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Gwen woke up sick on Halloween morning, but appeared to be in good spirits despite her cough and runny nose.  I thought for sure that she would take a nice long nap since she was wiped from having a cold and she had taken 3 hour naps the two days before (fighting the cold, no doubt).  We were scheduled to arrive for a visit and some candy-grabbing where I used to work at 3:30 so I moved Gwen’s nap from 12-2 to 11-1, thinking that if she slept longer than her usual 2 hours I would still have plenty of time to adjust my schedule accordingly and get everyone ready and loaded up to leave the house at 3.  I gave Gwen some Triaminic to help her breathe so she would sleep more soundly (the night before she was very restless) and at 11:20 she went down for her nap.  Or, rather, she just went up to her bedroom to play for 2 1/2 hours.  The Triaminic must have made her spastic, or maybe she was all jazzed up to dress up in her costume, but she wasn’t having a nap.  I went up to talk to her and coax her back into bed twice but to no avail; she was back up and rummaging through books and stuffed animals within minutes.  I was smart enough to leave her up there (she wasn’t crying and she still needs that down time) so I could get some stuff done (put the candy in a basket, pack up the diaper bag, pre-make lunches, etc.) but at 1:30 the babies woke up from their nap so I figured what the heck, I will get everyone, feed everyone and then we will get into costume and go.  Gwen ate her lunch like a good girl and watched TV while I finished feeding the babies their bottles.  At 3 o’clock (my estimated leaving time) Tess was just finishing her bottle.  I changed Gwen’s diaper and got her dressed then moved onto the babies and their costumes.  I grabbed the 3 long sleeved onesies, 6 socks, 6 shoes, 3 diapers, three lamb body suits and 3 lamb hats I had set aside earlier and got to work.  I started with Holden, which was a mistake since dressing him (in anything) is like putting pants on a Barbie doll.  Not to mention the sneakers I bought him that fit with extra room in the toes only 3 weeks ago were now so tight when I put them on him he cried and I had to unlace them to get them over his instep.  At 3:11 I finally had Holden changed and dressed and moved on to the girls.  Mind you, Gwen was sneezing boogers down Bo Peep’s outfit every 5 minutes and walking over the babies showing off her dress while the babies were following Gwen trying to get her pretty dress causing her to freak out, hit, push, yell to get away from her, then run to and/or jump over me all the while.  Ugh.  I dressed the girls, who immediately pulled off their shoes so I said screw it, no shoes then, threw the kids in some car seats, ordered Gwen out the door and threw on my sneakers (over my slipper socks, because I had forgotten I had them on and didn’t have time to change them).  At 3:28 I left the house, ready to pull my hair out and wondering why I was making a trip all the way into town for a half-hour’s visit.

I had fun chatting with the girls I used to work with and they were amazed at how good the kids were and how big they had gotten.  We left there at 5, which was when I was supposed to meet Tony at home, as he was taking the kids out for Trick Or Treat from 5-6 so they wouldn’t be too thrown off their schedule (our Trick Or Treat is always on Halloween proper from 5-8 PM; I love that!).  I got home at 20 past 5 with four kids passed out in the van.  We loaded the babies up into the stroller and figured Gwen would want to walk.  Not so.  She was revolting against Trick Or Treating.  Being sick, tired, and seeing all the kids walking around dressed up really threw her for a loop I think.  After much ado about nothing, a lot of, “No!  Me go inside!”, tantrum tears, and so forth, Tony managed to get Gwen calmed down enough to plop her in the stroller and leave.  We didn’t get very many good pictures out of her though, which I was bummed about, it being the triplets’ first Halloween and all. 

