Tripletville Adventures : Sleepless nights

First full week without my mother and I lived through it!!! The nights are tough as I'm super tired and that makes me uncoordinated and a little less patient with the boys. Gabe keeps insisting that I wake him up if I'm having a hard time but how am I to wake him up when I'm all the way down the hall dealing with three babies?!? haha... I figure it's easier just to get through it than go wake him up anyway. I'm trying to find my groove and I'll get there eventually... maybe I'll get there by the time they sleep through the night haha! It's the most difficult when they decide to throw off the schedule (yes, I said they... I blame the babies who don't even know they have hands yet). The first night, the boys barely ate in the middle of the night, Sam decided he only wanted to eat 2oz but of course he woke up one hour ahead of time for the next feeding. Normally, under perfect conditions, I can feed all three within an hour. Perfect conditions with babies?!? That happened maybe one time this week... I'd say the worse scenario is when you've fed one and put him to bed thinking all is good and he'll go right back to sleep, you come feed another baby and the one you just put down starts crying tirelessly... What do you do? Feed the crying baby who is hungry or put him down and go settle the sad crying baby in the bedroom... and then a third decides he's hungry too!! So as you can see, I don't get much sleep and there is so much to do in the daytime that I can't always nap when they nap... Thankfully I got help everyday this week! My mother in law came to help on Monday, my friend Charline came on Tuesday and my sister, bless her heart, gave up her Florida vacation to help me instead so she was here the rest of the week. I do have to say, however, that I have pretty good babies... They're not colicky (not yet anyways... knock on wood!) and are pretty darn cute! Zachary is my toughest baby... he spits up a lot (to the point where I got worried and had to do quite a bit of research... conclusion is that it's normal...) and lately he has had a lot of gas pains and cries a lot without being consolable. Just like tonight, we put him down at 7:30p.m. in his crib and is just down (at 8:30p.m.) starting to calm down after about 15 trips between Gabe and I to go see him and console him... poor little buddy. It's tough when you just don't know what the heck is going on!! They've been fed, changed, burped, cuddled... what else can we do little guy?? I went out to the mall on Saturday to look for hiking boots. I ran into my friend Erika and I bragged about how lucky we were to have suck good babies... I may have sent jinks vibes all the way home as the moment I stepped through the door when I got home, all I saw was chaos... all three babies were crying inconsolably and Gabe looked like he was about to cry himself...

Oh no... there he goes again... one more trip, here I go...

ok... he's quiet... please sleep little guy, we all know you're tired!!

So I decided this week that I wanted to get out for some walks. It's good for the brain, the body and the dog! So Wednesday, Cindy (my sister) and I decided it was nice enough outside to go. It took a while to get them all ready to go; put long sleeve shirts on them, put on their tuque, put them in their car seats, make sure they're all snuggled in right... Calm one... c'mon buddy, take your soother, we'll be in the van soon!! Get ourselves ready to go... diaper bag?!? It's not like I'll change their dirty diaper in the middle of the trail!! Bring it anyways, I might have to do an impromptu changing in the back of the van. Get the dog ready, which is hard because she's so excited that I'm actually paying attention to her. Did I start the van?? Put the dog outside to wait for us, bring the car seats out to the van (it's warm, hurray for remembering to start it!!), put babies in one at a time. Off we go!!! I'm so glad we decided to go to an actual trail as we were surrounded by nature and what's better than breathing tree air?? We had a really good walk! It was slippery and we laughed quite a bit as pushing an 80lbs stroller up a slippery hill is not the easiest task. 80lbs is crazy you say?? 11lbs per car seat (so 33lbs) + about 27lbs of babies + about 20 lbs for the base... It was even funnier going down a hill... we both had to hold on to the handle while half purposefully sliding down the hill, letting the stroller take us down! So this leisurely walk turned into quite a workout!! Pushing that stroller is quite something... so we took turns. We went twice this week and Gabe and I went again today (I let him push it the whole time...hehe... I just took care of the dog).

Good old Mapleton Park Trail

The boys are starting to show up real smiles... (well Samuel and Jacob... Zachary is our more serious fella). We shared a moment of laughter on Tuesday night when Jacob was sleeping after eating. We were talking about him and he just gave us this huge smile as if to say... I know you're talking about me and I agree, I am pretty cute thanks! Zachary is a big time squirmer... We lay him down on his stomach in the middle of his crib and when we go see him for the next feeding, his head is touching the bars of the crib.. poor little guy! Jacob found his thumb on his own... now if only Zachary could do that!! We wouldn't have to play paci police...

Speaking of Zachary... he's still not sleeping... I'll have to go cuddle him for a bit... Gabe is going!

It wasn't even Zachary this time! C'mon Samuel... you're my good little sleeper guy!!! On a positive note, Zachary is sleeping... for now...

The nurse from public health came back this week and boy have our babies grown!! Zachary was 9 1/2 lbs, Samuel was 9lbs 6oz and Jacob was 7lbs 13oz!! We've had to graduate our two biggest boys to size one diapers and into 0-3 month clothes!! My friend Véronique came to visit with her baby Sébastien this week and it blew me away how big he was... he's just shy of 7 months old. I kept looking at him thinking... wow!! My boys will one day be that big?!? It's crazy to think that they are no longer my little premature 3lb babies... they are growing into little boys!!! It wasli really neat to see what they would be like in 6 months. He was giving us big smiles, kicking his legs in glee, loving the toys I'd put in front of him, cooing and squealing... so precious! AND he finished his 8oz of milk in like 5 mins!! We're lucky if the boys eat their 5.5 ounces in 45 mins!!

Cutie pie Sébastien!

Sébastien and Véronique holding Jacob

I'm getting the rest of the picture from the photo shoot tomorrow so I should have them up on the next blog! I'm really excited to see them... I'm also going to get my necklace and charms from Stella & Dot and I'm going for a haircut... I might go super short, I guess you'll see next week! Gabe and I might also try to go out for his birthday (the 15th)/Valentine's Day. My mom said she could take care of things while we went out but with the way the boys have been lately, I wouldn't like to leave anyone alone with them.

until then, here are some pics of the week: