9 months

Emma, Julie, and Rebecca


Well, after week 1, I thought I just didn’t have much to say. Then I started taking notes during week 2 (yes, I take notes to blog. Memory is just not sufficient anymore.) And then I ran out of time last weekend to get anything typed up. And now it’s been three weeks, and I’ve got a ton to catch up on, plus a bazillion pictures. (Btw, I’m typing this in Word right now - - will explain later - - but I found it interesting that spell check doesn’t recognize the word “blog,” but it does recognize “bazillion.”) Because three weeks in our lives is like 3^3=27 weeks in the real world, and that’s more than 6 months. (That is the calculation I stand by when I find another gray hair.)

Family pic:


And my favorite version of this pic:


So, where to start? Greg’s parents were with us for 2 weeks, and it was so nice to have them. They got so much done for us - - little things that we just can’t seem to get done ourselves. That’s one of the most frustrating things for me right now – just the chaos of our house, and the fact that I. cannot. get. anything. done. The girls got spoiled by lots of attention, and Greg and I got a break (and REAL DINNERS.) Greg and I also got a nice dinner out together, which I promptly ruined by getting food stuck in my throat and not being able to swallow. I had literally had about 2 bites of food and we had to leave. Sigh. It’s just that we get to do it so rarely…

With Grandma and Grandpa


Becca and Grandpa


Emma is army crawling like a rocket, and now has started pulling up on things. She started with the bouncy seat, and has moved on now to the side table, the entertainment center, the Great Wall, the window ledges. And the poor thing now has 2 little bruises on her forehead. Last weekend, I caught her napping – for a good 45 minutes – kneeling against the bouncy seat. She gets a bit impatient when she can’t stand up where and when she wants to, particularly when there are empty bottles on the side table. Emma is just extremely inquisitive right now – she has to be into everything. And in a way, she reminds me of the cats: when there’s something new, she HAS TO check it out. She tends to steal toys from her sisters. It usually works out, though, because if she steals the keys from Becca, we just give Becca a new toy, and then Emma wants the new toy and Becca gets her keys back. Yeah, not a great solution. Eventually we’ll have to teach her that she can’t hoard all the toys.

Sweet Emma




These overalls are the cutest thing ever.




"Dad, you're embarrassing me."


Curious, intently determined Emma:


Do you SEE that look on her face?


Emma pulling up on the bouncy seat:



Mmmmm... ball...


She slept like this for 45 minutes.


Happy Emma


Let me out of here! (the Great Wall). She found the door in the gate pretty quickly.


Poor Becca as a speed bump for Emma. At least she didn't seem to mind it much.






Now we're pulling up on the Great Wall.



We also went though another bout of some sort of stomach bug that lasted about two weeks. Again, never any high fevers or anything, and everyone was acting pretty normal. We went through TUBS of diaper cream, though, and about 6 bottles of these probiotic drops that the pediatrician recommended and gave us a sample of last time. These bad boys aren’t cheap though - - $38 for a bottle that lasts us about half a week. The pharmacist at Target said, “Whoa, these are expensive. Have you looked for them online?”

"We're sharing."



Happy sisters.


Me and my girls:

The girls had their 9 month checkup at the end of October. Everyone is doing well. Emma is up to 21 lb 5 oz, Rebecca 19 lb 8 oz, and Julie 19 lb 3 oz. The girls just love the paper on the table at the doctors’ office. They rip it, eat it, rip it some more. When the doctor came in, she gave them each a tongue depressor stick (and its wrapper) to play with. (By the time she got to checking Julie’s mouth, Julie had already gnawed enough of the stick that the doctor had to get her a new one.) Each girl got 2 shots, too. Emma and Becca barely cried, but Julie still threw a fit. I think she was mad even before we got there. Anyhow, by the time we left there, the place was a mess. Greg said it looked like the girls were rock stars wrecking a hotel room. Pretty much. There was paper everywhere, wet and gooey, plus the tongue depressors and wrappers, and all of the alcohol wipes from 6 shots. Crazy. We were planning to get the girls flu shots (seasonal) also, but the office ran out 2 days before our appointment, and they aren’t sure if they are getting any more. And places like CVS won’t give flu shots to 9 month olds, so I’m not sure what we’re going to do.

