Any Morning and Most Nights

Wake up triplets! Awww, look at those sleepy chubbies above (old pictures from last May). I took the video below this morning (I really should decorate those nursery walls more and never mind the 1/2 finished hall that leads to their room (we were gonna put in a hall closet in there until we found out we were getting triplets, so instead made one big closet in their nursery which ate up the space for the hall closet . . .sssshhh, don't get started on the house!)). They wake up puffy around the eyes just like mama.

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Ahhhh, mornings are good now that we sleep most nights, though not all, from moon to sun without incident. Although I suffer terribly from insomnia half the week through no fault of the triplets. Even Sira, who spent most of December and January sleeping with Jerry and me due to some major midnight crankiness (and refused to go to bed in the nursery during this time), cradles snug in his bed with his brothers by his side without protest. Every morning starting about 6:30 the little birds start chirping in their tiny 100 ft2 nursery and turn their lullaby machines on and off. By the time we stroll through there (no hurries) about 7:00 or 7:30, they usually have thrown all blankets, books, pillows, binkies, and stuffed animals out of the cribs. And I guess with all the jumping up and down they mobilize the cribs (even with the casters off) so that they're all shifted and crooked.

Bedtime is 7:30 or 8:00 and the Bedtime Routine, oh so important for toddlers, goes on for about a 1/2 hour. The routine is like a sleeping pill (although I nearly hate to submit to schedules and routines, they indeed work for this age group) and goes like this: no TV, low lights, soft music, water, books, binkies, and repeated statements relating to bedtime such as, time to go to sleep now, time for bed, night night, ready for bed now? . Then we carry some and hold hands with the rest off to bed, tuck them in, give each a book, turn on the lullaby machines, and we're done. Jerry and I feel like bedtime champs, like we should win some kind of award or something.

I also believe strongly in sympathetic parenting. All that nonsense in baby book after baby book and other parents about allowing babies to cry for long periods, never picking baby up from cribs during the night, not answering screaming baby in the middle of the night--especially for babies under 12 months old, strikes me as heartless. Imagine you in your bed, you're awake, you're confused, disoriented, cold, in pain, terribly lonely or sad, scared, you scream for help because you are indeed helpless, and nobody comes. Or they rush in and rush out just as fast without responding to your deepest need. So while I cherish sleep, a screaming yelping baby is always welcome in my bed (truth is, I love it and wish we had an emperor sized bed for the entire family).

Now that I've bragged about bedtime, I'm sure tonight all three will wake up screaming and make me cry. ;)

No Surprises (except for the bald eagle)

Even Sira flipping off the chair onto a hard floor is no cause for alarm (but only because he got right back up, of course!). He repeated the same flip later that day off his booster high chair; he climbed up when I wasn't looking and flipped out accidentally--for about the third time this week! How much can one head and one mama take? Geez they make baby heads hard, thank G. Really, I'm not a bad mama, I'm not. I didn't know he was going to flip at the moment I grabbed my camera and turned it on the boys playing. . .

Anyway, here are the boys playing, bumping heads, and shortening the furniture's lifespan. Look at those adorable chubbo legs. Don't you want to kiss those knees and pinch those diaper bums? And don't miss Bereket's cheese and Tsega's gymnastics. And if you're a Radiohead fan, turn up the volume (it also explains the title--anything to plug my favorite band).

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Later that day we were finally able to go outside, walk though the grass, get muddy, look at the river flowing by, and feel a warm sun on our faces. Man what a winter it's been and we are so sick of walls! And to top it off, a bald eagle flew overhead. That's at least one good thing about Kansas: bald eagles during the winter season. A couple of years ago I would get an itch to see one, and all I had to do was go outside and wait about 5 minutes before one flew overhead. But this year I haven't seen a one until yesterday (and today), just when the season is almost over. It wouldn't have been a real Kansas winter without at least one eagle sighting. A sign of more good things to come, I'm sure :).

Short Dialogue with Sira

Me: Sira, do you have to turn absolutely everything into a weapon?
Sira: --no response--

I remember this conversation, but not really the context. Something about hitting Bereket on top of the head with a spatula.

Blog Interrupted: A Look Back

I'm not trying to be coy by not blogging in over a month. My camera broke (who in the world put the dish wand--you know, the sponge thingy on a handle that cleans dishes--on top of my camera!?) and what's a post without pictures (just words I guess, har har). New camera's on the way . . . Anyway, the lack of new pictures got me looking through old pictures from about this time last year. Wow, what a trip. Such fat little bald limbless things they were, all head and torso, flawless complexions, so ultra perfectly cute, but still so unfamiliar they were to us in complex ways. I don't know if it's different with newborns birthed from your own womb, but it took quite awhile before I knew these boys as well as I do and for them to know us. I have to admit, although my love was instant (and it doesn't always happen this way), it took nearly all last year to convince me that my children have fully internalized us as being their bon-a-fide parents.

