The weather today was seductive- high 70′s, light breeze, clear blue sky and brown leaves forming a crunchy carpet on the ground. The weather was so perfect, we debated taking the kids to the zoo but chickened out with excuses of “it will probably be too crowded”. mike doesn’t like the zoo and convinced himself three 4 year olds wouldn’t like it today because they’ve been there before. right. as if all little kids don’t believe the zoo is freakin amazing and go insane at the very word. we can’t even say or spell the word around them or they go apeshit (pun intended). after much debate, i decided we were taking the kids to a newish park on the edge of the county. i didn’t tell mike where we were heading because if i mention a schedule, he thinks it has been etched in granite and must not be deviated from because it will make the universe implode. i told him i am a river, flowing from one idea to the next and he should go with the current and stop being so prussian. he says i’m whimsical. i say the whimsical river shall take ye where you want to go. he rolled his eyes at me but agreed he would rather not know if there is a chance i’ll change my mind. compromise! in the end, the kids played, the dog ran, we had a burger king picnic and a lovely day even if it was spur of the moment and whimsical.

i wanted to rent wall-e but they were all gone. “there’s a special deal going on the wall-e rentals that if someone returns one early, they get a free bag of popcorn so check back later.” i thought about buying it but for $19.95, i thought a major discount retailer would probably have it cheaper and muttered something about going to target. the blue shirted manager ringing up my other purchases tsked me and said disney movies aren’t usually cheaper anywhere else but i stuck to my guns.

when one of the kids puke, i first assume it may be a stand alone incident. a puke fluke. maybe he gagged while coughing or ate something that didn’t agree with him and that’s why he got sick. so, when ethan puked on the kitchen floor, i comforted him, cleaned him and the floor and loaded the triplets in the van for a trip to buy wall-e. i’m still not used to standard time falling back so it didn’t occur to me when the sun was setting that it was rush hour. i pulled out of our subdivision into a wall of traffic. i turned down a side street and attempted the alternate route when i heard ethan moan, “oh noooo”. i turned around just in time to see him throw up in his lap.

lily told me jack was sick and i corrected her, “no, it is ethan”. i turned back around through an endless cavalcade of suburbans and minivans towards my house. i opened the window to fight back the smell and waited in more traffic. it was chilly so i turned up the heat but only cold air blew out at me. oh well, at least the heat wasn’t intensifying the smell because i am a sympathy vomiter and it was about to turn into a complete and total barf-o-rama*.

ethan threw up again as i turned into our driveway. while i was breathing through my mouth and unbuckling the ick covered car seat straps, i looked up to see that jack had also thrown up as well. lily was right. i peeled him out of his carseat, threw the foul seats into the grass and stripped the boys shirts off. by now, they had recovered and were running around the driveway shrieking and half naked in the cold november air. i wonder what the neighbors thought.

i hauled them inside, bathed them and set them up with sippy cups of water. needless to say, we didn’t get wall-e.

*Total tangent but i was looking up the barf-o-rama scene from Stand By Me and ended up on Will Wheaton’s page WWdN: In Exile (which I read even when not googling puke scenes. I also follow Will on twitter although he didn’t follow me back- he doesn’t know what he’s missing. I also had a huge crush on him when he looked like this.)  He had a link to some photos shot on set of the barf-o-rama scene but it didn’t work. I wanted to see those pictures so I looked around some more and found one of the benevolent order of elk before getting yakked on .

** I didn’t mean to make this such a puke centered post.

***Ethan just puked again. Twice. It really sucks when a kid is too young to realize they need to puke in the toilet or trash can.

I was interviewed for a story found here at the St. Louis Beacon (Which has become a new favorite for local news. I’m not just saying that because I’m in it, I bookmarked it as an alternative source for local news. If you are in the area, check it out!).

The article introduces me with, “she writes about voting, her non-tattooed husband, their lives together and their four children.” This cracks me up.  It is true that Mike is non-tattooed and I must have mentioned it in one of my posts but I don’t often refer to him as Mike, my non-tattooed husband. I think I shall start. Lest you think I’m a beautifully tattooed tough chick, know that I only have one tattoo and it is AWFUL. I got it a few weeks after I turned 18 in a converted auto garage by a biker named hooker. It was supposed to be a lizard emerging from a drawing from an MC Escher drawing. Deep. What the hell was I thinking? I can only attribute it to being an 18 year old.

To make matters worse, it is on my lower stomach. When I got it, I remember asking, “Won’t it get messed up if I ever get pregnant?” I think Hooker told me it wouldn’t. Hooker lied. After the triplets’ c-section, the doctor looked over the draping and seemed very amused to tell me he had lined my tattoo back up after he stitched my incision closed. While I would have rather he cut the damn thing out before stitching it back together, I have to admit he did a very good job lining it up. It is too bad the stretch marks distorted it even worse than it was before the surgery. Actually, it probably only makes it better. I may have the worst tattoo in the history of tattoos. Oh well, at least it isn’t a tramp stamp.

