Christmas photo...

A quick preview of the picture I think we will be using for Christmas Cards this year:

In other news,
Rebecca has 2 bottom teeth and 1 top tooth.
Charlotte has 1 of each.
Trevor still scores a zero on the tooth count.

Rebecca now outweighs the other 2 by about 2 pounds and is noticably taller. She has a new game where she will grab your finger and lead you around the house.

Charlotte is turning into our explorer. She is the first one out if we open up the front door and she's usually the fastest down the sidewalk.

Trevor is now bringing us things. It's either books he wants us to read, or just a toy he wants you to play with. He is also trading things with us.

Nurse Visit Today

The developmental nurse was here today so we have new weights:

Rebecca = 16lb 6.5oz
Charlotte = 14lb 12.5oz
Trevor = 14lb 3.5oz

All three are on track as far as their developmental milestones.

I have also uploaded a copy of all the pictures Terry has taken of them so far. You can find them HERE.

9 Month update

The triplets are 9 months old! I'm not really sure where the time went. It feels like forever and just yesterday all at the same time.

They had their doctor visit yesterday, so we have some new weights:
Trevor = 13lb
Charlotte = 14lv 1oz
Rebecca = 15lb 3oz

The kids are showing a good bit of their personalities as well:

Charlotte is calm and careful. She is very talkative and seems to spend more time trying to figure things out. Dorothy put out this "lazy-susan" sort of thing she uses in her exercise teaching. Trevor and Rebecca just tried to crawl all over it while Charlotte spent a good amount of time laying next to it, spinning it and just looking at it before she tried to crawl on it.

Rebecca is our strong one. She is the biggest and tallest. She has the best hang of standing and cruising, even trying to stand without holding on to anything sometimes. She is also the fastest crawler at this point. I think she is also the shyest. She is the first to cry if a stranger is trying to play with her, and the first to complain if Someone she knows tries to leave the room.

Trevor is our daredevil. I think he is making of for his size as he tries to keep up with Rebecca in crawling and cruising. He is a very good climber and I expect he will be the first (but not soon) to escape his crib. He has loads of energy and doesn't seem to slow down till he is asleep.

All 3 are standing while holding on to things, cruising, walking holding onto our hands and sitting very well. They all like story time and anything that's on our plates. Dorothy is doing a great job in making all their spoon foods. They are getting a huge assortment of food.

Latest Nurse Visit

Because of the weight "scare" last month we had a nurse visit today to check on the kids weights.

Rebecca = 14lb 8oz
Charlotte = 13lb 8oz
Trevor = 12lb 12oz

She recommended we try a sippy cup with Trevor to try to get him to eat more.
Trevor may also be getting a physical therapist because the nurse thinks he is over compensating with his left leg when we do the practice standing.

How To Know You Chose The Right Peditrician

We had a nice weekend for the most part. Rebecca is now sleeping without her swaddle. In fact, she goes most of the day without one now. She only gets wrapped up if she has a big meltdown. Trevor and Charlotte still seem to need the swaddle for bed time.

Our big issue this (weekend and last week) was getting the kids to eat. This was caused by the visiting nurse who thinks Trevor (and to a lesser extent, the girls) isn't gaining enough weight. Well, I sent our doctor a note and Dorothy got a call today saying that she isn't worried in the least about our kids. Babies can be very good at self regulating and if they aren't hungry, we shouldn't force the issue. She said that these visiting nurses are more used to seeing the 'problem' babies like the ones born at 24 weeks and can be more alarmist with things.

As long as the kids stay active and happy, we will just stop worrying about it.

Nurse Visit Today

We get visits from a nurse once in a while who tracks their developmental progress. She says we are doing a great job with the kids.

