A Typical Day in Our House...

Are you curious about what a day in our life is like? Here's you chance to get a glimpse! 

• 430am - My husband's alarm goes off and he gets up, feeds the dog and goes to work. Sometimes this wakes the babies up, hopefully it doesn't.
• 530am - The babies wake up and I hear them giggling and playing around in their cribs.
• 545am - I finally get up because the babies sound like they are getting a little less happy. Wash out their bottles and give them some milk.
• 6am - I hear Superman waking up and bring him upstairs. Everyone gets changed and dressed. 
• 630am - Breakfast for everyone. The babies throw most of their food on the floor and Superman barely touches his. 
• 7am - I try to clean up the kitchen a bit but mostly I just ignore it until later. The boys play (with things they aren't supposed to)/fight/hurt themselves. This continues the entire day as well.
• 8am - Nap time for the little ones. Superman and I usually go downstairs to play plus he has a snack.
• 930am - The little ones wake up. We go on a walk to the playground if it's nice out.
• 10am - The boys are all hungry already and begging to eat lunch. I try to hold them off until at least 1030 but I am already hungry too. So we end up eating lunch at 1030ish which means we are done by 11 and naptime isn't until 12. So we all play together (all three of them are jealous whenever someone else gets attention, so they all try to climb on me at once. It's pretty funny.)
• 12pm - Naptime for everyone! I usually end up taking one too. 
• 130pm - The little ones are up again. They get to play some more. 
• 2pm - Superman wakes up from his nap. Everyone has a little snack and then I try to entertain them. This is also the time I normally clean up the house. It's amazing how messy it gets in just one day.
• 4pm - The little ones are ready for dinner. Superman also wants to eat with them so he has a snack and watches a show. I start making dinner for everyone else.
• 430pm - My husband gets home from work and normally tries to work out for an hour if he can.
• 530ish pm - Dinner is ready so Superman and I start eating. The other boys are getting fussy so I eat quickly.
• 545pm - My husband quickly eats and we start baths for everyone. We do baths every other day in our house.
• 615pm - The little boys go to bed and we spend time with our oldest until his bedtime. I also clean up the kitchen and living room at this time.
• 730pm - Time to read a story and then bedtime for Superman! My husband showers and I do blog stuff or play video games while waiting for him. (Why does this whole process take him 40ish minutes when I can shower in 5 minutes? And he doesn't even have any hair to wash...)
• 830pm - We watch whatever shows were on that night and then bed time by 10pm so that we can start the process over again in the morning!

I hope it doesn't sound like I am complaining about our schedule! I will admit that sometimes it does get old doing the same thing every day, but I really do enjoy it (most of the time). We are pretty busy just doing the normal everyday stuff, but we try to get out and do some other activities with the boys a couple of times a week. 

Of course things change every day. It doesn't always follow this schedule exactly, but I've always been a scheduler with my babies. Things just work out better for us if they stay on the same schedule every day. The weekends usually mess up our perfect schedule and everyone gets a little off. As they get older now it will get easier to shift things around. My oldest doesn't usually have any issues now, but the little boys are still stuck on their schedule pretty much. 

So I just keep reminding myself that it will get better, we won't always have to have so many scheduled naptimes and soon they will be able to wait longer for meals if they need to and we will be able to do more out of the house activities!  

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Two Years Ago on Father's Day...

My oldest was born! Happy Birthday to my Superman! My favorite little two year old. We are going to visit the zoo today and then have some special birthday cake. The birthday party is not until next week because we are celebrating all three boys together this year. In honor of this special day, I've decided to share his birth story with you. It didn't turn out quite the way I had imagined it would...

It all started on Father's Day morning. We were already almost a week past the due date, so obviously we were expecting (hoping) for something to happen at any time. My husband was sleeping, I was up playing video games on the computer. I've always been a morning person, otherwise I'm sure I would have been sleeping too. I had just finished up a dungeon and killed the final boss when I felt my water break. Such perfect timing, I didn't even have to leave in the middle of the dungeon!

As you can imagine, I was pretty excited and nervous. I woke up my husband and called the hospital. Then took a shower and got my bags in the care and we were off to the hospital! I wasn't having any contractions at all yet. When we got there they checked to make sure it was actually my water breaking, and we also found out that there was meconium in the amniotic fluid as well. Still nothing was happening so they started me on Pitocin. 

It took awhile but contractions finally started. We walked around. We waited and waited and walked the hallways some more. They gave even more Pitocin. Nothing was progressing much. I got an epidural eventually but we were only at 4cm and still getting nowhere. The doctor came in because our baby was starting to be in distress and his heartbeat was dropping. She told me it would be best to do a c-section. I was really scared of course. This was the last thing I wanted. But I agreed to it and they took me back right away.

I don't remember much of the surgery except the tugging and pulling and my shaking. My neck and arm muscles were in so much pain from all the shaking and shivering and I couldn't pay attention to anything else. They didn't even let me see my little boy until I was in the recovery room a little while later. The shaking was horrible. It seemed like it took forever for it to stop afterwards. But I got to hold me precious little boy and he was perfect. That was the only thing that mattered.

