Reality bites

So, the reality is I don't feel like writing. Heck I don't feel like getting out of bed in the morning either, but I have to do that. Coming back to the 'real world' that I inhabit? Sucks. Because every day is the same thing. Or rather, every week is the same routine. I have bright spots in every week to look forward to, date night, one morning with time to myself, but that's about it. But I had freedom for 4 days.

Freedom.

That is hard to recover from. I had the choice of when to get up (relatively because I did have obligations I went for) where to go, and what to do when I got there. I got to hang out with old pre-children friends. I got to be my old animal rescuer self. I got to be brilliant at a 'job.' I forgot about the internet (mostly intentionally because the hotel wanted to charge me $13 a day for the privilege of checking my email) and forgot about the daily grind of mothering and got to just be.

I also got to remember why animal people drive me batty. Actually, I've had a theory and corollary for some time: "Animal people are crazy" is the theory, or honestly? The Truth. Capital T. It just is true. The corollary is "Animal people who fixate on one particular animal are craziest." Thankfully I did not run into the latter. But the weekend was full of the former. Sure I include myself in this collection of crazy. I used to have a cat rescue. One has to be crazy to have 23 cats in a house that pretty much has to then reek of cat urine. I don't know why you can't keep the smell down, but the reality is you don't actually smell it if you sleep and eat there. You just don't notice it. I'm definitely crazy. But I was not overboard. I like all animals. I just "get" cats the best so I chose that one to rescue. I also did not become the crazy cat lady with 100s of cats running through the walls and eating each other's dead carcasses like you read about in the news sometimes. So I know I'm not totally nuts.

But it's good to spend some time back amongst my tribe of crazy. Animal people are well intentioned. Several of them actually get along with people too, and that's who I spent my time with this weekend. The director of this particular animal rescue is 'da bomb.' She is non judgmental, funny, smart, and can laugh at herself as well as her circumstance any time. That's the way to be people. If you can't laugh at yourself you really need to loosen up. But when you choose a life of animal rescue it is imperative, nay, life saving, to be able to laugh because of all the pain you experience through the suffering of innocent animals. And when your family consists of over 200 farm animals of varying shapes, sizes and disabilities? Your life is full of humor.

So, I spent my time either at the 'farm' with happy people and happy animals, or resting and recovering from a cold from hell with a good book. It's hard to come back. Day one, same old thing. Grumpy, fighting kids. Crazy mom with annoying judgments. Wake up, feed and clothe kids, entertain, feed, nap, entertain, feed, get them ready for bed, sigh with relief when it's all over. And being away for 4 days did make me miss them, but that sense of ennui comes back like a ton of bricks the minute it begins again.

I think I need a new job.

Homecoming

Well, we made it. 10 days in the sweltering/freezing mecca of nothing that is Forestville on the Russian River. When we first arrived, as you could tell by my post, the house seemed like a disaster. I always amazes me how photographers know how to make a place look huge and then you get there and it's a box. I was horrified to find a tiny living room, dirty floors, dark bedrooms and so on. But the house grew on me after a bit. It turned out to work out ok in terms of layout. Childproofing was a bit hard but we figured things out and we settled in. The kids really didn't even act funny the first night or day like it was strange we were in a new place. I was shocked, but I guess we tired them out at the pediatrician that morning so they went to sleep and slept well. The best a mom can hope for the first night at a new place.

I am wondering how to make this blog funny. So far, just ho hum.

I think I'll have to be funny starting tomorrow when I start relating anecdotes of our trip. Suffice it to say, plenty of funny things happened and some unpleasant ones too, but not many. I learned that I can survive days upon end without a nanny, although I had a lot of help obviously. I bonded better with the kids, although I may have been witnessing the beginning of separation anxiety as J spent 70% of his time in my lap and whimpered at the door to the kitchen when I was in there. We had some major behavior issues with B who has become quite defiant, but let's cross our fingers that its a phase. A is definitely hyper active and literally can not sit still if she's not sleeping. God help us all.

I've been struggling with coming back here and going back to the routine of letting someone else have the 'fun' part of the day with the kids most days. I mean we go out and do things in the morning with the kids, not much in the afternoon. The other option is to start doing things in the afternoon but if they nap well there's only an hour and a half before dinner really. What can we do in that amount of time? And I get so slow having run errands myself all morning, its hard to do something with all three kids in the afternoon. On vacation we did stuff in the mornings and let the kids play on the deck in the water table or pool in the afternoons. I sat and recovered from the morning. I then had energy to cook actual meals in the evenings. If I run all day? Not a chance I'll make it. So then I'd have to take the whole day with the kids in order to do the fun stuff with them. But I can't really do it alone. Going to the zoo with three mobile kids sounds like ultimate stupidity. And I can't see myself making the nannies take me with them since they'd probably rather hang out with their other nanny friends.

I don't know. I am only going to get more pregnant and less able as time goes on. Another thought I had was taking one kid at a time some mornings of the week for one on one time. I am not sure if they would miss each other or not. Perhaps they prefer each other to me? You just never know.