One side affect of the visit is that we get another round of baby weights:
Rebecca = 13lb 10.5oz @ 25.5inches
Charlotte = 12lb 9oz @ 24.5inches
Trevor = 11lb 14oz @24.375inches

This means that all the kids are not gaining the weight they should be. They are going to be skinny like their dad, but we will do what we can. We are going to start giving them more snacks and we are putting faster nipples on their bottles so hopefully they get more down before they decide they are done.

Sweet Potato

We had our 6 month check up yesterday and everyone is doing fine.

Updated weights:
Rebecca = 13 lb 3 oz
Charlotte = 12 lb 1 oz
Trevor = 11 lb 11 oz

Also, last night, we tried feeding them some homemade sweet potato. They all seemed to like it quite a bit. Even Rebecca who still doesn't want to eat the rice cereal.
It looks like the 1 potato I made up will last them about a week at the rate they are eating right now.

Cold Shoulder

Rebecca has had some coughing lately, but it got noticeably worse over night. No fever or any other symptoms, but we were hounded so much in the NICU about possible respiratory problems that I decided to take her into the hospital. She most likely has a cold and I was told that all we could do is give her some Tylenol if she develops a fever.
A cute note...while there, she fell asleep on my shoulder which was a first for me.

Because we were there, we have a new weight for her : 12 lbs 1 oz.

In other news, in my last post, I mentioned the babies first bath. Today I got a note that Youtube was unable to process the video, but it didn't say why. I'll try again and wait till it's up and working before I post about it again.

Look at those eyes

So my wife noticed that Trevor's left pupil was sometimes a bigger than the right one. A quick email to his doctor told us it was probably ok but she wanted to check him anyway if we had time.

I took him in today, and the doctor said it was probably nothing but we should keep an eye on it. If it changes then she will refer us to a specialist.

Since we were at the hospital, we have a new weight for Trevor = 10 lbs 9.5 oz

Stuff about Bottles

Weights as of yesterday:

• Trevor = 10 lbs
• Charlotte = 10 lbs 13 oz
• Rebecca = 11 lbs 10 oz

Got 2 things today.

First, we got some special bottles for Charlotte. We were using Dr. Brown's Natural Flow® Bottles for the kids since they were in the NICU. C recently started randomly refusing both the breast feeding and the bottle and we were worried that she wasn't getting enough to eat. She is also the only one to have moved off the hospital pacifier and really seems to like the MAM pacifier we got her. We got her some Sassy MAM 9-oz. Bottles which have similar nipples to the pacifier. She really seems to like it, and even though she is breast feeding most of the time again, my wife is worried that she will stop soon because it's just easier and faster for her to use the bottle.

A few things about the bottle: 1) the bottle is leaky unless you are really careful about putting it together. 2) The ones we got came with level 2 nipples which means a faster flow. In fact, with warm water or milk in it, you get a solid stream like if you were to poke a hole in a water bottle. 3) The vent in the bottom doesn't seem to do anything. C still has to stop and let air back in through the nipple.

And finally, my wife read in a Parenting magazine that breast milk has antiseptic qualities which made it good for things other than feeding. Trevor has had tiny little white spots on his nose since birth and we were told they were basically newborn acne. My wife has been putting some breast milk on his nose for a few days and his nose has cleared up.

First Post

Just starting this blog. I'll be posting stuff about my current life which includes work, my marriage to my wonderful wife and our latest challenge --- our triplets.

Just briefly, My wife and I were married on January 23 2007. In April we found out she was pregnant. Because she is listed as "high risk", we got a sonogram at 6 weeks from her last period and that's when we found out about the triplets.

We had 2 girls (Rebecca and Charlotte) and a boy (Trevor) on November 2, 2007. They were carried by their mom for 34 weeks. Rebecca and Charlotte spent 21 days in the NICU and came home Thanksgiving day. Trevor stayed a few more days till the next monday.
All 3 have been healthy and have not needed medical intervention, they just started out really small.

Birth Weights:
Rebecca = 3lbs, 10 oz
Charlotte = 3lbs, 13 oz
Trevor = 2lbs, 9 oz