Smile yourself happy

I've finally bitten the bullet and plunked down a lot of cash to book a house for a 'vacation' with the triplets. I picked a lovely 5 bedroom house on the Russian River, which is only about an hour and a half from here. It's also only 30 min north of the grandparent's house in Petaluma, so I'm not stretching too much. All hell breaks loose and we can come scurrying home with our tail between our legs. Being only 30 from the in-laws also means if we forget things we are easily in reach of it or a walmart at any time. And if they fall and crack their fool heads, we are 15-30 from the nearest big town with a hospital.

Now where the nearest mental ward is I am not sure.

Triplets preparing their lounge chair act

In any case, I am trying to put a positive attitude on for this, since it scares me silly to be 10 days without a nanny to help out. I am contemplating ways to have help come but other than conscripting friends, I'm not sure. But I'm certain I have to be the positive one or it will go to heck for sure. If momma ain't happy....you know? So I'm going to try an experiment. This might shock some of you who know me well, but I'm going to try not to think of everything that could go wrong and I'm going to put a smile on and arrive like we're going to have the best time ever.

Think it'll work, this brain transplant idea? Because I never think of my worst case scenario thinking as a truly bad thing. Just know I'm always prepared for the worst and if the best happens, how great. Is it really worse to think the worst and then truly enjoy when you're wrong or than to think the best will happen and sometimes be disappointed? I don't know. In high school I was voted most pessimistic. So I believed I was. But in recent years I figured out it's not actually true. I am quite the optimist in most situations. What people misunderstand about me is that my sarcasm and dry sense of humor picks out the terrible things, the possible nightmares, the dark stuff, and uses that as fodder. So my jokes are negative, dark or possibly pessimistic. I'm not.

There are a few people in my life who have just not gotten this. They are not my friends ever if for long. If you think I'm just a complainer and griper, why would you want to be my friend? But is it their lack of sense of humor that is the problem or am I sometimes too much to take? Hard to say. Sure it annoys me when someone tells me I'm too negative or to lighten up. But I usually am just shocked. I'm sitting there at a wedding saying I hope the bride doesn't notice that the waiters just screwed up and someone thinks I'm being negative. Um, I'm empathizing with the bride? Or possibly I'm having a little fun making fun of the waiter? Or possibly I'm just making conversation? Or, heck, maybe I'm being a little snarky, but that's not a crime.

But I digress. I am a positive person or I would not be surviving triplets. I am a positive person or my mom would have me in the psych ward right along side her sometimes. I am a positive person because despite my misgivings, in three weeks I am packing up my entire house into a minivan and heading north for a week. Wish me luck.

Mom's a crab

You know, when I was a single, stupid, ignorant fool, I thought my friend was a little hard on her kids. She had three pre-teen to teen age girls (actually she had 5 but the other two were all grown up) and I hung out a lot with them. She would place them all in the back seat of a car and within 10 minutes there was whining, crying, or complaining about the abuse from the other occupants of said backseat by one of the three if not more. She would very rapidly move from talking normally to telling them in no uncertain terms that they could be left by the side of the road to walk home if they did not SHUT. UP. Well she never used the words shut up, but you know what I mean. Speak and die.

I always cringed a bit, I mean, I was one of those in the backseat once and it is HARD to get along for too long together with your sibling. Isn't it? I thought, I know they're annoying but shouldn't you have more patience? But I knew I thought she was a great mom and the kids honestly loved her to bits and her life is hard so I decided to drop my judgement and assume that she knew what she was doing. But I didn't forget feeling like maybe she needed to chill a bit.

Well. Hmm. Lets see here. Due to the lack of sleep acquired during 4, count 'em, 4 bouts of colds with triplets that has now even devolved to the point that two are on nebulizers to stop wheezing, which means I have not had a REM cycle in approximately 8 weeks and actually means I feel more tired than I did with three newborn triplets, I officially hang my head in shame. Oh that I judged a mother of many children ever. I mean, these kids are lucky I haven't left them out for recycling yet. By accident at least if not on purpose. I AM TIRED.