My non-tattooed husband and I had a great weekend. We got away from the kids, went to wineries, ate very well and relaxed. It was perfect. Today, we woke up and were rushing around like usual to get the kids up, fed and out the door. Mike was hurrying because he has his annual review at work today (fingers crossed). He asked me where the van keys were just as I realized the bright orange goo on my oldest son’s floor was thrown up baked doritos that he had eaten the night before. The kid has a bad cough that won’t go away and it apparently gagged him in his sleep causing him to puke a cascade of reguritated, neon orange doritos off his top bunk in his sleep. Right after I woke the kid up and was waiting on hold with the pediatrician’s office, we realized the van keys were missing.

Long story short, we called the place we visited this weekend and realized we left a bag with the keys in it an hour away (we took a different  car down). After shouting, searching and arranging non-tattooed husband to get a ride to work, we called and confirmed the missing bag. Just as Mike’s co-worker pulled in the driveway to pick him up, I found the van keys in the other car’s glove compartment*.

I dropped the triplets off at pre-school and the oldest and I drove down to pick up the bag even though we now had the keys. The positive part of the morning was hanging out with the kid and talking about the giant limestone walls next to the highway and the multitude of dead deer on the road side (deer season just started). We had a good time.

I’m back home to feed the kids lunch while I post and we’re about to leave again to take the oldest to the doctor. I guess perfect weekends have to balance out with crappy Monday mornings. Here’s hoping we have a better week.

*While farther away, this was not nearly as bad as him losing his keys at Six Flags last month. He took our oldest to Fright Night in late October. I fell asleep at 11pm only to be woken up 30 minutes later by him calling to say he must have dropped his keys on one of the rides because they were gone and the park was closed. I had to drive 45 minutes away through dark, foggy roads at midnight to pick them up. The keys never reappeared. I will never let his non-tattooed ass forget about that one.

today, i lorded over SEVEN kids under the age of 5 in my backyard. it is a good thing the weather turned mild and they were able to run around playing in the leaves. of course, after someone commented in my flickr stream about being scared of spiders in leaf piles, i’ve started triple checking the kids for hitchhiking insects. to further the paranoia, i found a funky bug crawling along our back fence and must consult my zoo insect keeper amiga for identification (she’s handy).

speaking of animals, i’m sitting at our dining room table typing away on my laptop. i looked up to notice the beautiful bird feeder my husband filled and hung outside the window for my birthday two months ago had an actual, living cardinal eating seed from it. i heard rumors there was a blue jay pecking around it yesterday but now i have visual confirmation that the birds have finally found the feeder. i was beginning to wonder if we either had really stupid birds or a defective feeder. it didn’t help that i found a dead sparrow laying underneath it a few weeks ago and started wondering if the feed came from china laced with melamine. my dad told me the birds would find the feeder as it got colder and they probably didn’t notice it because it wasn’t attached to a tree. the weather has turned cold and we have birds eating outside the window- dad was right again.

our backyard is also home to dozens of incredibly fat squirrels scampering through the leaves holding two more nuts than fit in their mouths or squirrely little paws (squirrels have paws, right? claws? hands?). with four trees in a small yard and no dogs or cats to chase them off, our yard is small animal heaven. i haven’t seen any possums this year but i’m sure they are lurking around.  i am pretty sure i’ve told this story before but i can’t find it after an extensive search of my archives (i.e. googling kimblahg + possum. why don’t i have a marsupial tag?) so i’ll recount one of our most bizarre suburban animal experiences.

when the triplets were still in the NICU, i began collecting strollers. i didn’t have my babies at home so my maternal instinct turned towards procuring infant transportation – never mind that they were too small to sit in standard strollers for months, they needed wheels! the first triplet stroller i bought was a peg perego behemoth triplet transporter. it was a nice stroller but giant, unwieldly and hard to push. after forcing mike to put it together the instant i brought it home (still sans babies), we realized there was no way we could get it in and out of the van and it was relegated to the garage. later, i bought a triple runabout which was just about the best damn thing ever. it had stadium seating so the kids could all see over each other, bicycle wheels for easy navigation and a sunshade to protect their precious little heads. i added it to our collection. later, i bought a double back to back stroller for the boys and a single conventional stroller for lily and her traveling respiratory unit. eventually, i added a double and single umbrella stroller to our arsenal and ended up using that combo more than anything. the triplet strollers, while nice, were massive and drew too much attention to our already noticeable brood. we usually only used them when walking around the block so they spent most of the time garaged.

