earlier today, my eight year old son glowered at me because i wouldn’t take him swimming! right! now! it didn’t matter that we don’t have a pool, it was only 78 degrees and we’d have three toddlers in tow that don’t know how to swim because i was ruining his life by keeping him from swimming. he rolled his eyes at me and asked if i was going to make him wait until june 21st to go swimming since it was the solstice. where does he get these things?

he has two days of second grade left (though he tells me the last day is more of a party) and i can see the physical longing for summer in his eyes. when i was a kid, the last week of school turned me into a spastic wreck and every hour apart from summer vacation was torture. that’s where he is now. three months without school seems like eternity when you are eight years old. the fireworks tents are still a month away and days of popsicles, bike rides, cartoons and swimming lay ahead if he can only get through a few more days.

summer sucks when you work in an office and i hated, hated, hated days when i was stuck in a cubicle longing to be off work so i could take my kid swimming. now, if i tried to take my kids swimming by myself, they would drown me with their collective weight wrapped around my neck. i need backup to go to the pool. i can’t wait. this will be the first summer in three years where i can run around with sweaty kids and not worry (as much) about hospital visits and home nursing shifts (knock on wood). i can’t wait.

(if you are in the states that is)

Hope you enjoy nice weather and some frosty treats.

I’ve been watching Michelle at Mihow’s video stories for her infant son and I want to gush about how much I like them. I admire her honesty and I notice that it is a common trait among those I appreciate. I like it when people tell embarrassing stories about being a naive kid or when they don’t try to hide life’s natural hiccups and blemishes– it makes me like them and empathize with them as real people. I’m not so good at videotaping myself or even looking at my own pictures. I’m prone to blurting out random trivia or embarrassing stories in person but I often edit myself if given the choice. Michelle is adorable and tells great stories- maybe one day I’ll face my fears and throw myself out there in a similar fashion. But not today.

howdy ya’ll. so the site was down for a few days (which no one even informed me about until it was suspended for over 24 hours. i’m so popular. today show, here i come!). the site was down because somehow my auto-payment went through paypal like usual yet the hosting company lost it in the intertubes and thought i didn’t pay. after i spoke to someone named darko, all was fixed. i didn’t ask him if he liked the film donnie darko or if he had heard they were making a sequel set 7 years later centering around the little sister but i thought about it. regardless, site back for the four of you that care.

i have been taking the triplets on daily adventures because the house just isn’t big enough to contain that much kinetic, toddler energy. yesterday, we walked around cabela’s, a giant hunting/fishing/outdoorsy store chocked full of dead, stuffed animals and a huge aquarium. the kids didn’t say a word about stuffed moose, deer or grizzly bears but were very impressed with the ducks. i’ve noticed they don’t say much about new experiences or people at the time but mention them later in their own babbling language. I overheard one of the boys singing twinkle, twinkle, little star but mentioning deer and big fish in the tune.

later, we hit the giant indoor playground where random kids sat in our triple choo-choo wagon after mine got out. the parents usually rush over apologizing and grabbing their kids out but i tell them to let them be, they aren’t bothering me if my kids aren’t in it. your average two or three year old sees that wagon and immediately wants in on the action so i let them have a turn. parents are constantly asking where we got it and i think it gets more attention than the triplets sometimes. this is especially true lately because casual observers can’t tell that they are triplets anymore. the most common question is if the boys are twins and lily their little sister but i’ve also heard the reverse. when i explain they are triplets, i still get the “oh, bless you!” and “wow, you have your hands full” but they are a little nicer than when they were infants when people would react with straight horror.

i realized today how happy i am to have limited freedom with the kids for the first time in two years (three if you count my bedrest). i can get the kids dressed, out the door, in their car seats and to a nearby park or store within a half an hour and i no longer have to lug oxygen tanks or heavy diaper bags with a stroller. now, i just put three diapers and a few wipes in my purse, disassemble the wagon, put it in the back of my van and head for the hills. i’m excited about the places i will take them this summer and feel more like a mom and less like a baby servant. things are getting more fun as the adventure continues and it fills me with gratitude.

i hope you are enjoying your spring and have exciting summer plans afoot. anyone have any suggestions for (free) places to take the trippos?

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.

my life has been a whirlwind of nuptial adventures for the past weeks leading up to my friends’ wedding saturday night. it was a spectacular occasion that came together even better than i had imagined in our months of discussions. it was an occasion where the extensive planning and well thought out details merged so well that i found myself saying, “wow! that is so cool/pretty/such a good idea/hilarious” even though i knew 90% of the plans ahead of time. it was quite a party. the ceremony itself was at the local botanical gardens, specifically in the country’s largest japanese garden, and it was naturally decked out with the most varied colors and varieties of tulips that i’ve ever seen. the weather forecast had been dubious all week- to the point that the bride’s aunts had requested novenas requesting sunshine and ten more degrees of warmth. the morning of the wedding it was gray and cloudy but the sun showed itself two hours before the ceremony and it never rained. the reception was in a banquet room/kid-sized city in a children’s museum and the party had the entire building at our disposal. guests in formal wear dove down twisty slides, got pictures taken with their hair standing on end and hands on a giant, metal static ball and jumped in front of the flashing “shadow wall” before getting down to the regular reception craziness of dancing, drinking and debauchery. between talking to people and chasing my eldest son and husband though the exhibits, i feel like i never stood in one place for more than two minutes the entire party (my throbbing feet were not happy after 12 hours of non stop movement). like all of the weddings i have been in, it felt like it was over moments after it began and this morning i was left laughing and reminiscing with a wilting bouquet. the newly married couple, anna and tony, are jetting off to the beach and i hope the end of the beginning of their marriage adventure goes as smoothly as their wedding day. i think i am going to need a week to recover from all of the excitement and standing.here are a few of my favorite shots from the day: