Happy Easter

Pants with a waistband keep you honest

My friend Gigi always has the best little gems of advice. She was the one who told me that if I ever needed a confidence boost to put on a pair of my tightest jeans and take a stroll through Home Depot. I got another little gem from her from her last minute fantastic visit on Friday (she lives in Arkansas and was in Chicago for work. She said that pants with a waistband keep you honest. So true. When you wear scrubs to work and sweatpants or leggings when you are not at work, you can kid yourself. Some days I dread putting on jeans or something with a waistband.
The same goes for Beckett. Last week I came home and Yesenia, our nanny, told me that we need to buy some new pants for Beckett. All of his pants are too short. They fit on top because they are size 18 months or 24 months but the poor kid looks like he is waiting for a flood. I've been to about 5 stores and can't find pants that are long enough but still fit in the waistband. He has the opposite problem. But, we went to the pediatrician on Friday to do a weight check and he is making strides. Before he was maintaining his own curve but looks like he is slowly inching closer to the 3%. Still below the 3rd percentile but getting closer.
Back to Princess Gigi. We picked Gigi up from the train station and I had told the girls that Gigi was a princess. They believed me because who else would have access to something as fabulous as this...









Eloise and Beckett were naturals. It was a little disconcerting how well Eloise could walk in heels. And what can I say about Beckett. The kid can dress.
The girls slept with the heels next to their bed and have been either wearing them or hauling them around in their shopping carts or purses ever since.


The most special people arrive on the train. We pick Rich up from the train station a few days a week. The kids love it. I get them in their pajamas, give them cups of milk and we drive to the station. Beckett is pretty convinced that Rich rides the Dinosaur Train to Chicago. Since sometimes the Dinosaur Train get stuck or delayed, it makes sense to them if sometimes Rich is not home before they go to sleep. But they love it when the train is on time.


No smiling faces tonight. As much as I love the time change because theoretically the kids will be getting up at 7:15 rather than 6:15, the 1 hour adjustment is horrendous for kiddos who are used to a pretty rigid schedule. We did everything the same today including putting them down to bed at 7:30, which to their bodies was 6:30. No wonder there was so much monkey business for 2.5 hours. They will back on schedule by the middle of the week- just in time for me to head to CA for a long weekend. Can't wait. Long weekend in San Diego. Have I said that I can't wait?

Train Wreck

I really need to just go to sleep because I've been up at 5 this week and I have a dry cough that doesn't seem to go away BUT I have this terrible guilt about neglecting the blog so of course the guilt got the best of me.
Still musical beds around here. Some nights I go to sleep in Beckett's room because it is a more restful night that having both girls and sometimes Beckett come into the room in the middle of the night. Addy has really become quite the little snuggle bug so I think probably 20 of the last 21 nights she has come into our room in middle of the night and wants to sleep in our bed. Not just in our bed but right next to me. As close as she can and with her head right next to mine. With all the curly hair I'm always inching away because it gets in my nose and mouth. Last night I swear I had about 2 inches of a king sized bed to sleep on. As long as I'm on the subject, napping has become just as painful. Usually I can get Eloise and Beckett to nap but Addy is just done. Yesterday no one napped. Since it is getting light earlier they think it is time to get up earlier. Addy was up at 6 yesterday following me around while I was getting ready for work.
It is 75 minutes after I put the kids to bed and I can heard Beckett saying, "Booger Mama. Booger mama." I should be happy they want to give me their boogers rather than just wipe them on the wall or their pajamas but holy man, please just go to sleep.
I had a conference at Eloise's school on Monday with all of her therapists, teachers and her case manager and they basically told me that the kids are going to sleep during the day (nap) or sleep at night but don't expect both at this age. I can see what they mean because no one napped yesterday and then after dinner I put the kids in their pjs and put them in the car with their milk and picked Rich up from the train station, two were asleep by the time we got home. Now all three napped today (no idea how that happened- I was at work) and now they are just playing and refusing to go to bed.
I told them that I would "snuggle" with them when I got out of the shower figuring they would be asleep or at least a few would be when I was done. Nope. All three were laying on the floor in the hallway with their pillows waiting for me. At one point it was pretty quiet and then I heard all this laughing and went into the girls room and all three were sitting together on their chair. I broke the rules and turned on the light to take a picture.
-look at that filthy lovie in Eloise's mouth. She only likes that one. They all call them "stinky lovies" now. That's just the name. And the girls are princess obsessed. See Addy with her princess purse even in bed?