one winter evening, after the triplets were home from the NICU and i was asleep, mike was in the garage. he sat on the garage couch (what, you don’t have garage furniture?) reading a book when he heard a scratching noise. he looked everywhere before he realized it was coming from the mammoth peg triplet stroller which hadn’t been touched since assembly. he slowly crept towards it and peeked inside the middle seat where he noticed a curled up, furry animal.

it took a moment before he realized it was a large possum curled like a cat and sleeping in our babies’ stroller. i would have screamed but if he did, he won’t admit it. he pushed the button activating the loud garage door opener hoping to wake the thing up. it didn’t move. he jostled the stroller and woke mr. possum up. it looked at him and went back to sleep. it wasn’t even scared enough to “play” possum and go to sleep, it was just irritated to be woken up so it curled back up and closed its eyes. he finally wheeled the huge stroller out to the driveway and tried to dump the possum out. that woke it up but it didn’t vacate the baby seat. instead, it started hissing  and baring its teeth at him while he attempted to dislodge it without touching it. finally, he grabbed a stick and poked at it while it stood hissing away until it finally jumped out and ran off. he stared at the now empty stroller and wheeled it back in the garage.

we never put the babies in the possum stroller and eventually sold it to another family. we didn’t tell them it attracts the only native marsupial to north america but we did disinfect it first.

p.s. speaking (writing) of animals, check out this barred owl that lives in my parents’ back yard. he was heard hooting for weeks before spotted one morning on a small branch ten feet from the driveway.

Ethan at 2 years and 3 years old.

I am amazed by the difference 12 months makes in the triplets. Another part of having multiples is changes that are noticeable with one child and extra noticeable with three of them- everything is intensified. One year ago, they still had baby cheeks and waddled a bit when they walked. This year, they have lost any semblance of infancy and their features are more chiseled. They run and jump without faltering and the boys are amazingly agile (Lily is a bit of a klutz like her Mom). A year ago, they barely spoke and now they say funny and cute things in their own language. One year for an adult is nothing- our faces and bodies don’t usually change much and last season’s clothes aren’t suddenly two inches too short (again, usually) but kids grow into completely different people in that time. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I have something in my eye.

i forgot to call my grandma last week to thank her for my birthday card and the ten dollar bill she tucked inside. she signed the card, “have lunch on me”  in her now shaky handwriting. she has to use her left hand because she can no longer use her right hand due to arthritis setting in the elbow she shattered forty years ago.

she always answers the phone on the third ring and semi-shouts hello the way that older people do. her hearing and vision are still perfect so i don’t have to repeat myself when i fill her in on the kid’s antics. she gets a kick out of the triplets and brags about them at her weekly beauty salon appointment (wash and set once a week please and monthly touch ups of her still red hair). the other women may have forty-four grandkids like her but not one of them has triplet great-grandkids. every time she tells someone about them, she also spurts out their birth weights for extra amazement, “this little girl only weighed 1 lb 6 ozs when she was born. we hope she gets that trach out soon.”

grandma is a tough lady. 84 years old and still living in her home, she cut her grass and tended her gardens until five years ago. with one functioning arm, she manages to do her laundry in the basement and when we visit, she cooks a feast. she has taken care of people her entire life, often with little appreciation. her husband told her she was stupid and not educated enough to get a real job. she retired from one of the most prestigious companies in the area. he told her he wouldn’t teach her how to drive and she would never drive his cars. she went to driver’s ed at the high school and saved her money to buy a car. by the time diabetes robbed him of his sight, she was driving him around to doctors’ appointments. after he died, she kept on doing what she always did and took care of everything.

she is a proud woman but always slightly worried about something. i don’t know if she is truly happy but if you ask her, she would say she’s making do. she hurts all over  from arthritis and osteoporosis has robbed her of six inches of height but refuses to take anything stronger than tylenol. even after her knee replacement, she refused pain killers. i think of how the world has changed in her lifetime and wonder if i will be as capable and with it at her age. she doesn’t email or have a cell phone but she watches the news obsessively and last year, went to a Hillary Clinton rally.

i respect my grandma and realize that the tough, lean times of her younger years have blended to make her who she is today. every birthday, i wonder if she’ll be around the next year to send me $10 for lunch. i worry she won’t be in her home anymore or lose independence and question if that would be a fate worse than death for her. i think i get my habit of worrying from her. she would tell me to go get dinner ready for my kids (doesn’t matter that it isn’t nooon yet, i should get ready) and make do.

i’ve been a bit remiss in posting. busy busy around here. yesterday, we went to the zoo and “awwwwwwed” lots of baby animals. the st louis zoo really is an awesome place as far as zoos go. hope you are having an extraordinary weekend!

