Wednesday, December 31, 2008

The Best Year of my Life!


Katie and Uncle Ed

Seamus and Me

Helena and Grandma Murphy


Happy New Year everyone! I'm sitting here tonight thinking about all of the things that have happened in the past year. It was a year ago today that we were up at my sister's New Year's Eve party and left early because I was tired and feeling nauseous. Pat ended up going over his parents' house to celebrate New Years and I went to bed. I don't think at that point that we had any idea what the new year would truly hold for us. It brought for us a crazy roller coaster of emotions that I can't even really begin to describe. It brought our three beautiful babies that have given us more joy and happiness than I ever thought imaginable. And it brought for Pat and I an incredible bond that only babies, stress, and lack of sleep can give! I wouldn't change a minute of this past year. Even the stress of not knowing what would happen with the babies, whether they would be born early and healthy, worrying about Helena being so small, or having to leave them in the hospital while we went home to an empty house was worth it. It brought us to where we are today and for that I thank God everyday. My New Year's resolution is to try and remember no matter how tired and worn out I may feel from caring for three babies, that we are the lucky ones. We have three wonderful babies that we love very much, that are healthy, and happy. Not everyone who deals with infertility issues gets that lucky. We did. So to my babies Katie, Seamus and Helena... Happy New Year! I love you!

Friday, December 26, 2008

Christmas Day Part 2

The second half of Christmas day was spent at Pat's parents house. Helena is being held by Grandma, Seamus is with Grandpa, and Katie is with one of her favorite Aunt Kathys. She definitely was bonding with her and if you ask Kathy she'll say she even said "Hi" to her while she was getting her pjs on. I was there it did sound like that's what she said. It was cute to see them together and to finally have them meet their Uncle John. Aunt Shari saved the day or should I say my sanity by running out to get me some caffeine while I was trying not to have a meltdown from lack of sleep and 3 screaming babies who desperately needed a nap. Thanks again Shari! All in all it was a good day. Tiring, but good. We spent the entire day today just chilling out at home. It's been nice...



Christmas Day Part 1







We started Christmas day by opening presents with the babies at home. They were very excited to have wrapping paper to play with. The presents were definitely secondary! They did like seeing all of the lights and sounds from some of their new toys including their Gloworms which are quickly becoming their new favorites. As you can see from the pictures Katie is quickly becoming our All-Star sitter and barely needs to be caught from falling down anymore. Pat was very excited to get his Batman boxers from the babies. I got to hold all 3 for them with their Gloworms after we were done.



After presents we got dressed and went to church and then back to my parents house for lunch and more presents! Katie is being held by Aunt Christi, Helena fell asleep with Grandpa, and Uncle Steve is holding Seamus.



Christmas Eve






This year Christmas eve was at my parents' house. My mom's whole family gets together every year for a traditional Slovak Christmas eve meal and this year was no exception. We had the food, the singing, and of course the presents. We also always wear crazy hats as you can see in the picture of Seamus and I and also Katie wearing antlers with Aunt Carol. The girls had their Christmas eve outfits on and Seamus got to dress up in his Santa outfit. It was really nice having everyone get together and seeing my cousin Andrew and his family who were in from Pennsylvania. The babies were very cooperative and we were able to unwrap gifts before getting them packed into the car and going home to go to bed. More to come from Christmas day...

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Not a "Baaad" Day

We were lucky enough to have the whole day together yesterday since Mary and I are both teachers and there was a Snow Day! So needless to say Friday stared off very well. The babies keep on growing and doing more every day. Katie has turned into a rolling machine lately she rolls both directs very easily now. She still needs to learn to stick up for herself a little more because she cries if her brother or sister takes her toys or rolls over on her. Seamus is painfully close to actually crawling, for a while he would look at what he wanted and try to get to it and go backwards. Friday he got up on his hands and knees and rocked back and forth before face planting or tipping onto his side. He learned that a couple of those faceplants will scoot him towards his goal so he is starting to get around a bit more now. He also seems pretty close to getting his first tooth because he has a rough part on his gums and keeps putting anything he can right on his bottom gum. Helena still has no teeth, which is good for Mary and I because she has grown fond of biting us, especially in the face area. She has bitten me countless times on the chin and nose, she even makes a little growling noise when she does it! She is moving around a lot too, she pretty much gets around by rolling until she hits something she wants to play with. She does well rolling because she still never wants to be still, she is still our little "wiggle worm." The most exciting thing for me yesterday was the babies eating their first meal with meat in it. They had my favorite kind...lamb (this should explain the title, I know its a bad joke but I can't help it, sorry). At first they all weren't sure about the new taste and texture, but Seamus decided he liked it after 3 bites, Katie came around after about half of it and Helena did not eat it well until today. I was very happy because I have been wanting to give them meat since they ate the Rice Cereal for the first time. The first picture is Seamus caught sneaking up on Katie, the second one is Snow Day Story Time and the last photo is the girls playing with each other (Helena is on the left, Katie is on the right).





