What's been going on

Just a quick update to let you know what has been happening around here. First of all, a big thank you to our parents, Kara, and Lisa for helping out with the kids while I went to class last week and Monday night. It was a long week for all of us and I think the kids have appreciated being back in their regular routine this week. I am not done with the class, yet. We have six more evening sessions from now until mid-September in Omaha, but at least no more long, full days. It is a good class, I'm enjoying it, I'm just not used to the work!

Between the class and the extreme heat outside, we haven't done a whole lot lately. So, my update can be mostly about what the kids are or are not doing lately.

I'll start with Will. He's still laid back, happy and cooperative as usual. He's the first to pick up toys when you ask and it usually does whatever else you ask of him. He's been the most successful on the potty, which may mean he's the first to underwear. We'll see. He also still says the funniest things. Ellen painted one of her rooms blue, he walked in and looked at it, held his hands up and said "I love it Grandma, it's pretty!" Priceless.

Grace has become so independent lately! She is my daughter! Everything is "I do it by self, mommy." This includes, but is not limited to, getting dressed/undressed, putting shoes on, or trying to pick up 8 things in her arms at once. She has been refusing to sit on the potty lately, and we haven't been pushing her. I don't know if it's a power thing or what, but when she's ready, she'll do it. She's getting much taller, but still very skinny. Her feet are huge, long and skinny. She's definitely built like a Niebuhr. And she's become very particular about how things are, even how her blanket is covering her up. I put the soft side on her today with the silky side up, and she looked at me and said "no mommy, put it the other way. Other side." Crazy girl.

Xander is still kind of in his ornery phase. He pinches, squeezes and pulls hair when he thinks Brian and I aren't watching. We blame Brian for the squeezing. He pretends he's squeezing them hard and makes a funny face and noises, even though he's not squeezing at all. Xander doesn't really understand that, so he actually squeezes. He can still pack away the food. You should see him eat! He is ALWAYS the last one finished at every meal. He'll eat three or four bowls of cereal in the morning along with a banana and a half (like he did today). He'll devour 3 pieces of Val's pizza and not even bat an eye, and there's always room for fruit. He has been loving strawberries and peaches lately. He ate two peaches by himself the other day. If you try to take his food away before he's done he'll yell "I still eating, mommy!"

As a whole, they are very into singing, as you can see from the videos. Their current favorites are all the Raffi "Songs to Read" books: Baby Beluga, Spider on the Floor, 5 Little Ducks, Wheels on the Bus, plus other folk songs books. We seem to sing a lot, and they are getting pretty good at it. It's funny to hear all three singing with us. They are playing quite nice by themselves for long stretches. There is occasional fighting, mostly when one takes something away or drives over body parts with cars, but nothing huge. They have been spending quality time in their toy room and enjoy it. Lots of other people have enjoyed it too, I think it will get a lot of use in the coming years. That's about all. Stay cool in this heat, everyone!

The boys singing Twinkle together

Here is another video of the boys singing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" together, or sort of together. I thought it was pretty funny, so I included it. :-) Sorry about the little clip of one of my piano students at the end. I guess I used the same tape to film them practicing their recital songs last spring.

Xander and Will singing

Here is a clip of the boys singing. I you love how they chant their ABC's instead of singing. Enjoy!

Grace singing

Here is a short video of Grace singing her ABC's, although she got a little shy and it's hard to hear. The boys are also playing in the background. Enjoy!

A quick update

I'm afraid my post will be short and sweet with no pictures or video to accompany it this week. I'm am in the middle of taking a graduate class at UNL this week, and things are a bit hectic. The kids stayed with my mom Mon and Tues, and with Ellen Wed and Thurs and back with mom on Friday. So, they're off the regular routine, plus they have a little bit of a virus, which is causing some unpleasant diapers. That's not helping matters. They fell asleep instantly tonight and are sleeping like logs right now. Hopefully they will be better after a good night's sleep tonight.

A quick potty update. They have all gone potty at least once, which is excellent. We're not doing too much with it this week, only what the grandmas are willing to do. We'll start back up again in earnest next week when I'm back home. We're also considering trying just one of them (probably Grace) in underwear. We wonder if maybe concentrating on just one at a time is a better idea than we originally thought. We'll have to see. We're traveling some in August, so that could be a challenge.