Oh well.  They still looked absolutely adorable and they were the hit of the neighborhood, after we’ve kept them locked up inside for so long.  I stayed home to hand out our customary full-sized candy bars and Tony took the kids out.  It’s weird going to people’s houses you have never met and having them say, “Oh!  So these are the triplets!”  There’s a Brangelina quality to it, neither of us is really all that comfortable with the constant attention we get when we go out, but I guess it’s the price we pay for being so awesome.  LOL

Okay… where do I start?  I guess I’ll think way back to September and go from there (I’ll use my pictures as reminders because I have very little real recollection and what I do remember is fuzzy).  After the kids all mastered sitting up, they wasted no time getting started on standing.  They are now master standers, as long as they have something to hold onto.  Nora and Tess have tried letting go a few times but that only lasts a couple of seconds.  They are all starting to cruise the furniture in small steps, mostly shuffling to the side, but if they find something to stand up on but need to get closer they will walk in to it.  I swear they will all be walking by Christmas, and then we will really be up the creek!  LOL  Holden and Nora have become climbers, mostly climbing on to the seat of Gwen’s little armchair.  Holden has also become quite a PITA with sneaking behind furniture to try and get into trouble, mostly trolling for small electronics and papers, like my shopping and to-do lists, or the remote control or camera.  He is constant work, that kid. 

Holden’s back is almost all healed up from the Carter’s tagless blanket sleeper incident, thank God.  Last week we were feeling brave, and driven by necessity, we headed to the outlet stores to buy shoes for all the kids (poor Gwen was still running around in sandals with socks since her feet have grown so much and we didn’t have sneakers for her yet).  We got the babies each a pair of Robeez and Gwen a cool new pair of sneakers that light up when she walks.  She’s hilarious with them and will run a few steps then stop dead in her tracks and lean over to check out the flashing lights.  While Gymboree is a store that’s usually too expensive for me to shop at unless there is a sale or a coupon or something that’s just so darn cute I have to have it, there was a new Gymboree outlet so I decided to check it out.  Their clothes are adorable, but spending $35 for a sweater and $30 for the matching jeans is just insane, so I was stoked to find the outlet.  I was hoping that there would be good deals, or at least a sale or something, and was pleasantly surprised.  Some of the clothes were still too expensive, but they all had SEWN-IN TAGS (!!!) so I decided to ignore the prices (which I still couldn’t do completely), shop mostly on the clearance racks, and bought Holden a whole new wardrobe that wouldn’t leave him with a 4” scar.  YAY!  I spent $150 and got about 8 shirts, 3 pairs of pants, a hat, a sweater, and 3 one-piece long sleeved/long pants play outfits.  A good deal for safety and quality, in my opinion.  I also bought all the kids a plethora of footed pj’s from The Children’s Place (an even mix of lighter-weight cotton and fleece blanket sleepers).  While all the blanket sleepers have sewn-in tags (YAY again!!!), the cotton pj’s have a stenciled tagless design, and so I am worried that Holden might react to it (he continues to react to the Carter’s new stenciled tagless label design).  I will try one pair on him and if he has a reaction I will have to return the rest.  What a pain in the ass this has all turned out to be.  If that is the case, I sure hope Gymboree has pj’s with sewn-in tags.

The kids are eating all sorts of yummy foods now (all still pureed, since I’m a worry wart about choking) including rice, turkey, bananas, pears, carrots, apples, sweet potatoes, peaches, prunes, squash, chicken, apricots, yogurt, green beans, oatmeal, blueberries, corn, peas, plain potatoes, onion, beef, and tomorrow we start barley/mixed cereal.  They love most of the foods but have favorites like pears, blueberries, apricots, squash, sweet potatoes, carrots, and meat.  I am hoping to start them on some finger foods in the next month because they are getting to that point where they have better coordination and control and look interested when they see us eating stuff so it is time.  By the time Thanksgiving comes around, I think they will have been introduced to enough foods that I will feel comfortable giving them Gerber Puffs or Cheerios without worrying about them causing an allergic reaction.  Besides, they are getting teeth now so they will be able to bite through veggies and meats so real food won’t be as much of a choking hazard anymore.

Speaking of teeth, Tess currently has 3 (two bottom front, one upper to the left of the front), almost 4 (the upper front next to her other top tooth has broken the skin but hasn’t come in yet), and has 2 more ready to come down (the other two top front teeth).  Nora has her 2 bottom front teeth (no more yet), and Holden finally got his first tooth on Halloween.  His other bottom front tooth is ready to pop through though so it’s going to be a tight race between him and Nora to see who gets what first from here on out.

