Memorial Day 2014

Memorial Day was just what the doctor ordered. Sunny and warm with good friends and family around. We invited some families over for grilling, swimming, and adventure including Jeremy, Mike's good friend who just retired from Special Forces. We couldn't let this day go  by without reminding ourselves that true freedom isn't free and only by the sacrifices of these dear soldiers are we able to enjoy such splendid, peaceful days like today. Speaking of fine soldiers like Jeremy, if you have never read the commencement speech by Admiral William H. McRaven, please do so immediately. 10 Life Lessons. It was inspired and something I believe I try to teach my children but could never say it so eloquently. 

1. If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed

2. If you want to change the world, find someone to help you paddle

3. If you want to change the world, measure a person by the size of their heart, not the size of their flippers

4. If you want to change the world, get over being a sugar cookie and keep moving forward.

5. But if you want to change the world, don't be afraid of the circuses.

6. If you want to change the world, sometimes you have to slide down the obstacle head-first.

7. So, if you want to change the world, don't back down from the sharks

8.If you want to change the world, you must be your very best in the darkest moment. 

9. So, if you want to change the world, start singing when you're up to your neck in mud.

10. If you want to change the world, don't ever, ever ring the bell.

I truly believe if you can change one person's life for the better in this world you can accomplish change. But in order to survive this world, that person may need to be yourself. I want to raise these children to be worthy of the sacrifices these men and women in the Armed Forces make for them each day. And I am happy to say that these kiddos can at least cross off "make your bed" today. God Bless! 

Paddle boarding with dolphins

Ballet Recital 2014

     Another year of ballet under her belt. That's my girl. I love that she still manages to stay a kid no matter how quickly these years fly by.

I love that her dreams still include her father and me in them. That she counts me as one of her best friends

I like when she tells Golden that I am a doctor in "Eternal medicine."

I love to see her be a big sister to the babies. They adore "Vava" almost as much as I do. 

I'm amazed at the limitless talent she has and the effortlessness in which she accomplishes great things.

I am humbled with how many people comment not only on how beautiful she is on the outside but also how sweet and lovely she is on the inside as if I had anything to do with it. 

I love to watch her when she isn't looking; always trying to catch a glimpse of my little girl but sometimes only finding a beautiful young woman instead.

I'm scared when she says that "Mom knows everything." or "Mom makes the best food." because I know that one day she will find me out and I only hope she still loves me as much. 

I love cracking up with her because she really is so funny. 

I will miss those front teeth when braces correct her front teeth that look just like mine.

But for now, I will just love on her and enjoy this wonderful, daily gift that is my sweet Eva. 

Mother's Day 2014

      After receiving breakfast in bed including the first strawberry from our patch, I was quickly shoved out of a bed that Mike and I no longer fit in with this expanding family. To say that my heart swelled is an understatement. It feels that I have one of these moments almost once a day lately. Purely grateful for what I have been given. But I must be honest and say that immediately following this feeling of joy comes either the deepest sorrow over the son that is missing in these frames or the overwhelming guilt over feeling so fulfilled despite his absence. It has been five years since Zachary died and for any mother looking for solace in this post I must apologize for you may not find it. I miss him. I cry for him. I feel incomplete as a mother during this day despite the countless bombardments from church, consumerism, and television telling me otherwise. 

   Losing Zachary is like a disease that has no cure. No. It is more like an amputation that has a constant recurrence. Some moments I am learning to walk again with an emotional prosthetic. One I can feel is clearly foreign but tolerable when suddenly out of nowhere something will happen to bring back the pain all over again. And as I sit there waiting for the spiritual Morphine to kick in I am overwhelmed with anger, sadness, or despair. I never know what will trigger it or when to expect it. But when it comes it comes with a vengeance and the only person who understands this is my husband who can look over at me and squeeze my hand, or wipe my tears. Sometimes he cries too or simply mouths the word "Zach" to me to let me know he understands. 

     But I thank Heavenly Father for giving me these beautiful children to watch over. If it wasn't for them I feel that I might just have floated away after Zach died. Golden and Eva were the anchors that kept me tethered to this world for I surely wanted to jump into that cold Winter's grave after him; first,  out of guilt I got up and began to care for them but after awhile I learned to love being a mother again. I stopped feeling like I abandoned Zachary and concentrated more on the living. This is not to say that these feelings don't creep back in every now and then just that I am learning to cope with them better.

