"Pumpkin Patching"

Yikes! I have lots of catching up to do! I'll start off easy by posting photos from our annual Pumpkin Patch trip last week. All of the kids were so excited to go (except perhaps for Carter, who insisted on wearing his Ipod the whole time to make it "bearable.")

For days, it was all the little kids talked about. Riley kept saying, "When are we going to go Pumpkin Patching? I've been waiting forever!" Unfortunately, we were late in the game this year, so the pickings were rather slim... No matter, we drove a mile down the road and got most of our pumpkins for $3 at WalMart, thus making everyone happy. Even Carter!

These are a Few of My Unfavorite Things...

So you already know how much I dislike goody bags. And balloons. And Sharpies. And anything of that nature that either a) destroys my house, or b) destroys the peace and goodwill amongst my little ones. This past week (and actually all in one very mischevious day) we added a few more culprits to the list:

1. packing peanuts





2. baby powder


3. shampoo

Funny thing is, all of the above happened in about 2 hours, with Tanner as the prime instigator. Here's my guess at the dialogue--

Tanner (while I'm doing dishes): Hey guys! Mommy got a big box in the mail and it's full of little white fluffy things. Lets smash them all up and make snow . . .

Tanner (a half hour later, while I'm shop-vac'ing up a blizzard of crushed packing peanuts): Hey guys! I know another way to make snow! Mommy got some new baby powder at Target, and I figured out how to take the lid off . . .

Tanner (another half hour later, while I'm distracted on the phone talking to Uncle Dan the ER Doc about the possible dangers of baby powder inhalation and wondering how to fix the shop-vac for another round of action): Hey guys! Since Mommy won't let us make snow and made us get in the tub, let's be Santa Claus! Turn the water back on, 'cause I got Mommy's new bottle of shampoo and I figured out how to take the lid off . . .

Several days and several cleanings later, we still have shampoo sludge in the tub, baby powder mist in the guest room, and tiny pieces of packing peanuts that stubbornly refuse to be picked up or vacuumed. Good times!

I can only imagine what else will be contraband in our household by the time the triplets make it to kindergarten!

Overheard: "You're Very Sneaky, Lauren!"

Driving home from Sam's Club and all hopped up on 32oz Big Gulp sodas, the car was full of six noisy kids and two weary parents. Somehow over the noise, we heard Riley's fluttery little voice: "Hey you guys, you need to be quiet! I can't even hear myself drink!"

I made the mistake of buying a package of chocolate chip cookies and leaving it visible on the counter. It got awfully quiet while I was putting laundry away upstairs, so I crept down and peered into the kitchen where they were all huddled around the box of cookies, fists full. I stood there and just stared at them in their joyful feast until Sydney spotted me. She jumped a foot and then became indignant: "Hey! You sneaked on me! That was a bad choice!"

Along the same lines, Bailey got into a package of chocolate chips on the counter. When spotted, I took them away and put them in a cupboard while she was watching. I then saw the wheels turning in her head as she looked around for a chair and then looked back up to the cupboard with the chocolate in it. Then, ever-so-sweetly, she said, "Mommy, could you please go away now, please?" Like I was born yesterday.

I went to pick up Tanner from his third day at preschool and, with a line of parents behind me and a smiling teacher in front of me, Tanner announced: "Tomorrow is going to be a very special day, Mommy! It's Hoe and Tell!"

"It's, uh, what?" I sputtered.
"Hoe and Tell! And you can come!" he hollered. Hmmm...

I was making dinner when Bailey hollered, "Mom! Come quick! There's a amergency!"

I dropped what I was doing and followed her voice to the bathroom, where she was staring at herself in the mirror.

"What's wrong?" I asked breathlessly.

"Look! There's no flowers on my dress! Hurry- go get some paint!"

Recent excerpts from prayers:

Sydney- "Thank you that we can hop from one foot to another..."

Tanner- "Thank you for the hearts under our skin. And our tentacles." (?)

Riley- "Thank you that I did not get puked on by Sydney or peed on by Bailey cuz then I would be all ruined." (following an outing to Sam's Club that involved both disasters.)

10K a Day... And Then Some!

I went for my yearly physical last week, and was pleased to be given a clean bill of health. "Your numbers look great, your bloodwork is good... so I'll tell you what I tell everybody in your age group," my doctor concluded. "Don't smoke." (I rolled my eyes. Duh.) "Always wear a seatbelt." (Again- Duh.) "And keep on exercising."

