House Pictures

We are so happy with how things have turned out with our new house. It's a great neighborhood and although there is still a lot construction and mess around right now, the kids love all of the big trucks and tractors that come with that. We are a 5-10 minute walk along a path to a park and also to where the elementary school is planned to be built. We can also walk to the zoo, spray park and library in about 30 minutes. We are just a few houses away from Gail, Dave and their kids (my sis and brother-in-law). We also have a number of friends in the neighborhood or close by. We love the layout of our house. It's a modified bi-level which means we have 2 bedrooms on the main floor and then our master bedroom is up above the garage. Downstairs we have 2 bedrooms and a walk out basement. There is a lot more room for everyone to run and space to play. But with a new home does come a lot of work.

We had been waiting for well over a month to get the stucco and driveway done on our house but the record amounts of rain that we got really slowed things down. After the wrong stucco color was initially put onto the house and then a storm messed up the freshly poured concrete on our back patio, everything got done.

The kitchen and dining room.



The living room. I love having an open floor plan, that was the major thing that we wanted to change from our old house. The babies are content now to play anywhere in the house whereas in our old house they liked to be somewhere that they could see me...which was usually in the kitchen.


Down to the entrance area and up to our bedroom above the garage.

This is the play room/change room. It will eventually be Maggie's room when it's time.


The bedrooms are a lot bigger in this house which is so nice. In our other house we had the 3 cribs in their room in a "U" shape and very little room in the middle of them all. This is their room now, with so much extra space. We still have all 3 together sharing a room, I think they would miss each other if we split them up.



This is our downstairs family room area. We try to keep most of the toys in one area, but I'm sure you can imagine how well that works.




We had to cage off the eliptical machine because the babies were using it as a jungle gym. And for the record, yes it does get used for more than a close hanger...I use it to exercise on and the babies use it for toy storage.


This is the view from our deck. We don't have direct access to the path that you can see but it only takes us 30 seconds to get there. We love being able to look out the back and see open green space and the kids like to watch all of the people and puppies walking on the path, not to mention all of the tractors around with the all of the new home construction.

The dirt area is ours and our neighbours' yards that haven't been finished yet.

We are waiting to get the final grade of our lot done and then we can get started on landscaping in August (fence, lawn, and sprinklers).

Videos

I've had some videos that I wanted to post here from the past month but for some reason I haven't been able to get them to play. So I finally uploaded them onto You Tube and then put the privacy setting to unlisted so no one else can find them.

These videos give you a bit of a glimpse into our kiddos being their goofy (and noisy) selves. This is what it sounds like in our house a good part of the day when they are awake. The odd time it's a little quieter, sometimes it's a lot louder.






This one isn't really them being loud, it's just Casey being really cute!


Our mealtime bootcamp has been going pretty well. What I've been doing is anytime they are in their chairs and throw any or all of their food or plate they come straight out their chair and just have to hang out while everyone else finishes their meal. At first they are okay with coming out but when they realize that they're missing out on all the good stuff that comes at the end of the meal like blueberries, grapes, etc., they are crying and whining to get back in their chairs. That's when I tell them again "No, we don't throw food, you're all done". I've been really praising whoever eats their meal with no throwing and when I take them out of their chairs we do 3 cheers (with the hip, hip, hoorays). It was so funny today...Maggie ate her meal good but then threw her sippy cup at the end so I took her out of her chair and just set her down (after telling her no throwing). When I took the boys out I made a big deal of how good they did and we did 3 cheers. Maggie watched us and then came up to me and said "Hoorays? Hoorays?" She was upset because I didn't give her 3 cheers and the hip, hip, hoorays. It was priceless!

So, overall I would say mealtimes have been substantially better since I started this last Friday and I think it should only get better. Casey hasn't thrown anything at all since then, he's just observed and learned through watching Maggie and Mitchell get ousted from their chairs. I feel better about mealtimes now too.