So, I return with much to reconsider and think about. But it was lovely to put the kids to bed and then have a great deck with a view to sit on and watch nature. As long as you were willing to ignore the trucks and semis and motorcycles with no mufflers that were constantly filling the quiet air with their noise pollution. We won't come back to this place but we will find a place nearby and without traffic noise to return to. All in all, a successful trip!

art break

We tried to entertain them with art one morning, you can see the play dough and fingerpainting J was trying to maintain control over simultaneously.
While the art was a success, all over the paper, their clothes and the deck furniture...
It was barely 45 minutes of entertainment. In a 3 hour morning. Good lord children have the attention span of gnats. And naturally, we had literally nothing else with which to entertain them besides our silly smiles and exhausted clown faces.

We have found that we must take them somewhere where they can run approximately 8 miles total in a small containable area in the mornings, or else the day goes to hell. They are all going to be marathoners, it's clear. While the rest of us will be in physical therapy for the next few months....

Train Town.....Woo Woo!

Daddy, B, Mommy, J, Grandma, A, strangers plus baby

Daddy and B, Mommy and J

Grandpa and A

A successful morning and a lazy afternoon recovering. It sure takes everything out of a 5 man team keeping triplets occupied at an 'amusement park.' Just ask us when we try to pry ourselves out of bed tomorrow. Oh god, there is a whole tomorrow to fill too isn't there?

Day one: a rousing success

Day one has been accomplished, and all went well. Except that I didn't get to sit down but once for 20 min the whole stinking day. But we have established that one kid loves the water, one thinks it's ok but she's going to keep to the shallows and the third is not going to have anything more to do with it after one false landing including water in the face.

I'm exhausted. Nice place if you could find a house without an interstate running past your bedroom window. Definitely worth exploring if there is a better house to rent.

Appearances may be deceiving

Well so far I am totally impressed with the way they took photos to make this place look huge. I mean, the photographer? Should be a professional real estate photographer. Made this place look like a mansion. And it is not quite how I imagined what with the back yard with 2 foot tall grass and down a set of stairs instead of something the kids could just run out to.

Also, the lack of air conditioning? Apparently is a problem. The heat is stifling in the house around 6 pm. What happens around 6 pm you might ask? Um, bedtime for triplets. So open a window you say? Um, apparently River Road, a most unassuming road winding through several small towns and villages between Santa Rosa and the coast is the busiest highway this side of the Mississippi. Especially at bedtime.

Yay. But, thanks to an eventful day full of shots (2, and not as painful because I insisted on some topical anesthetic I'd read about so they were much happier), a great pediatrician check up, visiting grandma's house for 3 seconds, a nap, and then 3 more seconds, and then arriving at a strange place full of sharp brick corners and kitchens with easily reachable household chemicals, we were exhausted. All of us.

They are asleep and I head that way too. We are not miserable, but things are not quite the rosy picture painted in the Russian River Rentals e-brochure. Oh no they are not. Because the housekeeper? Apparently doesn't do floors.

Where's the packhorse?

I just can't wrap my brain around how much crap I need to pack up and get ready for our trip on Friday. And I'm not trying really hard. I'm trying to get all the errands done this week and hoping that Thursday I can use my packing list to do a nice quick job of it. How does one even pack for 3 kids for 10 days?

First, there's the diapers, 6-8 diapers a day for 3 kids for 10 days. Just bringing a whole box. Wipes? We use a box of 700 each week. I guess I'm bringing a whole box. Laundry detergent, well thank goodness we can do laundry because then I don't have to pack 10x3 kids worth of laundry. Then there's the weather unknown. Is it going to be hot every day? Do we finally get to wear out the summer clothes that fail in San Francisco weather? Or is it going to be rainy some day, foggy ever, whatever?

Then there's the equipment. We have to bring toys, but how many? Books, videos, cameras, computers, pack n plays to sleep in, I mean why not just pack up the whole house? I do have a pretty large minivan. Then there's strollers, wagons, highchairs, baby pools, sand toys, life jackets......

I suppose the older they get the less we will have to bring. I have this fantasy that this house we are renting will be so great that we'll return year after year but I wonder. I hope they can play in the river, that would be a great change of pace. I hope the town is nice to wander through and has a park or two for the kids to play in while we eat lunch or something. I hope I get some time to read the apparently 8 books I will be bringing to read. I'd better not stay up late reading and make myself exhausted though.

I really hope this feels like a vacation. We will still have to cook for ourselves, clean, entertain the kids, put them down for naps and bedtime, bathe them, soothe their nightmares, and generally run a household, it will just be a different one. With fewer stairs. Let's hope that makes all the difference....

Funkariffic

So this weekend I got into a pretty good funk about the whole vacation thing. I looked up Disney Cruises, as if I could afford one, and found out that basically you need the kids to be 3 and potty trained, which, with two boys means at least 4. Which, with the proper math skills I can deduce to mean we are not going on a family vacation that I will enjoy for approximately 2 and 1/2 more years.

Kind of depressing. I put out a sad call to my multiples parents in the SF area to see if this was really true. I am craving a change of scenery. Dying for it. And yet, if it's just more work and I have to give up my morning help, then why would I do it? Is it really that refreshing to sit on a different balcony, perhaps staring at waves or a river, after the kids go to bed than staring at my tv at home? And if they sleep badly because they're in a new place? And if I can't keep them from escaping into the woods and so never get to sit down is that worth it?

I don't know. I'm trying to find a solution in some house I could rent on the Russian River or in Tahoe that has a fenced back yard, a different climate (anything different than cold foggy SF might be nice) and perhaps a beach, park or playground nearby or even better, a pool. There must be a way for me to 'get away' and feel ok about it. There must...