4yrs 4mo old!

4 years and 4 months old!

CET

my second runner up for their mirthday pic

Take 2 for pajama week!

Summer In January!

We've had a very warm winter here, it's averaging about 10 degrees above what it normally should be. Then last Saturday came along and we went outside and it was sunny and in the mid 60's, yes even warmer than it has been! I checked my weather app and saw that it was going to be 72F on the coast the next day. My jaw just about dropped. I told Phil about it and we both agreed that we just HAD to go to the beach. And that's just what we did! I don't think it quite got to 72 but it was pretty darn close, it was such a beautiful day. It's hard to get such a nice day at the beach in the summer let alone in the middle of winter! Am I the only one that's just a little freaked out about this? Global warming?!

Caleb. We made a small stop before hitting the sand : )

Thomas

Caleb, it was such a perfect day, no wind and not a cloud in the sky!

Eli.
I'm gonna miss when they no longer think it's clever to say,
"hey mami look I don't have any feet!"

Thomas and Caleb

Caleb, and don't ask what Thomas is doing with his foot, I have no idea, haha!

Eli

With my boys ETC

...And this is what it looks like when it's too bright and you smile with your eyes closed : )

On such occasions as a beach day we like to bring salami among other goodies. Caleb (middle) was so in love with it that he danced a little dance when ever he ate a piece of salami, heehee!

Pajama Day!

Pajama day at preschool has never looked cuter!!!

Eli (middle) trying to act mad and not smile

Then they get goofy

TEC

The boys looking up at where they were born. 

Took the boys to the dentist the other day and they were such great patients,
they got their teeth cleaned and x-rayed.
No cavities and they could see by the x-rays that their big boy teeth are ALL there and growing strong. I had been wondering if they'd be missing a tooth like I do (it just never grew in for me). Doc said it's a common birth defect related to the palate closing in utero, after all these years who knew! It just makes me marvel at how perfect my boys are down to the very last detail, especially when you think about the fact that they were the same embryo that had to then split two more times (a lot can go wrong when splitting!). 

Eli was an excellent patient!

The boys played with their goodie bags after their check ups while I quite literally spent 20 minutes signing digital paperwork, ugh!

It's a small world : )

Vaqueros

While my mom was here a couple of weeks ago we thought we'd see if the boys' cowboy vaquero outfits finally fit. My mom got them these from Mexico over two years ago and we thought they would have fit like a year ago but my shorties have great patience when it comes to growing, haha! Everything fits perfectly so now we just need a good fiesta or rodeo to sport these at!

Thomas, Eli, and Caleb

Thomas

Caleb loved wearing his outfit and didn't take it off until bedtime : )

"I present to you my good friend, don Thomas"

"Thomas and I have been through a lot of stuff together, some bad..."

"...but mostly good times!"

Some out takes 

As you can see Eli (middle) was an unwilling participant and we just barely got him to cooperate for this picture!

Go Ducks!

Since Cal isn't in the championship game tonight Phil thought it was ok to root for the ducks. But hey the boys might go to school there some day so you never know : )

A couple days ago Caleb decided to throw on his sports gear,
which influenced Thomas to do the same.

The boys proclaimed that they had their "baseball clothes" on and were ready to play ball, ha!
A few moments later, as promised, we all watched a family movie (aka non animated kids movie) by the name of Golden Receiver (you know, the air bud series of movies), in hopes that it would disentangle their confusion. 

The movie was quite inspirational and got the boys all "playing football" for the entire second half of the movie. One boy would throw the ball...

...and they'd all run to get it just like when the ball is fumbled in a real game. 

They were as much fun to watch as a real game : )

Eli finally got out his pj's and joined his brothers

How could these true Oregonians not root for Oregon?
Go Ducks!

Embrace It!

Any parent of multiples will agree that one of the most common questions people ask you about your children is "are they natural?" Well of course all children/humans are natural but what they really want to know is if you used fertility treatments. I've never been offended by this question and always just answer with a "yes they were spontaneous" then I get the "wow" "incredible" "that's crazy" type responses. I've come to see via multiples forums online that A LOT of people find this question offensive or rude. I totally get their point, why is it anybody's business how their children were conceived. But sadly that doesn't stop people from prying into your life asking personal questions about your family. I read this blog post recently Go Ahead, Ask If My Twins Are Natural. She makes a good point, she decided to just embrace it and is proud of the fact that her twins were from fertility treatments. I agree, those that went through all that emotional pain and had to endure physical pain and discomfort just to get pregnant, should be proud of the fact that they where blessed two fold or three fold or more! In many ways its much more special than my case where it 'just happened.' But that's just my humble opinion since I have no first hand experience.