     It was not easy getting pregnant after Zachary died and again I found myself feeling like a failure. Not only had I been unable to keep Zach safe but I couldn't give Mike another child to complete this incomplete chapter of our life. There seemed there was no happy ending destined for us. But luckily with the triplets I had not just a good pregnancy, I had the pregnancy of epic proportions. I worked until my due date and they came home with us. But those months were filled with countless tears. Would I lose one or all of them? Was I having a miscarriage or was the spotting normal? Thinking "when" not "if" something was going to go wrong. That is the true suffering of losing a child; you lose that ability to be carefree. You lose hope. Why wouldn't something go wrong? 

Nico's first feed by Eva 5mos

     But losing a child has given me the humbling ability to not only grow closer to my Savior but it has helped me understand just how great was His sacrifice of giving his first born son to a world that would eventually torture and kill him. He knows my sorrow and has made it His goal to show me increased love and understanding because of it. He has allowed me to mother so many beautiful children and promises me I will see Zachary again. But even with all of this I find myself sad because I miss him. I am selfish and want him to share in these silly moments we cherish here on earth that make us laugh and cry. 

    For example, each Mother's Day my beautiful daughter prepares for me the most splendid gifts. A card, a piece of art, or this year, a poem. She is amazing and each gift warms my heart like she will only understand when she becomes a mother herself.

Eva's gift

     

     Golden, on the other hand, seems to always be surprised when Mother's day rolls around. It has become a fun time here at the Harris house on a Saturday night when I turn to him and nonchalantly say, "Hey Golden, I know I am going to love your gift the most this year." This is where Golden looks at me with a blank face and says something like, "Gift?" I pretend to be so excited and say, "Yeah, my Mother's day gift that your gonna give me….Tomorrow!" Golden has the best cartoon like surprise face you ever want to see. I especially love the beads of sweat that gather at his temple at this point. But it is all in jest because Golden is simply not a touchy, feely kind of dude.  So you could imagine my surprise when Sunday evening Golden asks me, "So is it time for me to give you your gift yet?" 

    Mike and I gave each other a quick, "Do you know what he's talking about?" look and shrugged. "Sure it's time Golden. Let's have it." He quickly ran to his room and returned with two things. One was a plastic heart that said Happy Mother's Day. This heart he took from a chocolate chip cookie cake I bought myself on Friday. The second thing was a 3x5 index card with his chicken scratch writing on the front. Here it is below.

For those not familiar with these hieroglyphics it spells out "I love you with all my heart -Golden Harris" I don't need to tell you that I was rocked to my core with love for this child and then and there understood the parable of the prodigal son. Here I have a perfect daughter full of love, intelligence and beauty that strives to love me perfectly every day. I could not be happier but Golden's waters run deep and most days he slithers in and out of his room into the car and is lucky to put two words together in his responses to me. But what my son has always been is honest to a fault and that is why this card just broke me. He loves me. I am a good mother. How Zach would have loved this moment. And what would he have made me?

     I suppose that is life for most people. An ebb and flow of happiness and sadness creating a beautiful tapestry that is as individual as the grains of sand in the ocean. I usually don't allow myself to indulge in the sadness over losing Zach except on his birthday and Mother's Day but even then it is so hard because life has a terrible way of moving forward even when you are not ready. Forever, I will be stumped as to how best to answer the simple question of, "How many kids do you have?" or "Are these all of your boys?" If I say seven children and explain things I have to face that expression of uncomfortableness from the individual. If I say six, I feel a tremendous feeling of self loathing over not acknowledging him. There will be activities and work that needs to get done on his birthday and I am left feeling guilty for not spending my entire day thinking of him. So instead, I will find myself unable to hold back tears when I am alone and lying out in the sun on a beautiful day by the ocean. I can not schedule this mourning and will just let anyone know this. There is no right amount of time to "just get over it." Or if there is, I haven't reached it yet. But today I am grateful for my children, both living and deceased, and for my husband. All of whom I will be with eternally one day. Just not today. 