Back to the conference at Eloise' school. They said she is doing so well that they are cutting back on her speech and OT. She will still be going to school 2 mornings a week because she needs the social integration but they said that for the most part she is functioning on the level of the kids in the class that are the non-therapeutic-need kids. Amazing. She looks forward to going now, talks about her friends and talks about her teachers. When we talk about the people that love her she always mentions the names of her teachers and therapists at school. We set 6 month goals for her and she had met and far exceeded all the goals we had set for her when we first started her therapy 6 months ago. If you remember they thought she had the language skills of about a 12 month old. We were hoping she would be imitating or signing 1-2 word phrases. She is on 3-4 and sometimes 5 words with multiple syllables. So proud of this little pumpkin. That day neither she nor Addy napped. Rich was home so he stayed with Beckett while I took the girls to get cupcakes and go shopping at Anthropologie.

Doing things with just one or two kids is such a treat. I had so much fun with the girls and they just LOVED Anthropologie. Addy kept saying, "Ohhhh Mama, me like this!" or "OHHH Mama, a pink dress! I like pink." They really loved the whole collection of door/cabinet/dresser knobs. I explained to them that they were for dressers and we didn't need them and Addy said, "Mama, me's have a dresser!" like I didn't know. Very smart that one.

I have Beckett's conference on Friday and I'm hoping that it will just as good. I think his physical therapy is going great and we can see great progress with his coordination and running and jumping in the short time he has been going. But they bumped up his speech therapy and he his having a hard adjusting to his new group speech therapy. We'll see. But holy cow if you want to see something cute you should see him run down the hallway and hug his waiting sisters when he is done with therapy. It is so sweet. They are all playing together more, which means more fighting over toys but between the fighting is more conversations and cooperative play. And when one does something, every one has to. Like wear a costume.

Here we have a lion and an astronaut. Hugging.

Beckett got this NANA Astronaut suit from his TX Mimi last year and it finally fits. You would not believe how much this fits his personality. But he did want to wear pink Missoni rain boots with it (see above). Gotta love it.

And Miss Personality herself looking outside at it snowing. Buck naked. After this she read some books and then painted before I could convince her to put clothes on. Whatever. It's not like it's snowing outside or anything. Hope she grows out of this phase soon.

The lion and the astronaut were Beckett and Eloise who thankfully prefer to stay clothed. Here is another of them playing and sorting crayons and coloring books. I'm sure it is not a sorting system or method that has been approved by me but I'll take all the help I can get.

The girls have been playing so much better together as well. One day during dinner Eloise was feeding Addy which was pretty cute until it turned into a poking match.


The other morning Addy was playing with a Thomas the Train that runs on batteries as I was going out the door to work. She turned it on meaning the wheels were moving and put it on her head. Yep. Had to cut her hair to get the train off of her head at 6:30 in the morning.


I would have taken a picture with it attached to her head but I didn't have time because it was pulling out her hair. Now that's a train wreck.

The Fighter

I realized I just posted pictures of the girls and nothing of Beckett. Check out this mug.

He was wrestling with Rich and cracked his head on the window sill. After this he had black eyes but he looks much better now. You can't even see it anyway because Beckett is totally rocking the Bieber bangs.

The Artists

Have I mentioned that I'm not super crafty or artsy? Hmm, thought so. But, I don't want my kids to have the same fear of their inner artist like I do so I had to bite the bullet and bring out the easals and paints that we got for Christmas. I only did it with the encouragement and aide of my mom because you really have to watch these kids when you give them a whole palatte of paint to walk around with. Wait! Did I really do that?





I learned the following things:
-Addy needs a belt. Or to wear underwear. Or both.
-The tarp on the gound is essential.
-Beckett lasted about 2 minutes before the lure of fire trucks got the best of him.
-The girls will paint until the paper shreads from moisture.
-Dirty water is more fun to paint with than actual paint.
-Eloise likes to clean up paint as much as she likes to paint with it. She wiped up every speck of paint off the tarp.
-Don't ever turn your back. Or leave the jars of paint out for little fingers to reach.