We were planning to go get the H1N1 vaccines this weekend. The pediatrician was one of the first offices in the area to get the shots, and they sent out an email this week saying that they were going to have a flu shot clinic on Saturday starting at 8 am. We were planning to get there early, but we changed our minds in the end. A friend of ours who goes to the same office had an appointment on Friday and found out that they only had 100 shots and 400 mists. We’d need 3% of their shots. And then it started to show up on the news that they were having this clinic. As of Friday afternoon, we started talking about getting there by 5:30am. But as of Friday night, the girls all started running low fevers, and we decided we didn’t want to risk it. We’ve heard that people started lining up at 4am. We’d still like to get them the shots, with daycare and all, so I’m hoping that they get some more in. I’d like the shot, too.

Raspberries with daddy


"It's my turn, daddy!"


We have a small local zoo that does a Boo in the Zoo every year, with a bunch of little booths handing out candy as you walk through the zoo. We weren’t originally planning to go, as the girls are really too young to “get” Halloween. But we got a gorgeous fall day, and they just look so darn cute in their costumes, so we decided to go. (Plus we had grandparents’ help.) We didn’t get any candy, mostly just went for a walk. The girls did well – but it’s funny that they were just their normal selves. Emma was hanging out the side of the stroller, looking at and interested in EVERYTHING. Julie was looking around, but every so often would just burst out into tears. And Becca was just reclines and is mellow. We must have worn out all of their good behavior, though, because the 3 of them screamed the whole way home.

Julie's a lion. She still growls.






Emma's a turtle.


Turtle takes a thumb break.



Even though we weren't collecting candy, someone gave the girls each a box of Dots. You should have seen the look on Emma's face, and then the big smile. Like she knew what it was. Or else she just needed something to play with. We took them away after she started gnawing on the box.


Becca's a laid back monkey.





They look thrilled, don't they?


Family pic, in front of what is actually the "Not So Scary House."


And with their grandparents:


On our way out, still in good sprits. It didn't last much longer.


About 2 weeks ago, Becca finally decided that she can in fact sit up. We were pretty sure that her resistance was just because she didn’t want to, and wasn’t confident enough yet. But she does pretty good now, still when she wants to. Sometimes she’d just much rather lay down. We had an additional physical therapist evaluate her last week, about 3 days after she decided to start sitting up, and the therapist said she’s perfectly within the normal range, and shows no physical signs of not being able to sit, stand, or walk normally. She doesn’t qualify for any additional therapy, which is actually a good thing. (All 3 girls are still seeing an early interventionist once a week.) She’s also army crawling like a champ, and gets around awfully quickly.

Sweet Becca:




Mmmm... toes...


Sweet Becca


Becca’s latest “thing” is bibs – no bib can hold her. She just tears them off (after she’s done eating). I thought it was just some of the weaker velcro ones that we have that she was pulling off. But she can pull the stronger velcro ones off, too. I thought I’d finally outsmarted her with snaps, but she pulls those off, too. With a devilish grin, of course.






In fact, Becca - - sweet, sweet Becca - - has become a bit of a bully at day care. (Those are our words, not daycare’s.) She’s the worst kind of bully – a hair puller. I knew she pulled my hair all the time, and it drives me crazy. It doesn’t matter if I’ve got it pulled back in a pony tail – she pulls it out. But apparently, she terrorizes the kids at day care, too. There are two little boys there who have more hair than Becca does, and they seem to be her main targets. The day care workers say that the little boys get scared when they see her coming toward them. She likes to grab their hair and suck on it. Yeah, my baby girl. We’re so proud. Of course, one of the boys whose hair she pulls is also apparently her best little buddy at day care. They say that Becca tries to reach for Welles’ hand when they are in bouncy seats next to each other.

Julie is turning into quite a little character. She’s not quite crawling yet, but she can inch forward to get something that’s just out of reach. We aren’t worried; it’s just a matter of time. I think that one day soon, Becca and/or Emma are going to make her mad and she’ll figure it out pretty quickly. Julie has started opening and closing her hand, like it looks like she is waving. Actually, we aren’t sure if she is waving or if she is learning sign language from somewhere, because apparently that’s the sign for “milk.” She also says “ba – ba” all the time, so either she’s really hungry or it’s a really fun thing to say. Which I guess it kind of is. She has also started making these fishy faces. I have no idea where she picked this up. She usually does it while she’s eating, but it’s just too funny. She’ll do it when I’m feeding her, and I’ll start laughing at her, and the she starts laughing, too. Julie also shakes her head “no” all the time. I don’t think she has any idea that it means “no” but we haven’t figured out what she’s doing. (Becca did this for a while, and pretty much rubbed all the hair off the back of her head.) It may be part of her Julie dance, where her head and hips go one direction, and her shoulders go the other. Back and forth. We call it the Julie Wiggle. Too funny.