The Oxymoron that is Customer Service

     

     I would like to take a moment and discuss the government plot that is customer service. That is correct, a fairly thought out plan of the Obama cult that runs this country(which is impressive for a group that thrives on no plan at all). I think that somehow Obama convinced large companies that they needed to hire a crap load of people to do customer service during his tenure so that the unemployment numbers would look good in this crappy economy. Faced with this request, the companies have had to create reasons to use these millions of people. 

I think the conversation went like this:

Obama: Hire the unemployed
Big Companies: We don't need people right now. We are making money and running smoothly.
Obama: You won't pay taxes for the rest of your life
Big Companies: We'll get right on it

The job applications looked something like this:

Now Hiring

People who are alive

Must sound very, very happy 

Must know a ton of old exclamatory responses

And the questionnaires of these people went something like this:

School: To cool for…

7 + 3 = Purple

Last job: A lady paid me $3 to stop peeing and sleeping on her stoop

So now these previously fine tuned companies needed to have these newly unemployed employees (NUE) do something so they hashed out a plan. They were going to randomly select, oh, ALL of their customers and create a problem for them in order to have them call customer service which is where they had placed the above NUEs.

   Still not convinced? 

  Let me tell you about just a few of my latest interactions with customer service. The most recent one was with a company called thredUp. You send them all of the kids clothes you would like to sell them as if it were a garage sale. They will give you a dollar amount for them in credit towards buying other kids clothes on their site. I know. It sounds magical; so magical it was even featured on Good Morning America. So I sent them a bag of triplet clothes and got a $36 credit. Now here was the catch. Every time I tried to purchase the items it would ask me for my credit card information for totals as high as $0.10 and $1.45. These are not typos but the actual amount I owed after my transactions. The little red caption stated that my address did not match my credit card information which I knew for a fact was not true. I sent off an email to their customer care and was sent back a prompt standard email that read that I should (Captain Obvious voice here) check if my address matched my credit card  information. I sent another email stating that I had already tried this incredible feat and if they had any other savvy advice. Again I received the same email. That is when I sent an email that read something like, 

 You can keep my $36 dollars and I will give you $36 of bad advertising on social media. Have a human call me if you have any better suggestions.


     In a day, I received a human customer service agent's phone call asking me if she could help.She was so polite and happy. "Golly that sounds just horrible, Mrs. Harris" She would also put me on hold just about every time I finished a sentence. I pointed out the above problems and she had the nerve to tell me that after conferring with the technical supervisors she was to inform me that I should check if I had enough funds and if the address was correct. (Really, you needed to confer with a pro for that advice?) I told her that I was loaded (in pennies) and did indeed have the $0.10 in escrow for her and that I did live at my address. She then sounded worried and after saying several outdated explicatives like "darn tooting " and "gone dangit" told me that "just this once" she would override that security measure so I could shop. I bought two shirts and a pant for Carlos that used cost the same as if I would have bought them new at Old Navy and luckily, was allowed to make my purchase. 

Here is where the government job thing comes in. Not even five  minutes after the phone call, I receive an email from thredUP's Knitwit department (I did not make this up. They actually believe in truth of advertising) that asks me if I was satisfied with the care I received and if my problem was solved. There was only a "yes" and "no" checkbox. No comment section. Nada. I decided not to answer this email because the truth is "yes" the idiot woman was very nice and I have no beef with her but also true is that I wouldn't have needed to talk to her if their website worked in the first place.


     The Apple issue was (if problems are masterpieces) the flipping Cistene Chapel of errors. The nice folks at Apple have some great gadgets but boy are they temperamental. Any video I took with my iPhone would not download on to my computer when I plugged it in. Plugging in my phone directly into the computer is the only way to download video. I know this from a 3 hour "service" phone call with Apple earlier this year. But this was a new problem. My computer refused to recognize my phone. Like Lady Gaga refuses to recognize that all her stuff was done by Madonna 20 years ago. Whatever the case I called Apple and had to go through a computerized set of questions and press buttons until my fingers bled. However, I did note that if I were to press all of the buttons I had to push fast enough I played the tune for Loverboy's Waiting for the Weekend . When I did reach a genius (Again,this is not a sarcastic insult. They actually call themselves geniuses. The insults come later.) When I did reach said genius one hour later (no lie) he told me that this was actually an easy fix. This made the hairs on the back of my neck rise up because you know what always happens when people say this. When he wasn't busy putting me on hold, he led me through an elaborate set of instructions that ended with my screen going black with a poison emoticon on it. Maybe it was just blank but that is how I saw it. He told me not to worry that if I followed the next 100 steps that my computer would reboot. An hour after that, he told me he was going to put me on hold and have a super genius help me. When the super team leader did get on the line and brought my computer back from the dead I had been put on hold 15 times and on the phone for three hours. My problem wasn't fixed yet but my computer was back up. 


