Rules

In the land of multiples the rules of parenting are balanced with a need for survival and the curious dynamic of multiplicity. Some rules are stricter, by necessity, since behavior is contagious and they out number me five to one with their Dad at work. During the day some activities are entirely vetoed due to lack of reliable back up. Certain parks are 'weekend parks' and only for use when the triplet dynamic is favorable. Some rules fad into the chaos of a playful world of digging for worms with mom's kitchen spoons and using the potato masher to optimize a favorite bubble formula. The overarching theme tends to be, if they're happy and nothing is broken, carry on.

Today my five caped crusaders flew up and down the hallway lead by little Daphne, arms out screaming joyously. The flight path crossed every bed and even once dared to mount the kitchen table. Then it was snack time. We juggled oranges until they split open and then devoured an entire circus worth of fresh fruit. We had story time then taped all the books back together and picked the previous round of tape from Evan's little claws. We drug a toy kitchen into the dining room so that all our food could be cooked a second time in the play kitchen before arriving at the table full of hungry kids. Happy toddlers come with a lot of sound effects and messes, but they're happy.

We have those moments, at the park or in the store, when all eyes are on us and I wonder if it's rude to stare back to try and figure out what they are thinking. We get smiles, glares, giggles, occasionally full rolling laughter and cheers of congratulations. We get spontaneous, unsolicited stranger hugs and high fives. We go through gallons and gallons of germ-x. For better or worse, we know the limits of each of our children, how much risk they will take, how safe they are in new situations. Sure, we have an ideal, five smiling, gentle children, patiently waiting through every public situation imaginable while we live a calm, relaxing, sleep-filled life. We have another limit too... We took five kids and we brought them back. We need never speak of what may or may not have transpired in-between.

We empty enough boxes in a week to build tunnels and matchbox cities with roads and toilet paper roll skyscrapers. We make towers. Some of us eat towers. Towers of blocks, legos, canned food, crackers at snack time, and books. We build and build and build. Then we reenact scenes of mass destruction on our toys, clothes, and furniture.  We have no limits on building material. If I don't want it made into a tower it's in the basement in a box packed so well that you can use the box to build a tower. If we get enough towers all built and still standing we add even more random household items on top to make a fort.

A fort is a hub for all things messy. It can be filled with toys, stuffed animals, soft clothes to roll around in and food. Every child dreams of having lunch in their awesome blanket fort and eats at the kitchen table staring longingly over one shoulder while they stuff their little faces full of whatever their mom thinks she can leverage into them while the fort awaits. My kids pour their lunches into a communal bowl and bound off happily. If I ever doubted that I would let them get away with it they look at me with their sweet eyes and say "I just want to share with my broder and 'isters." Of course you little angel, of course I want you to share. I'll have my doubts later when I shake noodles out of your bedding and hair.

One day this week we read for over five hours... we read fewer than ten books. We read them over and over and over and over again. When I had to make lunch or leave the room for any reason, my girls sat together and turned the pages for the babies while I recited the text from the next room. It's baby Daphne that's the queen of the books. She has three books and her life revolves around them. The subsequent fall out from not reading her book first and only is catastrophic. Happily playing she may come across one of her books, joyfully run to me, grab everything in my arms throw it to the floor, all while yelling "no, no, no that one," and then shove my lap clear of competition to perfectly situate herself for book elation. Do her sisters mind having their books passed over? Occasionally, and if they don't I can't afford to rock the boat. Daphne gets her book nine times out of ten, but she understands that if it's that tenth time I'm determined and unpersuadable. The rule of the house applies, 'If everyone is happy, don't ruin it for yourself for no good reason.'

Animoves

Daphne ready for a workout.

Wriggly weight number one.

Recently I made the acquaintance of a little girl named Bo and her pet dragon. It's a show, an exercise program, for kids and their desperate mommies that miss sunshine. It's quite a workout with a wriggling twenty pound weight on each arm, running to help Bo make a magical door appear.

This show also possesses some real life applications. As we journey through our exercise adventure we choose an animal move, or animove, to help us rise to the challenge of finding the episode's make-believe creature. We can climb like a monkey, clap like a seal, stomp like an elephant, crawl like a critter, etc. We pretend a critter is a creature for the sake of the show's continuity. We select the appropriate move and follow the screen.