Happy Julie:


Sweet Julie:



Perhaps the quintessential Julie look:


My little pumpkin:


Feared pirate Julie Puffbeard. There are two stuck hanging from her chin.


Fishy face


Julie


Greg’s birthday was last Friday, and we just kept things pretty mellow. I took Greg out to lunch on Friday afternoon, and Greg’s parents had picked up a small cake for him. After cake, Greg and I snuck out for some coffee together - - our last night with babysitters! I ordered him my favorite cake (aren’t I nice?) and picked that up this week, so we’ve been having a bit of an extended celebration. We wanted to do a day trip to celebrate Greg’s birthday, up to get some apples and have a picnic on the Blue Ridge Parkway, which we postponed until this weekend. It’s a little bit of a ride to get there, which is why I am typing in Word in the car. Despite my propensity to carsickness, I discovered on some road trip (Seattle?) that I can totally type in the car. Maybe it’s because I don’t need to be looking at the screen the whole time. Anyhow, I knew this was going to be a book, and I can’t seem to find the time at home to get it all down. The girls’ fevers were down a bit this morning, all below 99.1, so we decided at about 9:00 this morning to go for it. (The extra hour made it an easier decision, too) So we did, in fact, get some more apples, and had our picnic in the car at a rest area on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Pics from today's adventure:



"Faster, daddy, faster!" (We were stopped at the time, of course. This was our lunch break.)



Hanging out in the back of the car with daddy. The girls needed to get out of their carseats and play for a bit.


I have no idea why she was making this face, but I find it absolutely hilarious.


Emma wants ALL the apples.


So, Julie and Emma both really like to dance. And they all like music. Well, at day care this week, they were listening to the Michael Jackson “This is It” cd, and apparently the girls LOVED it. They were wiggling all over, but apparently Emma was really in to it.. I almost bought it at Target yesterday, but I think we’re just going to download a few songs from itunes. If Greg can stand it, I’ll rock out with them.

We didn’t do anything for Halloween, as the girls were running low fevers, and it was drizzling and raining all day. I did take Julie to Target to pick up a few things, and I took her in her costume. Besides being called a boy at least twice, I think she was a hit. I’ve been trying to get the girls sitting up in the shopping cart itself so I don’t have to lug the car seat in. She did pretty well, until she got tired/bored and just slumped over. I’m trying not to be neurotic and get one of those shopping car covers for her, but the child needs some toys and I’m not sure what to give her. She just tries to grab and eat my list the whole time. Any ideas? Do those shopping car covers come with toys?

Happy Halloween!






The girls did get to celebrate Halloween at day care on Friday. They dressed all the kids up, loaded them into 2 of the cribs, and pushed them around the day care to trick or treat. They were nice enough to take some pictures for us. Earlier in the week, when they were telling me about it, it sounded like they would give the little kids some sort of “puff” snacks or something, but instead each of them came home with 2 bags of candy. ??? We added it (ok, the stuff we didn’t want) to our bowl to give out. We did manage to give out candy for a little while, through dinner and the girls’ solids. Once all 3 of them were screaming, though, we had to just turn out the light.

Pics from daycare of Emma and Becca:



Speaking of car seats, Emma’s about to outgrow hers. We just ordered her new one this week. I found some seats that say that they should fit 3 across the back of our car. We’re hoping to get it installed today, and make sure it all fits before we order two more of them. No more pink - - we went for Cherry Red. The box says “for compact, fuel efficient vehicles.” Yeah, or triplets.

... and they're off!

Emma started crawling last weekend sometime. She does an army crawl, and uses her left elbow and her right hand to pull herself along. And she's quick. She is starting to pull up, but not fully - just with her upper body. In fact, she's trying to pull up on the Bumbo right now. She is very determined. When she's in an exersaucer, she has started reaching for the toys on the other exersaucers. You know, the toys are always greener...

