MoreThanWeExpected.com

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