   It took them less than 24 hours to ask me how I felt about my care. Were they serious? My care of what exactly? The problem I had or the problems they created? 

   The latest problem I have is with Safelite Autoglass. These guys are the true winners here and by winners I mean the people who must have signed a deal with the devil for hiring the most incompetent people I have ever met. They installed my windshield with a 100% lifetime warranty (If I read the fine print it means if I have a warranty they will spend a lifetime avoiding answering my concern.) and after the window was put in incorrectly it rusted the entire frame of the car. I will save you the details but know that one month, nine hours, two body shop quotes have gone by and the "Executive Specialist" I was speaking to just stopped answering calls and emails 3 weeks ago. Today after a one hour conversation with a very nice, sweet lady executive who put me on hold at least five times to speak to her "Team Manager" I was informed that Kim Burgess had been out on maternity leave. Then she had the balls to tell me, "So you know what that means?" I quickly replied that I didn't because I had spent most of my child's first months of life on the phone with people like her. She sputtered a handful of "Oh by gosh!" and "Cheepers" but before she could go on I asked if it was all right if I put her on a brief hold. I then went and put the triplets to bed, made my lunch, started a load of laundry, caught up on some emails and after about forty minutes, returned to the phone. 

"Hi, are you there? Sorry to keep you holding," I said. Then I said, "Now where was I? Oh yes. Bye" and hung up. And if you are wondering, yes a survey is sitting in my email box.


    As I sit here on hold I thought about what the mechanism is for these customer care companies and here it goes. Two hundred recently employed people sit in a room with the one person (Team manager) who actually received any training. They are told to say nice things and ask for the problem. Once they have the concern they are to put the customer on hold while they stand in line to ask the only real employee what they should do next.(They are used to standing in unemployment lines so this seems easy) The hold button is also used so they can play a round of video games or catch up on episodes of "Scandal" because no one wants a stressed out, newly employed employee do they?

  But what I really think that hold button is for is so that they can spew real, down and dirty, just purely filthy bad words like they had a raging case of Tourette's Syndrome. How else can they get right back on the phone and pleasantly tell you that after keeping you on hold for an hour they and their trusty Team Member were not able to find that phone number you wanted or fix anything you just asked for? 

    This is where I have a problem. I was treated very nicely by all of these recently employed customer care employees. I wish that they could all continue to have a long, productive life of video game playing, tv watching, filth spewing employment but the truth is in my perfect world these companies would just do their jobs right thus nullifying the need for customer care altogether and thus firing all of their asses so I don't have to be subjected to product sabotage that helps Obama's unemployment numbers look good. And it would also save me hours of needless surveys that I wouldn't have to take in the first place if the companies just did their jobs right. But I get it, Obama must be behind all of this incompetency. It is truly the only reason I could think of why so many American companies blow. 

Well tomorrow I will start my phone calls to the medical billing office who overcharged me (why don't they ever undercharge you?), the Water company and finally the hold, hold, mother hold IRS.Nightline just had an episode on the fact that only 30% of people calling the IRS were able to speak with someone during tax season. Well I am here to tell you all that you didn't miss a thing. I reached someone who was THE nicest incompetent person I have ever had the pleasure of speaking to and they did ABSOLUTELY nothing I asked them to do so I have to call their holding asses again. 

I just wonder what the employment numbers will look like when everyone in America loses their jobs because they had to be on hold with customer service and filling out surveys but I don't think Obsma thought this far out yet. 

My Conversion Story Part !

