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.