Donuts!

Sorry I haven't posted in a while but we've been having too much fun with family in town : )

We all took the boys to have their very first donuts! Anyone who is anyone visiting Portland stops in at Voodoo Doughnuts. With good reason because even the locals love their donuts! My first year living here I would stop there on my way home from work every week to indulge on their delicious unique varieties (not sure how I didn't develop type two diabetes). Yummy : )

The boys having no idea the deliciousness about to come their way! 

Captain crunch on a glazed or crushed oreo topped with peanut butter and chocolate anyone? Sounds crazy but so dang good! 

I got the boys my childhood favorite, cake donut with colorful sprinkles! 

Caleb

Eli

The boys with uncle Chance and aunt Janet

This is how they all ate their donuts, frosting first!

Phil

Thomas

These are my donuts to enjoy during naptime, mcminville cream and an orangatang. I thought I'd give the bacon maple a rest : )   

TEC, super full on donuts! Only two bites of dinner were consumed that evening (that's is why this isn't a regular occurrence, ha!)  

More on our fun week to come!...

Quirks

The boys watching an ambulance go by, they love their emergency response vehicles!

I want to mention some of the boys silly quirks...

We have about 6 or 7 of these little figurines. I always find them in random places; in the boys play fire station, in the trunk of their ride on cars, or where ever. The interesting thing is that they are always in groups of three! I think triplets are born knowing how to count to three : )   

This is a t-shirt I have and I wear a lot, not because I like it that much but mostly because the boys LOVE it. They point at each of the different cats and I imitate the expression it's trying to convey, angry, happy, excited, worried, etc. I can't get them to imitate the expressions themselves but if I ask what the third kitty from the left is doing Eli will tilt his head : )  

Lately my house looks like a grave yard for baby socks but especially the boys room. They never wake up from a nap with socks on! And as I mentioned it before it's not because socks bother their feet but because they like putting socks on their hands, silly boys! The last time I cleaned I recovered about 20 socks from all sorts of nooks and crannies in the boys room. 

These are some books where the boys only look at ONE page, can you guess why? I can't tell you how many times they come up to me with these books open to those pages so I can list off all the stuff on them.  

Train

They looked at this page so often they ended up wearing it out!

Updates

I think the boys had a growth spurt because they are all looking a little taller and the 18 mo pants I switched them to don't fit quite as big as they used to (see pic above). We are officially done with 12 mo clothes! It only took us 2 years and 2 months (insert sarcasm)! Even our 18 mo footie pajamas are fitting a little snug (those are always the first thing we grow out of).

Some new words: roll (glad to see they are attempting 'r' words, I imagine it will be a while before they can roll a Spanish 'r' haha! no pun intended), stuck, stop, and knock-knock. Ah! only English words! I've heard of a lot of kids refusing to speak the language their parents speak when in an English speaking country even though they can or they had been. For a while the boys understood way more Spanish than English but I think it's really starting to even out even though I still only speak to them in Spanish. The English influence is undeniable and everywhere. Not sure if we are heading down that track but if we do I'll definitely make sure they go to Spanish immersion Kindergarten.

We are definitely going into the developmental stage called 'normal negativism' because the boys say no a lot more now and will even say it when they mean yes, oh boy!

Nap Time Crisis

cute little series of pictures...Caleb is so cute on his dad's shoulders : )

T see's how much fun C is having so he joins his brother up top  

the boys love doing puzzles and they are really good at it!

The boys kept 'talking' to each other while they did puzzles this day, they would exchange verbalization's and point at stuff. Who knows what they were saying but they seemed to understand each other. I have yet to crack any triplet talk code. 

the sand pit got a whole lot funner now that it has a bunch of community toys : )  

Eli getting braver and climbed up the sand pit waterfall

E and the boys at a different park

We went for a walk and to drop off some of the boys' baby toys at a friends house (which we've been meaning to do for several months now, so is the life with triplets). We thought we'd try it without a stroller. It's a good 10 min walk for an adult, they did really good on the way there but on the way back no so good : (  

And here are a couple of cute videos of the boys, nothing too exciting though. One is of Caleb laughing his head off on a swing and the other of Eli hearing a train...