     Today, May 4th, 2014, (International Star Wars Day for my fellow nerds) marks a great day in history for me and many Latter Day Saints living, or like myself, born in the South Florida area. Today this temple was dedicated and became the 143rd LDS temple. When I was born, the closest temple was the Mesa, AZ temple; a three day drive. In 1974, the next closest temple was the Washington DC temple, a 24 hr drive, then came the Atlanta temple, 12 hrs, and finally the Orlando temple at an astounding 4 hrs from Miami.But what does this mean to those who are not members? Well, in order to answer this I'm going to tell you a little story about myself. A story that begins at a Christmas party at my mom's house in 1997. Wait, maybe it starts earlier than that. Let's start in the Summer of 1994. 

     I was a medical resident at the University of Miami on a vacation in San Diego for a medical conference. I immediately fell in love with San Diego and did my best to drive around and see every inch of it before I had to go back to Miami. On one of my drives through the city, a huge white building caught my eye and I just had to go check it out. It was high on a hill, overlooking the cityscape and I felt it was drawing me to it. Much to my horror, this building ended up being one of those "crazy Mormon" temples of which I was not allowed access to. Nonetheless, I was able to stand in the garden outside before leaving and as much as I hated to admit it, this place touched me but I would rather die than admit that to anyone at the time. Now lets get back to 1997. By this year, I was now a practicing physician in a very posh Miami Beach practice that catered to the rich and famous. I had a penthouse office with a view of the bay and the ocean. I had a condo on the beach which I drove to every day in my red, convertible BMW. I was surrounded by my friends and loved ones and life was grand. At 27, I had checked off most of my "to do's" and was toping off the year with a trip to some island where I would be massaged and fed into the New Year. But plans got foiled by weather and I was almost catatonic when I realized that my only option left was to spend Christmas (tan-tan-TAH) at my mother's. 

   I arrived in a foul mood. I will save you the details and just say it wasn't Norman Rockwell at the holidays most years. I dreaded holidays most of my life. So it was no surprise that as I entered my mom's house I was greeted by some punk in a tie and white shirt with a tag on his pocket that read "Elder Harris." I lasered in on a small police shield he had pinned onto his tie. What a loser, right? He stuck out his hand and said, "Hi there, I'm Elder Harris. A friend of your brother, Henry." I looked him up and down and responded warmly by saying, "You think your a bad ass in that tie?" and proceeded to walk away. ( I will tell you now that my brother in law, a chief of police, had given him that pin when he got to the party and Elder Harris was kind enough to put it on.)

   I would like to say that I am in no way this person or maybe I am but I usually say this sort of thing in my head but Mormons and I had a history and I was just tapped for disappointment that night because later my brother John told me that he had been approached by said missionaries to receive the discussions which is a handful of meetings missionaries have with people who are investigating the church. I think I might have blacked out in anger at this point. (More back story here)

     Approximately twenty years before this incident, three of my nine siblings had been approached by missionaries and had been baptized into the Mormon church. My brother Henry had even been "brainwashed" into serving a mission in Paraguay where he lived in a house with a hole for a toilet and had contracted some stomach parasite. My Catholic mother blew her lid and I was introduced to a flurry of colorful terminology. But what killed me, truly ripped out my heart and killed me, was when I was not allowed to see or speak to these siblings which included my sister, Lourdes. She and I were tight and in a home where I sometimes was asked to be invisible she was somebody who not only noticed me but praised me. It was a long road but eventually I was able to establish a relationship with my siblings again. In the years leading up to this party my sister Lourdes and brother Henry had tried to subtly (they thought)send the missionaries after me. This was truly an epic failure. I was a young, flirty Cuban from Miami and they were mostly farm boys from Idaho. They never stood a chance. I could change any conversation into playful, unreligious banter. But today, they were messing with my brother and this was unacceptable. This was real. 

     When my brother John asked me to be his wingman for the first discussion I was more than happy to help. I was going to play it cool with this Elder Harris and let him dig himself into a deep hole and thus, show my brother John just what idiots these Mormons were with there temples and missionaries and whatever else Mormons had. That was when I realized that I didn't know much about Mormons so, that night, I proceeded to take out one of the many Book of Mormon(BOM)that were given me by the missionaries and began to read. I mean, how hard could this be? I crammed for 35 chapters of Embryology in one night, I could surely finish a chapter or two of this nonsense especially with my 12 years of Catholic high school religion classes. ( I would like to point out that by the time I had spoken to my last missionary I had moved three times yet in none of those moves had I felt prompted to throw away any of the BOM given me. Whatever that meant.)