New Additions

I took 2 of the 3 to a craft store today. Kind of my biggest nightmare with 2 kids running wild. I don't know why those stores freak me out. Maybe I feel inadequate as a mom with 3 toddlers that I don't really do crafts. I just have never been the crafty type. I try but it is just not me.
I promised them a toy if they behaved. I'm not above bribery and I will never pretend to be. I managed to talk Addy out of buying pink fabric paint (really, what would we do with that?) and ended up with a few pretty good things. And Addy picked something very appropriate out for Eloise to give her when we picked her up from school.
With all the stickers and glitter and flowers and whatnot I was really pleased with what we ended up with:
Beckett- An octopus that grows to 600% his size in water in 72 hours
Addy- An egg that you put in water and a dinosaur will hatch in 48-72 hours
Eloise- Same dinosaur egg

You should have seen Addy carrying around that egg before we got home to put it in water. So sweet the way she was so careful with it. Rather than just dropping it on the ground when she got bored, she handed it to me to put in my bag to carry for her. Highly unusual for this little spitfire.
Before lunch we put all of them in bowls of water and it turned into water play at the table. I don't know where Beckett gets his ideas. He loves the octopus and talks alot about how it doesn't "crawl up". I'm wondering if he thinks it is kind of like a spider with all of those legs. He has a really hard time pronouncing octopus and comes out like "oport". This kid just cracks me up.
It is really hard for 2 year olds to wait for 48 hours for a dinosaur to hatch. I figured we would put them in water and they would kind of forget about it and we could check on them once a day or so. Nope.
Here they are. Looks like that little dinosaur already started to peck a hole in the egg. That's Addy's. She really didn't care too much and wasn't really concerned that she could get a glimpse of the little guy.

Once Eloise's egg got a little hole in it, I knew it was all over. We kept telling her that her dinosaur was still growing and needed more time (we know all too well about needing more time to cook before being born!) but she didn't listen. She was bound and determined to help him escape. It took her a 20 minutes before she figured out that she could peel away the shell. She had a towel to dry off all the parts.



Squeezing so hard her eyes got crossed.
Pig tails are the new thing for Eloise. She cries at night when we take them out for bath.

While Eloise was giving her new little hatchling a bath the other two lost interest and struck up a game of baseball in the living room.


I can't keep clothes on Addy. She just loves to be naked. If it were up to her she would be totally naked all day long. Maybe just a tutu and rain boots if it is a special occasion. The problem is that it is winter, all the clothes she takes off gets thrown down the laundry chute so at the end of the day I have a full load of Addy clothes to wash AND I don't really think it is entirely too sanitary to sit naked on the furniture. Especially since she is newly potty trained and has been known to pretend to pee on things. These are the little things that we butt heads over every day- wearing clothes, taking naps, doing everything "myself", using knives. You know. The normal 2 year old stuff. I have a feeling it is just the beginning. I can't wait to go to work tomorrow.

Not so winter wonderland

It is the beginning of February and looking outside I can see grass. It's been that way for a few weeks. One day last week had a high of 45. I'm not complaining about the weather but it is little scary. We have only been able to use our snow blower twice. We take turns. Rich once and me once. I even did the neighbors because it was pretty entertaining and Rich was putting the kids to bed so I didn't want to go in until that was done. If you don't pay attention to the wind and the way the snow is blowing you get a snow face wash which happened to me a few times. I need to wear goggles next time. After the first big snowfall I thought it would be fun to get the kids dressed up in all the gear to make a snowman. About 30 minutes later, everyone was dressed and it lasted oh maybe 5 minutes. The problem was the snow up the sleeves and the limited range of mobility with the hands with mittens on. The minute there was one particle of snow on a wrist or hand the screaming started and I had to replace the mittens. I think I went through 9 pairs of mittens. Beckett liked the idea of a snowman but wanted to build it himself. To him a snowman is a 3 inch pile of snow. Probably should have let them just walk around and get used to it before they tried to play in it like a giant sandbox. Cold giant sandbox.

Only picture of Eloise- after the wild ride down our neighbors driveway with her friend, Abby, I swear she must have got one tiny little crystal of snow on her face and had a melt down. In she went.

