Long time no see, blog friends. It’s been a wonderful year for us and I’ve had so much fun looking over my daily photos of Oliver, Zoey and Quinn and remembering all of the places we went and goofy faces they made. Forgive me for being so silent here the last half of this year. This post will at least catch us up, and hopefully I’ll be a better blogger in 2013!

In January we celebrated Nana’s birthday, we were still on bottles and baby food, crawling, learning to pull up on our cribs and cruise. We went to the zoo, played with friends and at the park, had lunch with Daddy at work, went to Ikea, made each other laugh, ate blueberries and gave kisses.

In February we got dedicated to God at Irving Bible Church, we celebrated our first Valentine’s Day, Oliver met the FC Dallas team with Daddy, and Zoey celebrated cousin Nicole and Mike’s wedding shower with Mommy.

In March we turned 1! We played with Aunt Cara who was visiting from Columbia and met Aunt Ashley who came to our birthday party all the way from Los Angeles. We went on lots of walks and played outside with friends, we saw beautiful flowers at the Arboretum, we spent the night at Grandma and Grandpa’s house, we went to a birthday party for our friend Sydney and celebrated Grandma and Mommy’s birthday, too. We ate lots of big kid food like peas and we went for a walk in downtown Dallas to see a really cool music/art performance at the Nasher Sculpture Gardens.

In April we cheered on the start of the Rangers’ season, celebrated Easter, outsmarted our baby cage, Zoey started walking, we went to the zoo for the first time, walked in the March for Babies with friends, Quinn almost blinded Mommy and she had to wear a patch and keep her eyes closed for 4 days straight, and Ollie had his first food truck lunch downtown.

In May we visited the library and the Arboretum again, we celebrated Mothers Day in Fort Worth and took a walk around Sundance Square, we became quite obsessed with shoes, went on a bike ride with Daddy, watched FC Dallas games, Oliver started walking, we read books at the big Half Price Books and at Bookmarks, and we ate lunch out in public for the first time.

 

 

In October we saw the pumpkins at the Arboretum and finally got to wear some long sleeves on that one weekend when it got cold, we went to our NICU reunion and saw some of our nurses, Zoey got a fat lip, we listened to our friend Nathan play music at Patio Sessions downtown at the Performing Arts Center, we went to TCU with Mommy and Daddy and saw where they went to school and got married, we went to a festival by our house and played in a hay maze and we were Max and the Wild Things for Halloween!

In November we cheered at the Susan G. Komen 3Day walk and met some triplet friends from Houston, we had lunch with Daddy at work and helped Mommy do some Christmas shopping. We drew with sidewalk chalk for the first time and went to a petting zoo. We celebrated Thanksgiving with Grandma and Grandpa and Nana and Granddad, we put up our Christmas tree and celebrated Daddy’s birthday with a trip to the zoo.

In December we played at lots of parks in the cool 70 degree weather and went to the new one over the highway downtown, we had a Christmas party for our friends and celebrated our cousin Emily’s first birthday and then we got real sick for a week and Ollie had to take steroids and got super crazy. We celebrated Grandpa’s birthday and saw Christmas lights, and met Santa and had so much fun being with family for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We went to the new Perot Museum of Nature and Science, played with Uncle Nathan all the way from San Francisco, ate at Babe’s chicken with Grandpa’s family and rung in the New Year in our sleep because Mommy and Daddy are no fun and don’t let us stay up til midnight. 2012 was a GREAT year!

 

Here’s to a just as wonderful and maybe even better 2013!

Remember last summer when I did a Q&A over on EarlyMama.com? Well, Michelle and I have enjoyed keeping up with each other via email and following each other’s adorable baby pictures on instagram, so when she started talking about a redesign of her blog Justin and I jumped at the chance. I’m really proud of the new space we’ve worked with her to make and I’m excited to see all of the new content she’s been developing. Go take a look!

Shortly after my last post Little Miss Q decided enough was enough and started walking on her own! She was so proud of herself.

And with three walkers this summer has been a bit of a challenge, as I sort of expected it to be and have been slightly dreading since last winter. Three toddlers who want to constantly explore and move and experience new things get mighty stir-crazy in a teeny (some may say cozy) tiny little house all day.

The temperatures are consistently at or near 100 degrees from sun-up to sun-down, so walks in our wagon are not really an option, and those were our saving grace many days this spring. We’ve met up with friends at a couple of different public places like mall play areas and things, but unfortunately for us it’s been over-crowded and super stressful for me to try and keep track of all three kiddos, so I’m counting those out for awhile until the kids get bigger. We do LOVE to have friends come over or go visit them at their houses, so if you’re reading this and you’re a friend, well…hint hint.

The babies’ cousin Emily came to play with us last week and though she may have suffered a few blows to the head from Oliver and his soccer ball, she seemed to like us pretty well. She and Oliver even kissed! It was completely adorable and I actually got video!

And this summer we’ve actually made it to church two times. Baby steps! Both times the kids have done great in the church nursery. The first time we went I expected to have to stay to help them get used to the idea but they just jumped right in to playing with all of the toys and didn’t really even look at me so Justin and I went to the service together, which was great. Today was our second visit and right as we got everyone loaded in the car to make it there on time we realized that the dog had gotten out of the backyard and I got a call from a neighbor who found her one block over. So, we had to circle around and pick up the four-legged brat who has made escaping our backyard her summer past-time, drop her off at the house and head to church where we were about 10 minutes late. Just enough late that the ratios had been filled in the nursery so if the triplets were going to get to stay then I had to stay too. I was a little disappointed about missing the service but it was neat to see them around a bunch of other kids and observe their reactions to this new environment.

Of course they loved starting off with a snack, and then they enjoyed checking out the toys. Oliver basically staked out a spot and stayed there with a chosen toy, Quinn slowly moved around the room, very carefully checking things out, and Zoey was my child who I constantly had to look all over for every few minutes to figure out where she had gone. Near the end of the hour we brought all the kids (yes, about 30+ one and two year olds walking down the hall to a different room and sitting down to watch someone sing. ha.) to a larger room to sing songs all together. Sort of training them for what it will be like to be in the older Sunday school classes. Oliver already seems to be great at getting strangers to love on him, so he was in the teacher’s lap, Quinn was standing next to me and not moving her feet an inch from her spot (she wouldn’t sit down and settle in, she was on alert), and Zoey took it upon herself to join the volunteers who were singing on the little stage. These kids could not be more different! I love seeing how their individual personalities come out in new situations like this. Justin and I talk often about how we can best encourage each of them as they grow, something that all parents of more than one child do, but it is really interesting seeing them all grow at once.