Coming into the kitchen after a 'Bo on the Go' workout I noticed little Bella sizing up the fruit bowl on the high counter. She, like Bo, chose an animove, climb like a monkey.  She began to exercise in place and then quickly scaled the kitchen counter, retrieved the banana and descended. Then she did a victory dance (a 'Bo boggie') and appreciated her accomplishment... or rather ate her banana. After three short episodes over the course of two days my daughter had incorporated an animove selection process into everyday life.

Wriggly weight number two.

Now I personally wouldn't watch the show if it didn't have my kids running circles like maniacs burning energy before bedtime and they do love every minute of it. The greatest benefit is not the exercise. It's not less frequent trips to the fruit bowl for me. It's the first few minutes on the show when Bo says those magical words, "let's clean up your Bo zone." Yes, please, let's! Cami and Bella set to work because Bo wants to make sure they have a clean place to run and play safely. They get everything off the floor in preparation. Cami gets a little carries away even... I've caught her more than once guiding her sisters up onto the couch and explaining to them how messy they make her floor. Granted her cleaning consists of one big pile of everything that she can move from one room, but it's good to vacuum under the lighter furniture frequently. It saves the lazy mommy in me a lot of bending over. We can work on sorting the pile in due course.

Cami reminds us all why we need exercise!!!

Tylenol Chart

Illnesses love our home. Everything that's not fast enough to dodge the swarm of gooey toddlers gets licked and lathered in mud... though not necessarily in that order. Someone manages to touch every wall in every building we visit. Bottles and cans, that sat just an hour before on a busy store shelf, are pressed on little cheeks, over eyes, and in mouths. We get sick!

Occasionally the meeting between sickness and sleep deprivation leaves us in a less functional state. I vaguely remember times of desperation through the haze of high fever. Just alive enough to clean up vomit, operate a thermometer, pass out tylenol, and say a prayer of gratitude that no one else wants me to fix lunch either. This is our sick life. Our kids fall asleep all over the house in tiny heaps and as often as we carry them to their beds we also leave them where they lie and tuck a blanket around them. These are our worst moments. We are blessed during these times with just enough lucid moments to care for our children and get them to the hospital.

The hospital. Our home away from home. Where we spend our vacations and long holiday weekends. It seems like all our free time we would have wasted catching up or relaxing is spent at our second home just counting the days. I spent my thirtieth birthday there and just last week, in a fit of nostalgia, I took a few days to stay at my birthday vacation room and get reacquainted with all the friends we've made on previous trips.

There is one system we have in place that is our salvation during times of illness. It grounds us and keeps our children protected from our sleep deprived, fever brains. It's the tylenol chart. Between us and medicine we place a paper on which we record, in one place, every dose of every medicine for all five children. It's a messy mass of left-handed, I'm holding an angry sick baby scribbles, but at our private dispensary it protects from overdose, bad judgement in the wee hours of the night, and memory lapses. Running 105° on no sleep at three in the morning with sick identical twins... You see how it could come in handy. Spending the month of May making up for all the springtime illnesses that we thought we had missed took a lot of effort. Pre-ER we got to the point of alternating tylenol and motrin every two hours, nebulizing three to five children on a four hour rotating schedule, and of course all our daily inhalers just to keep oxygen levels above 90% and fevers under 102°. We survived. We're hanging onto that nagging cough to remind us to chase our kids down with germx and restock our private clorox wipe stash. Each time we learn a little more and get a little faster. While triplets give us this special opportunity to build our immune systems by being so fast, licking so much, and sharing everything, we know someday we'll have a nice crop of germaphobics.

Daphne at the end of her leash

Watermelon

To properly open a watermelon take a two-year-old and place watermelon loosely in their dirty little hands. Allow them to give the watermelon a swift tug. When the rolling and shattering phase is accomplished the other two-year-olds may proceed to enjoy.

This is that point in the day when tired me thinks "awww man"and practical me thinks "we can still eat this right?" But with my husband in mid-scold and me trying to create a baby-watermelon perimeter, we missed, for just a second, the startled look of panic on Bella's face. It wasn't lost on Ava who wrapped both arms around her sister and said, "are you okay 'ister? It's okay. It's okay."

Kids have a way of reminding us of our priorities. Their sticky little faces scream, sometimes literally, "I'm important." In everything that they do they remind us to simplify our lives and enjoy the moment. Sure they can be frustrating, they're half a person trying to assert their independence over every breakable object in your life including each other. They use every crazy childhood event that frustrates your life to proclaim the value of their own.

