5 yrs 1 mo!

CET are 5 years and 1 month old!

We just got back from a little beach vacation and aside from re-assimilating back into normal life, I'm also going through oodles of pictures we took. I'll post soon!

Personalities 5.0

Caleb

We call him our round headed wonder, he's the easiest to pick out because his head shape is different from his brothers'. He is a real goof ball and loves to be the funny one. Still laid back and the only one that doesn't sweat the small stuff. Takes his time with most things but especially eating, the boy loves to savor what he's eating! When he's being silly or cheeky he does these duck lips that are so funny, they make me want to squeeze him immediately! When he gives up or is feeling defeated over something he'll lower his shoulders and hang his arms down and walk away (it's pretty funny to see). This happened about a year ago but one day out of the blue he tells me worriedly "Awww mami, how I can carry the big pichoo-pichoo (their made up word for gun)?!" The kid must have been day dreaming, I guess! Their love of weaponry is less than desired to say the least, mom-of-boys problems! Caleb's fashion sense is that of a college frat boy on a school day. He'll just grab the first t-shirt he finds in the drawer, throw on some sweat pants and flip-flops and he's good to go. He's a man of leisure and comfort!

A good demonstration of Caleb's fashion sense

Caleb doing his shoulder thing, sorry for the blurry face

Caleb has always pulled off the cool kid look

This picture cracks me up!
Caleb doing his duck lips face while playing around with a silly ipad app

Elias

Eli is a real sweet boy that loves to snuggle. He's a really smart kid too. The other day I tested the boys on their sight words after at least a couple of months with out practice and Eli knew 10+ more words that his brothers, which is impressive considering we have only ever worked on about 2 dozen words. He also caught on to the value of money first and even asked, all by him self, if he could do chores to earn money. Eli is a motor mouth and he never stops talking. I find myself telling him several times a day to please just take a break from talking for a while, "you're driving me crazy!" When he's trying to be cute he makes his mouth go crooked and he does look pretty cute doing it. He also loves explaining things, the other day driving home I over heard him saying this to his brothers, "When we two, we use baby spoons. When we three, we use baby spoons. When we four, we use baby spoons. Now we five, we use big boy spoons!" Not sure where he got all this from because they are still using the same old plastic Ikea kid spoons, unless they are all dirty then I give them just regular spoons. Eli gets all his fashion sense from Thomas, he always comments "Thomas looks super cute mami!" So he tends to copy Thomas but a lot of the time he doesn't really care what he's wearing.

Don't you just love this alligator that Eli drew!
I've been really loving the kid art lately (I'll post more samples soon!)

Eli being sweet with his kitty and puppy

Eli starting to do that crooked mouth thing when he's trying to be cute while talking to you.

Thomas

Mr. T is quite the character, he is if anything a passionate boy. Passionate out pretending he's a police officer that is. He pretty much lives in his policeman get-up. He piles as much stuff on himself as he can to achieve the look and feel of a police officer (it gets a little ridiculous sometimes). And he'll gladly go out in public looking this way too! Aside from his love of law enforcement he also loves to draw and is always learning to draw new things. He is a serious boy and can play very well by himself. If anyone is off doing his own thing, 7 times out of 10 it's Thomas. Sometime after 4 am he joins us in bed, it's just enough time to give his dad a bad nights rest from all the squirming and kicking he likes to do in his sleep. I'm such a heavy sleeper that when I finally wake up I have him right there to snuggle first thing in the morning. Thomas can be a little dense at times and does some pretty clumsy things. Phil and I have an ongoing joke that he's so clumsy because he's too busy thinking about his next outfit. Thomas changes his clothes like 3-4 times a day and I swear I wouldn't have half the laundry we do if it wasn't for Thomas constantly changing. Thomas always tells me "I'm going to pick my own clothes and I'm going to look super cute mami." He has really good fashion sense so I pretty much let Thomas pick out his clothes and then I dress the other two accordingly since they still don't really care what they wear. When Thomas gets mad or frustrated at me he likes to say "ok silly mami!" as if it were an insult, ha!

My little Fashionista Thomas.
He picked this out all by himself!

Police Officer Thomas

A close up of the gear, homemade binoculars and handcuffs, a plastic radio, and a plastic baton.
He also usually has a set of keys clipped on too, ha! 

Even when the sun isn't in his eyes Thomas (middle) always has this grimace on his face. His teacher last year asked about this because she was worried he was in pain or something but I told her that's just Thomas' look : )

Triplets 5.0

CET

CTE

The wild west

Time to update what life is like with our 5 year old identical triplets! Life is running smoother than ever due to the boys developing new and honing old skills. Our typical day starts early, about 6:30-7 am. The boys wake up playing and only pause for their morning cereal. If it's a school day, I lay out their clothes and they dress themselves. I only ever have to help them with tough buttons and socks (or finding shoes, ugh!). If we don't have school that day we do our "activities" were we do our Spanish language homeschooling. We practice reading, writing, and math (we spend about one to one and a half hours doing this). Nap time follows, around 1:30-2 pm where we first read from My Book of Bible Stories or Learn From the Great Teacher, then I let them each pick a little Caleb & Sophia video to watch from the JW.org website (this all takes about 20 min before their head hits the pillow). The boys are good little nappers and rarely protest taking naps. I wake them up at 4-4:30 pm (so they take about a 2 hour nap). We still wake up really cranky from naps and I just don't want to put up with that so I let them each pick out something to watch on Netflix to ease them back into life, ha! After about an hour and a half of TV we shut if off. Bedtime is 9 pm-ish, its kind of late but we don't read books at bedtime anymore after we noticed that they weren't paying attention anymore and just playing around (we read at other times of the day now).