Monday, December 15, 2008

Fill in the blank...







Ok now that I have a few minutes hopefully I can fill in the blanks from my last post. First Katie's teeth... She officially has 2 of them! Her middle teeth on the bottom are in which makes her do this cute little thing with her tongue since she's still not used to them. Seamus is teething right now too which makes him very droolly and barfy but no actual teeth for him yet. Helena doesn't have any yet either even though she acts like she's teething with how cranky she can be. Seamus started wearing a TOT collar last week which is supposed to stop him from tilting his head. Now that we've started to see some results with his head reshaping his cervical spine has shifted which makes him tilt his head slightly to the right. This TOT collar is basically a plastic thing that goes around his neck, he can only wear it while he's awake so seeing results may take a little while. On top of that he can't wear his helmet with it so hopefully that won't slow down any results we're seeing there. Our Christmas pictures of the babies turned out awesome! Hopefully if Pat gets them scanned in tonight I can add them to this post. Our Christmas tree is up and very cute! It's about 3 and 1/2 feet tall and has only a handful of ornaments on it but it's all lit up and the babies like to look at it so I'm happy. We went to the tree farm to get it but stayed back at the lodge while everyone else went and got theirs and picked ours out for us. I'm not that brave (or crazy) to take three 6 month old babies out on a tractor ride in 30 degree weather! We then went back to Aunt Becca's house and had lunch. We got to use our booster chairs for the first time and the babies did pretty good with them.
Kathy and Chris Dressig's wedding was on Friday. Both Pat and I stood up in their bridal party so Aunt Mel, Uncle John, and Aunt Christi came over to babysit. It was a really nice wedding and Pat and I both had a good time. I can't wait to get some of the pictures printed up and to see how they adjust to finally living in the same house after almost 10 years of dating! Kathy I'm sure I'll be getting some phone calls just like you got when Pat and I first were married!!
I think the last thing that I need to update was our visit with St Nick on Sunday. My cousins Suzanne and George did a great job with the kids. Their play and singing was really cute! I especially liked the donkey played by George Swanney. They all did an awesome job with their parts. St Nick was a hit too. He had gifts for all of the kids and all 3 of the triplets came home with a whole goody bag of stuff.
On that note...Pat just sent me the Christmas pictures so they'll be posted today... Katie is in the red and white and Helena is in plaid (Seamus too!).

Sunday, December 14, 2008

St Nicholas and Tree

Pictures are: Pat and babies at the tree farm. Me with babies at the tree farm. Decorating our tree (Helena, Seamus, then Katie). Visiting St Nicholas.






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Seamus


Helena

Katie

Toof, Toof, Teef!

I don't even know where to start... a lot has happened in the past week or so. Katie officially has 2 teeth! Seamus started wearing a TOT collar. All of the babies ate their first graham crackers. We got the babies Christmas photos back. We went to get our first Christmas tree with the babies. Kathy and Chris finally got married! And we went and saw St. Nicholas. Whew! I think that about covers it! I'll post some pictures for now and fill in the details over the next few days. I'm wayyyy too tired to do much else! The pictures are 1- Kathy and Chris wedding, 2-babies and our Christmas tree, 3-Helena and cracker, 4-Katie and cracker, 5-Seamus and cracker.




Saturday, December 6, 2008

St. Nicholas Day





The babies had their 6 month well baby visit this week. All of them are growing wonderfully both physically and developmentally. They had to get a ton of shots including their second dose of the RSV vaccine which for both Katie and Seamus was actually 2 shots. Their 6 month stats are:

Katie:
Length: 25 1/2in (50th percentile)
Weight: 17lbs 15oz (75-90th percentile)
Head circ: 16 3/4in (50th percentile)

Seamus:
Length: 26in (50th percentile)
Weight: 17lbs 2 oz (50th percentile)
Head circ.: 17 1/2in (75th percentile)

Helena:
Length: 25in (25th percentile)
Weight: 14lbs 6oz (25th percentile)
Head circ.: 16in (10th percentile)

As you can see, birth order is also starting to represent size order. Katie's definitely the largest and Helena is definitely the smallest. There is no more preemie growth curve, they've all officially caught up, size-wise anyway. There are still some developmental things that they're not quite there yet on. They're close though!

Today we celebrated St Nicholas Day by putting the babies Christmas shoes in the hallway last night and having St Nick fill them with some lovely treats. Things like peas and apple juice... just the kind of treats that babies like! Or is it treats that mommy's like to give babies! Either way it was too cute. We also had to take them in this morning to get their 1st dose of flu shots. They couldn't get them with the rest since they were already getting 5 other pokes. 6 is too many I guess even though I would like to have just been done with them all at once. It's almost time for lunch so I'll add some pics and then go feed some babies. The one with the three of them was from yesterday all playing in Seamus's bed (H, S, K).