Saturday, October 1, 2016

3 years old!

In keeping with the new tradition of the monthly blog post, I did not do a year in review post.  This post will do our September outings, our yearly comparisons, our year 3 video,  and the kids birthday party.

Teaching for 14 years I never knew how nice the weather is in September.  We love it and we've taken full advantage of our last weeks of summer.  Here are some September pics.

This boy would stay in the pool all day.

resting after swimming at auntie cathy's pool

this girl and her tablet

playing at Sherri's

arms crossed.  stink face. 


love this pic

aftermath of playing in the sprinkler

3 little monkeys swinging in the park

ready to fix things with his saw

these pics never get old.  I love when they cuddle.

We went to Children's Art Lab in Mattapoisett.  Elsie liked painting

Sam loved playing with animals and feeding them in the tub

watching their sister make her creation



she couldn't see the guys working in the yard, so went to the high ground

in her pajamas still.  ay yi yi

who loves french fries?

these two!

the never ending yard project.  

look mommy! it's a sea horse.  

ready to work if they'd let him out of this fence

she says 'hey vovo, you forgot to water this plant!'  

the boys watching them move a tree

Elsie watching and narrating their every move

Here is a pic off the fridge of the 3 invites.  What a difference a year makes!

at the zoo





Elsie telling Grammie she won't share her cheddar bunnies







she took off her shoes outside then skinned her big toe running on the walkway.  soaking the wound

love that this boy loves to snuggle

watching the guys work on the yard with vovo

selfies with momma

The boys helping build the fire pit

back yard coming along




loving the trampoline at gymnastics

with the backyard under construction, we have some dirty kids.  play hard kiddos, play hard.

We got a new table!  Saying goodbye to our triplet table


Sammy loved getting his face painted!  Look at how relaxed he is

As soon as Elsie saw Sammy was a pirate, she wanted to be one too.

Vovo and his girls
We were outside coloring and Elsie kept hoarding all the crayons, so Sam took a few and went and colored on the bench.  

Danny took this pic and I love it because this is the look he gives his momma all the time.  That soft sweet look.  


We gave up naps this month.  Kids were just running around playing  most of nap time, and Mommy was doing more work to get them to sleep.  So we bumped bedtime from 8 to 7:30 and the kids are sleeping within minutes and waking around 8:30am.  But every few days we get a tired crew that can't make it through the day without a quick crash on the floor.  So cute when they are sleeping.  

Sammy doesn't care where he is, drop and sleep. 
he loves snuggling

reading a book on his momma's lap

Sammy's turn.  afternoon snuggle

look at her face, totally up to no good

Elsie's new thing is trying to wash her hands after the potty without the stool.  She pulls herself up and then hangs there.  She had a romper on, so now she's naked after going potty, and notice the potty seat marks on her bum.  Seriously, what am I gonna do with this girl.

yoshi

where did my baby go?  she is so grown up



so handsome

Emmie


everyone thought it was funny when sammy tried to run off during group shot






I said 'where are your listening ears?' because they weren't listening very well.
Elsie won't hold her brothers' hands, but loved walking with Jazzy and Gianna

Even Danny wanted to hold hands 

Sammy had no interest in holding hands, just wanted to puddle jump.

Her first french braids :)





















Here are some pictures of our 3rd birthday party.  We were lucky again to have great weather, and loved spending the day with family and friends.  Thank you to everyone for coming and all the wonderful gifts for the kiddos, they've been in toy heaven all week.




I made Dory cupcakes, the kids loved them!




















Finally, our year in review!  Every year I'm stunned to see the comparisons.

This year I saw an article about toddlers taking pictures holding their NICU pictures. It moved me to say the least.  I decided I would do it with our babies this year.  People don't realize how much normal stuff you get robbed of when you give birth to a preemie.  You can't hold them (for us it was 14 days before I held a baby), get the sweet little paper with their hand and foot prints and weight and length (I had to have a nurse look up our lengths on their medical records 4 months after they were born so I could record them), cuddle them, take cute little pictures without tons of wires and tubes coming out their mouths, you can't hear them cry (Elsie was the first to make audible sounds at 3 weeks when her ventilator was removed),  put adorable little outfits on (6 weeks before we could put a onesie on), the list goes on.  I never focused on what we were missing out on, probably because I was too busy learning all the medical stuff so I could add knowledgeable input in rounds everyday, but always focused on the small positive successes they made that could get us to the normal stuff.  So when the normal stuff that goes on everyday here with 3 year old triplets gets me mentally exhausted, I try and remember that this is the pot at the end of the rainbow.

I picked some pictures from the first 10 days and framed them up.  I labeled them with their date and time of birth, and their weight.  

Let's start with Sammy.  Born at 9:30pm weighing 770 grams, or 1 pound 10 ounces.

This picture was taken on day 9.  You can see he is laying next to his sock doll.  I took the sock doll and put it on top of the picture for you to see that it is almost to scale.  So this sock doll is from Sammy's mouth to below his knees, and wider than him.  He is on his side and the sock doll is higher than his body.

here he is holding the sock doll.  WOW. This gives you good perspective of how small they actually were.  My baby wasn't much bigger than that entire sock doll and now half of it fits in his hand.
He loved his picture and couldn't wait to hold it up for me

checking it out

he took a break from holding his picture to play with the basketball and I got a good pic






Next is Danny.  Born at 9:31pm weighing 780 grams, or 1 pound 11 ounces. 
This was taken day 5.  I put the band-aid on his belly to show how big that was on their little body.

Here is the band-aid on my thumb.  So my thumb was a third of his midsection.

he was less than enthusiastic about holding his picture

but excited to be playing at Fort Phoenix

and we're back to taking our picture...

He liked the picture, just not looking at me to take another one

and break for basketball and fun!

I liked this one with Sammy in the background

And last but not least, our feisty girl who broke her water first and got this party started...
Elsie Mae, born at 9:32pm weighing in at 700 grams, or 1 pound 8 ounces.  That is 6 sticks of butter.  Take that in a minute.  If that isn't enough to wow you, check out the goggle comparison...

This was taken day 7.  So Elsie wore these goggles for about 2 weeks nonstop because she was in light therapy to break down bilirubin.

To show you how small her head was I took out a can to put the goggles on but that was too big.  I was able to squeeze them on to the bottom of a sippy cup 

My thumb is bigger than the bottom of the sippy cup, so Elsie's head was smaller than my thumb.  Look at your thumb from this angle, and imagine her entire head fitting in that width. WOW. 


and look at her now

who would have guessed it

She liked taking her picture

Sammy kept pointing to it saying her name

one of her usual faces.  she's saying no right now because Sammy is getting in her picture.

My little girl.  My heart.





Hard to believe another year has passed.  I made our year 3 video,  I let the kids watch it the other day, Sammy loves it and wants my phone all the time to watch it.  

 

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