When Mommy's away....

Bob posted this picture on his Facebook page last weekend. I was working all day at the clothing and equipment sale for my multiples group, so he was on triple toddler duty. This pic cracks me up. The room is a mess, Rachel doesn't have any pants, they are still in their jammies, and Morgan's hair is in desperate need of a brush and a pony tail. You can see Sophia's legs in the background. Oh well, at least they were all alive when I came home! 

I'm a drop out again....

Five months ago when I signed up for two classes at school, I was in a place where I thought I could do it all. My days seemed calmer back then. During their naps, I would eat lunch, read, play on the internet, prepare something for dinner or whatever. I just wasn't as stressed as I am now.

Now at 20 months old, the girls are exhausting me again. It's a very exciting and fun stage that they are in, it's just a challenge for me every day. By 12:30pm when it's time for nap, I'm completely wiped out. I usually end up eating something for lunch and then taking a nap. If I don't take a nap, I pass out and die. The end.  hahahaha....

Back in May, I thought I'd have the time and energy to do school work during nap time or at night... or on weekends. Turns out...It's just more than I can handle right now.

The solution? I'm halfway through this semester. My Human Development class isn't difficult at all. I'd actually call that class easy. I'm going to finish it for sure. However, my Anthropology class is kicking my butt and leaving me with bruises and a bad taste in my mouth. I bombed the first test with an awesome 65% . Let's face it. I don't have ten hours a week to read 60 pages and memorize things that I don't even agree with. Seriously, the book is telling me I came from monkeys! No joke! So I dropped that class. And I'm out...word to yo mutha.

So that's not all. After the girls went to bed tonight and I sat down and worked on the Hum. Dev. class for an hour, I decided I'm not going to school next semester. This wasn't the right time to try and finish. I'm not in a rush to go back to work at all, so why am I kicking my own butt trying to do this now?! There just simply isn't a reason for me to stress myself out over this. Bob and I have never planned on me going back to work until the girls are well into elementary school or possibly later anyway. There's plenty of time for me to finish later.

I'm a little sad that I couldn't just stick this out, but my girls come first! They don't need a mommy who is always tired, busy, and stressed! So until the girls are 4 or 5 years old, I'm just a student of the mommyhood. Not the collegehood! And I'm okay with that!

Rachel update

We had the follow up appointment with Rachel's pediatric surgeon today. He confirmed what I thought. The tumor is growing back. Not only is it growing back, it is also not healing normally from when it was cut off and biopsied by the dermatologist. Dr. D now agrees that it is a "Spitz Nevus" and that we do need to go in and do a more invasive procedure to remove it 110%. The thing about these growths is that if they are not fully removed, they grow back. When they do grow back, they can be harder to biopsy. They can show possible malignant behavior without truly being malignant. Because of this, it can sometimes lead to treatments that are questionable. We don't want to get to that point.

It's confusing. Right now, the plan is to see Dr. D again on December 1st and plan the surgery for sometime between Dec-Feb depending on how the growth is doing. Dr. D wants it to heal just a bit more before he does anything. If he were to remove it all right now after just having done the original biopsy a month ago, the tissues will be too irritated to be able to biopsy the current growth. It's hard for me to explain. I really trust Dr. D's opinion and knowledge on this. He's operated on these types of growths numerous times and knows what he's doing. I really do feel at ease with him.

So that's where we are. I have had a pit in my stomach all day thinking about the day she will have to do the surgery. I'm really not comfortable with the fact that she has to be put under anesthesia. At least she is up to 24 pounds and 1 ounce! That's really good for her!

It's going to be an outpatient surgery. I can be with her when she is waking up. I'm going to need a lot of prayers and comfort while they have her in surgery. Just thinking about it now makes me feel so uneasy. The only thing that made me chuckle was that Dr. D told me how they start to administer the meds to put her to sleep. She will have to drink some tylenol that has sedatives in it. All I can say is good luck getting her to drink that. It's not going to be a fun day at all. I'm going to try to just put this at the back of my mind for now. We're just going to have to wait until her follow up appointment in 2 months and see when she will be scheduled. So surgery is definitely needed, it's just a matter of when. Ugh!

Life is never boring!