And if they have one more fight over the one toy out of a thousand that they own that two of them wants at the same time? I am not responsible for my actions. I have confiscated toy after toy some days because of this endless battle. As soon as one kid picks up a toy someone else wants it too. They love sitting in the toy box that does not comfortably fit 2 of them in it but god knows, they will all three try to climb in once one of them has. The toy box itself has been removed from the room when the only other choice was to stuff them all in it and close the lid, which, I'm told, is child abuse unfortunately. But at least they'd all be happy that they were in it? Not?

People, I'm losing my mind. The universe is trying to kill me one night at a time. I am now that crabby mom I always wondered about! I hope to heck my kids remember me as happy. Perhaps they will once they stop picking up every illness being passed around. Perhaps it's just a mom of siblings thing? Maybe the fighting just wears so fast that you just end up snapping faster than seems called for. Because it is also inevitable that the most fighting happens when everyone is the most crabby from being sick or tired and that is just a recipe for disaster.

Free me!

There are so many triplet moms out there who do so much more with their kids than I do. I feel like I've been trapped inside my house for years since it started when I was an 800 lb pregnant woman. I mean, sure, we go to the park in the mornings and we've been to the zoo and the Discovery Museum in Sausalito (which rocks) but being on Facebook puts my life in a sad perspective. These women are off to lakeside cabins, barbecues, trips to mountains and beaches, playdates and relatives' houses far away.

What am I doing sitting on my arse? I thought it was a triplet thing that had me so homebound. You know, my usual shtick about how you all with the one baby can miss a nap and only have one crabby baby but I am NOT having three missed naps and crabby children. NOT. I mean I'm not insane right? Kids who have missed naps are miserable. Nightmarish even. They look like this:

Actually I have no pics of angry children because we never. miss. naps.

The one time I took a 'vacation' with the triplets about 3 hours north to a beach like area it felt like more work. I mean, I do have a nanny to help most mornings and on vacation? Not. So how is it a vacation when it's more work and harder than my 'regular' life? How would a lakeside cabin be any fun if I can't actually sit still on the porch and look at the lake? Except after bedtime? It just doesn't work for me. And as for barbecues, I'd have to run after children in someone's possibly unfenced backyard or a crowded beach area constantly. How do I enjoy that? I suppose friends would chip in and watch one or more kids for me while I stuff a little ribs in my face?

I mean I go to weddings where people get to bring their one beautiful moody baby but the couple can take turns. We can't! I couldn't get an appetizer down, much less a whole wedding dinner if I brought the triplets. So I guess I have to take my hat off to you much more adventuresome moms. You're amazing. You're fantastic! You're....out of your freaking minds! Or is there a trick? Tell me please? Because I have been counting the days until I can take the kids to carnivals and fairs and go on a freaking vacation and they still seem years away.

Oh but I AM going on a Disney cruise when I win the lottery. SO. AM.

Aaaaaaaah. That's more like it.

Ok I'm back. thanks to a stretch of 4 or 5 hours and another of 3 that was given to me last night by my still sick but possibly drugged into submission children. No, I only drugged one. And she still woke up 4 times. But she spaced it out better. The night before she had done a 10, 11, 12, 2, 4, 4:10, 4:20, 4:30 thing that pretty much killed me. Not to mention the diaper explosion of B at 5:30 immediately following. I mean, when it rains, it pours, right? I'm hoping that when I head in there this morning I will find then all over the third cold and A's eye will just turn out to have been a cold symptom and not have turned into pinkeye overnight. That would suck. Because my chances of not having three pinkeyes? Miniscule.

It's amazing how you can have night after night of miserable sleep and just one night with a longer section or two can completely revive you. I feel like a human being today. I can handle whatever thousand things I should be doing, smile at my kids, make it through without counting the seconds to bedtime the minute they get up from their nap and so on. Or I think so. The rest of the day remains to be seen. The first order of duty is a shower. Somehow with or without help, showering on the weekends is a lost cause. And yesterday? Just too tired to step into the box. So I stink. And tonight is date night. Gotta try to look good at least because hubby does.

