We've taken many hours of video footage this year, but few make me laugh more than these two "oldies". Those of you who only just started following our story this fall (when we moved to blogspot) have probably not seen these before!
"Who You Talkin' To?"
(That's a mirror Jackson's yelling at - so maybe he thought he was talking to one of his brothers?)
"Wild Playtime"
What do you think? Did I pick two of the best or is there another video you think I should have featured?
The boys are at it again. Plotting and scheming together. This mommy is in trouble! Their first act of plotting was mild, but I knew it was only the beginning. I have a feeling things are only going to escalate quickly from here.
It's that wonderful time of year again.... Cold, Flu and RSV season. Yipee! Last year we were under strict orders to keep the boys home with the exception of doctor's appointments. Due to their prematurity (and yet not preemie enough to qualify for the RSV Synagis shots) they would have had a really rough time recovering from RSV and likely would have ended up in the hospital.
This year is slightly different in that the boys are quite a bit bigger and are very healthy, so would have an easier time fighting off RSV should they contract it. That doesn't mean it would be as easy for them as it would be for a full-term toddler, but it wouldn't likely be as devastating. Taking this into consideration we aren't going under full lock down like last winter, but we are taking some precautions.
For the bulk of cold and flu season we will not be bringing the boys to church. Two weeks of being home with sick kiddos was enough for me this month. No more plastic food sharing for my boys (that's what happened last time they were in the nursery)! We also ask that anyone that comes over is healthy - that's a no brainer though really.
Thankfully for the sanity of this mommy, I have been told it will be ok to take the boys to the store or the mall as long as I keep them away from excessive germs (so no playing on giant plastic fruit at the mall). I'm so glad I have the option this winter to load the boys up in the Choo Choo at Target or the mall. I think it will do wonders for my attitude!
Some new Baby Einstein DVDs!
Yep, it's what you think it is.... leashes!
A push-toy with clacking ducks!
And Tyler received this lovely rash. It started with a few spots yesterday afternoon and by this morning looked like this. I took him to Urgent Care this morning and the verdict is it's just a virus. Good news is the rash doesn't bother him at all!
And now, on to the video!
(Just so we're clear... Nick and I have no problem using leashes. When you have three active toddlers who won't hold hands yet, a leash is a safe way to go. I mentioned to my friend a few weeks ago that leashes would have been nice when I took the boys out to play in the snow. I was scared to death one would run into the road while I was corralling the other two - thus I made them stay on the front porch. When used properly I believe a leash is perfectly acceptable for families with multiples, or just multiple young kids!)
Last night I had the chance to attend a Christmas Eve service with my sister. Yes, I know last night was only Christmas Eve Eve. However, when the church you attend expects close to 25,000 people to attend Christmas Eve services, members are encouraged to attend one of the 3 Christmas Eve Eve services in order to make room for first time visitors on Christmas Eve.
It is with great joy that I present you (those of you not on our mailing list for whatever reason) with our family Christmas card and letter (written by Nick every year)!
Hello Readers,
It’s that time of year again - time for Christmas letters. YES!!! 2008 was a busy but awesome year for the XXXXX 5! It’s hard to believe the changes that have happened in our family in the last year. Here are a few highlights.
In January Jackson, Tyler, & Chase slept through the night for the first time (I think cried that first morning). Two months later in March we attended church together for the first time and sat together in the sanctuary. During the service at least 2 of us fell asleep. (I’m not telling which 2) During the month May at around 9:30 p.m. the XXXXXX tornado sirens sounded and we went to the basement of the house for the first time. We spent about 30 minutes down there and then Gary Lezak said it was safe to return upstairs.
July was a big month! We took our first family vacation! We traveled to Maine & Vermont to visit A LOT of family & friends. Two people ended up in the emergency room (Once again I’m not telling which 2). September we got to eat out for the first time as a family. We went to Bob Evans and had a blast down on the farm! Finally in December we attended our first KiDS COR Event - family advent night. We enjoyed pancakes, sausage, tang and checked out a Christmas musical!!