Rebecca started crawling sometime on Tuesday at daycare. Totally surprised us. She still doesn't want to sit up, but she's doing an army crawl just like Emma. She slept through the night for the first time in a week on Monday night, and then started crawling on Tuesday, so I'm attributing the waking up to some sort of a growth spurt, and then things just clicked. She will sit for a few seconds if she's distracted - if she has a toy or something. And lately, when I'm feeding her, she wants to sit up straighter with her bottle. But if you want her to just sit on the floor, she's not interested. The therapist that comes to daycare and I decided this week to get a referral for a physical therapist to come to daycare and work with her some more. Just this weekend, I started putting her in the shopping carts NOT in her carseat, so just sitting up and strapped in, and she did pretty well.

Becca:


Becca when a cat comes near. She LOVES the cats. They make her giggle.


Julie gets up on her hands and knees and rocks and/or wiggles. She isn't crawling yet, but I don't think it will be long.

Our Julie Cat:


They are all babbling a bit more these days, and they say lots of things that sound like "dada," but they don't really know what they are saying, so we're not counting it as a first word yet. The early interventionist that works with them told me that "da" is the easiest sound for them to make, so I wouldn't be offended when they said "dada" before "mama."

One of our favorite toys right now is the swing that Brook lent us. They LOVE to get underneath it, pull the straps through and chew on them, and then get it swinging with their feet. Occasionally they "learn a lesson" and bop themselves in the head. They are also a little obsessed with the laptop. We were having a video conference with my parents last week, and whenever I moved the laptop onto the floor to get a better shot, they'd make a beeline for it, particularly Emma. Other than that, they mostly just like to steal each other's toys. That's a big game right now.

We took the girls apple picking again last weekend. Of course a million people stopped us and commented. I feel like I did a bit better with it this week. For the most part, people are really supportive. But there are some comments I'm really sick of hearing. "Oh, you have your hands full." No? Really? "I thought one was hard!" Well then it's a good thing you didn't have more. "They're identical!" Um, no they're not. What REALLY made me mad the last time we were there was when someone said, "Oh 2 girls and a boy?" "No, they're all girls." "Oh. I wasn't sure about the one in the middle." IF I JUST TOLD YOU THEY ARE ALL GIRLS, DON'T PROCEED TO TELL ME WHICH OF MY BEAUTIFUL LITTLE GIRLS YOU THOUGHT WAS A BOY. Anyhow, the girls were pretty well behaved, and we ventured a bit further with them. But honestly, there weren't many apples left. We've been coming to this place for a long time, and it has certainly gotten more and more popular every year, to the point where it's just too much. We're thinking about looking for a new place. I won't make it through the fall without a constant supply of fresh apples, though. It's a must.

Julie and Dad


Becca chillin in the stroller


Emma. We accidentally put them in dresses, and it was a bit chilly up there.


Family pic


The obligatory "how tall" photo


So, we finally finished paying for the girls last week. The insurance company has been "reprocessing" claims for 8 months. It has been a dreadfully agonizing journey, particularly for Greg. He keeps telling the girls that they don't have to worry about the repo man anymore.

Last Friday, daycare had a Parents Night Out fundraiser for the March of Dimes. 4 hours of evening childcare! Of course we took full advantage. Greg and I went out to a wonderful dinner. In fact, it was our 3rd non-fast-food dinner since the girls have been born. Of course we had to pay for it: when we went to pick up the girls at 10:30... Julie and Rebecca were still awake. They're normally asleep by 8:30. They were all asleep by the time we got home, so we thought we were out of the woods. But no such luck. It was an awful night - at some point, all 3 of them were up and crying. We were up pretty much every hour. It took a good 3 nights to recover from that. We are so glad that they are sleeping through the night again now. And very lucky that they do.

It finally cooled down some last week, and we started putting the girls in sweatshirts in the morning. It's been warm again though (and I finally got some long sleeved stuff washed), so we're back to no jackets. It was hot and sticky today - - totally not fall weather. And yet, while out shopping, we saw a Christmas tree lot set up.

We finally got a baby gate (see: crawling), and of course the girls hate it. We just have it in a square configuration right now, so it's like a cage. I mean, play yard. The plan is eventually to mount it to the wall and just block off the living room. I think we're going to have to get to that this weekend.

