Trips Turn 5

Imagine I have a time machine and this post is done promptly in May. Besides, the triplets celebrated all month long so I am really right on time. I can't believe it has been five years since we moved back to Florida. And it is a distant memory of caring for these guys when they were unable to walk or feed themselves. If I had to do it again I would be just as freaked out because I honestly cannot remember anything about that time unless I see it in pictures. And in case I can't remember anything about this year, I thought I would put some pictures in to remind me of just how much these kids have grown. 

For their birthday the triplets got to choose their individual cakes which seemed quite similar to the cakes they picked last year but I was not complaining.The girls only wanted to be mermaids and Carlos only wanted instruments to torture them with in the pool. I think I made everyone happy. 

This year has marked the first ballet class and recital along with the first T ball game where they called themselves the hammerheads. What they manage to lack in silence they make up for in humor. Always loud and always making a mess is the norm for these guys.

Ballet recital song was the Hokey Pokey and Beau was the only one to give a bow, like a man but we loved it. And don't get me started on Gigi's hands. So graceful.

First day of ballet

As far as t-ball was concerned, Gigi always had to wear a bow in her hair and when she put on her helmet or cap, the bow went over it. As for Beau, she sure liked snack time. As you can see by the pictures, the kids were very focused but they loved their teammates, especially Carson Daringer who both Beau and Gigi married at the gym day care. 

Why I augta! 

There soon on their way to being Kindergarteners this fall but for now, they are my sweet five year olds. 

Catching up with Trips

Beau: Mom, I saw a scary bitcho ( bug)(Holding sword and stuffed white rabbit)

Mom: Oh no, Did you kill it with your big sword?

Beau: (playing coy) no

Mom about to praise her

Beau: Lifts a slightly stained white rabbit. I killed it with my bunny. (Smiles her adorable smile)

Beau: Mom, I'm going to be a rock star. Can you get me a hotar? (guitar)

Eva:Beau you are the cutest thing ever!

Beau: Yes, I am the whole package. I am cute as a button

Mom: Beau, what's your phone number?

Beau: 2 second and number nine

Gigi: I'm not tired, just my eyes.

Carlos:(As his mom sings the ABC song.

Mom, you're going to jail

Mom: Why

Carlos: For singing terribly

Mom: Carlos, what word starts with the letter "B"

Carlos: The letter "D"

Beau: Chank you, my arms and eggs urt. (Thank you, my arms and legs hurt)

Carlos: What are you mating there?

Me: Excuse me?

Carlos: Over there(pointing to a construction site) what are you mating?

Gigi: I want yummy spray (canned whip cream)

Gigi:Mom, I had a nightmare I was a baby unicorn.

I love these girls except when I walked into there newly cleaned room to find it had snowed baby powder everywhere and they looked like ghosts. Did I mention it was ten at night?

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.

Easter 2014

Happy Easter to all of our friends and family. We could not be happier to have had such good weather and great company for this special day. In this last general conference for the LDS church, Elder Uchtdorf spoke on being grateful. (see link here)I could not think of a better day to do that than on Easter. 

The first thing I was grateful for was that my children cooperated in sitting down and taking pictures. Nay, they did more than cooperate; they begged me to take more pictures. So for the first time ever I have managed to be in a picture with more than just one of my children with their eyes open and have had a record of more than two children staring and/or smiling at the camera at once. As crazy as it may sound to some, my gratitude is magnified because I have known true, gut wrenching sorrow from being a mother. I have been to such a dark place that all seemed lost to me but were it not for the love of my children, both living and spiritual, as well as of my Savior,I would not have had the strength or purpose to carry on. It is those sad days that allow me today and every day to find gratitude and happiness in the monotonous, the repetitive, the otherwise minuscule task of child rearing. And through grateful eyes see the miracles that I have been entrusted with for an eternity. 

These bambinos will be three years old in a few weeks and most days it seems like yesterday they were born.

Nico's first Easter. He's smiling inside.

My mini men and me

What a great big sister these kids get

All my Harris men. 

No prompting to hold hands. They just love each other that much

These two have similar personalities and humor. Lucky me.

I am grateful for a loving husband. For this man, like Michaelangelo with the statue of David, was able to see a worthless piece of marble that most had discarded as "past saving" and brought forth something valuable. In this case, someone who would love him fiercely, faithfully and eternally. He reminded me that I was a Heavenly daughter of Heavenly Father and thus my worth is unmeasurable. My greatest wish is that my daughters find husbands like their father. Someone who is humorous, hard working, goal oriented, spiritual, loving: a Priesthood holding man who loves them as much as he loves me. And good looking don't hurt either. 

Love this man.

I am grateful for the love my children have for one another. Their tenderness brings me to my knees some moments. To here Gigi say, "Good Morning Baby." (in what sounds like an old New York lady accent) as she peers down at her little Nico is adorable. Only to be matched by Carlos patting him on the head saying, "Nice Nico.I hold baby now."

How you doin'

Golden will first kill himself than admit that he loves his siblings but I catch him sitting in the living room surrounded by the triplets as he tells them about something on his iPad. He is always counting heads making sure they are all accounted for. 

Gigi loves to sing and dance. 

Little man loves big man

I am grateful for the roof over our heads and the food we have to eat especially today. To stand in the kitchen with the triplets sitting on the island "helping" Eva and I make the food is my favorite part of every day but holidays are the best because we get to experiment with new things. This day was marzipan and dinner rolls in the shapes of bunnies. The fact that the rolls grew into each other made it look like a lot of bunnies sniffing each others butts and this laughter was enough to try that again. 

Bunnies jumping into the hole

It looks like a pen for crippled bunnies

I am grateful that Beau likes to cuddle. That her sense of humor is bordering on genius and that she likes to pretend to be a kitty cat and curl up in my lap a lot. 

I am grateful that Carlos likes to wake up from his nap 30 minutes before his sisters so that he and I can have our own private cuddle and play time. I love that he wants to wear a Superman shirt every day all day. I love that he loves me and that he says "Please and Thank you, Mommy" when he only needs to say please.

I am grateful that Gigi is potty trained. That she is incredibly inquisitive and happy, that the most terrible words you can here from her are "I got it" which usually means she has gone and got something that is either breakable, spillable or both.

Love this mug

I am grateful for the fact that everyone allowed me to take their picture individually. I am also thankful for their health and their ability to be children without the need to grow up too fast. I am grateful that the biggest problem in my house is the noise from too many kids screaming and laughing at once.

When did he grow up? 

Did I mention how much I love the Superman phase?

That look gets me every day.

I am grateful we were able to have a splendid Easter egg hunt. One for the little ones in the day and a nighttime one for the big gins in their night vision goggles. The babes gorged on chocolate  more than they should have and I could care less. They found all the eggs and no one seemed to notice that I left one egg empty to signify the fact that Our Savior is Risen which is the last and most important thing I am grateful for. I never need ask "What is the meaning of my life?" or " Do you ever just wonder if what you do is important enough?" I know that I am here for the simple purpose of receiving a body so that I may return to live with my Heavenly Father and I can do so with this crazy group of individuals I am lucky enough to call my family. I know that I will be reunited with our son one glorious day in the future and that Heavenly Father put us here so that we may have joy. And today I say that His mission is accomplished for my heart is full.