Remember that time I posted monthly updates the first week of the month instead of the third? Yeah, me either.
So, SEVEN MONTHS (almost eight, eeks). Are you kidding me? We’re closer to 1 than we are to 0. The babies are such little chub chubs and so incredibly sweet. Everyone hangs onto us so tight when we pick them up. One of my favorite things in the world is feeling those little hands slide under my hair and gently run their fingers on the back of my head. It melts me…until they grab and yank my hair right out of my scalp and I have to call Justin to peel the baby off of me.
We have an actual schedule that we keep pretty regularly these days. For those of you who are interested, it goes something like this:
7:30 am – 8:00 am – Wake up, get changed, eat bottle.
8:00 am – 8:30 am – Play
8:30 am – 10:00 am – Nap
10:00 am – 10:30 am – Eat breakfast (fruit + cereal = YUM)
10:30 am – 12:00 pm – Play
12:00 pm – 1:30 pm – Nap
1:30 pm – 2:00 pm – Bottle
2:00 pm – 4:30 pm – Play (usually our window of time that is long enough to try to go somewhere out of the house so mama doesn’t go cuckoo)
4:30 pm – 5:00 pm – Bottle
5:00 pm -5:30 pm – Cat Nap
5:30 pm – 6:00 pm – Eat dinner (veggies + starch or meat = EH, I guess I’ll eat this.)
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm – Play (Daddy gets home around 6:15, FUN TIMES!)
8:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Bottle, then Bed!
Remember when we did EIGHT bottles a day for EACH baby? Lord, I am thankful we are almost 8 months old.
Its so interesting to see babies of each gender developing at the same time. A friend of mine who works in child development said that boys are usually earlier with the fine motor skill stuff and girls do gross motor skill stuff first. This is definitely true for O, Z, and Q. Oliver is enraptured with toys and his hands and is very dexterous. Zoey and Quinn just started doing some of the things that Oliver has been doing for a couple of months, like reaching and grabbing for toys and passing them from one hand to the other. But, while Ollie is content to lay on his back and put things in his mouth, Zoey and Quinn are constantly swimming on their tummies trying to figure out this crawling thing. They also seem to have gotten the hang of balancing themselves to sit up a little better than he has, but no one is sitting unassisted yet.
Having three babies at the same time makes you understand how individual development is and how pointless it is to compare babies to each other and worry if they’re doing something they’re “supposed” to yet. I will say that I AM pretty tired of people with singletons asking if my kids are doing x, y or z yet, me saying no, and them saying “Well that’s ok, they were premature so they’re behind.” One, you likely don’t know much about premature babies, especially not my babies, and two, they’re really not behind, every kid just develops differently and yours may be brilliant and done something a couple of months before mine, but it doesn’t mean mine are developmentally delayed. You’re not making any mother of a preemie feel better by telling her that its ok that her kids are “behind” because they were premature. Mama Bear is just sayin… 
Oliver has so much personality and it just gets more bright and hilarious every day. He absolutely loves being in his jumperoo, so much so that when we hold him he jumps on our laps too. He loves faces and especially loves to grab noses, glasses, and lips and try to put them in his mouth. Which isn’t surprising because he puts everything in his mouth. No teeth yet, but there is constant drooling and chewing of everything possible, including his sisters’ heads. (Exhibit A, below:)
I’ve started calling Oliver “The Gremlin” because he’s always growling and grunting and being a weirdo boy. If he has a toy or blanket in his hands that he can chew on and growl then he’s a happy camper. Ollie also seems to be enjoying solid foods. Like most babies he’s all about the fruit and not such a fan of the green stuff, but he’s a very dutiful boy and will eat it despite giving us a face of pure disgust. When he really doesn’t like something he tries to grab the spoon out of my hand and take control of the situation, which usually ends with me wiping spinach off my leg and Ozzie getting a taste of it on the floor.