I am fairly certain, however, that something must go wrong. For goodness' sake I have 3 toddlers. I am dreading a visit to the dr today. I am prepared for pinkeye so that wont send me but you just never know and I have a bad feeling. I have learned that my bad feelings are generally right on. I'm like a bloodhound on the trail of bad news. I'm sure you'll all be waiting on the edge of your seat for an update...

Birthed child pains

The pain of children doesn't end at childbirth. Sure, it was more direct during that pregnancy thing. Bladder kicks, stretching muscles and tendons, hemorrhoids, and the usual discomforts, not to mention the actual birthing process, I don't care how the baby or babies come out. It all hurts and it hurts a. lot. For some reason we choose to subject ourselves to it more than once quite frequently but we don't realize what we're in for in the long haul do we? The whole stinking process of raising kids is painful, and I'm not talking about the mental stuff!

First, there's the back breaking lifting and carrying and toting and rocking and walking of the baby or babies. My back hurt like hell during the first few months! I still don't now how women wear those baby carrier things, my shoulders would ache for days after. Sure, I had huge babies but people wear those with their babies all kinds of sizes and I just don't see how.

Next, at some point you baby proof and baby gates are in half the doors in the house. Baby gates are not for keeping kids in or out of a room, they're for torturing parents! Every time I walk in or out of a door I get a new bruise from knocking my thigh against the frame. I can't even open the things fast enough to keep from kicking the stupid gate on the way through. Unbelievable. Where's the stupid remote control that opens the door and slides the frame into the wall?

Then, inevitably, the kids decide you're a trampoline, punching bag, gym mat or whatever and start jumping on you, pounding on you, crawling all over you and generally treating you like a great big stuffed animal. Try telling them to be gentle when they realize that when they pound on your belly it jiggles in a very amusing way. Try getting them to stop jumping on you when they realize it's such a soft place to land. It just doesn't work.

Not to mention the endless round of unintentional head butts, book corner to cheek hits, plastic hammer whacks and random full on kicks by children not entirely sure how to coordinate their body parts yet. I have bruises all over, especially on my face, but that's probably because I'm stupid enough to lean in again and again while making smoochy smoochy noises to kiss bellies and faces and feet of flailing children. I suppose I'll never be able to resist. The learning curve is defeated by sheer hormonal attraction to baby belly. Ach.

I'm sure I've missed a few, but you get the general idea. Raising children is cause for many injuries, bruises, strains, headaches and general malaise. And I'm not even talking about the illnesses they give you. Cold after cold after flu after cold. Good gracious. I need a vacation.

On sleep

Speaking of evolutionary principles, what is the point of fighting one's bedtime till all hours when you know perfectly well you will be up at 6 am no matter when you fell asleep? It seems mighty counterintuitive seeing as how doctors have shown that inadequate sleep will affect you negatively in many ways. So why do toddlers fight their parents, sometimes for hours each night, about falling asleep in their beds and then spend the next day all bleary eyed and crabby for all to enjoy?

Of course it's not just the toddlers is it? How many of you adults out there fight your bedtime constantly? I say almost every day 'today I'm going to go to bed early because I feel like crap.' Does it happen? Oh no. Despite the fact that I know that my impatient, tired toddlers will be rattling their cages loudly and screaming starting as early as 6, I watch one more crappy show, read one more magazine, send one more email. I know I feel like my justification these days is that once the kids finally go to sleep I need a couple of hours to decompress but really? I'd feel better in the morning with less decompression and more sleep. And honestly? I didn't go to bed on time before I had kids.

So what is this about human nature? I'm a morning person and I still can't get into bed on time. So I spend my days dragging around trying to find the energy to play with three wildcats and rueing the lack of sleep I got last night, because in addition to my stupidity one or more babies may have had a bad night and awakened me 3 or 4 times for comforting, and I think to myself that there must be a reason we do this to ourselves? Perhaps the saber toothed tiger was on the prowl in early evening and we needed to be up to watch for it?

Calling Emily Post

Why is everyone's natural comment after hearing I had three babies, and especially after hearing I had one girl and two boys, "so you're all done now huh?" Is there some preset limit to how many babies a random person wants or should want? Or is the limit somewhat determined by how many you have at once? I never thought to ask a person after their third singleton child, "so I guess that's it for now eh?" Isn't it implying that the person questioning you kind of thinks you've had enough children for now, knock it off?

I am just curious if twin parents get this question if they have a boy and a girl. I assume that triplet parents of all girls or all boys tend to get asked if they're going to try for the other gender just one more time but perhaps not? Where does this preset limit of 3 kids per family come from? If I had four singleton children would that be too many? If I had only one kid is that too few?

And honestly, how many blog posts to I get to create using the stupid 'none of your business' questions people ask me because I've had triplets? Isn't it sad how much fodder I've been provided? Miss Manners would be horrified by half of the stuff that gets asked or said to moms of multiples. It's like we're all on Jon & Kate just without the TVs. Did we all sign the contract that allowed strangers to view our every move and question our every choice in life because we ended up with more than one baby exiting our wombs at one time? Somehow I missed that contract but I suspect it happened while I was recovering from delivery and high on vicodin. I can't think of another 'affliction' one might have in life that allows people to ask you so many invasive questions. People avoid disabled people, they don't query them on how they got that way and what they plan to do next. They pray for sick people, they don't ask them stupid questions. Or maybe they do.

Is it possible that Americans have just lost their manners? I wonder if I had triplets in Europe if the same stupid stuff would have been asked of me. I can probably extrapolate that in Asia I would have just been praised and congratulated based on the first generation immigrants in my neighborhood. But elsewhere, I wonder. Anyone have any ideas? Are Americans just losing track of how polite people behave? I suppose it's probably true since TMZ and US magazine make so much money off of celebrities' failures. Oh well. Here's hoping I raise mine better.

Triple the fun

"You've got your hands full." As people have said this a million times to me in the last 16 months I have given it much thought. Do you think that I could find any parent of toddlers or even one single toddler who doesn't think their hands are full? I have had a theory for a long time that life with baby or babies is just like having a purse. You know that no matter how big a purse you buy you will fill it to the brim with crap. Suddenly you need one of those tissue packs, an extra pencil, perhaps a note book or a small book to reed if you get stuck in line, a little extra make up for touch ups and so on. If you had a clutch, you'd be fine with an id, lipstick, credit card and a few dollars.

Well having kids in your life is similar, if sort of the opposite way. If you have one kid you find that there are a million things you need to do for them. You will spend every waking second chopping food for home made baby food, sterilizing equipment repeatedly, plotting graphs of diapers and bottles, and staring into their eyes lovingly. If you have three infants at once you economize your time. Your infants are lucky if they get some rocking, one nap on your chest, a clean spoon in their mouth, and organic food processed by a corporation. You just have to adjust or you can't survive.

If you try to do everything for triplets you would fall down dead. So, triplets seem to adjust, they get used to soothing themselves sometimes, spend a lot of time in swings or bouncy chairs while someone else has a 'greater need,' and share every single cold with one another because of shared spoons. Now, do they suffer for this? I don't know. Because I believe most parents with more than one kid will admit that child #2 got less stuff and attention than child #1. "First child syndrome" which I have heard it called, means the first child sleeps in your bed until they're 2, rarely touches the floor for being held so much, is practically attached to you by the umbilical cord still. Child #2 gets less partly because you have to spend time with #1 as well but also because the novelty has worn off. It's not the first baby smell, the first co-sleeper, the first burp. So, do triplets suffer for never having been an only child? I suppose not more than second children suffer. But we won't find out until therapy begins.