I managed to take some time off to go to the girls' therapy session with their early interventionist. It was definitely beneficial for me - I got to see what she's doing, and get a lot more information on things to do with the girls. It was also good for me to see the toys she brings. It made me realize that we really needed some more toys - most of what we have are just teethers. (Or, as Greg says, "chew toys.") I thought they were still too little for a lot of stuff, but she adapted things like shape sorters to their level. So we went toy shopping this morning. I took Becca with me, and she slept through most of it. You think she'll ever live down sleeping through her first trip to the toy store?

We finally got 2 of the high chairs set up, and we've been using them for the last week or so. The girls are doing pretty well in them (we normally only feed one at a time right now), and it actually helps keep them a little cleaner. Mostly, it's harder for them to get food on their legs. :) They are still eating fruits and vegetables. We bought some "puffs" last week to try. Emma acts like I'm trying to poison her. Becca just makes a face. But Julie LOVES them. I think she's going to be our adventurous eater. She is starting to try to feed herself. Her hands get sticky from baby food + slobber, but that makes the puffs stick to her hands, and then she has about a 50% success rate of getting them in her mouth from there. We've also been trying out a sippy cup with some water at dinner. Emma again acts like I'm trying to poison her. Julie likes to chew on it. But Becca loves the water, and is really good at drinking out of the cup. She doesn't hold it herself, but she's got the drinking thing down.

Emma tests the high chair.


Julie


Becca eating something orange. Probably sweet potatoes.


We also got a note on Friday that Becca is now able to put the whole pacifier in her mouth at daycare. They've given up on pacifiers at home, except the raspberry ones, but they still use them at daycare, exclusively to chew on them. So I found some of these at Babies R Us today. If she can fit this whole thing in her mouth, we've got a problem.

Almost Crawling

Emma and Julie are almost crawling these days. They both can push themselves in reverse; once they figure out forward, there's going to be no stopping them. Becca is pretty content to roll anywhere that she wants to go, and she's good at it.

Last weekend, I was in the kitchen and heard Becca scream, then stop. A few seconds later, she screamed again, so I went in and saw Julie with a handful of Becca's hair. Poor thing. So the hair pulling has begun. And Becca's at a disadvantage with all that hair. :)

The girls started therapy last week. The therapist goes right to daycare, so I haven't had a chance to be there yet while she's there. I'm hoping to make it a few times. But we get very detailed reports with some recommendations for things to do with each of them. On her first meeting with Becca, she said that Becca was very social and has strong legs - both true. :) Emma was inquisitive because she tried to steal the woman's pen. And Julie likes to look at herself in the mirror. All true. They each get about half an hour right now, and the day care workers says that she wears them out.

For some reason, Emma's new favorite toy is the bouncy seat: not sitting in it, just playing with it. She likes to sit on the floor in front of it and pull on the straps. She likes to be held up standing in front of it. She pulls it, tips it, and chews on it.





Emma also loves to bounce up and down in the exersaucers (2 of 3 are on springs). She goes crazy! When we put her in the one that doesn't bounce, she still tries to bounce and just kind of jumps up and down.

Emma has also jumped into a babbling phase. She talks non-stop on the way to daycare in the morning. It's so adorable, and makes me wish I had a voice recorder to remember it all. Of course, Emma also has mastered a whimpering noise that we call "emma-nating."

Greg and I each made it to the gym twice this week. I'm really proud of us for making time for this. It won't be a quick fix, but we really need to get back in shape. The girls deserve it. I really would need to be going 4+ times a week to lose weight, but I'll settle for 2-3 right now, and may start Weight Watchers again. (I worry about the time commitment of WW right now.)

In Sophie news, Sophie 3 joined the family this week. There were too many fights over Sophies. The girls' main toys right now are Sophie, teething rings, "keys," and the teething pacifiers.

Becca can get her feet in her mouth now, too, so toes are apparently good for teething. We've had a tooth explosion lately. Julie's top 3 are through now. Becca's top 2 are coming in, and Emma's got one of her top teeth coming in.

