Oooh that little....#2

Oh them crazy kids. You go through all the trouble of training them at night by not responding to every cry and they start sleeping through the night (say at 6 months of age?) only to find that 6 months later you're right back where you started. Somehow, unbeknownst to you, child A has started a pattern of waking every night at 4 am, sounding like she's had a nightmare. So you rush in, night after night and stupidly wonder, why the increase in nightmares? Maybe she's going through a developmental change? Maybe she's getting sick?

No. She's just training your stupid butt to get up every night at 4 am and pat her. Sure the first time was innocent, she probably did have a nightmare. But nights 22 and 23? Probably not so much. So it takes an aside question, asked while at the doctor's office for freaking hand, foot and mouth disease, about supposed increases in nightmares around this age to be set straight. Because the kind doctor in all his wisdom basically tells you that you're being taken for a ride.

How did I not recognize this for the 89th time? I mean how many times does one of my children have to take advantage of my kindly sleepy stupid self before I realize it on night 2 instead of night 22? Or rather, before someone else calls it to my attention? I mean duh? Every night at 4 am she has a nightmare? Really? Is sleep that predictable?

And another question I'd like answered. How is it MORE disruptive to B's sleep when I go in and shut that girl up within moments (tiptoeing silently as humanly possible) than leaving her caterwauling for 20 minutes? But oh it is! The minute I turn that doorknob, silently mind you, because I have developed the instincts of a ninja when it comes to making no noise, that boy is up and looking for attention. And god forbid I give attention to the screaming child first, he then screams himself. Or heck, even if I give the screaming child second shrift? He still screams when I give someone else attention.

So, my nights are about to get easier. I have, for the past 2 nights, lain in bed listening to the varying cries of my daughter, and she is inventive I must add. I have struggled, felt guilty, analyzed every nuance of those cries, because she changes them up just to throw me off. And yet, she is alive in the morning. Smiling, happy. And we are both more rested. What a freaking paradox children are. Now the trick is to find all the other ways they are fooling me. Think I stand a chance?

Did I what?

Another one of the strange questions I get a lot when people hear I have triplets is "did you know you were having triplets?" To which I must say "huh?"

Do people really think, in this day and age, that a person can grow three babies inside them and not have a clue? Do they not understand the nature of ultrasounds? Do they not realize that everyone has an ultrasound at some point in their pregnancy? Do they not think about the fact that three babies takes up more room than one during the incubation period? Do they watch too much TLC and see those nutty women who didn't even know they were pregnant and think we're all oblivious that way?

Because you'd have to be pretty unaware, and by unaware I mean stupid, to not know that you're getting awfully pregnant looking awfully fast when you have triplets. And I don't just mean skinny girls, large ladies also can tell that they have triplets. It's a huge pregnancy. And you start to show at 6 or 7 weeks. "Normal" single baby pregnancies don't show until 4 or 5 months which is why they get to keep their pregnancies a secret from everyone first trimester. Here's what I looked like at the end of my first trimester. Think I coulda fooled anyone?

So, I tend to look really confused at people who ask me if I knew I was having triplets. I try to clarify if they mean to be asking me that other stupid question "did you try for triplets?" or if they really mean did I make it full term without knowing and find myself in the delivery room being told it was a boy, a boy and a girl. No, it was shocking enough at week 8 to be told there were three embryos. You'd have to live far far away from medical treatment to make it with a triplet pregnancy and not know it. So the fact that I live in the bustling metropolis that is San Francisco kind of would indicate that I was likely to have good prenatal care, wouldn't it?

It's a good think I'm actually quite pleasant in public because this kind of question is the type that makes you quickly put on a poker face to avoid looking at someone like they have two heads. I mean, asking me if I 'tried' to have triplets isn't much better because how exactly does one 'try' to have triplets but I guess someone who has never had a baby or had a friend have a baby (how cloistered do you have to be?) might not know anything about prenatal care? Or am I making excuses for plain old dumb people?

