I've fallen behind on both the blog and Axel's quotes, so here's a few.  He's been on a roll lately.

Ax:  Look Mama, he has an eyepatch.
Me:  Don't put stickers on your brothers' faces.

[from the other room] Me: What are you doing in the sink?
Ax:  Ohh, just wasting water.

Ax:  Mama, what is this?
Me:  It's a teaspoon.
Ax:  I'm going to itch my butt with it.

Moving on . . .
We've had quite a time here with the ear infections, and Eero will be visiting the good-looking ENT doctor on Tuesday.  Good for him and me.  Magnus will also see him, and then they all have their 9 month check-ups, so we're excited to see how much they've grown.  Magnus seems to be super serious about eating and catching up to his brothers.  I think he's tired of being called the little guy.

That's most of the news here I guess.  I will attach some pictures now, because I think that's all people are really interested in anyway.  Then I will attach my columns to this post, and will write again next week after we know their sizes.

This is Axel two Thanksgivings ago, which I happened upon just now when looking for the pictures I took of the boys yesterday.

 This is us two Thanksgivings ago, with one of our most successful cooking experiences together.  See Jesse's pie to the right?  We're gonna try again this year for a repeat of beautiful turkey and pies, but that seems unlikely.  Stay tuned.

 Eero loves Cheerios, and likes to yell at the box when it appears before him.

Rex also loves Cheerios, but in a more subdued way.

 

 Magnus probably likes Cheerios the most, but you wouldn't know it from this picture.

 

High chairs are now overtaking our kitchen/dining area.  Booo.

My last two columns . ..

Parent Initiation

                Like most people, I could categorize myself as a lot of things; I am a student, a pianist, a baker, and a writer, apparently, to name a few.  Of course I am also a daughter, sister, wife, and, I have realized, a parent.  This would incite a sarcastic, “Picked up on that, did you?” from some people, my husband being the first . . . of course I know I have birthed four children and been defaulted into caring for them, but lately I feel I have crossed many rites of passage into the exclusive Club Parenthood.

                This really hit me yesterday when one of the babies (who can remember which?) coughed sweet potato puree in my face.  Nice.  As I toweled off and he laughed, I thought of all the things that have happened lately that only those with children have to, I mean, get to, experience. 

A few weeks ago I awoke to the sound of dry heaves and ran into the next room to find Axel puking in his bed.  I won’t go into the gory details, but it was the kind that made me want to vomit myself.  It was so random and unprovoked, and he was fine the next morning, but as I stripped the bed in the dark and took the disgusting sheets to the washing machine, I knew I was a real mom.

Ever been kicked in the head while you’re sleeping?  Me, too!  Somehow the Hurricane is mild enough in the night to climb up into our bed without waking us, but when he returns to a sleeping state he is as turbulent as he is in wakefulness.  I learn of his presence when I get kicked, elbowed, or cracked in the nose as he flops around unconsciously.  “When did Axel get in bed with us?” I ask Jesse the next morning.  “He crawled right over the top of you!” he often says to me.  I must have been tired for some reason . . .

Though we are a pretty messy bunch I try to keep us from being too dirty, but everything still gets covered with a thin, crusty coating of kid debris.  The furniture and flooring has become an abstract of milk, frosting, and mustard, among other things.  We could try not eating in the living room, but that seems unlikely as Jesse and I have always done that.  When I was young my mom had white carpet put in our living room and only she and Dad could eat or drink in there.  Dad spilled his coffee shortly after that.

The house is not the only disaster area.  All of my purses seem to develop a permanent layer of Cheerios in the bottom, and have at least one fruit snack or Junior Mint adhered to the lining.  Okay, the Junior Mints may be my fault.  Our vehicle, which when clean is quite impressive, has the same problem, and even if I vacuum it out, popcorn and French fries and chunks of granola bars magically reappear.