Nap time Crisis

So I'm in a bit of a quandary! The boys keep pushing up their nap time, they were going down for a nap just fine at 1pm just a couple of weeks ago. But then I started noticing that it would take them longer and longer to fall asleep and now that they can climb out of their cribs (except for Eli) it's getting trickier. My first thought was that with all the rain we've been having we have been staying home a lot more and that maybe they weren't getting enough exercise. I experimented and even on days that I was certain that they had gotten enough exercise they are still not falling asleep till 3/4pm (if in bed by 2pm then asleep by 3pm or 3pm by 4pm and so forth). If I let them they will sleep until 6/7pm which doesn't work for their previous 7:30pm bedtime! Even though I haven't been brave enough to try it, I have a suspicion that they could skip nap time altogether! So I need to figure out what to do, my options are as follows:

1) Put them down for nap time at 2 pm so they are asleep by 3 pm and don't let them sleep past 5 pm so I only push up bed time to 8 pm.

pros: I still get some time to clean and a little time for myself each day
cons: It's very hard to watch the boys for that long of a stretch before they start to drive you crazy, I would have to make sure we leave the house each day to avoid going crazy.

2) Skip nap all together and keep bed time at 7:30 or push it down to 7pm (not sure that will go over well).
pros: No more worrying about a nap schedule and we can move on to toddler beds.
cons: They will most surely drive me crazy unless I up their 30 min a day T.V. quota to 2 hrs.

3) Put them down at 2 pm and let them sleep as long as they want, which would be till 6 pm. And push up bed time to 9 pm.
pros: I would continue getting a nice long stretch to myself each day
cons: I get less time in the evenings for cooking and hanging out with husband. We'd have dinner along with the boys (unfortunately this is still a con, I do not like getting up 10 times during a meal).

Right off the bat I'm not liking option 2 since I'd like to avoid taking anti anxiety medication. But inevitably we'll have to switch to option 2 sometime in the future when the boys finally decide on a nap time mutiny, hopefully not till a more mature age so I don't have to turn to medication. My instinct tells me to milk nap time for all it's worth! So it's down to option 1 or 3, decisions decisions...

So now that I dragged my boys names through the mud let me clarify and say that they are VERY good boys but nothing changes the fact that they are two years old and that there are THREE of them!

Friday Flashback 12/7

don't expect these every week but I was looking through some old pics and these were so cute that I just couldn't help but to share them : )

Flashback to 4 months!

ETC, so chubby!

Caleb going in for a good stretch, remember how much they loved to stretch!? 

CET

CET in one of my fav footie pj's, so soft and snuggly : )

Happy Friday everyone! Hope you have a good weekend : )

Personality Updates 2.0

Next time someone asks me how I can tell them apart I'm gonna say "the same way you tell your kids apart" they are just different!

Thank you L & M family for the cutest little shirts you ever did see!

Identical Triplets 2.0

There is no doubt about it, they are TWO YEARS OLD! Everything is getting just a little more difficult: diaper changes, leaving the park, getting them out of the bath tub, getting them to keep socks on, etc, etc, etc. Sometimes they out right get upset about something but most of the time it just turns into a game, like when I want to get their jackets on and they decide to play a game of 'you can't catch me.' Just when you think things are getting easier and then two comes along! Oh boy and it's just starting, also did I mention they've learned to climb out of their cribs, there goes nap time!!! I hope three is better : (

I'll still take the bad that comes along with it because the older they get the funner and funnier they are and of course more interesting!

What they are loving

They are CRAZY about trucks, cars, trains, airplanes and the like. They all love Sesame Street characters, especially Elmo, Big Bird, and Cookie Monster. Of course anything Thomas & Friends. They love story time and I could probably read them books for an hour straight only my voice dictates I keep it to 20 minutes (30 minutes if I haven't been yelling all day, haha jk but not really). They love Thursday mornings because they get to watch the garbage man at work on our curb. They could play with Duplo Legos all day long. Riding their balance bikes for sure. At the park they could swing forever but my arms always get tired and I have to cut it shorter than their taste calls for. They don't seem to care for non-dude things, if it's something stereotypical to boys they'll probably like it. I have no qualms about getting them a doll if I thought they'd actually play with it but considering what they are into now I'm afraid they'd slap me in the face if I did! Build and destroy is their game, they are dudes, no question about it!

garbage truck!