For those of you who follow my Christmas musings on a regular basis, you’ll know that each year I close my letter with the annual top 10 list. However this year I’m changing it up and giving 12 somewhat interesting facts about our life and I am dedicating this list to the holiday classic the 12 days of Christmas. Please enjoy.
12-The minimum number of diapers we go through in a day. (I think we hit this number once)
11-Average Gallons of Whole Milk the boys drink in a month
10-The number of times a day the boys ask to watch Baby Signing Time
9-The number of sippy cups currently in use
8-The number of kids Jon & Kate have on the hit tv show…which coincidentally is the most popular question we get asked as parents of multiples (“Do you watch the show Jon & Kate Plus 8?”)
7-How many months old the boys were when we first had to buy diapers (Thanks you friends, family & strangers!)
6-The number of wins the Kansas City Chiefs have in the boys lifetime (6-24)
5-The number of times Chase has been put on antibiotics this year (he leads by 1!)
4-The number of Furniture Reconfigurations we’ve done in our living room this year
3-The number of movies Helen & I watched alone in 2008 (Bee Movie, Meet the Robinsons, Hallmark Hall of Fame Front of the Class. Go ahead and laugh it up; we are watching Hallmark movies!)
2-Two most popular movies in our house-Baby Einstein & Baby Signing Time
1-Number one song in the XXXXX House….Itsy Bitsy Spider…Let's sing it right now…The itsy bitsy spider went up….
I hope your 2008 has been as awesome as ours!! Merry Christmas Everyone!! See you in 2009 for the 5th annual Christmas letter!!
Love,
Nick, Helen, Jackson, Tyler & Chase
http://threetimesthegiggles.blogspot.com
This year the boys will be celebrating Christmas in style! A very special friend of mine (who shall remain nameless so as to avoid jealousy among the other friends who did not get special shirts), who also happens to be quite crafty, made the boys some great shirts to wear for Christmas.
Tyler has a new friend! This friend won't tackle him, steal his snack trap or sippy cup, bite him or pull his hair. This new friend is just there to sit and snuggle up with.
Several times recently I have wandered back to the play room to find Tyler quietly sitting on the futon, next to Piglet. I find it simply adorable that Tyler seems so taken with this giant Piglet! The only cuter thing than finding Tyler sitting with his buddy is seeing Tyler trying to carry a Piglet the same size as him down the hall.
Normally on Wednesday I would have The Video Clip of the Week, but I'm experiencing technical difficulty with that today. Hopefully it'll be up tomorrow morning!
One night a month we load the boys up and head down the street to Sam's Club. We only pick up a few select things that I have done a careful price comparison on. Some things definitely are cheaper to buy at Sam's, but the bulk of our groceries and paper products are actually cheaper if you shop the sales, use coupons or buy generic at a regular grocery store.My boys aren't cute enough for print. It's true. At least that's what the folks over at BabyGap think. This fall I took some pictures of the boys to enter into a BabyGap contest. The finalists would be flown to San Fransisco for 5 days in November for a photo shoot, and then those photos would be posted online so that people around the country could vote who should win (I don't remember all the prize details but I know there was a $3,000 BabyGap gift card involved).
Good news everyone! You get a bonus post today!
Who here as heard of The Blog Frog? I think only a handful of the blogs I "follow" are on it, but I'd like to see more! I had never heard of The Blog Frog until someone here commented on one of my posts that they found me through The Blog Frog (they got to me by clicking on the blogs one of her friends on BF was linked to).
I think of The Blog Frog as kind of a combination of FaceBook and a directory. We'll see if I can explain it without butchering it.... Basically you enter your blog address, then you fill out a brief profile including your name, schools you've attended and places you've worked. Within about 5 minutes you have lists of people with blogs who attended the same schools or worked at the same locations! It's supposed to be a fun way to reconnect with people you may have lost touch with. I say supposed to because I haven't found anyone yet, but with some time I think The Blog Frog could grow enough to give me lots of connections!
If you've got a blog, I suggest you try it out. It'll take about 5 minutes of your time. Oh, and you won't get spam mail - at least I haven't yet.