Grace was able to pedal her tricycle on her own this week, which is great. She's finally has enough leg strength to do it. Will continues to amaze us with his great memory. It seems like we tell him something once and he will talk about it later. For example, my mom must have told him Grandpa was at work, looking at people's teeth. This morning, Brian told Will he was going to grandma's house, but grandpa would be at work. Will said "work on people's teeth?" Xander is coming out of his stubborn phase (a little). He's been better lately and not quite so much to deal with. We've been ignoring it at much as possible, and giving him some choices has seemed to help. We (or at least I) have been trying to give him a little more attention to see if that helps improve his behavior. He has a tendancy to play by himself or wander away, so I have been wondering if he gets less attention than the others because of that.

That's about all. I'll get some video over the weekend and some pictures and give a better update next week. Thanks for being understanding, it's a busy week for me. Take care!

Yes folks, it's true. It has begun!

The thing I have been most dreading since I found out I was pregnant with triplets has begun. POTTY TRAINING! I have absolutely no clue how I am going to do this. I have read a book on potty training multiples, and it's only marginaly helped me. Brian and I both have different ideas on how we should go about this, but one thing we do agree on is that they're pretty much ready and we don't think doing one kid at a time will work. These kids do pretty much everything together at the same time, and we don't think that the other two will tolerate not getting to do what one is doing. So, we're all in!

Over the weekend, we got the potty chairs out. Three completely separate ones. They all know which one belongs to them, so there's no fighting about that. We are opting for the slow and steady approach. No drastic moves (like straight to underwear) yet. We are just sitting on the potty at different times during the day, hoping to catch them accidentally using it, to get the idea of what to do. Then we may try short periods of time in underwear, like an evening or afternoon. Then we'll see how that goes before we make any other decisions about where to go from there. In our experience, most everything we do is vastly different from the way parents of a singleton would do it (like our kids are 2 and 1/2 and still in cribs), so I think the conventional potty training wisdom may not help much. If anyone out there knows how other multiple families did it, please let us know!

swimming

Unfortunately, the pictures of swimming lessons with the underwater camera didn't turn out. There was not enough light in the indoor swimming pool and there was no flash on the camera. But, I did get a couple of pictures of them swimming at Star City Shores last month. So, enjoy those. We went swimming at Madonna Life Point's outdoor pool today. The kids had fun just playing in the water and, luckily, it wasn't cold! We played for a little over an hour and they were ravenously hungry when we got home. Thanks Jessi for getting us in!

2 1/2 birthday party

2nd half birthday party

I know I have mentioned it a million times, we have decided to celebrate the kids' half birthday every year. So, we had a party with family on Sunday night at our house. Everyone came over and ate way too much food, then we opened presents, sang happy birthday and ate cake and ice cream. This is the first time that they've really understood what was happening. For several days before, we talked to them about having a birthday party with cake and how all their family was coming over. We would hear Will talking about birthdays during the day. He would even tell people and objects "Happy birthday." Cute. They really got into the present thing this time. They loved ripping the paper and wanted to open and play with the toy right away. It was hard to keep them moving from present to present. And they had a ton of presents. What spoiled kids! They did get lots of fun things including a basketball hoop (which Will LOVES, it's all he wants to do.) Dick Vitale, from ESPN, talks when you make a basket. One of his lines is "Swish-a-roo, baby." Will walks around the house saying that now. They got lots of dress up clothes, more Little People sets, Legos, bubbles and sidewalk chalk and a huge swimming pool. I've invited a multiples club family over on Thursday and we're going to get the pool out and let all the kids play outside all morning (the goal is to tire them out for a good afternoon nap!) Thank you to everyone who came and made it a great party.

Trip to the lake

4th of July weekend - trip to lake

The kids had their first taste of being on a lake and at a beach on Saturday night, when we went to Middle Island, which is by South Bend. Some friends of the Niebuhrs, Randy and Judy Bailey, have a great house there. Their backyard is a beach! We went up after nap and the kids had a ball playing in the sand and swimming. As you can see from the pictures, they floated on a raft, but their favorite was a little floaty ring thing that you can sit inside. They liked floating around in the water, but with no fear of falling. After dinner, we got on the pontoon for their first boat ride. they really enjoyed it and didn't mind wearing life jackets that were too big! We road the boat to a house down the way and played a little duck game where they got a prize and then rode home. We left shortly after, because it had been a long day and they needed a good night's sleep for their big party the next day.

4th of July

4th of July 2008

(Click on the picture to see the entire group of pictures.)