He must have seen the look pass over my face because he said, "You DO exercise, don't you?"

"Uh, well, um... not so much," I hung my head with shame. "Unless you count chasing after six kids every day as exercise?"

I was hopeful for a moment until he smiled and said, "Nope. You need to be doing at least 30 minutes of cardio at least 3 times a week, and at least 20 minutes of strength-training at least twice a week if you want to stay as healthy as you are."

Oh. Because I actually wouldn't mind getting a lot healthier than I currently am. But I at least want to maintain what little fitness I've got!

"Did I mention that I have a lot of kids?" I persisted. "I mean, seriously, I'm not making excuses here, but I honestly have no idea how to fit all that into my schedule."

"Where there's a will, there's a way," he said, closing my chart. "Make it a priority. Schedule it into your week. Make it happen."

Spoken like a man. A man who doesn't have to drink his breakfast while dropping carpool kids off to school and rushing back to get the next kid onto a bus. Spoken like a man who has an entire hour off for lunch in which he can either chow down at the nearby Chili's or go for a jog and still fit a shower in afterwards. Spoken like a man who can probably eke out more than 5 minutes a day to himself without somebody else having a major melt-down.

Sorry, did that sound bitter? It's just that my days are so crazy-busy that I can only dream of having an extra 30 minutes in a day where I might actually have enough energy to do more than drop onto the couch and promptly fall asleep!

But the fitness thing is a priority to me. (I mean, I drink a protein/beet/spinach/wheat germ concoction every morning for breakfast. I am really trying here!) So I was working up a plan for this dilemma when I saw an article in the newspaper (as I was cleaning off the coffee table) called, "10K a Day". It was all about how research has proven that the average American only walks 3000 - 5000 steps a day, yet people in top physical form walk at least 10,000 steps a day. The article suggested that you can vastly improve and maintain your fitness level if you can work up to 10,000 steps a day.

And a ray of hope shined through my fitness doom. This might actually be something I can do! I bought a pedometer, calibrated it to my stride length, and prepared to add a lot of extra pacing to my usual routine. I made up a little chart in my head for how to gradually increase myself to the 10,000 steps a day. I was set.

I clipped the pedometer on the next morning and forgot about it until around 9 am. It said I had already walked 3000 steps. Worried that it was malfunctioning, I tested it a few times and was surprised that my pedometer was working correctly. And then I forgot about it again until noon, when upon checking, I was stunned to see that I'd clocked 6000 steps. So I tested it again. It was still working.

By 10pm (and my day not near over yet), I was near 13,000 steps, which is over 6 miles. I mused over the fact that it had been just an ordinary day. I hadn't even added in any extra pacing yet! Weird.

The second day was much like the first: I ended up at nearly 13,000 steps.

The third day was a bit of a let-down: I was tired and not feeling well, and spent a lot more time sitting down than usual. But I still was at nearly 11,000 steps.

I haven't worn the pedometer since. It served its purpose by proving to me that I do, in fact, exercise EVERY DAY. I just didn't know it! And, yes, I realize that 30 minutes straight of cardio would be optimal. And I also realize that I need to someday work in some strength training (bearing in mind of course that I regularly lift 30 - 40 pounds of kids up and down off countertops, couches, carseats and beds on a nonstop basis... does that qualify?) But I'm still happy to know that I'm not atrophying away while I'm too busy to officially be working out.

So the proof was in the pedometer. And, in answer to your question, Doc, apparently chasing after six kids all day does, in fact, count for something!

"Hey! We're not ladies... we're triplets!"

So we survived the girls' first trip to the dentist, and although I'd dreaded it for weeks, we came out virtually unscathed. No PRE-appointment waiting room histrionics, no dental chair melt-downs, and perhaps most importantly... NO CAVITIES! Which, when you consider that the older three had cavity-free visits last month, this adds up to six cavity-free mouths and one very happy mom. (I suppose it's another "you know you have a lot of kids when..." that we weren't able to schedule all my kids' dental visits in one trip.)