The Blog Frog
Well this morning the children were finally well enough to go for their 15 Month Well Check today! This was only our 3rd attempt at getting in there, as the boys have been sick for the last 2 and a half weeks. Fun, fun, fun! Shots were rough this morning and the nurse laughed and told us to just wait until their 5 year shots. Nice.
I'm not so sure the stats for Tyler or Jackson's height is right as I could have sworn she said they were 30" when she measured them...
Jackson:
My sweetie pie is becoming quite the little chatter bug! He says the most "words" of his brothers. Sometimes you can tell immediately what he's saying and sometimes you have to really think about it and look around at what he may be referring to. Favorites though are car (said "cah" like a good New Englander would!), cracker, bye-bye, boat, coat, and of course mama and dada.
Height: 29" (13th percentile)
Weight: 24 pounds 4 oz (42nd percentile)
Head: 17.7"
Tyler:
Growling Tyler is so rambunctious he can't seem to catch up to his brothers in the weight department! Someone tell that kid to slow down and eat more. Tyler's favorite new thing to do is pointing. He constantly asks to be picked up and carried around the house so he can point at things (pictures on the wall are his favorite). Tyler uses tons of signs and recently started signing "help" which is handy! His only words are mama and dada so far.
Height: 29" (13th percentile)
Weight: 22 pounds 2 oz (13th percentile)
Head: 17.7"
Chase:
Mischievous Chase has been causing a lot of trouble lately, or at least making us think he's causing trouble... Last night he kept running into another group and then he'd come back giggling like he'd just done something he shouldn't have. Chase doesn't say a whole lot other than duck, mama and dada. He definitely uses his signs though and his favorite right now is to sign "please" and then throw his arms up in the air so that we'll pick him up. I will say this, way back when he was in the NICU one of the nurses predicted he would be our snuggler. She was right. He's a total snuggler!
Height: 31" (62nd percentile)
Weight: 24 pounds 2 oz (40th percentile)
Head: 18"
My 30 something weekend readers are lucking out this weekend! As mentioned in Friday's post, I normally do not bother posting on the weekends anymore. Today though I'm doing a couple of things that I thought I'd get the word out about!
Most (if not all) of you know that Nick and I attend a very, very large church. There are definite perks to attending a large church; more Bible Study options, plenty of family friendly events, a large nursery that isn't even phased by triplets being added to the room, exciting special events, etc. Today I'll be cashing in on a couple of those perks and I invite you to join me!
Perk #1: For the second winter in a row Nick and I will be alternating who goes to church each weekend. Due to the boys' prematurity it has been recommended to us to keep them out of the nursery for the majority of cold and flu season. You get no arguments from us as the last time the boys were there (2 weeks ago) they came home with colds, which turned into ear infections. It's not been a fun 2 weeks! Anyway, this weekend was Nick's turn at church. Instead of waiting a few days for the sermon to be available online (like I did last year) I'm going to watch the entire service live on the web! Last year I always hated missing out on the music, and now that the church live streams a couple of the weekend services I don't have to anymore.
If you're around at 5pm Central (you do the math for your time zone), join me at http://live.cor.org/ for a contemporary service! The sermon series is titled "It Was Not a Silent Night" and is focused on Christmas through the eyes of Mary.
Perk #2: As mentioned in the above list of "perks", our church has some amazing special events. One of them is Christmas at Resurrection. It's a huge, elaborate production complete with a living nativity at the end. The show reminds me a lot of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular in that the first half is full of fun music and dancing and the second half is the living nativity. The level of professionalism is astounding and there are certain parts that give me goosebumps (Little Drummer Boy comes to mind) and parts that bring me to tears.
Tonight is the final performance of the weekend (I think there were 5 shows total) and they're going to be live streaming the show on the web for the first time ever! Plus, family and friends from "back home" will want to watch for my sister Laura as her dance company is part of the show.
Again, if you're around join me at 7:30pm Central at http://live.cor.org/. Christmas at Resurrection is something you just don't want to miss.
Last night I was bored and was checking out my blog stats on Google Analytics. I find it fascinating to see how many people visit the blog, where they're from, how long they stay, etc.