One of my favorite movies is Parenthood, a Steve Martin classic, and while I thought it was comical in my younger years, I am now emotionally involved in it as a parent.  We’ve regularly compared Axel to the kid who runs around with a bucket on his head.  And like that kid, he’s happy.  I highly recommend the movie to anyone with children.  It will pull on your heartstrings and, for most people I would guess, make you feel a little better about your own family, reminding us all that everyone has his own problems.

I also find myself enjoying different television shows as a parent.  I still adore Seinfeld, Friends, and Sex & the City, but I connect much more now to family-oriented comedies.  I am a combination of Debra from Everybody Loves Raymond, living a stone’s throw from my outlaws, and Jill, Tim Allen’s wife on Home Improvement, living with too much testosterone.  We own these shows in entirety on DVD, and when I need some sympathy I pop in a couple episodes.  That way no one else has to hear me whine.

A few months ago a baby peed on me as I was changing his diaper on the floor while Axel drove a remote control car back and forth across my feet.  I had to wonder what my life had become, and I briefly longed for the days when the house stayed relatively clean and we went to the movies whenever we felt like it.  But, like any good show, I am in the end reminded of the joys of parenting.  Three charming babies entertain each other on the floor, at least until the scratching and hair-pulling starts.  Our preschooler puts his own clothes in the hamper when he takes them off, without being reminded.  I almost cried the other night when he was proud to show me how he could write his own name (well, close enough).  And of course, there’s the chance hug accompanied by, “I always like you,” which is Axel’s highest compliment.  I guess we’ll keep them.

Our Ongoing Battle with Time

                Traditionally there are two specific occasions I wake up very early on purpose:  the Easter sunrise service and Black Friday shopping.  In the last few years this has expanded to include other early morning shopping trips, which is not necessarily because I want the deals but because I’m so excited to shop.  Sometimes, like over the last weekend, I was just excited to leave the house.

                I’ve never claimed to be a morning person.  For many years as a young person I would shuffle down the stairs each morning and not speak until I had my chocolate milk (this must be where Axel gets it).  If we were out of milk or Nestle Quik, watch out.  My dad, who got up early with a smile on his face to do chores, drink coffee, and watch the early morning news, loved to get under my skin about my unpleasantness.

                I married another non-morning person, so we never rose earlier than was absolutely necessary.  It makes our kind sound lazy, but we’ve figured out that we are night owls who prefer to stay up later and wake up later.  We’re not actually getting more sleep than the morning people, our waking hours are just shifted a little.

                As many of you know, having children changes all this.  Now that we are no longer in charge of when we wake up, we are both night owls and morning people.  Medical professionals push new parents especially to sleep when their babies sleep.  That’s nice in theory but most parents, new and experienced, know that the only time to get anything done is when the little ones are sleeping.  It would be tough to maintain the responsibilities of daily living if we napped and went to bed when our children did, and forget any extras like making phone calls or completing household projects.

                We have never needed to keep a regimented schedule at our house and so bedtime with Axel (our practice kid) was never a hard and fast rule.  We were also living in a wide-open basement for the first year of Axel’s life and so, with no walls or doors to shut out light and sound, he went to bed when we went to bed.  With a completed home and for the sake of our sanity we’ve made it a point to be better about bedtimes with our triplets, and they are very good sleepers.

                It’s been said at our house that if all babies were like Eero, people would have more babies.  He is pleasant and content 98% of the time, and since he was two months old has slept for 12 hours straight night after night.  Even when he wakes up in the morning he just plays with his blanket and babbles until we take him out of the crib. 

                Rex has become ever calmer since coming home from the NICU (where he was known to the nurses as “T-Rex” for being a little feisty).  We can’t really complain about his sleeping either, going for about eight or nine hours until waking up to eat, and then sleeping for another couple hours after that.

                Magnus, the little fighter, has had some minor medical issues that have prevented him from eating as much as his brothers and therefore has woken up to eat more regularly.  He has however made great strides in this area and can now be counted on to sleep almost as long as Rex.