This old house

Oh my poor house. First it has to suffer the indignities of three cats. Peeing in closets, barfing on stairs and under beds, pooping just slightly out of the litter box on the bathroom floor. What a life. This beautiful 1914 sophisticated house with original wood floors and doors and plaster walls. It was not built for a cat loving woman who lets animals be animals and presumes that if a cat is misbehaving it is the human's fault. How horribly unfitting for a grande dame of a house to have furballs ruling the roost.

But then it gets worse. Babies arrive. Not just one cute manageable tug with some misplaced drooling and smelly diapers but three. Three drooling, running, pooping, eating, food throwing, tissue scattering, cat chasing, garbage eating, sticky fingered children. Unmanageable. Except by the rule of gates and bars on the windows and locks and catches screwed into the original wood work on each door. Plaster drilled into and abused for the cause of children not falling down stairs, climbing up stairs, sticking fingers into kitchen appliances, touching breakables, opening windows, cracking open heads or generally not getting into places they are not allowed.

So here I sit in the prison that has been made out of a beautiful home. Gate after gate in door after door and stairwells as well. Latches made for smarter people than I, window gates, doorknob protectors and so on wondering, how the heck am I ever going to sell this house to anyone else with all these holes in it?

Walter the nightmare pooch

Product warning: Walter the Farting Dog, a toy we have possessed for over a year, a toy which was a mainstay of my daughter's crib because she loved it, has the potential for a total meltdown. Yes, one night, while you're watching some DVR-ed crap on TV and enjoying reading your blogs, you will hear over the baby monitor "thbthpthbthpthb." Then a minute later "thbthbtpthbbb." And again, and again. Until you decide that your daughter must have her foot on the dog, causing its unintentional flatulence at a critical juncture of the sleeping period of three, count them three, easily perturbable babies.

So you'll tip toe into their nursery, reach for the dog, right where you remembered it from checking on your daughter earlier, and at the moment you grab it you will find, to your horror, that it will go completely bezerko. Like some stuttering rap star of farting, it will begin to fart incessantly but in a staccato rhythm that is so very not conducive to sleeping triplets. Instantly you will step into hyper speed, exiting the nursery at the speed of light while praying simultaneously to every god in the pantheon that not one triplet will be disturbed by this insanity of a fart festival.

I am now sitting in my living room listening to the last and dying farts of a Walter the farting dog. Somewhat sad at it's passing, but also somewhat relieved that it is shutting the heck up after trying to wake all three of my damned babies! Heed my warning parents! This is NOT a good crib toy!

A public service announcement from yours truly.

The view from here

Why do people assume that just because I have triplets I am the authority on Jon & Kate or the octomom? It seems that ever since I got pregnant I've been being asked about J&K, as if perhaps that's where I got the idea to become a triplet mom? Or is it that the minute I found out I was pregnant with triplets I must have tuned into that channel to learn everything I can from the most famous multiples mom around?

I'm not saying I don't have opinions. I do. Anyone who knows me knows I have opinions. However, having triplets does not make mine carry any more weight than yours. It does not make me an expert on crazy people with multiples. Because, and listen carefully here, I AM NOT CRAZY. Therefore, I am not an expert on crazy plus multiples. Oh yes, I believe I just spilled my opinion that I think both of the above (or I guess all three?) individuals are nuts.

But the truth is that perhaps I do have some insight into these situations. Why sell your soul to the devil to make money to take care of your multiples? Because the alternative is impossible: to work full time and care for them adequately. So, perhaps a deal with the devil makes economic sense even if, in the end, the devil seems to be winning and all you may actually end up with is money and material goods.