Oliver is so much like his daddy. He is such a silly, entertaining baby when its just us, but as soon as he’s in a new environment or with people he doesn’t know he is quiet and wide-eyed, taking everything in. After he hangs out with you for 30 minutes or so he starts to let out the inner gremlin, but you won’t get to know him in the first 5 minutes you meet him. When we get together with anyone they always comment on how quiet they all are and Justin and I just have to laugh. They’re plenty loud when its just us at home!
He has also started to hold his own bottle! He still needs a little assistance but pretty much feeds himself these days, which is very nice. He can pull himself up to standing when he’s holding onto our hands and kind of army crawls/hurls his body over our laps to grab his sisters’ feet on the couch.
This month we also had our first “they’re growing up too fast and its making us misty” moment when we gave the swings away to another family with sweet little twins. We were barely using them and they were more of a naptime crutch than they were beneficial so we decided to just bite the bullet and get rid of them. The last day they were in the house though we took one more picture of Oliver in the lamb swing. Wouldn’t seeing this for the last time make you tear up just a little?
On to Little Miss Z.
Zoey, our previously shy, “I’ll just whisper so quietly that you have to be an inch away from my face to hear me” little girl has found her voice, and her sense of humor. The girl who, when we would lift her high above our heads and wiggle her all around, used to give us a look like “What do you think you’re doing?” now stickers her tongue out and shrieks with laughter.
Grandma calls Zoey the cuddler. She’ll wrap her arms around you, grab a handful of your shirt and drool all over your shoulder and you’ll love it. Even though one of her nicknames is Sweet Z, she wrinkles up her forehead and opens her mouth wide to let you know if something is bothering her. Most of the time its because her bother (that started out as a typo, but its accurate) or sister is touching her. The girl needs her space, thank you very much.
It took Z and Q a little longer to get the hang of grasping and reaching, but they’ve gotten so good at it in the last month! They love playing with links and you will not see Zoey drinking a bottle without holding onto her foot. Zoey loves trying to catch my tongue when I stick it out at her. She’s gotten a good deep belly laugh now too. Most of the time she’ll get started laughing at something so small we can’t even figure out what it is, but then we make silly noises and faces to keep her going and its so much fun.
Zoey and Quinn are both getting more hair and its looking darker than I originally thought. Several people have asked if I have cut it because its grown in so even, but that’s just the way its coming in! They’re our little Franciscan monks.
And, the Quinners.
I just have this feeling that Quinn is going to be a very independent person. She enjoys being with us and her brother and sister, but she seems to have the least “need” to be held and is totally happy playing with her feet and singing songs in her crib by herself. She and Zoey must have traded places vocally in the last couple of months because she has been way more quiet than she was. Though in the last couple of days she’s decided that shrieking and shouting is REALLY FUN, especially when her brother and sister are still sleeping.
Quinn pokes her tongue out of the corner of her mouth and smiles this closed mouth smile that has a great look of mischief about it. I can picture her giving me that look then turning the other way and running off to do something dangerous. We’re going to have to keep close tabs on this one.
Just like with rolling over, Quinn is determined to be the first crawler. She is very deliberate with practicing pushing up on her hands and wiggling her feet. She knows she can get somewhere if she can just get all those limbs working together. She pushes up on her toes and winds up like this:
Q gives us the sweetest reaction when we get her out of bed. She is usually on her tummy, head up and looking all around until she spots us and we say, “Quiiiiinnnneeeeaaaaaa” then she gets so excited she can’t hold her head up anymore and wiggles her arms and legs all over the place.
Can you spot who’s ready to go home?
We’re getting out of the house more and more which is a lot of work, but so worth it. There are a lot of normal things that families with one baby get to do that just isn’t logistically possible, BUT that doesn’t mean we can’t do anything and have to be stuck inside our house until they’re 3 years old. When we go out we get lots of nice comments from people and I especially love seeing the looks on little kids’ faces when they see the babies. They get SO excited about seeing triplets. Its adorable and makes me proud. The most common thing you hear as a triplet parent is “You’ve got your hands full” which is true, but a little obvious . I think the 2nd most common, if you live in the state of Texas, is “Bless your heart.”
Yes, our hands are full, but our hearts are overflowing.