You have to start somewhere

I'm finally getting off my butt to put words into a computer with the thought that some people might enjoy reading it. It's a shocking idea to someone like me that people might enjoy my sarcastic ramblings and dry as toast commentary on life as a triplet mom and daughter to a crazy lady but apparently I should believe it. Throughout my life I have been told I'm funny so my goal is to create a funny blog with some poignant moments. Let's hope you find enough entertainment to keep reading the next day or at least every once in a while.

I think probably the most important topic to cover today is stupidity. This topic can never get enough press to cancel out all the stupidity in the world and yet it's worth bringing up because as a parent of multiple children of the same age, you run into stupidity on a regular basis. Take last week at the toddler gym class I attended with my three children, MIL and a nanny. First, one encounters the people who apparently didn't even look at the kids who ask if I have all boys. My daughter, for those of you who don't know me, is invariably dressed in pink. A pink shirt, pink polka dot pants, a pink dress or even, occasionally, a blue dress with a pink design on it. She also sits up front in the quad stroller. The most prominent child they are looking at. Does this help? No, apparently not. She is unceremoniously lumped in with her two brothers as if she looks just like them. I don't know about you, but not many American moms dress their sons in pink. Not if they don't have some serious issues that don't get talked about much in public they don't. So, I ask you, if you're so gosh darned interested in my triplets, why not take a look at them first? Is it impossible to notice the dress? The shirt that says 'pink is the new black' or 'cutie pie?'

Next the inevitable "are the boys identical?" Again, for crying out loud, are you even looking? Because one of my sons has blindingly blond hair and the other has dark brown hair. Fine, he has blond highlights but you have to squint to see them so if you can't see that my daughter is, well a daughter, then you couldn't possibly have mistaken his hair for peroxide blond. Now, stupider still are the people who seem to be looking at my triplets and then ask "are they all identical?" Um, no. That's a girl, and they are boys. That's not the definition of identical my friends. Not at all.

But we worked past all that and it's all old hat by now to endure the barrage of stupid questions and the slightly better but still annoying refrains of 'how cute' coming from people who, again, have not actually looked at the children, they just think anything that comes in threes is by far cuter than anything in fewer numbers. So we're here just auditing this gym class to see if we want to sign up for an actual session of several weeks and so grandma and I and the nanny are racing around trying to comply with the orders of the gym instructor to run our child in circles, and roll them over in a somersault and drag them back to the parachute for some 'fun,' and we're breathless and sweaty and overwhelmed and a lady turns to me and asks "do you have help with those things?" Uhm, what? Things? Ok, first off, who do you think is chasing after and holding my daughter and who is rolling my son over and over to his delight while I hang onto this other boy of mine while he tries to run away from the parachute? Strangers? People I found on the street and asked to help? Er, no. Again, is it impossible for stupid people to look around and assess a situation before they ask a question? Or is that just stupidity in its essence? The lack of wisdom to open one's eyes before one begins a query? Perhaps that should be the definition. Webster? Oxford? Opinions?

Now I haven't even addressed the fact that this lady called my children "things." And, no, she didn't retract it and say "oops, I meant babies" or act appalled that she called them things at all. No, her stupidity remained on solid footing. This question may rank highest in my list of all the stupid things people have asked me in my 15 months of motherhood. I'll have to think on that one because there's no one who has ever before referred to my children as inanimate objects. She may have the crown. And it was not a one time experience for her because on our way out of the gym she picked up a child who was not her own and held her while she screamed for her momma because, as she explained, 'the child was in the way.' Needless to say, the mom was highly displeased that A. her baby had been picked up by a stranger against her will and B. that stranger was so stupid that she didn't put the child back down when she started screaming or think that she had done anything wrong. So I feel quite comfortable in stating that this woman may be the stupidest woman I've ever run into to date. Thankfully, since I hated the gym situation, we will not be back but you never know where we might run into her again. She does live across the bridge!