Aunt Jen and Uncle Elliot came to visit us this weekend. Greg and I got some adult conversation, plus lunch out. The girls got showered with attention. :)

Becca and Jen


Julie and Elliot


Emma and the bottle


The cats hanging out on the boxes and cooler by the front door. I keep promising them that soon enough it will be cool enough to leave the front door open during the day. I love those fall weekends where we can open the door and feel the breeze. And the cats LOVE to sit in front of the screen and stare outside all day.


Just some pictures of Becca and Julie from a few weeks ago that made me giggle. They both fell asleep in the bouncy seats in EXACTLY the same position, down to the teething rings in their hands. And then I came back later and they had both turned their heads.

Sleeping right...


and sleeping left...

8 months

Today, the girls are 8 months old. I must say it every month, but wow - I can't quite believe it.

Last weekend we took the girls apple picking. This time, we loaded the girls into the triple stroller, ate our picnic lunch, and then went out and actually picked apples. It shortly became clear that the best course of action was for one of us (Greg) to push the girls around up and down a gravel road, and the other (me) to actually go pick the apples. Some pictures:

The girls (J, E, R)


Me getting apples


The car ride home (R, J, E). Rebecca and Julie are awake, Emma is asleep.


Greg lowered the mattresses in the girls' cribs this weekend. Julie could about reach her mobile, and they will all be crawling and pulling up soon enough.

I went to the eye doctor this week. I hadn't been in about 8 years. I noticed my vision getting worse while I was pregnant, and it hadn't really gotten better. Turns out, I really just need to wear my (8-year-old) glasses. They gave me a slightly stronger prescription, but I may just try to wear my old glasses more regularly and see how that goes.

I went to another consignment sale this week. This one was much bigger, and was just crazy. There were so many people there, so much stuff. No luck with high chairs, but I did find some Halloween costumes for the girls, and some of the toys I was looking for. The girls got a pony! My $20 splurge was this gorgeous, wooden ride-on toy. Hoping to get all this stuff cleaned up for Christmas time.

The hard drive is dying on my work computer. It's been going on for over a week now - just shutting itself down without any warning, blue screens, black screens. I called to get it replaced, and --get this-- it's backordered. So in the mean time, I'm hobbling along, saving frequently, and hoping it doesn't go completely before the new one comes in.

I saw Julie's top two front teeth coming in today. You can definitely feel them. That will put her at 5 teeth! She hasn't been too much crankier than usual. Emma, though, is still super clingy. There are times where she just won't be put down. She gets mad if you walk away from her.

We started Stage 2 jarred baby food this week. I'm still making some of it, mostly the easy stuff. For some reason, the jarred Butternut Squash + Apples was really runny. We later thickened it up a bit, but on the first night we tried it, Julie wore it from head to toe.




Greg and I are really going to make an effort to get back to the gym. We're horribly out of shape. It will probably involve going once the girls go to bed at night - one of us goes to the gym, the other makes bottles. Maybe some weekend trips.

Personalities

Emma is definitely becoming more mobile. She's good at getting on her belly and using her arms to push herself backwards to shimmy around. Every now and then when she does that, she actually pushes herself up onto her knees, so it won't be long until she figures it out. She's also close to sitting on her own, as long as she's not distracted, or going for a toy. A couple of times this week we've found her in her crib on her belly with her head up against the top of the bed, so she has found out some way to push herself forward. Over the weekend, she started getting up on all fours and rocking back and forth. At daycare this morning, they said that she backs herself around the room until she gets into the corner where the cabinets are, and then gets her legs going and starts swinging cabinet doors open. Emma has decided that she does in fact like solid foods, even peas. She loves just about anything these days! She is our neatest eater.

Emma and Julie getting into mischief, both trying to wedge themselves under the entertainment center. We've also had to perform extractions from underneath the coffee table.



Rebecca is still a happy, go-lucky little girl with tons of smiles. Right now, she giggles at her teddy bear, and loves to watch and giggle at the cats. She doesn't have a lot of interest in sitting up, and usually would rather stand than sit. But she's a pro a rolling, and will wander all over the living room just by rolling and pushing herself. Last weekend, she kept going underneath the swing to play with the tag hanging from the seat. (They all love to suck on the tags on everything - playmats, toys, and their Taggies.) Rebecca loves to grab at the spoon when we're feeding her, and help guide it to her mouth. This usually digresses into her sweeping food off the spoon into her mouth, but at least she's showing interest in the spoon. She also dives for her bottle when we're in the process of getting it out of the bottle warmer and getting back to the couch/chair to sit down. As soon as she sees it, she starts leaning and trying to get it in her mouth. The only time she isn't our happy, go-lucky girl is when she knows her bottle is coming and it isn't in her mouth.