                We had been putting the babies to bed, one at a time, between 8:30 and 9:30, which increasingly moved up to between 7 and 8:00.  Now enter daylight savings time.  I’m guessing this is all too familiar to parents of young children.  It really wreaks havoc on their sleep schedule.  The one hour time frame of 7-8:00 automatically jumped to somewhere between 6:00 and 7:00.

                After a day of taking care of three babies and a three year old, we are more than happy to take these crabby kids to their cribs a little earlier.  The time change affects Axel just a little – he was in bed about 10:00 before so now it is 9:00.  It would be suggested that we go to bed then and catch up on some sleep, but sometimes we just want to watch primetime television in peace or talk to each other without being interrupted by whiny babies or Axel asking us to make another fort out of the cushions.

                The problem with all of this is, of course, that if the babies go to bed at 6:00 they are up between 5:00 and 6:00 the next day.  Remember how I said we’re not morning people?  Monday morning all six of us were on the couch watching old Transformers cartoons by 5:15 (Jesse had the remote).  The chocolate milk was flowing.  I only like to get up for mega bargains or the Resurrection, not old boy-oriented cartoons.  Stupid daylight savings time.

               

               

               

               

Banner Columns 11/2 and 10/26

Good Health is Hard to Come By

                It’s been a bad week for us health wise.  The Snotsucker has been out in full force.  And we have a new pattern here – if someone has the sniffles, Eero has an ear infection.  Last week we took him to a follow-up to see if his infection had cleared up, and not only had it not cleared up, the other ear was infected, too.  The poor kid is so mild-mannered and showed no signs of being uncomfortable.  We had no idea.  Rex had a couple of teeth sprout, and he is not shy about letting us know he is uncomfortable.  Magnus is an all-around attention hog, so it’s been a very demanding time as parents. 

Sleeping through the night went by the wayside, and there were a few evenings we were up at least once an hour with between one and three children.  This has to be relatable for anyone with more than one child:  if one is crying in the night, we are half pleading, half whisper-shouting at him to be quiet so he doesn’t wake up anyone else.  The strangest part is that Eero, the one with documented illness, did sleep through the night.  We can always count on him for a solid twelve hours. 

                Luckily, as a parent of multiples, I am able to function relatively well on little sleep, but not for several nights in a row.  When I haven’t had a solid sleep for a while, I get a hideous cold.  Jesse has idiot sinuses that bother him regularly.  This has all come to a head over the last week or so.

                And let’s not forget Axel in our sleep-deprived, sick house.  He’s at a point in his life where slowing down is not an option.  There is just not time to be sick; toys need to be played with and messes have to be made.   We dined at the local bar and grill Friday night, a place we hit up regularly, and instead of his usual practice of running around the restaurant or shaking salt all over, he said his head hurt and curled up next to me in the booth.  Hmmm.

He woke up the next morning saying, “I feel good now,” but when he was uncharacteristically lying on the couch later that day, we knew something was up.  We broke out the “Nine Nine,” which is what he calls the thermometer, and got a pretty high reading.  Time for some medicine, we told him.  Then the freak-out began.

                The poor kid is not used to being sick, and not good at it.  At just a couple months shy of turning four, he’s had one ear infection and one bout of strep throat.  Other than an occasional runny nose, that’s it.  It was quite a battle getting him to lie still so we could shoot some liquid medicine in his mouth, and he spit most of it out in defense.  That night I thought he felt warm again, and before I even got the thermometer he was crying, “I feel good!  I feel good!”  The Nine Nine told us otherwise.

                This time we wised up and put the medicine in some chocolate milk, and though normally he could live on chocolate milk, it was quite an ordeal to get him to drink it when he knew it was tainted with medication.  I escaped to Willmar the next day for some essentials and picked up some alternative children’s drugs, including chewable acetaminophen and some grape Triaminic, which I remember being delicious to the point that I would fake sick so I could have some.  Since I arrived home with the new remedies he has not needed them, but they’ll be on hand in case he’s sick again in another couple years. 