In the last few weeks I've noticed a trend. Monday through Friday I average 100 hits per day (and that doesn't include hits from my computer), and of those 100 an average of 80 of them are unique visitors. Wow! Then on the weekends my visitors dip to about 30 a day, which is why I've stopped writing posts on weekends. It seems I have a lot of people that read my blog in order to slack off at work!
As I was looking over the numbers last night I started to wonder just who exactly is visiting Three Times the Giggles. Where are they from (I only see countries) and how did they find us? I know a handful of the readers because they comment or they "follow" my blog, but what about the others? We'd love to know who you are - so please comment today!
I have my very own personal trainer. He pushes me, makes my workouts more challenging and uses his own body weight to help me build resistance. His name? Tyler.
I guess seeing Mommy laying on the floor is just too tempting for these little guys. I am a human jungle gym after all. The remaining 10 minutes of my workout that day were extra challenging. Imagine trying to do ab work while a 23 pound child crawls all over your belly. Yep. Good stuff.
So thank you trainer Tyler! My abs are stronger because of you. Well, actually to be fair they're in the state they are right now because of you and your brothers... it's only fair that you help me whip them back into shape!
Yesterday we had our first real snow of the season. We got about 2 inches here according to the weather folks. It was just enough to cover everything in white and really make it look like Christmas is coming. I was so excited to let the boys experience snow for the first time that I didn't let the fact that I only had two pair of mittens or that I was home alone stop me.
On with the Clip of the Week!
Yes, those were socks you saw on Jackson's hands. I figured they were a good substitute for mittens. Speaking of socks....
Yes, Jackson was out in the snow with one shoe on and one shoe off. I didn't even realize it until after came back inside and only had one shoe to take off him. It must not have bothered him too much because he threw a fit when I brought them back inside. Good thing we were only outside about 10 minutes!
Jackson & Tyler
Tyler
Jackson
Chase
Nick and I were reminded several times this week just how much can change in a year...
Originally I had planned to blog today about the boys' 15 month appointment. You know, all the fun stuff about how big they are, how many teeth they have, new words they say, etc. However, yesterday afternoon Jackson spiked a fever of 102 so we had to postpone their appointment. He seems to be doing a bit better today, so hopefully it was just a one time thing. Now, on with the fun stuff!
See that nice, neat pile of blankets in front of Chase's crib? Those would be the blankets that had started out in their cribs at nap time. Apparently they thought it would be fun to pass them all down to Chase so that he could throw them out of his crib. Obviously Jackson passed his to Tyler, who then passed it on to Chase because there's no way he tossed his blanket all the way over there!
I feel like this is the beginning of their plotting stage and it's making this mommy nervous.
Many people appreciated being able to subscribe to updates via e-mail when we had our site with Freewebs. I'm happy to report I just now figured out how to offer that here... (the link I put up this weekend was wrong, and I didn't realize it until now!)
Just click on the link to the right and you can receive our updates in your inbox!
Last night Nick and I put up our Christmas tree (and yes, it's real!). We were excited to see how the boys would react to the tree this morning and they sure didn't disappoint...
The jury is still out on whether or not we'll need to fence it off. Chase has brought me several ornaments already this morning. Tyler and Jackson are pretty good about not touching it. We put all the breakable ornaments up high, but it still would be nice to not be finding ornaments scattered throughout the house.
I receive a couple of parenting magazines (for free, cause I'm a master shopper!) and was reading through one a couple of weeks ago when something caught my eye. It said that between 12-18 months old is a good time to introduce coloring (well, scribbling really). Nick and I thought that sounded fun so I went on a mission to find some big crayons.
I'm sure some of you are curious if the crayons ever actually touched paper... I'm happy to report they did! They also touched the table. I think we'll wait several more weeks before attempting this again. In a few months when the crayons spend more time on paper and less time in mouths we'll put their kid sized, activity table in their playroom. Then we'll sell their masterpieces of artwork for large sums of money. Hey, we gotta pay for diapers somehow!
Thanksgiving Day was a busy one here. Not only was I cooking my very first turkey but we also turned our third bedroom into a playroom for the boys! The makeover of the backroom isn’t very extreme and it didn’t take very long to do, but it certainly resembles a playroom now and the boys love playing back there.
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