For the past week, my sister and six month old niece were in town visiting. My niece is in the round-headed, huge eyes, soft skin and cute, squishy thighs stage where she tripods her legs and arms to sit up and hasn’t started crawling yet. I was soaking in her baby smell and staring at her perfectly round cheeks while rocking her to sleep before she jetted back home thousands of miles away. I won’t get to see her again for months and by then, she’ll be giggling and crawling across the floor and her legs will be leaner from motoring around- she’ll probably have a few teeth and maybe her hair will be long enough to curl around her ears.

At two and a half years old, the triplets have lost all semblance of infancy. Over the winter, their legs grew long and tall so they look like young fawns running across the grass. Their faces have grown leaner and more child-like and Lily’s ringlets cascade down her back as she clomps around in my shoes. I look at these amazing kids that have grown up in the blink of an eye, glance back at my niece’s picture and know that she is soon to follow.

Parenting a baby, particularly triplets, is messy, loud and happens at breakneck speed. By the time you get a chance to reflect, the sweet baby is a walking, talking child. Who invented this cruel system? I’m sure there are evolutionary advantages to this because by the time you miss your baby, enough time has passed that you forget how exhausting mothering a baby is so you decide to have another.

That can’t happen with us for a multitude of reasons so I have to enjoy the beautiful babies of my siblings and friends then hand them back to go home. I’ll miss my niece – I wish I could see her grown and develop day by day like my nephew (I am also lucky enough to have a nephew in town who is seven months old and gives me the best smiles whenever he sees me. He also has awesomely chunky baby thighs and arm rolls. Nom Nom Nom.) but I’ll take what I can get. Now, I’m going to go watch my huge children sleep and try to freeze time.

we had a lovely easter filled with family, ham, pinwheels, those malted milk balls that act as lipstick if eaten correctly, potatoes (and sweet potatoes!) and children hopped up on sugar. the temperature plunged last night and light flurries forced the easter egg hunt into my parents’ basement but the kids still managed to have a great time shoving jelly beans in their mouths and extras in their pockets for they are candy chipmunks. when we got home, i hid every piece of candy and forced them to eat ham and broccoli after they dumped an entire large box of honey nut cheerios everywhere. there were sticky, honey-coated crumbs crushed into the carpet and hundreds of broken cheerios coating the kitchen floor. i found lily stomping on them and giggling while her brothers threw them up into the air and watched them bounce. they were also shoving the cereal in their mouths for more sugary goodness.

 it wasn’t easy, but i coaxed them out of their sugar high long enough to get them bathed. i noticed the bath water turning green after i put ethan in the tub and realized he had smuggled jelly beans in his tightly clenched fist into the tub.  just when i fooled myself into thinking everything was under control, one of the triplets shit in the bathtub. i bathe the three of them together and it happened so fast that i didn’t know who was responsible for the large floating globs of poo floating in the water but i do know two of the kids were trying to catch them in their hands. this is probably the second time any of my kids have pooped in the tub and each time i’m temporarily flummoxed because really, what is the best course when you have three toddlers sitting in poo water when you know that once you remove them from the tub, they will run around naked and probably piss on the floor? i grabbed them out of the tub, pushed them out of the bathroom so i could spray every anti-bacterial potion available on the tub until i was gagging on fumes. i scooped, sprayed, scrubbed and rinsed the tub, grabbed the three naked, slippery toddlers, put them in and turned on the water only to find only cold water pouring from the spout. now what? i had to get the poo water residue off them so i quickly soaped them down, winced and dumped coldish water on them. they didn’t like that too much but i didn’t like cleaning up poo water so it is what it is. after a mere hour, they were squeaky clean in their footed pajamas and mellowed after a high fructose corn syrup hangover.

it really was a good day, poo and spilled cheerios aside, and watching the kids find easter baskets and hidden eggs was a wonderful experience. the triplets are finally on the verge of understanding parties and they definitely know how important their family is in their lives. their eyes light up when they the people they love the most together in one house and they run from relative to relative in excitement (and for candy). i am grateful to have the means to make the kids baskets, for a loving family and for all the chocolate i will be sneaking out of my kids’ baskets.

Quick Update because one of the toddlers is poopy and trying to remove his pants and diaper:

My Dad is home from the hospital and says he feels better than expected but he may be lying or given a shot of morphine before he left. He does sound less groggy and miserable than after previous spinal surgeries, especially the one after they, in his words, “Went in through the stomach, took my guts out, threw them on the floor, stomped on them and shoved them back in.” He is living with spinal disc degeneration and I hope the surgeries stop for a while after this.

Also, we put the cribs back up. They obviously were not ready to transition to toddler beds and are sleeping like little angels in the cribs. Clearly, they do not embrace change. The following was naptime with the new toddler beds before the cribs went back up:

Before: