HomeTales From a Triplet House
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Sick Child (a Haiku)
My Mother's Daughter Literacy in Bloom! Soccer Mom? Sam I Am I’m a Costco junkie... My Head is Spinning... I need a 'do-over'... Bicycling to school...another milestone. My summer book report. February 08 March 08 April 08 May 08 June 08 July 08 August 08 September 08 October 08 November 08 December 08 January 09 'Be careful how you interpret the world: it is like that.' - Erich Keller 'I do not pretend to understand the universe. It's a great deal bigger than I am.' - Tom Stoppard 'Chaos often breeds life, where order breeds habit.' - Henry Adams 'When you can laugh at yourself, there is enlightenment.' - Shunryu Suzuki 'My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither; but to just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate.' - Thornton Wilder This one was on my quote-a-day calendar the day after I found out I was carrying triplets. 
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This morning, the triplets rode their bikes to school. They were so excited.
When we practiced this the week before school was in session, I wasn't thinking straight. I was fantasizing about my school days riding my bike to school. Of course, I started doing that when I was in 2nd grade and my brother was in 8th and would ride with me. It is a somewhat different experience with three kindergartners, one still with training wheels on. But it's only two blocks; how hard could it be, right? I forgot to check the location of the bike rack (the opposite side of the school from the direction we have been mapping out). And, I forgot that they would need bike locks. Then, what to do with the helmets? And, all the cute hairstyles my Daughter1 wants to wear will have to revolve around how the helmet fits on her head. So the first few days of school we walked. Then they received bike locks from their uncle for their birthday. Then we had to wait to use them while I color-coded them so the keys wouldn't get mixed up (thank goodness I have all those colors of nail polish!). Finally, this morning was the big event. We rode the other direction so we would come to the bike rack first (no riding on campus so they would have had to walk their bikes part way if we had approached from the direction we had planned to). The ride went great. I took lots of pictures and a little video. We decided to lock the helmets to the bikes with the chains so they wouldn't have to deal with them in the classroom and I wouldn't have to carry them home. We had left 10 minutes earlier than when we walk to allow for any first time mishaps, but ended up running to the classrooms to get in on time. The girls actually ran in on their own from a central point where I could see them but cut the distance to get my son to his room. All in all, it was a successful first attempt. I know it will go more smoothly the more we do it. I'm so proud of my 'big kids'.
I just finished reading 'Why Gender Matters' -what parents and teachers need to know about the emerging science of sex differences, by Leonard Sax, M.D., Ph.D.
Has anyone here read it? It was recommended to me by a friend. I finally checked it out of the library and read it. I kept reading excerpts aloud to TripletDad and now he says he feels he should read it too. I am going to buy a copy so I can re-read it and highlight and flag it for later reference. It gives a new perspective to look at how our children our taught and sites studies on how male and female brains develop differently and process info differently. We all kind of know this, but this book delves into how the past 20 years of 'gender neutral' teaching in the classroom has done a disservice to both sexes. Anyway, it's very easy to read and grounded in research with citations. Then gives some helpful ideas on what to do with the information when relating to your children. Fascinating. I'm telling every parent I know about this book. Claudine What happened to my babies?! You know, last week the identical quads in town went off to kindergarten and made the paper. Triplets don’t make the news anymore. Oh well. It’s a big deal to us anyway. Yesterday was the first day of kindergarten for us. My Daughters are in a different room together. They have a set of B/G twins in their room. Daughter1 turning into such a Big Girl; she’s so into coordinating her outfits and deciding how to wear her hair. And Daughter2 seems really ready for this. I’m so glad I waited a year for her!
These first two days I have my parents here walking to school with us. Tomorrow will be my first day dropping them at two separate rooms by myself. That should be a neat trick I'll have to figure out as they are across campus from each other!!! The girls came home saying they 'love school'. I'm really happy about that. Of course it’s easy to love it now when they said they played all day and haven’t brought any homework home yet. My Son This afternoon we have their birthday party at the park with friends and this evening a birthday dinner at home with family. Big events at my house. Time marches on, and mostly I feel like I’m running behind trying to catch up and come to terms with my babies becoming ‘Big Kids’. For the past several months I have been on a roller coaster ride called “Trying to Buy a Short Sale”. ‘Short Sale’ is a terrible name for the kind of home buying this is. I know it refers to the price of the house vs. the amount owed on the house, but it implies the exact opposite of what you think it would be on first impression – the timeline of the sale process. It should be called the ‘Long Sale’ or the ‘Stress Sale’ or the ‘Hurry Up and Wait’ sale. I feel bad that people are having to sell their homes this way, but right now it is the ‘Only-Way-We-Can-Afford-a-Bigger-House-Sale ’. PS: I know the home-buying process has been dragging on for a loooong time when my son started incorporating a 'For Sale' sign in the front of his art work houses! LOL! Is apparently fulfilled at Costco. Conspiracy theories abound. I now have $17 more a month in our budget! Where did this money come from? I can now say with confidence that my son, at almost 6, is out of night time pull-ups. Yippee!!!!! I was recently inspired by the finale 'The Next Food Network Star". I love to cook but rarely make the time for from-scratch dinners. Take that and mix it with the fact that I really need to get a handle on my grocery budget and meal planning. I recently joined Thegrocerygame.com for the trial period. I like using coupons, I just don’t have the time to figure out when items are at their best time to buy, and I am especially bad at knowing meat/chicken/fish prices to know when to buy and stock-up. Last weekend managed to go camping for our one time this summer. I love camping. TripletDad is trying to love camping. The triplets LOVE camping. This is our third summer camping trip in as many years. We went with 4 other families to a great camp ground at The one thing it didn’t have was Bear Boxes. But it did have a resident bear – we were told. So we diligently put all our food stuffs away in our van every night. Not a great option but the best one at hand. Unfortunately, Saturday night we forgot to take our trash to the locked metal dumpster before bed. 11:00 - I wake up to TripletDad scurrying to the tent flap to peer out with a flashlight. “An animal just walked by our tent,” he said. My mind immediately jumps to The Bear. I’m thinking, what is he doing unzipping the tent and shining a flashlight out?! Then he says,” It’s the bear! It’s got our trash and I just shined the flashlight in its face!!!” OMG! It was 8 ft away outside our tent! He zipped the tent shut and jumped back to the middle of the tent and sat on me. I don’t know why he did that, but he did. I looked over at the kids – sound asleep and I was desperately hoping they stayed that way. We sat like that for 20 minutes. Seriously. But didn’t hear anything else. We felt like idiots because neither of us had the slightest idea of what we should do if the bear should take an interest in our tent. Luckily we were smart enough to realize you never bring food into your tent in bear country. We finally fell back asleep. Then I woke up at 1:00 to the sound of the bear walking through our site again. I grabbed TripletDad and whispered, “It’s back!” Right then we heard the clanking of metal dishes at the site next to us. TD tried to go out! I held him back and unzipped just the top of the flap. I saw other flashlights scanning the area from two other sites. I called out, “Are you outside? Is it gone?” The other dad confirmed it was all clear so I let TD out. They cleaned up the campsites (it turned out the other family had left their dirty dishes out, but the sound of them falling and clanking had startled the bear and he ran off). They took the trash down to the dumpsters. And that family let me use their port-o-potty in their trailer, thankfully enough, because I was too scared to go down the road to the pit toilet. I was so grateful that the kids did not wake up the entire time so I never had to venture to the toilet with any of them either. What an adventure! We both agreed that the benefits of the campground, and the fun of the rest of the trip, were so good that we would visit that place again. But before we do, we are investing in our own port-o-potty for our tent and a cow bell to clang to scare off any other bears! |