   The New Year quickly approached and I had made fabulous plans with my fabulous friends. We went out dressed to the nines and went to several exclusive parties full of celebrities and beautiful people. Life couldn't have been better but as I looked around that night I had a gnawing feeling that ate at me over and over: "Is this all there is? Now that I accomplished all my goals, what is the meaning in my life?" I shook it off and passed it off as too much wine so right there and then I made a New Year's resolution. No more liquor. I never really saw the point of it and it had no place in my newest goal of triathlon training anyway. I was sure it had nothing to do with the BOM I had been reading and the feelings I felt when I was reading it. It was just a choice. 

    By the time I reached my brother Henry's house for the first discussion I felt like a prize fighter in his prime. I had several questions for Elder Harris from the BOM, especially about this Nephi guy and how he killed a man, Laban when he was drunk and incapacitated. Yeah, these Mormons were a piece of work all right. But as we sat down the Elders asked John to say a prayer before starting and I could feel the atmosphere in the room change. Now I am aware that it was the Holy Spirit. I was struck mute but it didn't matter because the first thing Elder Harris wanted to talk about was Nephi and why he had to kill Laban in order to save the golden plates which would later become the BOM. He said he was prompted to discuss that. I still get chills when I think of that. He then asked my brother questions about what he believed. Did he believe God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit were three distinct individuals? ("Duh, yes" I thought to myself.)"Do you know that only the Mormon church believes that?" he said. 

"Do you believe you will be with your loved ones forever and that marriage is for all time and eternity?" (Of course, right.) And so went the night. Elder Harris: 1 Sylvia Villate:0

    But I was not deterred for I had lost the fight but not the war. I continued to pick random chapters in the BOM to trip up the missionaries and sure enough, each time we met, Elder Harris would bring up the topic before I could. We finally reached the end of the discussions and they asked John if he wished to be baptized. He agreed but felt nervous and asked to speak to me alone for a minute. We went out back and he asked for my opinion. I told him that I could not make such a big decision for him but I told him that God wouldn't be screaming at him and making him feel anxious. That I figured that might be the adversary working on him and that I felt God might be more quiet, like a still small voice. When we returned to the group that good for nothing,all knowing, smarty pants, Elder Harris asked if he could have me read something. He turned to 1Nephi and I read, "Ye have seen an angel, and he spake unto you; yea, ye have heard his voice from time to time; and he hath spoken unto you in a still small voice"  

This is a picture of the "think tank" that is Elder Harris, that managed to foil my every plot. 

     My brother was baptized and as I sat through it tears streamed down my face because I had failed by letting this moment happen and greater yet, I felt that this church must be true. I made a pact with God. I was going to finish sitting through the baptism but as soon as it was over I would walk out the door and never speak of this again if he would let me walk out quietly. I would be a model citizen but no Mormonism for me. Not after all the heartache it had caused in my home. And worse, what kind of social backlash would this give me with my friends and colleagues? Services ended and I had one foot out the door with the sun in my face. I even had a smile forming in the corner of my mouth when I felt a hand on my shoulder. There he was. That… That.?  That (said as a bad word) missionary. "I felt prompted not to let you leave without asking you, Sister Villate, will you allow us to give you the missionary discussions?" 

    I will save the rest of the story for another day but let me tell you non-Mormons just a bit about the temple now before I go on. It is heaven on earth. As a non-member one time I felt peace there. As a member, I know I can commune with God there. Some of you may read this and think I am just another zealot who got taken but I ask you to look at this picture and I will remind you that most missionaries are between the ages of 18-21. Elder Harris was 25 because he too was a convert and got a late start. They go on two year missions that they themselves pay for. If you need no other proof that the gospel is true it is that boys and girls who you would not trust your car with at a valet carry with them the armor of righteousness that pierces all the excuses and lets the the Spirit touch you and reveal to you the truthfulness of the gospel. I will spoil the next installment for you by telling you that I get baptized. The rest you will have to wait for. 

     

Triplets Turn Three! Yipee!