                We really have been fortunate in terms of good health in our boys.  The little ones have done marvelously considering their chance birth and way into the world.  Also it’s a pain to take them out so they haven’t been exposed to very much I suppose.  Having never utilized official out-of-home childcare, Axel has also not been subjected to the germs that often get passed around there, but he has eaten his share of things off the floor and what he finds in the couch cushions.  I can’t stop him.  He’s also spent a fair amount of time in a filthy auto repair shop.  That must be the secret to healthy kids.

                Visit threebuns.blogspot.com for photos (Halloween!) and more from our crazy life.

Time Flies

                I have come to learn quickly my place in life now – as “the mom” and the only woman in the house, it is my job to get everyone and everything ready.  Ready for bedtime, for dinner, to receive company, ready to leave the house, etc.  It’s not something I volunteered for, but it is the natural progression of things around here and in other households it seems.

                My mom has mentioned on occasion her memories of her grandparents.  They would arrive at her grandparents’ home for Easter dinner or some other family gathering, and her grandpa would be cleaned up and dressed and leisurely sitting in the living room.  Her grandma would be running around like a crazy person in a robe and curlers setting the table and stirring the gravy and welcoming the guests.  Apparently this has been happening for generations.

                I remember, as a young child, getting ready to go to church or somewhere nice and my own mother running around in a robe and curlers, dressing us kids and wrapping up the food to bring along.  My dad sat patiently on the end of the bed in his robe, waiting for my mom to tell him what to wear.  Occasionally, if she was really on top of things, she would have his clothes laid out before he showered, but not always.  It was easier for him than getting dressed and having to change because his wife reacted with, “You’re not wearing that, are you?”  For the record, I don’t know if that actually happened.  At some point it must have for him to arrive at that notion of just waiting to be told what to wear.

                My husband can dress himself, thank goodness, but if we go away for the night – just the two of us or all six of us – I end up packing the suitcases for all of us.  How do men get out of these things?  I do enjoy fashion, and try to keep my family looking presentable in public (at home is another story).  I like to play dress-up with my little boys and think of it no differently than if I had girls.  But there is a lot of thinking involved in dressing five people, including myself, every day – especially if we are behind on the laundry.  Dressing six people for 2+ days can be exhausting, and with all the babes, we need to take into account possible bodily functions gone bad, which requires even more clothing.

                There is a lot of time and a lot of stuff involved in preparing four children to leave the house.  We try to give ourselves a window, as in “we’ll leave between 9 and 9:30,” then we know we’ll leave by 11:00.  Particularly if we are going to be in the car for a long time, we must make sure all the babies have eaten recently and are dry and generally happy.  Sometimes by the time we’ve taken care of the last baby it’s time to start again with the first one.

                Of course, we cannot leave out the Hurricane.  Getting him dressed takes just about as long as dressing the other three.  Some days he wants nothing to do with clothes and would prefer to stay in his jammies all day.  If we’re not leaving the house that day, he does stay in pajamas.  It’s gotten to the point where I will tell him it’s time to get dressed and then he asks, “Where are we going?”  Nowhere, I say, we’re just getting dressed for the day.  Why? he wants to know, and I don’t really know what to say.  There’s no good reason to get dressed some days.

                Anyway, dressing our oldest takes forever because he needs to jump up and down, run around, do a dance, show us how his train works, or some other random task, in between every step.  We’ve started letting him dress on his own to save time, but he almost always has his underwear on backwards or inside out or both, and that’s just the start.  We’re working on it.  I’m sure he’ll be thrilled in about 15 years that I’ve put that in the newspaper, but now he thinks it’s hilarious.

                Besides clothes we need to pack typical baby stuff like diapers, burp rags, bottles, formula, blankets, toys, etc., times three.  We need to make sure Axel has his chocolate milk fix and his blankie with the stars on it.  We have to get everyone in their seats and in the car and find ourselves some caffeine.  Depending on the duration of the trip we may need suitcases, cameras, laptop, or anything else we deem necessary to function.  Then we can leave.

