch up and turn on the lights whenever she wants. After Kate woke up screaming a few mornings ago because Sarah threw on the light bright and early when she awoke before the others, and I had to go in a couple of times to turn off the light and stop a party in the evenings after I'd sent them to bed, I decided something had to be done.

: Cue the handy-dandy duct tape:

Now at night instead of taping their diapers on, I'm taping the light switch plate. So far Sarah hasn't been able to remove the tape, and there's been no more blinding, screaming awakenings for Kate and Maggie.

Perhaps duct tape could be used to keep clothes on as well?!?
*I'm going to include this post over at Rock's In My Dryer's Works for Me Wednesday... as it may be useful for someone else with diaper removing, light blaring, bandits in the house.