Solids and Crawling and Teething, Oh My! - August/September 2008 Update
Wow, what a month – or two!! Things have been happening so fast that I haven’t even had a chance to sit down and post an update, let alone finish all my Thank You cards (which I am still working on, LOL… I figure there has to be a “within 1-year is okay” allowance after triplets, similar to after a wedding). Here’s a synopsis of what we’ve been up to for the past several weeks…
The triplets are getting so big!! Now at 7 months old, (5.75 months corrected), Tess weighs 17.8 pounds; Nora, our little piggy, is 17.9; and Holden is our little guy at 17.2. They were measured for length at their doctor’s visit on 9/10 and were 27.25”, 27.5”, and 26.5”, respectively.
We’re finally getting into somewhat of a tolerable daily rhythm. There is always someone who wants to buck the system of course, whether at nap time, meal time or play time, but we go with the flow as much as we can without ruining their schedules entirely and we usually do okay. The kids are sleeping through the night with only the occasional mid-night cries, generally from teething. They are also doing fairly well napping, right now doing 1 hour in the early a.m., 2-3 hours in the late a.m., and 30-40 minutes in the late afternoon. They go to bed for the night at 7:30 and sleep through until 5:30 (I wish it was longer!). They are all on regular formula now and take 4 8-oz bottles a day, and have solids twice a day. So far they’ve had rice cereal, turkey, bananas, pears, carrots, applesauce, sweet potatoes, peaches and prunes (out of necessity), but they all take to eating solids very differently. Of course, if you think about it realistically, each baby is an individual and naturally one will be ready to start solids before the other, just as with any other milestone, but we try anyway, as getting them used to food and practicing eating can’t hurt. Nora is a natural, Holden is coming along (doing much better than when we started), and Tess still has a pretty good tongue-thrust reflex so she doesn’t get much down into her belly, besides which she is very picky and will only open her mouth for about three different foods. She’s even become savvy to my attempts at getting her to laugh so she opens her mouth and now only smiles with her mouth closed when we’re at the table… little shit!
Some of the funniest things to watch with the triplets (and even with Gwen) are how they interact with each other. They already fight over the same toys and love to touch each other, even though they haven’t quite learned yet that pulling your sister’s hair is unacceptable and grabbing someone else’s ear is a no-no. The girls are especially close and I will often find them holding hands or touching each other’s faces or chewing on each other’s hands and feet. All three of the babies are sitting up (usually assisted, for a couple of minutes before toppling over) and are propping up on one arm learning how to get into a sitting position. Nora is already sitting up on her own all the time and thinks it’s great fun. You can tell that the other two are like, “Hey! How’d you do that? That looks like fun!” then they all smile at each other, obviously sharing a private joke. All three are crawling already, though they tend to do so commando-style, with their bellies on the ground, pulling with their hands and lurching with their feet. Very recently all of them have been perfecting their crawls, getting their bellies off the ground and supporting their weight on their hands and knees, rocking and even kicking off with a foot, which usually sends them sideways and over, much like a turtle. LOL Holden actually gets up on his hands and feet! Tess has just found her voice and has started babbling some constantans (“da-da-da-da”, “na-na-na”, “ah-goo”, that type of thing). Tess and Nora both cut their first tooth (Nora has two!), about 3 days apart, and Holden isn’t far behind. The biggest differences between their first teething are that Tess never complained about the pain while Nora whines and pouts endlessly. Holden is going to be like Gwen I think, where he has the same tooth “ready to cut through the gum any day”; he has had the same three or four teeth visible just under the gums for a few weeks now and has been drooling and chewing and whining about them for months. Typical male… LOL
While we don’t have the time to do all those things you always think about when you dream of how you’ll teach your baby the new things in every day life on an individual basis (i.e. “Where is your nose?”, “Look at the tree; trees are very big and help keep our air clean; let’s touch the bark and see how it feels.”, etc.) or encouraging them to crawl, sit up, say “ma-ma” and “da-da”, etc. we do our best and they are learning a lot on their own too. Our pediatrician actually just said that even if we ignore them they will thrive and learn everything they need to know on their own (all on the basis of necessity, I’d guess). She also reassured me that if we don’t have the time to do all the little things we did with Gwen to not sweat it because we are good parents and if we’re not available, they have each other. Good news since I’m wracked with Mommy Guilt 95% of the time…
Gwen is done with daycare now, and it is definitely more challenging having a toddler around full time. She’s pretty much stopped taking naps (a lame attempt, I think, at exerting her independence and pushing her limits to see what the outcome may be at home versus what she was used to at daycare), and has become more interactive with the babies (Tess is her favorite), even if it’s not always appropriate (tackling Tess pig-pile style, covering up Nora’s head with a blanket that she can’t get off, stealing toys away from Holden that she wasn’t interested in until they were in his mouth, etc.), which feels to me like she’s missing having kids her own age to play with. I’m trying to have more play-dates for her at home, at least until we are more mobile this spring where we can hit story hour at the library and such. She is such a good girl otherwise, though. I hate the fact that I have to use the TV to keep her occupied while I feed the babies, or that we only get outside to play two times a week, but she is good about it and takes everything in stride. It’s fun having her around the house though. She is so funny and has such a great personality. She will be ready for potty training soon, though she still denies when she poops. If we catch her crouching in the corner or smell the tell-tale scent, we’ll ask to check her diaper she will say, “No poop. Jus fah-ting.” LOL She is showing lots of other readiness signs though so we will work on it over the winter, when everyone is holed up inside. She is in a real bed now, which was a bittersweet and heartbreaking transition for all of us. We need her crib for Holden, and she has climbed out of it twice now, so the time was right. The night we made the transition we left her crib in her room with the front railing off so she could crawl into it if she felt like her new bed was too scary, we talked about her new Big Girl Bed all day, and she helped us while we baby-proofed and brought up some low-key toys and board books to make it more comfortable for her. When bedtime came she ran upstairs and I thought we were going to get lucky again. Nope! Soon after the picture-taking, the reality of the situation set in and she wanted nothing to do with it. We offered to read her a story, to lay in bed with her, to tuck her in, and all the other things we would have done anyway, and she melted down. I left her screaming and sobbing while I put the safety gate over the stairs; I turned around at the bottom of the stairs to shut off the light only to see her with both hands up on the gate, still yelling, “Mommy! Please! Nooooo!” I shut the door to her room but felt like I had trapped her in the basement. By the time I was done crying, so was Gwen, and 40 minutes later when we went up to check on her we found her sound asleep in her bed, not her crib. She’s gone right to sleep in it ever since and we’ve moved her crib down to the babies’ room. Holden has graduated from the ghetto Pack-N-Play to a real crib (finally!) and he LOVES it (and is sleeping much better too!).
Here are some of the latest and greatest pictures, which I’ve tried to whittle down to less than a hundred… LOL Each picture has a description; just hover your cursor over the picture to see the description.
August:
September:
Just today a few fun things came about… Both Tess and Holden sat up unassisted (all by themselves!), Nora scaled the single step in between the sunroom and the kitchen (I have to constantly keep an eye on Nora the Explorer), and Gwen had her first bubble bath. I was also requested to put up some pictures of Gwen’s bedroom now that the bed frame is assembled and so I figured I’d throw in a couple of the triplets’ bedroom (our former den), so that people can get an idea of how it really is possible to comfortably cram 3 cribs, a changing table, a dresser and a rocking chair into a 12’x14’ room. LOL