                We’re getting pretty good at the routine of leaving now, and I can’t decide if it will get better or worse.  In a few years they won’t be so helpless, but will all the little boys be running around in between every step of dressing?  Will we be chasing them across the lawn (in four different directions) when we ask them to get in the car?  How long will it take us to get anywhere when they start asking to use the bathroom in every little town along the way?

                Ever wish you had more hours in the day?  Think of us, and then go leisurely sit in the living room while we’re still getting ready.

               

               

Bat Meets the Three Little Pigs

Let's start with Axel's quote of the week:
"Look, Mom, I made an X on the floor out of scratches!"
That's great, buddy.  Damn preschool.

We've had a tired couple weeks here, which I've spelled out in this week's column - more ear infections for Eero (he's so delicate!).  We've also had a lovely Halloween.  I'm just going to attach some pictures now and comment. . .

We decided to dress up our little ones as The Three Little Pigs.  They were not happy about it.  I figure it's the only time I can dress them in pink.

We tried to convince Big Brother that he should be the Big Bad Wolf, but he is hung up on bats and that is what he wanted to be for Halloween.  Notice the pigs are still not happy.

The bat flew around our yard for awhile after having his picture taken.

I just love the top view of the Little Pigs!  It's hilarious.

The front view is also hilarious.  Magnus defnitely has a "you've got to be kidding me" look on his face.  This picture will be with us forever - wedding slide show, here we come!

Eero didn't think it was so bad, but we still couldn't get a smile out of him.  Rex cried most of the time, so I didn't take any pictures of just him.  I should have, but he was just so miserable.

The bat had a hard time smiling, too - I think he thinks bats yell a lot.

We got a Jack-O-Lantern pizza from Papa Murphy's for supper.  We eat a lot of Papa Murphy's.

Here we all are.  Look, Magnus is smiling!  He must have temporarily forgotten about the pink pig outfit.

When Jesse and his dad buy a piece of machinery, they get the salesman to throw in a pedal tractor.  There are like 14 pedal tractors around, so I said maybe you could get something else.  This is what they came home with for the boys . . .

The plastic tires spin sometimes, but he just gets out and pushes.

I put the columns from this week and last in a separate post - missed posting last week but was kind of occupied with the ear infections and such.  Sorry.  Happy November!

Colorful conversations

What up?  Early this week, woo!

Here are a few things overheard in our family the last couple of days:

"Why is Magnus crying, Axel?"
"Well, I think he probably just hit himself."

"No, Axel, you cannot use the iPad for a plate."

"We always wear underwear at the dinner table."

Near the kitchen utensils in Target. . .
 "Look, Mama, knives for kids."
"They do not make knives for kids."
"But they are colorful, and that yellow one is just my size."
"They do not make knives for kids!"
"Why?"

Eero has recovered from his ear infection, so we're in good shape healthwise again.  We've finally got them eating rice cereal and baby food, and it's funny how they all take it differently.  Eero opens his mouth wide and leans into the spoon.  Rex licks the spoon like a dog; it never really makes it in his mouth, so a lot ends up on his chin and bib.  Magnus is not really interested in baby food yet, but loves to suck on pickles.  We've realized that, behaviorly, he is the most similar to Axel, so it will be interesting to see if he continues to follow that path as he grows.  Axel never got into baby food, and pretty much went right to cubes of cheese.

We've got a couple of seats that clip on to the island and they can sit in there and play and watch the activity in the kitchen.  May need one more, because that seems to keep them happy for quite awhile.  I leave them in the living room to play, but pretty soon they're crying because they don't know where I am.  Actually, sometimes it's because one is trying to pull the other's face off, or hitting someone with a rattle.  But sometimes not.

Here's my column for the week, and some pictures. . .

Not a quality image, but it's telling of the activity in our house - someone is sleeping and someone else is bugging him. . .

Magnus cannot be left alone in a bouncy chair, because in about two seconds he's flipped to his tummy.  He doesn't mind this, but has almost flopped out the top a few times, even when he's buckled.

Here is Rex's fuzzy head.