   

The Grand's gift

  I can't help but pat myself on the back today because Mike and I have managed to keep these three from killing themselves for 1,095 days to be exact. Sure, Gigi has a cut on her nose, Beau had a bloody toe and Carlos managed to get a scar on his eye for the one hour I left him in the gym's nursery (Not on me) but in short I am going to take this as a win for the Harris clan. Luckily, we have the angel from on high,or as most folks call him, Nico, to thank for our ability to care for these three. He is so good he is practically invisible(if I didn't love holding and squeezing him all the time because he is frankly- adorable)I want to say how it's gone by in a flash but the truth is that it has gone by more like a stroke that leaves you with partial memory loss and immobility. A very long, drawn out, sleep deprived stroke. But we are getting better every day…and by better I mean that every day we are one day closer to getting them raised, self sufficient and out of the house. Don't get me wrong the triplets have been a blessing (I am legally bound to say this) but in the farthest reaches of my mind I imagine that one day I will do something crazy like maybe type this without a child on my lap spraying the keyboard with chip crumbs from her mouth as she says crap like "I help." Or maybe even sit down for longer than five minutes without someone saying,"Mom, I need…(enter whatever the hell makes you get up to get that thing you just got for the other kid five minutes ago)and I am practically having a maniacal laugh now when I think that one day I will not have four kids in diapers (really three in diapers and one in panties with a lot of "Oopsies!" And one more thing, I can't wait to have an (sorry I just had to change two diapers, make strawberry frosting from scratch, make two lunches for school tomorrow and put three kids to bed)…what was I saying. Oh yes, an uninterrupted thought. 

      Yes, this has been a crazy three years but I will say it and most of you will not believe me but here it goes. I couldn't imagine my life any other way. Call it motherly love that kicks in the second you hold them in your arms or call it Stockholm Syndrome the result is the same, I am deeply and emotionally attached to these guys who are practically my sole source of happiness most days. 

Gigi, Carlos, Beau

Carlos, Gigi, Beau

Carlos, Gigi, Beau. 

Carlos, Gigi, Beau

I could bore you with a bunch of individual quirks about each of them but…I will have to start a new paragraph first and post a picture.

Gigi

This little firecracker has two speeds. Busy and super busy. She can mostly be found smiling because she is genuinely happy to be around us. Her infectious laugh is only overshadowed by her ear piercing shrieking if things aren't going her way. Yes, she is a bit of a control freak but I have to admire her skills. Any child who can convince two other toddlers to not only give her all of their Easter candy but do so happily is destined to be a CEO of something, somewhere, someday. She is amazing in this capacity. She will always be finding a way to trade up in a deal. For example, she will say stuff like, "Here you go Carlos. Have a cookie." Which means, "Here Carlos. Take my half eaten, slightly soggy cookie and I will take your whole, never touched cookie." With that said, you will be hard pressed to find a child that loves her siblings more. Each morning she says Buenos Dias to all of the triplets and than uses her best baby talking voice(which sounds something like an old New Yorker) to say "Hi baby! Awe isn't Nico cute?" to her brother as he just laughs and wiggles at the sight of her. She is always climbing into a lap to snuggle and is enamored with anything Eva is doing. She is my kitchen "helper" and it makes me laugh to see that all of her antics that drive Eva crazy are the ones that most remind me of her older sister: Deeply inquisitive, busy body, who wants to do everything herself, know it all. She likes to sing and dance and bounce. The bouncing drives us all crazy as she slams back and forth in a chair, car seat or bed but every doctor, self help book and psychic has told me this is normal. And if you take the time to listen to her singing as she bounces you just might crack up. (Sing song voice here) "Beau's gonna get a time out. A time out. A time out. Carlos got a stinky poo poo in his pants. In his pants. In his pants"

Just look at her smug face..And Carlos being Carlos

Beau

    Beau is our tiny little powerhouse who dances to the beat of her own drum. She reminds me of a card I saw once. Cover read: "When they made you they broke the mold." The inside read:" And they beat the crap out of the mold maker too." I have dealt with a lot of personalities in my life but Beau may just be in a league of her own. Unlike my  patients who paid me for my professional opinion, Beau would happily pull down her diaper and take one giant pile of poop on what I think. We have had many a stare down and I am ashamed to say I have not won them all. It is hard to be serious when your opponent tries to disarm you by crossing her hands in front of herself and praying, "Heavenly Father, bless mommy and daddy," while she peaks up through half squinted eyes to see if this new tactic is working. (ugh, yes it is.)