My opinion may also stem from the fact that I may be missing one piece of the puzzle and if someone could enlighten me I'd love to hear it. I know exactly how people will respond when I tell them yes my triplets are spontaneous but how do people respond when you tell them they came from fertility treatments? Is it a negative reaction? I've been curious for quite sometime about this, anybody??? I've been met with lots of negativity but not for the way my kids were conceived. For example more than one person has said to me "I would kill myself if I had triplets." SERIOUSLY?! You'd really kill yourself if you had three beautiful perfect healthy children? There is something very wrong with you to think that! Anyways...

I honestly don't think people have bad intentions when they ask you if "they are natural." I theorize that people A) just want an explanation/reason why they see three little humans of the same height in-front of them or B) out of fear, want to know if it can happen to them! I love that being able to imply to people that yes my kidos are completely random and it could happen to you just as it happened to me, ha! 

Like the author of the blog post above and most people that bombard me with questions about my kids as I'm trying to go about my day, I totally wonder the same thing too when I meet other parents of multiples. For me it is about connecting with someone and sharing a commonality about how our multiples came to be. If we both conceived spontaneously then that's just one more thing we have in common, but of course I would never ask since I now know better : )

Couldn't leave you w/o any eye candy!
We took this before mama Elda left last week : )

From Sledding To The ER

The last time we took the boys sledding they had a terrible time mostly because their feet were so cold. Two pairs of socks in rain boots is just not enough, lesson learned. Since then I somehow amassed several pairs of used snow boots (5 to be exact). When I told the boys we were going again they weren't too excited until I told them that their feet wouldn't be cold because they'd be wearing snow boots. Then they just couldn't wait to go! We got up there and were having so much fun and after quite a while we decided to go to a steeper hill. Well at one point Thomas goes down and was heading towards a big rock, so Phil, who was standing guard near by swooped in to stop the collision. He got there in time but Thomas must have been going too fast and he bumped his head on Phil's arm. He started crying and then his eyes started rolling back which scared the crap out of all of us! He was pretty upset and acting just a little woozy so we decided to head back to the car and see if he didn't improve.

We tried cheering him up with some left over donuts we had in the car but then he seemed rather sleepy so we tried keeping him awake with candy. Sleepiness is a sign of a concussion but it was well past his nap time so he may have just been tired from all the activity. Once we got some reception on our phones I called his doctors office and spoke to the doctor on call for advise. She thought it would be a good idea to take him to urgent care but it was up to us since he didn't sound too bad. Well after I hung up the phone Thomas barfed up a good amount (vomiting is another sign of a concussion). So at that point we really wanted to get him to urgent care. The closest one wasn't too far but when we got there it was closed since it was Christmas day. So we drove a few minutes to the next one and again they were closed even though their phone message said they were open! Ugh! Again we drove another few minutes to a hospital and were so relieved to be there! We'd been driving for almost an hour and all the while making sure Thomas didn't go to sleep (which we were ill advised to do).

The doctor thinks he may have just thrown up because of a combination of all the junk we fed him (we weren't thinking, clearly a mistake) and the altitude OR because he suffered from a minor concussion. They gave us the option of a ct scan which was not advisable because his developing brain would get some radiation from that and because he'd only thrown up once (twice would definitely warrant a ct scan). I started running for the hills when I heard radiation, no way, not for my baby! So we opted for the second option which was give him some apple juice and if he didn't throw it up within the next half hour we were good to go home as long as we checked on him every couple of hours through out the night (waking him up and making sure he wasn't acting strange). Thomas slept between Phil and I and the night went without incident so he's all good now, the bump didn't even bruise up too bad and went away completely after two days.

Thomas requested that next time we go sledding we go somewhere without so many rocks and he'd like to wear a helmet. And I completely agree with him!

Thomas

Caleb

It was cold and lightly snowing but that didn't stop us from having fun!

TEC

With my boys

Mr T waiting to be seen.
Caleb and Eli were with our friend K in the waiting room. 

His owie

Drinking his apple juice