Situation number two, what to do with all of your frozen embryos? Well, while I am plenty pro choice and do not believe that life begins at conception, but I can tell you that I became pretty darn attached to those little pre-reptiles in my uterus once they were implanted. I can claim that I never would have had more than 3 at once, but that's pretty easy to say having never had to make that decision. Had I been told they needed to put in 6 embryos to ensure one stuck, I would have taken that choice. I know that does not appear to be the situation of octomom, but what to do with one's leftover embryos? Don't sit on your high horse and claim you know what you would do unless you, yourself, have struggled through infertility and created those proto-babies on ice. I didn't make enough to freeze so I abstain from judgement of wanting to have each one get a chance at life, I just might have spread them out a wee bit more. Honestly, if you want the woman to suffer for her choice to have them all at once, do not worry. Raising multiples is not cake no matter how much help you have.

So, you have my opinions. They are not worth more than anyone else's. Now stop asking multiples' parents what they think about these two issues! Because it annoys us to be lumped in with some people that the world judges poorly. Does it mean you judge us too? Probably. Yes, I know that a lot of people do judge me based on their assumptions about fertility treatments, but I can still wish it would stop. I had no choice but to try everything they offered because my chances were pretty stinky. I beat the odds, but someone has to be the 1 in 100,000 who has 3 of 4 embryos implant. Someone has to be the 1 in a million who has 8 babies from 6 embryos, and you can't make that happen. It just does. And then you live with the consequences.

If I had it to do over again, I'd take my consequences any day. They're awful cute...

The queen makes her demand

Sometimes I wish the words "Triplet Mom" were tattooed on my forehead. At least then people would understand why I stood there with my greasy pony tailed hair, stained t-shirt (my husband's since I don't fit into my own), tattered jeans with front butt and flip flops displaying my way beyond non-manicured toenails. I mean I want to wear a medal or something that I even got out of bed this morning and instead these people just think I'm a flake or some sad fashionless idiot who has no idea how bad she looks! That's just not fair. I suffer. Greatly. Daily. And nightly. Right?

No, it's funny the dichotomy of a multiples parent when it comes to attention. I'm sure I don't speak for all of them but I'm sure I'm not the only one who has two different reactions to attention depending on how it's given. First, I hate the people who are dumb enough to say things like 'you poor thing' or 'you sure have your hands full' and far, far stupider things that you would be surprised to hear if you are not a multiples parent. I mean the very fact that having more than one baby at a time somehow gives people the right to inquire how I got pregnant in the first place makes you want to smack your forehead a little bit. I want to know why I don't get the congratulations, the 'how wonderful' that 'normal' pregnant and new moms get. (Except from the Asian community, which I love, because not only do they think it's fantastic that I have three babies, three being a magical number, but that two of them are boys, how lucky could I get?) So, obviously, this is the negative side of attention that had me wishing we were invisible when I walk my huge stroller down the street.

But then there's the other side of the coin. The side that had me strolling past Robin Williams' house daily with my triple decker stroller, when the babies were just infants, hoping he might look out the window and run across the street because he wanted to 'do a bit' on the ridiculous stroller or the realities of having multiples. That's the part of me who wants to always wear a shirt that somehow announces that I have triplets so that unaware people might make their shocked comments about how great I look (even if they do tack on 'for a lady with triplets.') It's the part of me who, at my mothers day dinner, made sure the waiter knew I had triplets, and pretty much anywhere I go finds a way to bring triplets into the conversation so I can show them a picture on my iphone. I mean, there is a little attention whore inside of me who I do not recognize!

Oh yeah, look at me, look at me!

Actually, I do recognize her. She's the one who planned my wedding and wanted everyone to know it was my wedding day and made sure that it was all about me and that beautiful dress walking down the aisle. Oh yes, I remember her. She's the one who also would love someone to take me to a Mexican restaurant, put that stupid sombrero on my head and sing me the happy birthday song just so everyone know's it's my birthday. I have to admit. I am quite familiar with this side of me. But since I've had triplets she's been more present than not, because I was only a bride-to-be for a year, only have a birthday once a year, and was only pregnant for 9 months. I am a triplet mom every stinkin' day and I want credit dammit.

Where's my crown?