Our nursery is still full of storage containers and the floor is barely visible, but we have made some progress! This weekend we took advantage of a free Sunday afternoon (one of our last for awhile) and went to pick up a couple of cribs at Ikea. We had been planning to get the Gulliver crib, but once we were in the store we saw another model (the less pleasantly named Sniglar…c’mon Ikea that sounds like an evil Harry Potter creature) that looked almost identical for literally half the price. And when you’re buying three, hey, that’s a big difference. We did some quick research while we were in the store (thanks iphone) to see if there were any negative reviews of the crib or comparisons to the one we originally planned to get and everything we found was really positive. For now we just bought two, one to keep in our room and one to keep in the nursery so its not just an empty room for the first few months. We’ll crib all three babies together for the first 6 months or so, in our room. Our doctor said that they’ll prefer to sleep together since they’re so used to being cozy with each other in the womb. I can’t wait to see them snuggled up together! Not sure when we’ll buy the 3rd crib, but we figured we didn’t need to spend all the money at once.

And the really fun part, I ordered fabric to make crib skirts for each one (pictured above)! Here are the sources for each fabric if you’re interested: Amy Butler Fresh Start, Joel Dewberry Herringbone, and Lecien Sweet Broderie.

I love love love color, and typically a lot of color and pattern comes into a nursery through the crib bumper pads. But, in researching crib safety I discovered that bumper pads are actually considered unsafe by the American Academy of Pediatrics. A lot of people use them to protect babies from rolling against the bars of the crib, but I’ve heard one too many stories about babies suffocating against the bumpers for it to be worth the risk of getting them. If they get a bump or bruise here and there when they’re older from rolling against the bars I can deal with that. The AAP has done studies and found that babies are actually not strong enough to really hurt themselves by rolling against the side of the crib. Anyway, all that to say, I’ll be adding color not through bumper pads, but through crib skirts and sheets, and of course lots of artwork on the walls, curtains, and fun toys and books.

The curtains for the nursery are also on their way. Can’t wait to get this room cleared out, painted, and the carpet cleaned (not that I’ll actually be doing any of that, but many thanks to Justin, the in-laws, and my brother for helping out with that stuff in the next couple of weeks). We have so much to do before I get too big to do much of anything. The next few weeks our schedules are packed with preparing for babies…they’re going to be here before we know it!

This week’s picture officially makes me feel huge. I don’t feel like I’m carrying a lot of extra weight around so its surprising to see how big my belly actually looks in pictures. The past week I’ve taken it easy (oh, other than selling my prints at the Jingle Bash for 8 hours last Saturday) and just let the news of triplets sink in. I think we’ve handled it pretty well, though I did have one night of overwhelmed crying when I was trying to figure out what we need to register for. Since the chances of preterm labor and having to go on bed rest are pretty high with triplets we’re having to move up all of our plans and everything is coming up really fast. I have a couple of baby showers coming up in early December (yay!) so I wanted to have most of our registry items in place in time for the shower guests to check it out with plenty of time. My internet browser has consistently had dozens of tabs open while I look back and forth at Amazon customer reviews and prices vs. Target and Babies R Us, trying to figure out the best of everything and what we actually need in a whole new world of stuff. Its been pretty exhausting, but I think I’m just about done with it!

This is also the week that I first started feeling regular movement from the babies. Mostly small flutters here and there and sometimes a lot of pressure right under my ribs. Nothing big enough for Justin to feel yet, but its exciting to feel them and know that they really are in there.

The love that we’ve felt from our friends and family and even acquaintances in the past week since we found out about the triplets has been humbling and helped us to feel increasingly confident about our abilities to parent this multitude of babies. Thank you all for the kind words and sincere and generous offers of help and prayer. We are grateful for you and know that you are part of how God is providing for our family.