Becca asleep in her carseat, yet still holding on for dear life. She doesn't trust Greg's driving. :) She has been falling asleep lately on the way home from daycare and napping for quite a while. Look at all that pretty hair!


Julie is our wild woman, with seemingly endless energy most days. Even on days where they say she doesn't nap at daycare, she's still full of energy. She likes to yell, and there was one day this week where I was picking her up at daycare and could hear her screaming from halfway down the hall. She was in an exersaucer, just yelling at the toys. Not crying, just yelling. She also makes these funny "growling" noises all the time - she sounds like a tiny Julie monster. It's so cute. She has just about figured out the toy on the exersaucer that plays music, and she LOVES the music. You have to hit the animal 4 times to get it to play music, and she gets in there and just pounds and pounds and pounds. She loves to explore on the floor, too, and when she gets on her belly, she'll get up on her toes, almost in a push-up position, to try to move herself around. Julie still loves solid food, and you almost can't feed her fast enough. She tends to make a huge mess, because she wants to hold the spoon. She doesn't quite understand that I have to put more food on the spoon for her, so I usually have to wrestle it away from her, leading to mess. Plus, the all love how food makes the Bumbos slippery, so once it's on their hands, they rub their hands all over the Bumbo.

The cats have been really good with the babies. They are much better around visitors, and don't run and hide for days on end anymore. Lefty is essentially disinterested, although the influx of cardboard boxes (diapers, exersaucers, gates, etc) has certainly made her happy.

Dusty has become extremely skittish since the babies came home. She's very jumpy and afraid of everything. She not interested in the babies in particular, but is kind of a "mother cat." She would come sit on the floor in the nursery during feedings, even in the middle of the night. She still makes her rounds when we're in there feeding them. And she follows us upstairs every single night when we take the last girl to bed. She follows us around the nursery every night, meowing loudly. I feel like she's watching out for the babies, but at a distance.

Happy Birthday, Dusty & Lefty!

Today is Dusty and Lefty's third birthday. We were going to celebrate by showering them with treats, but then they wouldn't know it was anything other than an ordinary day. Such spoiled kitties.

The last week has been l-o-n-g. Julie's teething symptoms last weekend turned out to be a stomach virus. She got sent home from daycare on Tuesday and I took her to the doctor. By the time we got back to pick up Rebecca and Emma on Tuesday afternoon, they were saying that Rebecca was showing symptoms. Greg stayed home with Rebecca and Julie on Wednesday. By Thursday morning, Emma was sick, too. So I stayed home with all 3 of the girls on Thursday, and Greg and I each did a half day on Friday. By Saturday or Sunday, they were pretty much back to normal.

The sickness, though, forced both Greg and I to finally be comfortable with all three girls on our own. Last Thursday was the longest I've been alone with the three of them since they were born. (It was also the longest I've been away from another adult.) We've each had them for short stretches, but normally 2 is about all we could handle. The girls have gotten to where they can play for longer, with fewer meltdowns. Well, up until 4:00 or so. After that, all bets are off. Even where there are two of us, someone is usually unhappy.

For all of their sickness, the girls were in relatively good spirits. We had some gorgeous, totally un-August like weather last week - 80 degrees and no humidity. After work one day, we took the girls for a walk.


You can see Emma's 2 teeth.


Julie


Rebecca


And one more pictures of the ladies (E, J, R) from the weekend.


We had been planning on replacing the dishwasher for a while now - it's got a small leak (nothing a plastic plate can't fix), it's loud, and we have to pretty much wash the dishes before we put them in the dishwasher. Greg went out on Saturday and found one, and it's going to be delivered next weekend. So, of course, what happened last night? Yup, that's right. It broke. We are living off of paper and plastic for the rest of the week, as it is taking about an hour to wash all of the girls' bottles and food containers every night. Sigh. It's all in the timing.

Tonight I caught Greg sucking a cup of pudding through a straw to avoid dirtying a spoon. It's also helped me jump start a diet, as I'm too lazy to do dishes.