Cami reminded me of the watermelon incident when she began proclaiming the value of things. "I'm special to you. That's why you miss me." All her toys are either "my favorite," "so special to me mommy," or "I need it, I love it so much." This makes it harder to share since everything has a complex back story involving the occasional fictional character and lavish events that I must have missed.

Ava and Bella are much more casual about valuing everyday life.
Ava: "Hi Bella."
Bella: "Hi Ava."
Ava: "Are you okay?"
Bella: "Yea, I okay. Are you okay?"
Ava: "It's okay."
At this point life has been found to be acceptable and they hug or run off together holding hands.

It's those moments in life that give them the opportunity to take stock of each other and carry on to enjoy the messy fun that is their life. They're not going to look back at their childhood and think "I'm just delighted you made me such an elaborate lunch everyday. The flavor and diversity really rounded me out as a person." They'll remember that heart pancakes, even from a mix, mean 'i love you.' That even at breakfast I occasionally use frosting to draw faces on their food. They'll remember when we only had two coloring books with dinosaur pictures and three girls so we had to make our own.

We won't have the same memories of their childhood that they have. We'll remember saving for a special toy and they'll remember that all three of them fit in the box and that they took turns holding the flashlight and eating crackers in their special holiday box. They don't remember the amazing chicken parmesan I made, but whether I let them have noodles shaped like bows, flowers, or caterpillars.


Their expectations are so much simpler than ours. Our lives are so much simpler than we make them. Of course I still let my kids experiment with the produce, they give the houseplants a good snuggle some evenings, and we often have an extra plate at the table for a beloved, stuffed friend, but we enjoy our lives and more importantly they enjoy our lives as a family.

Happy Easter

Four years ago this month we had our very first doctor's appointment that would inevitably lead to the little family we have now... maybe I should say the family of littles. We watched the BP oil spill in the waiting room and contemplated, not completely realistically in retrospect, parenthood. By that December we had our first three and now, four years from our initial visit, we have a healthy crop of toddlers. But this beautiful weekend of seventy degrees and sunshine is really our first Easter together doing all the Eastery things we imagined for our children. We had our first egg hunt, our first excited glee over windup chicks that are our new best friends, our first lecture from Cami about Jesus loving us so much he sent a bunny to leave us candy in the yard, and, if all goes well, our first Sunday when our children don't use church to do every awkward or loud thing they imagined all week for that express purpose.

The true meaning of Easter, the joy of the resurrection of our Savior, and the extra family time we wring out of this week left our toddlers nodding in understanding and sympathy. When asked what she learned this weekend Cami knew just what to say:

     "Jesus  and Heavenly Father love us and we remember them. They love us so much they sent a bunny and we feed him carrots and they all gone and he left eggs. They have candy inside 'em and we eat it all up. He hop, hop up in the tree and leave a pink egg and I eat the candy inside all up. I love Jesus and bunnies. Easter is special to me. I love you mommy. You're adorable."

Even for a three-year-old, Easter is a great time to reflect on the blessings of Christ in your life and enjoy your family a little extra. Happy Easter!

First Birthdays

In our crazy family of seven we celebrate four birthdays. This past weekend we celebrated one year since we jumped face first from a family of five to a family of seven. I can't believe it's been a year already.

We used for inspiration the ultimate party planning book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. This amazing text comes complete with menu and color scheme. Now, lets be honest, the party was really for the party-crazed three-year-olds that inhabit our home. Cami in particular had visions of caterpillars dancing in her head.

For nearly two weeks she kept me up-to-date on various party planning issues and needs. Every time someone came to the house she offered them caterpillar cake that hadn't been made yet while rubbing her palms together in elated anticipation and muttering to herself about the baking, frosting, and general cake joys.

We minimize decorations in this house with the knowledge that mostly they are baby fodder. With the brilliant caterpillar inspiration, we hung butterflies from the ceiling out of everyone's reach. That solved the 'decorations are food' problem and the 'we have no free time' issue as we hung them two weeks before the party. We did overreach our bounds a little trying for a colorful and disposable tablecloth. It died well before its time... Much like the cake left a little too close to the edge.

I think I would feel like a cheat if I bought my kids' birthday cake, like someone else went to the effort to make their day special, but I would probably feel like a cheat with more time to finish everything else and a nicer cake. To construct the caterpillar of Cami's dreams it took four batches of cake from scratch. I should mention that despite my love of desserts, baking cake is far and away my worst subject. Just to help us along my cake decorating tips all decided hide-and-seek would be the best party game... we had to go on without them. I finally began constructing about the time the party was supposed to start and just stopped when I reached the edge of the first pan and decided it was appropriately representative of a hungry caterpillar. Lets be honest, the extra cake layers that would have made the back half of a caterpillar will find their place in this world without difficulty.