I'm sure we were helped by the fact that we go to a pediatric dentist who is as fabulous as he is patient, and that the office is well-equipped for little ones. But I love this office most for their ingenious policy of taking the child back to the exam room for cleaning and x-rays and exams WITHOUT the presence of their parent. Even when they're just three years old. Seriously. A nice hygienist calls out your child's name, and gently whisks him/her away by the hand, assuring that they'll come get you if they encounter any problems but that kids do best without the moms right there. (Code for: moms hover and it makes the kids nervous and we want you to just back off!) The Mama Bear in me was nervous about this policy at first (do they do this for everyone, or just me? How did they know that I'm a hover-er?), but it went so smoothly for Tanner's first appointment last year (and again last month), that I came to see the wisdom of this policy. And I won't lie: that kid-free hour was the most peaceful I'd had in weeks.

So I was experienced with office policy and was bracing myself for the girls to melt down when somebody came to get them, but, shockingly, they allowed themselves to be led away. This alone was a miracle because, frankly, it could have gone either way. You see, it's a gang mentality thing: if one triplet decides that it's okay and that she's willing to go along (usually Sydney), then the others follow suit. But if one triplet (usually Riley) decides that she's not okay with what's about to happen and freaks out, then they ALL start to freak out and there's no hope for turning the situation around. It's an all-or-nothing endeavor.

Fortunately, it went our way. The girls were taken deep into the bowels of the dental office (which must be sound-proof because I could hear nothing) and I sat there, agape, and a little unsure of what to do with myself. No kids? Really? Tanner was at a friend's and the big two were at piano and I was... utterly alone. Lucky for me (?) I had a mountain of "patient's first appointment" paperwork to fill out (in triplicate), so I took my sweet time. One of the questions amused me: "In one sentence or three adjectives, describe your child's personality." Piece of cake. Sydney: adventurous, thoughtful, caring. Riley: introverted, sweet, sensitive. Bailey: feisty, temperamental, charming.

I was musing over this when one of the receptionists came into the waiting room. "Are you the mother of the triplets?" Gulp. "That depends," I joked. "Is somebody throwing a tantrum?" "No, no," she gushed. "They are just adorable. We are getting such a kick out of them! In fact, the doctor wanted me to come tell you what just happened!" Gulp again.

Apparently the girls were set up together like an assembly line on three side-by-side dental chairs in their matching little outfits and hairbows and shoes (a ploy to make them seem as sweet as they look), when the good dentist walked by and said, "Hello, ladies!" He was answered by an indignant Bailey who replied with hand on hip, "Hey! We're not ladies! We're triplets!"

Truer words were never spoken.

And the funny thing was that if I'd finished filling out my paperwork in time, they wouldn't have had to describe which triplet it was (shortest, round face, blondish hair) in order to know that Bailey was the culprit. Because it was written right there on the paperwork: Feisty. Temperamental. (Don't you dare call her a lady!) But charming. She had the entire office in stitches.

And, just when I thought we could make our escape without a single incident... they gave the girls balloons and goody bags. UGH! (I've posted this before, but I'll repeat myself again: goody bags are the bane of my existence! Followed closely by balloons. I appreciate the thought, but, UGH! The kids fight over whose bag is whose before I can write names on them and somebody inevitably has something that is different and therefore better than the other people have, and somebody has the wrong color of toothbrush when their favorite color is in fact green, and somebody is missing their tin of dental floss, and somebody spills their ACT fluoride rinse mini all over the carpet of the waiting room, and... you get the picture.) I'm pretty sure that goody bags were invented for only children.

Things fell rapidly apart from there. In the three minutes it took from receipt of goody bags and balloons to the office exit, I was pretty sure that our "adorable" facade was blown to bits. Such howling had never been heard there before. Even in the dental chair. I left the office with one girl on each hip, one by the wrist (getting knocked in the face by the diaper bag), and all four of us hopelessly tangled up in balloon strings. Again, Ugh! Balloons.

But we made it, and with the exception of those last few minutes, the experience was relaxing and pleasant. (How often can you say that about a dental visit?) Yet one thing is for certain: our entire pediatric dental office now knows that my girls are triplets. And definitely not ladies.

Deception and the Art of Motherhood

True confession time: sometimes I lie to my children. (This would be your cue to gasp.) I am not proud of the little fibs I occasionally tell, but at times they seem nothing short of necessary:

Example 1: I bake an amazing main dish of eggplant parmesan and I bread and cheese and sauce the meal for nobody's business, so as to disguise the fact that the starring item in the dish is... a vegetable! (and one with a weird name, at that.)

My kids are chowing the stuff down when Taylor (the pickiest of all my eaters) says, "Hey... this is good. But what is it?" "Oh," I fumble. "Something new. A parmesan casserole!" "Yeah," she presses on, stabbing a piece of eggplant with her fork. "But what is THIS?" "Chicken," I lie, so smoothly that she doesn't doubt me for a moment and even asks for seconds.

