The weigh-ins

We just had our 9 month pediatrician appointment, which of course means weights and heights! The boys are doing great. Developmentally, they are all somewhere between their age and their developmental (adjusted) age for language, motor skills, etc., which is more than we could ever ask for. Win has been saying "Dadadada" for awhile, but I swear that Charlie said "Mama" when I picked him up. Or so I choose to believe! Wes' first word will probably be Julep.

So the stats...

Winston
weight: 18lbs 15oz - 24th percentile
length: 28 inches - 41st percentile

Wesley
weight: 19lbs 8oz - 33rd percentile
length: 27.6 inches - 27th percentile

Charlie
weight: 18lbs - 12th percentile
length: 28 inches - 41st percentile

Both Win and Wes went up in percentiles for height and weight (if I hadn't been holding a baby or two, I would have written down from what percentile to what). Charlie went up in height, but way down in weight. Apparently all that moving burns calories! And it doesn't help when he crawls away halfway through his bottle! We'll have to slip him a few extra bites during their meals...

9 months old (yesterday)

Yesterday, the boys turned 9 months old. It is amazing to think they have now physically been with us longer than when they were in utero. Time is truly flying. They are all babbling away, sit with no problems, roll and squirm. Winston and Wesley are content to sit and play with a toy. Each has started to move backwards a bit - they are making a lot of progress on the floor with their rolling and creeping. Charlie is all over the place. Often when I sit on the floor and play with the boys, it really means playing with Win and Wes and constantly getting up to move Charlie away from things like our slippers (which apparently taste good), waste baskets, Julep's toys, etc. They now eat 3 meals day, in addition to their 4 bottles a day, so we feel as if we're constantly feeding the boys! They are not quite ready for finger foods and sippy cups, but we're practicing. And we are moving them out of their infant car seats, which means finally having to figure out new stroller options. We bought simple double and single umbrella strollers, which they enjoyed their first ride in on my birthday on our walk to pick up cupcakes. But I think the next step is to get the plastic bucket seats (like you see on the backs of bikes) and attach them to our current triplet stroller. There are not a lot of options when you have 3!

Winston, Wesley & Charlie at 9 months old:

We were only able to take a few photos of all 3 of them because they all move around so much (flipping, rolling, etc). And then Charlie decided to get on his knees and pull himself up to the crib railing.

And then before our eyes, he pulled himself up to a standing position for the first time.

Amazed at his own accomplishment! Time for us to lower the crib mattress again and remove the bumper!

33!

I turned 33 on Thursday. 33! My goodness. I can't believe I'm almost out of my early 30's! Now that I'm a mom, I feel a deeper appreciation for the meaning of a birth day and all the my parent's went through and felt on the day of my birth. So the day should really be a celebration of them.

What a difference a year makes...
Last year (celebrating at Grammy & Poppy's - with lobster no less). I was 5 months pregnant, but was already the size of someone 7 1/2 months pregnant with a single baby. And I still had 14 weeks to go! My parent's have always taken a photo of me on my birthday with daffodils. Apparently when my mom left to go to the hospital to have me, the daffodils had not bloomed yet. But when they returned, their garden was filled with them.

My birthday this year - with my 3 beautiful boys: Wesley, Charlie and Winston

Cheering for Daddy!

(That is how we spent the day.)

Rob received an email late last week informing him that he was receiving an award at the Honor's Convocation at Gordon Conwell. So we packed the boys and all headed up for the event, not knowing what award Rob would receive. Little did we know, he received not one, not two, but THREE awards! (One for each boy!) He is now a member of Gordon Conwell's honor society Phi Alpha Chi (short for Philoi Alethias Christou which means "lovers of the truth of Christ"), and received awards for "distinguished biblical and theological studies" and for "outstanding promise in the practice of preaching for pastoral ministry".

We're so proud of him. He is so humble, but I wanted to share the good news with you all.

The school is an hour away, so we ended up having a picnic for the boys so they could have their cereal. It is a gorgeous 80 degree day. The whole day has been such a blessing!

Time to baby-proof the house

Charlie is discovering how to pull himself up. After his bottle today, he decided to do pull-ups on Win's bouncy seat, thus bouncing the seat up and down and stopping to eat the chair in between bounces. Win looks thrilled.