There are things I terribly miss from this time last year. Like the lack of mobility (although I am grateful for their mobile bodies) and little fighting, the submissive-fresh-innocent-angelic-ultra cute and perfect baby qualities. But every new stage offers something magical and exciting even as I mourn the passing of dead stages.

Looking Back and Today. . .

Bereket.


The most charming and smiley of the three in the beginning; a favorite among the nannies while in care in Ethiopia. Now perhaps the most sensitive of the three. The first to reach major milestones up until the boys got to walking (Tsega walked just before one, Bereket at 13 months, and Sira at 14 months.). He is the one I can't say "no" to. The nannies told me he would grow very big and fat, but he is currently the littlest of my three. He presses buttons with his middle finger, which I find adorable. If he is upset, it hurts me the most and I really need for him to be happy all the time. He is probably the worst at sharing. He was so into this cheapy little push car he rode on, but he freaked anytime somebody else rode it (the boys will lift up from the bottom and try to tip their brother off the car so they can ride!). Anyway, the car had to go into hiding. Bummer. He is otherwise sugary sweet and does a great gorilla imitation.

Tsega.


Can you believe how fat he was? He went from about 12 to 18 pounds in the first month home. His suddenly-big-body made mobility difficult for him. But in about 2 short months he went from rolling for the first time all the way up to walking. A real hand-full and high-needs in the beginning. The guy would scream and claw at nap and bed time. He rarely smiled and didn't seem to like us. Now he is happy-go-lucky, a real charmer, a groovy dancer (really, the guy's got a natural inner coolness), mama's boy, and into absolutely everything. He's strong as a bear and has no patience for stacking blocks or playing with puzzles, but he loves reading books and that's all he might stop moving for. Not so great at lap sitting either, although he constantly wants up on the couch with us (only to slide back down again) and gives lots of tight hugs all day. A hugger from a very early age. Unfortunately, he creates the most tension somehow with his brothers and last weekend they seemed to be trying to exclude him as best they could. How sad!

Sira.


Such a face! I feel like I blog about him the least (incidentally, that was him in the orange t-shirt in my last video in last post) but the guy gets lots of attention at home. In fact, he has slept in between us or next to us in a crib for the last two months while his brothers slumber in the nursery. He was the tiniest one in Ethiopia, and indeed so tiny at about 10 pounds at 5 months old. He's grown into a little butter ball. (His belly! So kissable!). Indeed, I never send him or Bereket down a slide on their own for I fear their little top heavy bodies will tumble down the slide like bowling balls. He loves to "sing". He's very much like his identical brother Bereket, but less sensitive, although he goes through serious cranky stages time to time. He will arch his back so rapidly he nearly springs out of your arms when he's in a mood. He is our best block stacker and can quickly stack at least 7 blocks for long time now; somebody usually interrupts him before he can go beyond that. It seemed he was always trailing behind his brothers just a smidge, but now we think he may be ahead of them in terms of language and sounds. He loves to mimic yawns, speech inflections (hums "UH-ohhh" "THANK-you" instead of saying it), blinking, whatever fancies him. He thinks he's hilarious when I go in for a kiss and he laughs and pushes my face back (hmmm, I hope you didn't just mumble, I don't blame him).

As a group, I want to mention a few current fun things all the boys are doing at 19 months: removing sofa cushions then using them as stepping stools to climb up on the sofa (where they then proceed to jump up and down); constantly handing us small seemingly chokable objects from off the ground (a lent ball, a dried up pasta shell, etc) as if to say, here mama, I might choke on this , for which they always get a Thank You and round of applause (actually they've been doing this long time and I don't worry about them stuffing little objects in their mouths so much anymore); handing us pretend objects when they are craving a round of applause and a big Thank You but cannot find anything to hand us; tickling brother's feet when the tickler is free and the ticklee is defenseless in a high chair; still tipping and pushing chairs and ripping up our sofa, including pulling the stuffing out of it (eck, I don't like this!). I could go on but . . . I won't. :)

There isn't hardly a thing that one brother does, that the other two don't copy (that can be good and bad). Monkey see, monkey do is definitely our house mantra.