Hi everyone! Just wanted to share with you the pictures from our 4th of July. It was a nice day, with gorgeous weather. In the morning, the kids were in the annual Firethorn parade with my parents. You can see them decked out standing next to the golf cart. We ate lunch at mom and dad's, home for nap, then we had a BBQ at our house with all of our friends. After dinner, the kids got to shoot off their "fireworks", some poppers. Brian shot off a couple of little things for the kids to see, some parachutes, a roman candle and a little fountain. They liked them! Then, it was off for a bath and bed. Luckily, they slept through our extremely noisy neighborhood fireworks display that night.

New playroom

The best part of the room, a kitchen area and table and chairs.



Window wall, before



Window wall, after

South wall, before

South wall, after

Closet, before

Closet, after

North wall, before

North wall, after

Well, the playroom is done and the kids like it very much. We didn't show it to them until the day of their party, Sunday. We played down there for quite a while on Sunday morning. When Will walked in, he looked around and said "Mommy make it all pretty!" That was the best reaction I could have hoped for! They are enjoying their kitchen area and table and chairs. I also put new magnetic letters on the easel, so they have been having fun playing with those. It will be neat in the next few months to let them explore all parts of the room and do whatever they want in it. We have yet to unpack all their new presents (which I will talk about in a different post), so those will also fill up the room. Brian and I gave them new kitchen things, play food and dishes. Those are quite a hit. Thanks to Dale and Ellen who helped with painting and watching kids during this project. This was phase 1 of a 3-phase thing we're doing in our house. This part of the project got the toys out of the main part of the basement, because we are moving our office from upstairs to the basement. Then that bedroom where the office was, will shortly become the boys' room. So, phase 2 (which is cleaning out the office and transferring everything to the basement)begins soon. It may take longer than I think. I'm shooting for September for it all to be done.

New things

Here are some pictures of their newest fun thing to do. They say "time for night-night" and run and get their blankets and pillows off my bed. They lay on the couch or chairs, or even floor and pretend to sleep. If only they would pretend to sleep when it's actually time to sleep.........

Since we don't have a lot of new to tell about where we have gone, or what we have done, I thought I would fill this entry with a couple of stories about what they are doing and saying lately.

Will loves to talk! The child talks non-stop. He is definitely related to me, and those genes don't come from Brian. He will repeat things over and over until you acknowledge what he's talking about "daddy car in garage, daddy car in garage?" "Yes Will, daddy's car is in the garage." Then he moves on to something else. Since he has a great memory, he talks about things he saw or things that happened weeks ago. He still is rather shy in social situations, though. It does take him a little while to warm up to new things (swimming lessons). Will has been asking to go potty so it won't be too long until we start, I think.

Xander is still a lot like Brian. Dale commented on it the other day, too. Xander was sitting by himself in the garage while I was working and the others were inside playing. Dale observed that Brian used to do the same thing, just sit around in his own little world, near another person, but not necessarily interacting with them. His latest thing is pushing/pinching/pulling hair. He's in time out for it a lot. I'm also going to try and post some video of him singing. He loves to sing and does it all the time. He even tries to sing songs with complicated words like "Baby Beluga". It's pretty cute. He bobs his head while he sings in his little low monotone voice. He's also been called cute so much that now he asks us if he's cute. Brian got his pajamas on him the other day, brushed his hair and said "You're all done." And Xander said "Cute?" He flirts already, too. He was making cute faces and smiling at a lady from the multiples club who was here one night. I think he's already learning how to be a ladies' man.

Grace is still miss Sassypants. She has a very low frustration level. If she is carrying her tower of legos around and part of it falls down, she screams. If she is trying to carry 8 things in her arms and she can only get 7 to stay in, she screams. She's getting a little better and calmly asking me for help, but sometimes she forgets and gets mad. Grace likes everything, we think. She'll announce every once in a while if she likes something. It usually is so cute we can't stand it. Brian took them to a lake and fed baby ducks and she told him "I like baby duckies daddy." She also announced to me yesterday "I like stripes, mommy." She is definitely a girl. She likes girly colors and loves to play with her babies and carry purses (although the boys carry an occasional purse, it drives Brian nuts.)

We have a huge weekend planned. Lots of 4th of july celebrations on Friday and Saturday, then their birthday party on Sunday. So, there will be lots of pictures and news early next week. Have a great holiday weekend everyone!