Jesse is hosting a panel discussion with E, Rexy, and Mags.

Again, kind of a fuzzy shot, but you can see Eero's starting-to-curl fuzz, and Rex's happy chubby face.  Love it.

Feeding the Masses

                We have a variety of eating habits at our house.  I grew up with a mom who didn’t enjoy cooking, though everything she made was good.  It wasn’t a matter of whether or not she was capable of decent cooking; she just didn’t care to do it very much.  She prepared simple meals that she knew we would eat.  We were never made to eat our vegetables or anything else we didn’t like.

My dad grew up in a family of nine children where they ate what was presented to them or they didn’t eat.  There was not much he didn’t like and so eating at our house was probably a huge disappointment for him (spaghetti again?).  Luckily, in that regard, he was an over-the-road truck driver who spent a lot of time away from home, regularly choosing for himself more satisfying meals.

On top of my limited experience with a variety of food, I have a texture issue.  There are many things that have a fine flavor, but I cannot tolerate the way they feel in my mouth, e.g. mushrooms, peas, Mike & Ike’s, etc.  This is a point of contention with my husband and my outlaws, but I just can’t help it.  Wouldn’t my life be easier if I loved all food?  I wish I did.  At the very least I wouldn’t have to have that conversation every time I passed over the cooked carrots during a Nelson family meal.

I have become much more adventurous as I’ve aged, and though I will probably never eat certain things I’ve developed some new favorites by keeping an open mind.  For the first 20 years of my life I thought I didn’t like salad.  Turns out I don’t like Ranch or French dressings, the only kinds available in my fridge as a child.  I love Thousand Island, Italian, and Caesar especially.  I just needed to suck it up and be open to possibilities.

Jesse eats like my dad, because a wide range of food was offered to him at a young age.  He adores chow Mein, chili loaded with veggies, and every kind of fluffy marshmallow salad available at a big church potluck.  Aside from marshmallow fluff, he does not have a big sweet tooth, unlike me.  The first time I ate dinner with his family, on his birthday, he turned down a piece of his own birthday cake.  I told him then I didn’t think it would work out between us.  Shows what little I know . . .

In spite of our different tastes we manage to find things that will please us both.  I pretend I don’t see the celery in the soup, which I put in because Jesse (and now Axel) loves it.  We have peas on the side of chicken a la king and he mixes them in the sauce on his own plate.  Homemade pizza works great, as each person adorns his/her side with desired toppings.  A lover of spicy things, I make enchiladas with mild sauce instead of hot so everyone else will eat them.

And now we have Axel and three more little boys.  I don’t even want to think about the amount of food we will need on the table in about 15 years.  But right now we need to make sure all our boys are given the opportunity to try various cuisines. 

It’s working well so far with the Hurricane (who deserves his nickname at the dinner table as much as the rest of his life – his plate, the table, and the floor are a complete path of destruction.)  I cannot honestly name anything that Axel will not eat.  He devours vegetables and fruits of all kinds.  If he sees something new, he doesn’t scrunch his nose at it.  He grabs it and asks what it is, and before we can answer he’s taken a bite.  He’s not always thrilled with it, but his willingness to try it is almost inspiring.

When we go out for pizza, Axel picks off the olives so he can eat them first.  Though our garden was somewhat neglected this year, we did get some crop.  A person would think we were growing candy out there, the way our oldest boy bolts outside to have fresh green beans and tomatoes on the spot, whether or not they have dirt on them.  The other night he was very upset that Jesse ate all the beans at dinner, because he wanted more. 

I have to believe that his enthusiasm for trying and eating all kinds of foods, in spite of my limited palette, is credited to our giving him things without bias and letting him make his own decisions regarding his likes and dislikes.  This has all come to light as we’ve started feeding our littlest boys their baby cereals and pureed fruits and vegetables.  I’ve began to wonder, in addition to how tall they’ll be and what they’ll be when they grow up, what kinds of eaters they will be.  For their sake I hope they are like their dad, or dinners with their outlaws could be brutal.