Caleb

Mr Charming from day 1 and continues to be. Caleb hands out smiles to anyone who pays him any attention. As an infant he was my easy going baby but then around 1 turned into my 'singleton' (the one that requires the most attention). Well it's come first circle and again he is my most easy going child. He goes with the flow and will adopted his brothers interests. Caleb seems to really like elephants for some reason, he always spots them out in books and toys. Can't wait to take him to the zoo again so he can see the new baby elephant that was just born! Caleb really enjoys drawing and does it for way longer than his brothers like to, I am hoping he'll have his dad's artistic talents : ) He is a mama's boy and I can snuggle him way longer than the other two will stand for. He has perfected the art of kicking his brothers out of my lap so that he can take their place! All the boys have really good attention spans when I read books to them but Caleb's is exceptional, he likes his stories! Caleb does the funniest body and facial gestures, he keeps us laughing all day long. I've noticed my self doing special little things for each boy that I don't do for the other two. This was not something I started doing consciously but rather just came to realize I was doing. For Caleb it's letting him get more than his fair share of snuggles, for example post nap I always pick him up last so I can snuggle with him on the couch while he wakes up completely (the other two have to work out their post nap crankies on their own).

I probably should have made him an elephant but I just really wanted to make an owl. I knew my easy going boy wouldn't mind one bit : )   

Caleb spotting an elephant statue

Eli

That boy is a whippersnapper, full of spunk and has plenty of gumption! Eli is assertive, he knows exactly what he wants and will give you a firm 'no' if you don't get it right. He can belt out the most horrifying blood curling screams (I am working to curtail this). He doesn't just like things but becomes passionate about anything he likes. He can hear the garbage truck coming from a mile away and let's me know so I can put him and his brothers up to the window to watch it. He is such a water baby and we have a hard time getting him out of the bath tub even when all the water has been drained! Eli is very affectionate, and loves to snuggle with no preference. He'll snuggle mom, dad, or anyone he likes. He is as smart as a whip and learns new things the quickest. He is most likely to test me with defiance, and if I catch him with somethings he shouldn't have or it's time to change his diaper he'll run like the wind. Phil has started calling him Velociraptor for it. Often times you'll see Eli holding a little pink pig, he'll just carry it around all day and sometimes takes it to bed with him. I guess he really likes pigs? Eli is very picky about color so our 'special little thing' is letting him pick first when there is more than one option. Some times I can guess what he will pick because his favorite color is yellow.

Made Eli a monster truck since he's totally into them, we've actually looked into taking them to a monster truck rally but then realized they are too expensive (not to mention redneck)

a boy and his pig : )

Thomas

Sometime between when I weaned him and now he's become less of a daddy's boy and seems to prefer mama (but especially in the evenings for some reason). If we are all walking somewhere he has to hold dad's hand so there are still some signs of preferring his dad. Thomas is very independent and does not like to be helped unless he asks for it. He can play by himself for very long periods of time and builds the most elaborate trains with his Duplo's (he pretty much has a monopoly on 5 of the 7 train cars). Thomas is a hoarder and will walk around the house with his arms full of stuff that he doesn't want his brothers to have (it's actually pretty funny to watch). He is hard to figure out sometimes when upset. But even though he can be the most difficult at times he requires the least of my attention so maybe that's why he has several 'special little things' to his name. He gets to be front in center when I spoon feed the boys their breakfast cereal or oatmeal (yes we all eat trough style in the mornings, it's just easier that way). I always let Thomas sit on my lap for story time while the other two sit besides me. I always let him have the tiny little ducky first at bath time : ) And he's become my cooking sidekick since he loves to watch me cook dinner (and breakfast on the weekends). I like the company : )

we've called him Mr. T since week one

my cooking side kick, he likes to flip the pancakes : )

For some reason Thomas loves this shirt, I don't know why but he does . Aren't the dangly legs adorable!?

Zoo Take II

We were headed to play somewhere dry when we realized the weatherman lied to us so we decided to go to the zoo again for some fresh air and exercise... 

CTE

ECT

Found a spot to warm up with some hot chocolate and eat our pb&j's 

Caleb ate his sandwich (minus the crust) then ate a small piece that Eli didn't want and then ate the sandwich that Thomas took two bites out of and then didn't want!  

E and I, I don't think they look like me and I don't think they look like Phil, is it possible they were switched at birth? (hahaha, jk to both but not really) : )  

T and I

going on a joy ride

hand over the milk and no one gets hurt!

Not too much to write about today but I'm working on a personality update so stay tuned!