Once Eloise went in I decided to take the other two for a walk. Halfway down the block we had to turn around because Addy had to pee. I knew that would happen. I just love our neighborhood. Our street is so beautiful in the summer because of the huge trees but really pretty in the winter as well. After a fresh snow everything is so pretty around here. But give it a few days when it turns to dirty slush or dirty ice ruts in the road and I'm singing a different tune.

Oh this funny sweet little man. Tonight he was using his sweet potato fries and pretending they were a fire hose and spraying Addy. She started to cry because she said she was getting wet. He's all boy.

Right now this beautiful little guy is sleeping on the floor of his sister's bedroom because he said his room is too loud. He got up at 5 this am and came in and told me someone was talking too loud outside his window and woke him up. He remembered that tonight and was scared to sleep in his room. He also said his T Rex was too loud- the one on the wall.


Ms. Addycakes. What more can I say?


And she's done. That's my girl, just waiting for someone to take off her snow pants and bring her a hot chocolate- with marshmallows and candy canes of course.


I was going to do a post about little Eloise who was bit by the princess panties bug and has been doing amazing with my non-traditional potty training method. I was just about to do a post that she is officially potty trained- first poop in the potty tonight. Then 30 minutes later she peed on the couch. A white couch. I thought she had peed on the floor since she her wet socks seemed to be the major concern. Then I saw the couch. No potty training post today. I have to go vacuum up the baking soda I poured on the cushions. 2 cushions. Any suggestions on how to further salvage the couch would be appreciated. Don't want to buy a new one until all the pee is better controlled.

Not your average play date

I'm not even going to set this one up.
We had 5 sets of triplets over for a play date on Saturday. With my kids it was a total of 18 kids. 15 two-year olds and 3 one-year olds. Is there no limit to the lengths I will go to custom order bakery or have treats in the house? It was a Valentines Day party so I filled them full of sugar and sent 'em home. That was not really my intention but that is kind of what happened. I just hope the rest of the kids were not as hyped up and naughty as mine the rest of the day.
Sounds nuts I know but my kids pretty much trash the play room and living room in one morning so I figured that 15 more kids couldn't do that much more damage. Maybe a few more crackers on the floor but no big whoop. Also, since everyone there was a triplet mom they are all pretty used to the chaos and take it all in stride.

I didn't anticipate all the kids wanting to sit down for snack time so I was not prepared with 18 chairs (plus 6 more for moms). I kind of pictured bowls of goldfish around the house and kids snacking while they were playing. Kind of like a toddler happy hour with BYOSC (bring your own sippy cup). I provided goldfish, juice, Diet Coke and frosted cookies which were intended as a take home present in a treat bag but had to bring them out as bribery for a group picture. That's how they got all sugared up. Sorry!!!
I think this was the best group picture I could get. I counted 16 of the 18 in the picture. Not all are shown but I know I got the tops of their heads.


Anna, Eloise, Logan, Nathan (missing head), Leah and Jack.

Remember how I previously talked about "The Alpha girls?" I don't know how they do it. They always end up sitting by each other. They were at the head of the table. Addy in the one captains chair.

Oh my. Look at Beckett with these beautiful girls. I don't think I know who is who. As you see, Kailee and Katie are identical and Taylor? Brooke? are identical too so I'm not sure who this is!

I KNOW this is Sydney but Taylor?/Brooke? Watching these two dolls eat frosting was just too much. They were even wearing pug shirts. (FYI- Bella didn't see it, she was locked upstairs but the little vacuum cleaner was super helpful in finding the stray goldfish.)
I'm not kidding, within about 30 minutes everything was cleaned up with Rich's help and back to business as usual. Business as usual these days is no napping, T-Rex talk, and princess attitude. All the sugar didn't help.

WAIT- did I mention that Eloise is potty trained? I count it potty trained if she wears panties with no diaper or pull ups under the panties. There was a time where she would wear panties OVER the pulls up. No longer. That would have been helpful the other day at Pick n' Save when we left two puddles in middle of aisle 9. Two down. Just the boy left. I thought we were on to something the other day when he sat on the potty and started to pee. Then he peed all over his legs- don't have to tell you how that happened... and that was the end of that.