Going out with them is a breeze, they stay close and are very well behaved. At restaurants they wait patiently and only get restless if there is a really long wait for food or if I take too long to finish my beer, ha! They don't get cranky if they skip their nap (although we only do this on occasion) so we don't worry about "staying on schedule" like we did when they were younger. They are not social butterfly's, I really have to pull their ears (so to speak) to get them to say hi or reply to someones question. If you are someone they know really well and are comfortable with they'll talk your ears off though. They now enjoy watching "family movies" with us which is what I call non-animated movies we can ALL enjoy. We recently watched The Sandlot and Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, the boys loved them both.

The boys play together a ton and its usually "cops and bad guys" or firemen or "hunting for treasures" in the basement (I'm not a fan of this one). When they aren't playing together they build police stations and vehicles with their Lego's (they LOVE Lego's!). They enjoy drawing or coming up with their own little "projects" to do, like for example they made paper money the other day (all their own idea). They are really starting to understand the concept and value of money. Currently they are obsessed with anything law enforcement (police, FBI, swat team, etc) and they recently renewed their love of firemen (they had all but abandoned it). Paw Patrol is one of their favorite shows along with Little Einsteins, Garfield, Daniel Tiger, Rescue Bots, Jake (& Pirates) and Dino Trux.

who needs to earn it when you can just make it!

The boys have good appetites and aren't very picky. They love pasta's, brothy soups, real Mexican street tacos, most fruits and a long list of veggies, chicken and fish (they go to town when ever we have fish). I fried up some smelt once and they even loved the crispy tails, they kept asking "more fish tails?!" I can say for sure now that none of the boys are mirror twins like I had hoped, everyone is right handed. I originally thought they might be since they all have a different cowlick pattern (Thomas has his on the right, Caleb on the left and Eli has two, see my Mirror Twins post) and they also sprouted some teeth on opposite sides of each other. They are still very petite boys, they are of course 5 years old but they are wearing size 4T (and with plenty of room to grow) and size 9 toddler shoes. As of the last 4 years the trend seems to be a size per year.

apple munchers

All are very well behaved in school and their teacher recently commented on how well they write their letters for their age. They play well, not only with each other but with other kids in their class. They have their own little clique of boys that play cops and robbers, their friend Charlie directs who plays the bad guy and then all the boys chase him. They do really well at meetings now and for the most part Phil and I can listen and pay attention to the talks. The boys all have similar physical and intellectual abilities and of course still look identical to most anyone but Phil and I. But it's their personalities that really set them apart. In the next post I will cover each boy's personality, so stay tuned : )

The boys love copying words out of books,
then they show me all proud if I can read what they wrote : )

Some samples

some words are in Spanish

With their class at a pumpkin patch field trip
(their Teacher is on the left and the teachers assistant is on the right).
I am really loving teacher Katie, she has had many great lessons and the boys are learning so much. For example September was "learn about your body" month and they learned how the heart pumps blood and all the different areas of your tongue that can taste bitter, sweet, salty, and sour. It's really cool and real stuff that I would have never thought to teach them!

Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum

The weekend before last we took the boys to the aviation museum that houses the Spruce Goose...

Thomas and Eli

Caleb really liked the flight simulator

Eli not wanting to leave the flight simulator

Group pic inside the Spruce Goose

All buckled up and ready for take off

With the Spruce Goose behind them!
Its so big you can't get it all in one pic.

I forget why they were laughing : )

Outside the museum

On the way home sleeping identically

Visitors!

Mama Elda, tia Aracely and cousin Natalie visited us all last week. We had a lot of fun and did lots of different fun things!

With mama Elda on our way to eat at a very popular Mexican restaurant which incidentally Prez Obama once ate at! It was very good (fyi Luis's Taqueria in Woodburn). And in case you are wondering why the boys are in cowboy get up, it's because in the morning papi took them to a pumpkin patch while the ladies did some outlet shopping and of course they had to wear their "farm clothes."

Visited a pumpkin patch and convinced the boys not to wear (most of) their cowboy gear : )

When we caught my mom wearing her new hoodie with the sticker still on it, haha!

After a day at an indoor pool we stopped at some food carts for lunch!
A cuban sandwich (fried plantains instead of bread) with a side of yucca, sooo good!

At the rose gardens

Family pics!

Had to throw one in with me!

With their mama Elda

They were running out of smiles by the end of our little photo shoot : )

On our last day while the boys were at preschool we went to Pine State Biscuits for breakfast.
This was the only thing I ate until dinner at 7pm, it was sooo filling (it had a piece of fried chicken, bacon, cheese and an egg). After eating this I didn't think I'd ever get hungry again, ha!