At 8 months old, we are dealing with the kids’ first cold.  Ugh.  Gwen woke up with a head cold on Halloween.  The next day we dragged everyone to the outlets and that evening Tony and I had big plans (so sad on a Saturday night…) to put away the laundry that has overtaken our bedroom.  Or to at least get it sorted and folded, anyway.  We started in on the laundry at about 8 o’clock (after we had put the kids to bed and finished up the clean up and prep for the next day chores) and got through the sorting stage before we heard Nora crying in her crib.  At 8:30 I got Nora up, who was inconsolable, and tried laying on the bed with her, patting her bum, patting her back, singing to her, but nothing worked.  I had Tony make me a small bottle thinking maybe she was hungry, which she wanted nothing to do with.  She was congested but I just thought it was because she had been crying so much.  I laid her in my lap and started rubbing her belly thinking maybe it was just gas and had Tony go get the Mylicon and Tylenol.  After we loaded her up with meds, Tony knelt down next to the bed and started stroking Nora’s hair.  That did the trick!  She calmed right down and started to fall asleep but as soon as we moved her back to her crib she was up screaming again.  As fate would have it, Tess started screaming too, so we just decided to bring them both into the bedroom (so as not to wake up Holden too) and work on them there.  I started thinking, maybe they are getting sick and because this was their first cold they were freaking out at the feeling of being congested, not to mention colds always make you achy and crabby anyway.  At that point it was around 10 o’clock so we decided to call it a night and just sleep with the girls to keep them quiet and happy and so we could get some sleep.  Two hour later Holden was up, congested and crying, so Tony went in to get him and bring him in to the mix.  Of course, Holden being a boy, wanted to steam roll over his sisters, pull their ears and hair, pull out their eyes, etc. so he made our happy little sick bed miserable.  After about 15 minutes of him not settling down, and now that the girls were also awake and crying, I told Tony to take Holden somewhere else to sleep with him, and I would stay in charge of the girls.  We parted ways and were able to get in about 4 more hours of sleep before waking at 5 AM due to daylight savings time ending and the kids all being on an earlier schedule.  Ugh!!  They are still sick, but colds tend to linger in babies, and they are making progress.  They aren’t as snotty as they were last weekend, but they have more of a cough from all the post-nasal drip.  They are still eating and drinking, and they have gone back to sleeping through the night (the humidifier really helps), and since they don’t have any fevers we’re confident that in another week or two they will be back to normal.

Besides all that fun stuff, the kids are becoming more adorable and interactive on a daily basis.  They’ve lost that newborn look and are even almost past the infant stage.  By the time they’re toddling around I’ll barely remember the past year and will be too busy trying to keep up with them to make new long-term memories so I am trying to make the most of each day as it comes.  My pictures are so important to me for that, it’s like scrapbooking my memories without taking a lot of time or wasting paper.  Already we look back at some of the photos and say, “Remember when…?”, but we barely do.  Here are this month’s pictures, showing the good, the bad, and the ugly of raising 8 month old triplets with a two year old:

My Aunt Laurie had sent us these adorable matching Elmo outfits when the kids were born.  They are finally big enough to wear them so when we put them all on it was hilarious and surprising to see their reactions.  They ended up chasing each other’s bums, trying to kiss/eat/lick the Elmos on the other’s bums.  The following shows the progression from initial interest to full-blown obsession pulling off each other’s pants.  LOL!!

I had run to the baby’s room to change a diaper and left Gwen with her markers.  Good thing they’re non-toxic because this is what I came back to find:

I took these pictures tonight when Tess was all smiley.  I needed to come back and post them to help illustrate what I was talking about with Tess’ teeth coming in.  If you click on the pictures you can view them enlarged and in detail to see that she has the one top tooth that’s already through and at least 4 more ready to pop through any day.  Tess has a tendency to stick her tongue out when she smiles so it’s difficult to get a good toothy grin out of her.  LOL