We had an impatient little girl... we had lots of impatient little girls, but one in particular that was tall enough to grab the cake by its face and try to pull it down. She made sure it was done before candles and pictures. We live in a world where this is normal. We decided it was going to be a funny memory later and decided to give her a head start and laugh about it now.

It's hard to plan a party with twins. I almost think they enjoy staggering nap times to try and keep one of them asleep at all times. It's a clever ploy to extend their celebration as long as possible.... and it works.

With the party finally underway and forgiving family that know we have no concept of time, we ate our way through the book. Apples, pears, plums, strawberries, oranges, chocolate cake, ice cream cones, swiss cheese, sliced salami, sausages, cherry pie, pickles, and a nice green leaf (roll). My husband did an amazing job making green leaf rolls for the party. Once again Cami had insisted. That girl knows what caterpillars eat and she wasn't going to let us short change this party! We threw some extras in for good measure and had more food than we can possibly eat in a week of caterpillar birthday parties.

Present opening is really much less fun for a one-year-old than one might imagine by examining the remains of the daily mail or weekly ads that may get pulled within reach. With presents wrapped and rewrapped over the course of the morning and lots of sisterly help, we were finally ready for the girls to open the twins' gifts permanently. Then came the lesson on sharing, which sounds much more parental than it is. Ava's pleas to share are always the most insistent, but an actual translation reveals the true meaning: "Relinquish control immediately. All turns are my turn. Surrender fun." Bella settles most often on "She took it," which is in no way a description of who had possession at any given time. Cami's concept is most like actual sharing in the 'two for me, one for you' sense. The toys and children survived the day though, so it will be counted as a victory.

Cat gets first lick.

Ava and shirt cat

The babies are, unbelievably, one. The girls are still, almost a week later, going in the basement to pretends to catch butterflies. The new toys have integrated themselves into everyday play and all is well. We survived the first year with our now five under three!

Ava and Cami

Cami, Bella, and Evan

Eating Caterpillars

Families are full of compromises. With a family of toddlers this is most noticeable at meal time. There are the simple sacrifices like the cayenne pepper taking up residence in the deep dark corner of the spice cabinet. The bigger sacrifices come in the everyday struggle to eat and to feed the young.

I will admit right now that there have been those meals when in desperation an entire pork chop is speared and eaten like no civilized food should. The moment when corn became a finger food doesn't keep me up at night. Spaghetti... Or spaghetti sandwich? It comes with garlic bread for a reason. Even if I am eating like a human being... a silverwared, chair-sitting, napkin-using person, it is often at such speeds as to baffle the mind. Anyone who has met me can tell you that I'm in no danger of starving.  Lately the simple strategies I use to feed the kids has backfired and my appetite has become hostage to their imaginations.

Yesterday my little Cami insisted that we were in fact a family of caterpillars. She worked hard to control her irritation as I strode around the house on two legs, neglecting everything that we as caterpillars hold dear. She forgave me when my caterpillar voice came up lacking. As long as I called her 'my baby caterpillar' and answered to 'mommy caterpillar' we could continue a peaceful mother-daughter relationship. We're caterpillars, is that really asking so much?

Having firmly moved past my time as a caterpillar, I prepared to make lunch today. Fresh peas, strawberries, green grapes, chicken nuggets, and, most importantly, tiny rotini. Cami took one look and thought I was the best mom ever. "Thank you for making caterpillars for lunch mommy caterpillar." This is about the time I start searching the fridge for leftovers that sound a bit less like eating my own young.

I admit I rename a lot of foods to get my children well-fed. Apparently they're on to me and they have a few of their own. So here are the significantly less common and less appetizing names for food you may never want to eat again.
 

Creamy peanut butter... Blobby (Also, how you'll feel if you eat too much, too often.)
Vienna sausages... Baby doggies (Sound effects play a significant role as they whine and bark sadly, but much more quietly than regular doggies or hot dogs.)
Cooked peas... Little eyes
And my personal favorite, "Mommy, you got blood on my noodles." Spaghetti and marinara sauce.

Well, you get the idea. Add that to new flavors like fish stick lemonade or ketchup grapes and add a few yucks and ewws as they supervise my own lunch and you have the makings for a wonderful day in our toddler cafeteria.
It's these little compromises in life that build families, create memories and keep diets on track.