Curly Sue

Her facial expressions are priceless and we don't know where she gets half the stuff she does.

In the picture above she found a small branch and came up to her father and rubbed it on his pants while she cracked up and said, "Tickle tickle daddy's huevos." I liken her to a Sour Patch kids commercial I saw recently where the sour patch candy crawled into bed with a little girl and proceeded to chop her pigtails off and when the girl awoke the sour patch, looking remorseful, gave her a loving hug. That is our Beau. She will throw a Defcon Twenty Meltdown at the gym when it is time to leave, throwing herself on the floor as I have my hands filled with her three other siblings, refusing to get up off the floor until a strange man comes over and asks her if she wants to be picked up. She immediately stops crying and jumps into his arms. The strange man will then follow us to our car and wait patiently with happy child as I put her siblings into the car. He then appears concerned as I reach for Beau who then takes up where she had left off; screaming and writhing to get away from me. As I try to bend her rigid body into the car seat the strange man seems to be thinking if he should be calling the authorities. And as soon as I place the last buckle in, Beau relaxes and says, "Hug mommy." As if she has returned from a long trip and has just seen me for the first time.I wipe away all of the facial sweat I can and hug her, feeling her little arms wrap tight around my neck I find it hard to remember why I was typing "LDS Adoption" into my phone a second earlier. She also will grab your face in her tiny hands and admire you as she says (unprompted) "Oh mommy, your so beautiful." God, I love that sour patch kid of mine.

She is the weak link in getting the girls to sleep together. If you put Beau in a room to sleep with anybody it is like watching John Belushi in "Animal House." But after all is said about her insane personality I must counter and tell you that this girl is a cuddler who loves her daddy. She pretend plays that she is a kitty most days and will crawl up into your lap and scoot close until you scratch her back while she sucks her thumb. She loves her sibling but her and Carlos have that triplet language people talk about. They will plan and execute play time together and not cry once over a toy or a turn. 

Carlos

This handsome devil is my big baby where Nico is my little baby. I am not ready to let him be a big boy yet. He is the kindest, most loving boy a mom could ask for and if it wasn't for his two sisters, he may very well have been the quietest, happiest child I had. But the girls' favorite game since the womb seems to be "poke the bear" If Carlos seems to be enjoying a toy you bet, one of those girls (mostly Gigi) will be taking it from him to watch him melt into an unconsolable puddle. Most of my day is what I like to call Carlos Watch. I try to make sure that (A) No one bugs Carlos and (B) If someone bugs Carlos he doesn't kill them because, even though he is my big baby, Carlos is now towering over Beau and weighs more than Gigi. He loves his mommy though and wakes up early to cuddle with me at nap time. And his favorite thing to tell me is "You want pretzels" and "You want leche." Which really means he wants it but he just can't seem to grasp that because when I correct him and say, " I want that," he thinks about it a second and says, "Okay," like I can have pretzels and leche too if I want.

Did I mention we are in a Superman phase. Like I had to overnight four Superman shirts to the house because that is all he has worn every day for two weeks now. I love to watch him get down on the ground, putting on a serious face, preparing to take off flying then he sprints off running with his little hands flapping back and forth so un-Superman like. 

When I look back and see these guys at nine months in the baby jogger I often wonder, "How did I do that?" I imagine that is exactly what I will be asking myself when I look at the picture again when they are three in the baby jogger.

It is clearly the side effect of the sleep deprivation triplet having stroke I was talking about. So forgive me as I write all of this nonsense down but I probably won't remember it tomorrow so it is therapeutic. I have thousands of images I want to remember forever but I mostly just take away that they have been happy and loved for their thousand plus days and I suppose,what more can a kid ask for? No don't answer that. Let me just be happy in thinking love is all you need for now because that I have for them in spades.And if at all possible, they have managed to teach me more about love, patience and happiness in three years then I could ever hope to teach them in a lifetime.

Okay, maybe just one picture of Nico.