Bootcamp Begins Tomorrow

It's time to do something drastic or else mealtimes around here may send me to the looney bin. Picking up plates, forks, bibs, endless amounts of food and sippy cups got old a long time ago but I'm still doing it, mainly because we only have so many plates and forks and we don't have a dog to clean up the leftover food. If I put too much food on the trays everything gets thrown off. So what I do is feed the babies one course at a time: protein, starch, veggies, fruits and then milk at the end. But what happens throughout the duration of the entire meal is they throw what they don't eat or want of the food (each kind of food), plus at some point their plates and forks get thrown as well. They also often will rip off their bibs and throw them on the floor. When they throw something they don't get it back (food, plates or forks), but what I have been doing is then moving on to the next food because I want to offer them a well rounded meal and don't want them to be hungry.

Well after today I am saying, too bad so sad. If you throw anything, you're done. I got the idea to do this from another triplet mom on the Triplet Connection forum where she said that she did this with her kids. If anyone threw any food or plates/utensils they came out of their chair and didn't get to eat again until the next snack or meal. She said it took a few days of some crying and whining but after those first few days there was no more throwing. A little additional crying and whining in our days won't even be noticed so now is as good of a time as any to try this.

I know that I just need to relax and let go of things a little, if they are really hungry they will eat. I think my mentality around this came from the beginning when they were discharged from NICU and the nurses stressed to us how important it was to get them to take their bottles to catch up on their weights. Well, obviously that was a long time ago and no one here is fading away. So we'll see how boot camp goes tomorrow.

Last weekend we went to the lake again. We try to get at least one weekend out of the summer where everyone in my family can get together out there. It was a great weekend! I think the biggest hit with the babies was playing in the tubes and being pulled around.




I think Mitchell liked being pulled around the most. We heard lots of his famous giggles.



Mitchell gave Brennan a thank you hug for all of his hard work pulling everyone around. Thanks Brennan and Brett!

Casey and Maggie did take their turns doing some pulling.



Maggie also took a little time out to pose with daddy.

My niece Ava was another passenger in the tubes.

Here are a few other pictures of our little Roughrider fans.




They slept through almost all of the game, but our littest fan Calder turned the game around for us once he put on a jersey.

Spray Park

Last Friday I took the babies to the spray park, just the 4 of us. It was looking it may not be a great idea because it took way too long to get everything and everyone packed up and ready to go. But part of that problem was that I didn't have anything ready ahead of time, which is key to getting out the door somewhat smoothly with our 3 monsters, I mean angels. I parked the van, put the Elmo harnesses on and we trekked through the mosquito swarmed park to get to the spray park. Once we got there the babies headed straight for the water. This was the first time we've gone so it was all new to them.



Mitchell had a lot of fun getting sprayed and giggled a good part of the time. He was however curious about what was on the grass surrounding the park. I had to tell him to come back a number of times but luckily for me though listened really well and never made a break for it.



These pictures of Casey don't do justice as to how much fun he had. He was squealing and giggling as he ran through the water. He said "Spray, spray" over and over and over!



Maggie really enjoyed herself too but was a little more cautious than the boys. She liked to get sprayed a little but wasn't interested in getting soaked. I didn't get a picture of her doing it, but she was trying to round up the other kids' pails. I guess the margarine containers that I brought along weren't doing the trick.




When it was time to go it took a little while to get everyone gathered in one spot and their Elmos back on. Mitchell and Maggie were fine with the idea, Casey didn't want to leave and voiced his objection with his ear piercing cry. But after I bribed him with my cell phone, everything was fine. We had a few tumbles while walking on the harnesses. It's tough when one of them is lagging behind and the other two are ahead, someone is going to get pulled.

All in all, it was a really good outing and we'll definitely go back. They had so much fun! It's nice to know that we did another normal thing on our own that most moms wouldn't think twice about. But as any mom of multiples knows, normal things are not so simple when we're outnumbered by more than 1 kid the same age, there just aren't enough hands and arms to go around.