Welcome to our day. The girls are just a few days shy of 20 months old. I simply cannot believe that in just four short little months, we'll be celebrating their second birthday! They have grown so much. It's unbelievable. In the Spring, I was going through their clothes and put some size 18 month stuff away to use this Fall. I was just SURE they wouldn't be in a bigger size even though they would be older than 18 months. The girls have always just seemed small to me. Imagine my shock when I pulled these clothes out and realized there was no way any of them would fit. Not even Rachel! The girls are so tall now! I cannot believe I've been buying clothes in the 24 month and 2T sizes. 

Anyway... Just wanted to share some cute pics of the girls that I snapped a few days ago. Here are Rachel and Sophia fighting over their new laugh and learn chair. My dad picked this up at a yard sale and gave it to the girls. They LOVE it and fight over it all day. It's too funny.

Morgan offering me some juice from her sippy.

 Our happy little Rachel

Sophia playin with the pig and cow puppets and making a silly face

I tried to get a pic of all three looking at me. They were out of "position" as soon as I backed up to try and take the picture. *sigh*

I know I write about our hard days more often than not. I tend to use this blog as an outlet for me as well as a journal about the girls. I like to keep it real and write about the raw truth and not just the peaches and creme part. The truth is, there are days when I want to pull all of my hair out and run away. That's real life.

The truth is, whenever I am away from my girls for just a few hours, I miss them like crazy. I love seeing their smiling little faces. I love it when I lay down on the couch, they all climb on me and we snuggle up and watch one of their shows together. I love it when I open the door when they wake up in the morning or after nap and they start running back and forth in their cribs with excitement and hold their arms up for me. Even though this is the hardest job I've ever had, I wouldn't trade it for the world. My girls ARE my world!

How do you think high chair boot camp is going?

Yeah.... It's not going so well. We really did give it our "all" for quite some time. This pic shows an excessive amount of food on the floor. We had a rough day today. lol... They did learn a little from the boot camp. Usually, they only toss about a quarter of what you see here.

They know not to throw food. Sometimes it's a lot. Sometimes it's a little. Once in a while, it's none at all. It depends on whether I'm trying to get them to taste a new food or not. Either way, we just stopped taking them out of their chairs. We're almost done with the initial evaluations for the therapy that they're going to receive. So far, I love the therapists we have met. All three of them are such a good fit for our family. They know about the issues we've had getting the girls to eat and how picky they are, and they are excited to help us. I'm going to hang on until we can get some advice that applies to where my girls are with their development. I think we'll be more successful that way!

Stay tuned.... One of these days, I'm going to post a pic of clean NEW tile floor!

I smell like curry and other stuff

I really do smell like curry.

I just returned from a fabulous girls night out with some of my friends. We sat in an Indian restaurant for over 2 hours. I really should change my clothes. I can still smell my dinner. Maybe it's my breath haha. Oh well. I had such a great time, it's worth it to reek of curry.

So much has been going on over the past week. I don't know where to begin. 

I just realized I never did an "18 month update" about the girls' recent well baby (or um technically well toddler) appointment. For every check up, I fill out a questionnaire for each one of the girls regarding their development. There's always a list of questions like, "Does your child stack at least 3 blocks," and "Does your child say more than 5 words?" You know, developmental questions. For the first time at one of these check ups, I had to answer "no" to a lot of the questions. I've been around other little ones their age, so I knew we were a little behind. I was so happy when their pediatrician decided to refer us to the county development program to be evaluated in ALL aspects of development. I've been trying to get the girls into this program for months, but I was told that because our insurance covered certain therapies, they couldn't see the girls without a referral. Well, we GOT the referral! 

So last week,we had a couple of days of evaluations on the girls (just two hours in the mornings). The therapists came to our house, which was awesome. I can't imagine trying to get them all somewhere for something like this without meltdowns. The speech evaluation was cancelled because the therapist was sick, so we'll be rescheduling that one. 

The first day was pretty rough for me. I had to watch my sweet little girls pretty much fail most of the tests the therapist did. The tests were pretty simple. For example, she had three coffee cups and hid a ball underneath one of them. They were supposed to lift the cup and find the ball. Rachel grabbed two cups and ran off into the corner and banged them together. Morgan picked up a cup and tried to eat it, and Sophia copied Rachel and took two cups and banged them together. Another task was to put these round pegs into a hole. Rachel took the peg and ran off. Morgan kept handing the peg to Amy, our therapist, in her "you do it" motion. Sophia just took the peg and banged it against the piece of wood that the holes were cut in. They did pass some of the tests, like being able to get into a toddler chair and sit down. Sophia almost scribbled with a pencil. I thought they didn't pass most of the tests because I haven't shown them how to do these things before. However, Amy told me that these are all tasks that a 19 month should be able to pick up and do after being shown once. There were other skills tested that I'm not going to list. The girls scored so much lower than I thought they would. 