And while we were getting them all ready for bed tonight, he discovered that he could pull himself on the lowered crib railing of the party crib. Looks like we'll have to keep the crib rail up at all times! (We normally keep the rail up when they are sleeping, but will leave it down while we are moving them in and out of the party crib during their diaper changes.)

Happy Patriots' Day!

Today is my favorite day to be a Bostonian. It is Patriots' Day (as opposed to Patriot Day on 9/11), which means it's also Marathon Monday and the Red Sox play a home day game. Today was 60 degrees, sunny and gorgeous, so everyone is outside enjoying the city. I spent the morning with a beautiful baby girl named Audrey, daughter to friends from church. In the afternoon, Cortney (our wonderful nanny) and I decided we would take the boys for a walk to watch the Marathon. She got to experience the comments, stares, pointing, etc that we get when walking the boys.

My favorite comments from the walk (besides the typical: "3!", "triplets!", etc):

"God bless you"
"Are they all yours?"
"A buddy of mine has triplets. But wow, that's one hot ticket." (He then proceeded to punch me in the arm.)
"That's a lot of babies!"
"Can I take your photo with my cell phone?" (At least she asked. So we stopped and posed.)
"That's the best stroller ever!" (Said by a 12 year old boy on a scooter.)
[Police car pulls next to me, rolls down window] "Hey you! I have twins" [Police man yells, holds up 2 fingers for clarity.] "I can't imagine 3..."
"Oh wow, triplets" Then the group of people proceed to cheer and clap as I walk by. (At this point, it was late in the day, so there were not a lot of runners to cheer, so they decided to cheer me on.)

Rob and I ended the day by grilling out with the boys. This was actually their first time playing outside! Nearly 9 months old and this is their first time playing outside. As you can see, we all had a great time.
The boys

Julep, enjoying being outside with her pack

Charlie feels grass for the first time

Big smiles for Win...

...and Wesley

Daddy and his boys

Mama and her little men

Charlie and Julep have a face-off over a ball

Wesley started a trend!

Winston and Charlie wanted to show us that they too could hold their own bottles. There is about a 50% chance that any one of the 3 of them will hold their bottle for a feeding, but we'll take it! Charlie often tries to roll onto his belly and crawl away while feeding, but can't seem to understand why the milk won't come out when he does this.

Charlie holding his own bottle

What happens when Charlie holds his own bottle


Winston holding his own bottle

Win celebrating by wearing Daddy's Red Sox hat

The beauties

Charlie (who now has enough hair for a mohawk)

Wesley

Win


Some outtakes
This photo of Win cracked us up - it looks like a mugshot...

A gremlin?

Look at Wes' 4 teeth!

A new house & trip to the fire station

So the house. OUR house. God-willing, this will all work out. We are currently set to close on the house in June, so it is far from a done deal, but it's all moving along. The house is only two towns away, closer to Grammy & Poppy, my dear friend Ellie and fam and Rob's new job (which he'll start full time in May). It is in a wonderful family-oriented neighborhood and has a wonderful backyard for Julep and the boys. We will miss our current neighborhood and friends nearby, but we couldn't ask for a better home for our family.


Our buyer's agent extraordinaire/friend/fireman was working at the fire house just up the road from our apartment. So the boys baked the firemen cookies, donned their caps and we walked up for a visit. They got to see the fire engine, lights and all, and were so in awe that they barely broke a smile.
Preparing for the trip (quickly outgrowing their infant seats)

Wes

Win (not amused, saying "Seriously Mom? The hat?")

Chuckles (aka Charlie)

Bottles for all four boys

We just returned from a baby shower for our friends John and Laura. Little did we know that Rob would win a prize for a drinking contest. He was challenged by the dad-to-be to drink milk from a baby bottle. As if Rob has never done that before...

The boys continue to change and grow every day. They have dropped their third nap. The first week transitioning to this new schedule was a bit rough considering they had not yet extended their awake time. But they are now awake for about 3-3.5 hours, typically take two 1 hour 15 minute naps and continue to sleep 12 hours at night. We'll take it! But we have noticed that Charlie, whenever he hits a new milestone, will wake up in the middle of the night and will scream for 2 hours. It is so frustrating since there is nothing we can do - you can't rock him to sleep (he thinks it's playtime), you can't put him in the swing for long periods (he escapes the swing even when buckled in) - so you just have to listen to him cry until he falls asleep. Thankfully, Win and Wes sleep through this.