We were all set to go home a couple of days later but the day after my surgery I started having horrible pains and it got so bad I could not move without help. It turns out I had a bad ileus and ended up being there for nine days. I couldn't eat anything and wasn't supposed to drink water either but the pain meds made me extremely thirsty. I had to have a nasogastric tube in my nose to get all the green bile out of my stomach. 

It was awful. The worst experience of my life. My stomach was swelled up more than when I had a baby inside. They were talking about another surgery but thankfully it started to get better slowly on its own and we finally got to go home! I was able to breastfeed through all of this, which I was also very thankful for. The bad news is that I was in lots of pain and could barely walk upright for the next two months until they finally figured out what was wrong (they kept telling me it was just constipation) and I had to have another surgery to fix my intestines. This was another long week with no eating allowed. (All these issues are the reason I lost all my baby weight plus more in the first month). After that all was well and I got back to normal life. 

And that is the story of the best Father's Day gift ever. Happy Birthday my precious little boy!

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5 Tips for Dealing with a Picky Eater

My little boy was a really good eater for the first year and half or so. He pretty much ate everything I gave him. He liked trying new things and even loved spicy foods. Nothing could faze him. In the last couple of months he has started eating a lot less. He won't eat some of the foods he used to love. Except some days he will. Some days he will eat a ton of food. The next day he barely will touch anything and I'm sure he must be starving. My other little boys aren't too picky yet. They will throw it off their tray if they don't want to eat it though! I'm sure our puppy must love cleaning up after meal times around here. Here are some of the things I've learned over the last few months.

1. Don't let your child snack too often. Some days I have realized that this is probably why he's not eating his dinner. I try to have three meals and two snacks each day. If you try to keep everything at a set time it's easier not to get too many snacks in. 

2. Try to include at least one thing that you know your toddler will eat during each meal. Of course something he was eating the day before he might not touch today, so this doesn't always help!

My oldest one year ago. He has changed so much!

3. Minimize distractions. This is a huge problem in our house. There is always somthing else going on that is more interesting. The best idea is probably to try to have everyone eat together at the same time. This doesn't usually happen here because the babies are hungry by 4pm. Then our oldest wants to eat something because they are, which usually turns into dinner because it's so close to dinner time anyways. And it's pretty much impossible to eat dinner at the same time as feeding 3 little boys theirs anyways. 

4. A lot of times if I show him that I like it by taking a bite first, he will be more likely to give a new food a chance. Even if he's had a food before, sometimes he doens't recognized what it is and will refuse to try it even though I know he likes it! And of course once I get him to take one bite, he usually remembers how good it is and will eat more. Be a good example of healthy eating because they will probably want to eat whatever they see you eating. 

5. Keep trying. Even if they don't like it the first time you give it to them, keep trying every so often. There are many foods that my boys wouldn't eat at first and now they enjoy. Try to avoid only serving them foods that they like. This is something I need to work on. We tend to eat a lot of the same foods because I know they will eat it. We need to keep trying new foods!

What are some other ways that you have found to help with a picky eater?

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10 Things Nobody Tells You About Having Kids

You know all the things that people always say about having kids. About how you will never sleep again and your days of privacy in the bathroom are over. Everyone's heard all the usual stuff over and over again. Here are some things that people don't always tell you:

1. You can never completely relax again because you have developed "super senses", hearing every little noise your little one makes while sleeping or playing in the other room. I don't really think this applies to men because in my experience they will just sleep through anything and don't pay much attention to what is happening right next to them...

2. You will find that love this little person and worry about them so much more than you ever thought possible.

3. That it's hard. Really hard. Especially the first few weeks. Somehow you will forget the hard part and only remember the good parts...I don't know how this happens. Then if you decide to have another one, you are like "oh yeah...how could I forget this zombie-like feeling that comes with getting up every single hour of the night with a sweet baby!?" 

4. That there is no one "right way" to parent. Every kid is different. There are hundreds of parenting books out there and everyone always has advice for you but the truth is you'll just have to make it up as you go. 

5. That having kids is completely messy and there's nothing you can do about it. It will also change what you consider to be "gross". Baby barf, poop, snot coming out of their little noses that you have to pick out for them, it's all really not that awful anymore. Now, other people's kids...no thanks, that's still disgusting.

6. That most of the time raising kids is really boring. You have the occasional moments of excitement but otherwise you're mostly doing the same thing over and over and over again. Read the same books every night. Sing the same song hundreds of times. It's especially monotonous with babies who really don't do anything except eat and sleep for awhile. 

7. There really is not enough time in the day to do everything you need to do. This diagram is very true:

(source)

8. That your brain won't work as well as it used to. I don't know what it is about having babies that does this, but it certainly has happened for me. Maybe it gets back to normal as they get older? I sure hope so!

9. That any shows involving children or babies will emotionally affect you much more than they did before. Actually, change that to everything. Everything affects me emotionally lately. 

10. That even with all the worry, extra expenses and frustration there is no way you would change it for the world.

 

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