I thought we were only 3-4 months behind. Turns out it's much more than that. For fine motor skills, Rachel is at a 10 month old level and Sophia and Morgan are at an 11 month old level. They scored around 15 and 17 months in other areas, but I can't remember what the name of those areas are. I didn't write anything down and I was too busy trying to hold back tears because I felt like I've failed my children by not teaching them more. I'm over that now though. I know this isn't my fault. I know that it's very common for multiples to need therapy in certain areas. Besides, the fact that we are so far behind gets us 100 percent approved for the therapy. I'm so thankful that this is finally happening for us. I've known we've needed some help for quite some time. I feel incredibly blessed to know that we're going to have so much support. I have several friends who have gone through this program and give it rave reviews. I'm so thankful that we're in the process of getting started. I just feel at peace now knowing that the girls are in such good hands. I know we'll catch up soon. 

Other than all the development stuff this week, I've still been trying to find the right contractor for the right price to do the work in our bathrooms and kitchen. One of our friends who does tile is hopefully coming soon to put a bid in. I had one contractor come on Thursday last week. He took a bunch of measurements, but hasn't gotten back to me on the price yet. I just want to get this work done. Shopping for someone to do it has not been fun at all. 

School has also been keeping me on my toes. I am kicking myself for taking two classes while trying to take care of the girls too. I didn't realize that even though I don't work full time outside the home, I still work full time (you know....running my own day care! haha).  So this has been like working full time and going to school!  My Anthropology class is kicking my butt. It's boring to me so I really have no interest. I have a test next week and I'm totally freaked out over it. I spent almost 5 hours at the library today studying, which I must say........was pretty awesome. I got to sit in a quiet room for hours! Today was my first time going to our local library and I absolutely loved it!  I did feel super old though. They have several "quiet study rooms" that are separated with glass windows. I can honestly say I was the only one over 30 who was using one of the rooms to study. I think everyone else was 19 haha! Oh well. When I was 19, I was the worst student ever. Sometimes I get frustrated that I didn't go to college when I was younger, but that was no one's fault but my own. I'm proud of myself for going back now! Anyway, I think I'm going to enjoy my Saturdays at the library. I spend the entire other 6 days a week with the girls. It's not going to hurt them if Mommy goes to the library for 5 hours on the weekends! 

With all that said.....wow, it's getting late. Time to get some much needed sleep. Oh and I must admit that I had to stop and take a shower before finishing this entry because.....even my hair smelled funky! Who can sleep if they stink? I can't!

Our Sweet New Ride

We did it. We bought a Chevy Tahoe. At first, I thought the inside wasn't much bigger than the cargo space of our van. But then I realized that the whole reason we wanted an SUV was so that we could have other passengers with us from time to time. We're not expecting to go anywhere too far for at least another year, so this didn't need to be big enough to fit either of our triple strollers. Our girls will be out of the stroller stage when that time rolls around. It will fit 3 umbrella strollers just fine if we really must use strollers. (The triple stroller would fit if we removed the back row of seats too.)

I usually do NOT like driving bigger vehicles. I used to run over curbs and such when I would drive Bob's old Dodge truck. (I can't tell you how many times I almost backed into things!) This Tahoe handles so much better than that truck did though. I drove it around a lot this afternoon when I went to the other side of town to buy some climbing structures off of Craigslist for the girls. I totally fell in love with this SUV. In fact, I secretly want this to be MINE! However, I will still happily drive my minivan. I am much more comfortable driving a smaller vehicle anyway. 

We already have one extra carseat that I got from a friend. We're not sure if we'll get two more or just switch out the carseats when we want to take the Tahoe somewhere. The Tahoe is really meant for Bob right now. He's going to enjoy it during his upcoming camping trip. I'm glad he was able to get what he wanted. He's been talking about this since May!

I can't believe how excited I am over this purchase! I will really miss our old car. It was meant to be our family car, but having triplets certainly changed that plan! I'm glad that both of our vehicles are now perfect for our family! Plus, this is just one sweet ride!