Winston

Win does a great job sitting on his own. He has the occasional topple, but it is mostly because he is busy playing with a toy that he forgets to put his hand out to catch himself! He has his bottom two teeth, and his top two are about to poke through any moment. Win is definitely making progress on the floor - mostly backwards. It's very sweet to listen to him practice his sounds and volumes - especially when you catch him whispering "dadadadadadada". Rob actually was sitting with him one day and would say "Dada" and kiss him and then say "Mama" and jokingly pinch him. Seriously.
Charlie

Charlie has a great big smile, filled with four teeth and his little tongue always curled up to his lip. He does not stop moving. Even while sleeping, you will find him stroking his stuffed animal. He too is sitting on his own, but you will rarely see it because he is always cruising about. He did actually just start going from his belly to a seated position! I don't know what you call it (creeping? crawling? charlie-ing?), but he will get up on his hands and feet or knees and launch himself forward. We discovered our internet connection wasn't working this morning and then realized that Charlie had actually made his way over to and turned off our modem. Perhaps it's time to baby-proof the house? He too is practicing his sounds, and like his brothers, has a lot to say. He even has a raspy, Bert & Ernie laugh that he often does, which is fitting since we often call him "Chuckles".
Wesley


Wes is also doing a great job sitting. It's so nice to be able to seat him somewhere and know that (with enough toys to keep him occupied), he'll stay right how I left him. Wes also has his four front teeth and is very vocal. Wes normally wakes up babbling (perhaps he's talking to his brothers?), and the longer we wait to come get them, the louder he gets. He does a great job on his belly (for awhile it was hard for him because he would get painful gas bubbles and reflux), and he now moves his arms and legs furiously. He'll be crawling any day! But Wes' most fantastic accomplishment to date is that he has held all of his own bottles today! Dreams are coming true with the thought of the boys holding their own bottles. To date, it has always taken two people to feed the three of them (or we would have to stagger them to feed one, then the other two at the same time). I can't begin to express how excited I am about this!

Spring forward?

You know what today is not? Daylights Savings. Could someone please inform our clock? A few years ago, we bought a fancy pants alarm clock that automatically adjusts for Daylights Savings time. But then Congress went and changed when this occurred, but never told our alarm clock (Hello, we are from the government and we are here to help).

So, this morning, we heard the boys squawkings at what we thought was 7:15am, thinking they slept in. So we lept out of bed, and started their morning routine. Then we realized it was actually 6:15am! Ugh. (I know, I know, many babies are already up by this point, but we were really enjoying the boys' typical 7am wakeup time!)

Oh, by the way, we bought a house.

Tante Lala

Tante Lala's (aka Aunt Lori's) visit has unfortunately come to an end. The boys fell in love with her all over again. They would look at her from across the room and just smile, trying to get her attention.

Lala with Charlie, Winston, Wesley



Poor Wesley. He has the greatest hair for mohawks. We like to think that he is getting his rebellious stage over with early.

Not so happy campers

We have hit a transition time in the boys' development. They are in the process of dropping their 3rd nap, but haven't fully extended their awake time. This leads to fun days filled with fussy screams from tired boys. On top of that, they are all teething. (Wes' top front teeth have just poked through, and Win's are quickly on their way!)

And to make matters worse, we had to bring them in for their RSV vaccination yesterday. The upside to this appointment was that the boys were weighed. Charlie: 17lbs 15oz, Win: 18lbs 12oz, and Wesley: a whopping 19lb 3oz. Unfortunately for Wes, the dosage was calculated based on weight, so he had to get two shots.

Perhaps out of sympathy, Julep started limping yesterday. Well, it started with a slight limp and quickly turned into a hop. So Rob took her to the vet today and although the cause is still unknown, she is now on bedrest. So she is confined to her crate (which had been stored when the boys arrived since we ran out of space).

On the bright side, we have had Rob's sister Lori (Lala) with us for the past few days (as well as her husband Tobias for the weekend). Amazingly, she is still here despite all of the above.