Example 2: Thanks to my fellow bloggers and bffs, we have a new breakfast favorite here in our house. I like to call it The Super Smoothie. With a little help from The Magic Bullet (love, love, love it! How did I ever live without it?), I blend up the following concoction: milk, banana, frozen berries, protein powder, ground flax seed and... spinach! (brilliant, SARAH! brilliant, Julie!) I swear to you that each of my six children BEG me to make them a Super Smoothie every morning. And I happily oblige while turning my back to them as I add the "secret ingredients" (it's very cloak-and-dagger), all the while walking around with a funny little smile on my face because it perversely pleases me to know that I am tricking my children into chugging something that is so fantabulously healthy.

I had a close call, however, this past week. In all my smug glory, I apparently got a little lazy and didn't blend the tar out of our secret concotion. That's not to say that it wasn't fully blended, mind you, I just hadn't Magic Bullet'ed it to smithereens to obliterate all trace of the spinach. So when Taylor spotted a little green fleck with her eagle eye and asked me, in horror, what the green stuff was in her smoothie, out came a lie: "Hmm... must be a piece of berry stem." And she bought it- hook, line and sinker- which is a good thing. Because I promise you that if she knew there was spinach in her smoothie, she would never, ever touch it again.

It would seem that my little white lies revolve soley around food. Unfortunately, they have extended into other arenas as well. Like when Carter came home from school, complaining that some "crazy mom" called the school district transportation office and now the bus driver is not allowed to play the radio on the bus. Ever. Apparently I didn't hide the glee that passed over my face quickly enough because his jaw dropped: "Oh my gosh! You are the crazy mom who made the call, aren't you? You narc'ed on the bus driver!" "Of course I didn't narc on the bus driver," I said with as much righteous indignation as I could muster. "I would never want to get anybody in trouble!" Which was true... in part. But of course it was totally me that made the call, and justifiably so! I mean, talk about crazy ladies: this woman was playing the raunchy rap station nonstop (including the horrific morning show) with absolutely no regard to how inappropriate it was for her elementary school passengers. I'm sorry, but when your seven-year-old makes reference to a lewd term that she heard on the radio of her school bus- a term that was made popular by the scandals of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky- well, let's just say that a mom is entitled to go a little nuts.

So I'm a liar. And I've never even felt all that badly about it until just recently. You see, we do an ongoing "value of the month" in our house and guess what the value of the month is for July...?

Every day I look up at this reminder on my wall and feel twinges of guilt. And then, as we do "honesty role-plays" and talk about what honesty means with the children, the twinges turn more into stabs of guilt.

This guilt, however, was assuaged by something I saw on Oprah: Jessica Seinfeld (cute and smart wife of Jerry), describing the principles behind her fabulous book, "Deceptively Delicious." She has mastered an entire cookbook on the very brilliance that I haphazardly stumbled onto: puree'ing vegetables and sneaking them into "normal" kids foods. Ingenious! My pal, Mindy, lent me this book and I've gone crazy trying things out and making up a few recipes of my own. (These days, Quinn eyes everything I make with suspicion and secretly pulls me aside to ask me what I snuck into tonight's dinner.)

Deception. Deception. Deception. I really don't want to lie to my kids to get them to eat vegetables. And I don't want to have to lie to my kids in order to create a better environment for them on the bus, but... what's a mother to do? In a perfect world, kids would love vegetables and bus drivers would have a clue.

Now if I were really computer-savvy and clever like my sisters, I'd post this entry as a poll and ask you to vote with your opinion: "Is it okay to be dishonest with your children if you really believe it's for a good cause?" But, sadly, I am not savvy or clever like that, so I'll just beg you to leave your opinion as a comment for me in the "comments" section.

And please, if you think I'm a horrible mom for my little deceptions, be kind in your comments. Lie, if you must.

Overheard: Cracked

Tanner: "Hey Mom, I'm in that room in the front. (the formal living room) What do we call that room? The other play room? Anyways, I'm in that other play room teaching myself cartwheels!"

Me: "Oh, that sounds a little dangerous."

Sydney: (perking up) "Yeah, that sounds dangerous. I want to come!"

Tanner: "This is hard stuff, Sydney. You might really crack your head."

Sydney: "Okay. Let's go!"

I am always amused by the kids' sense of time. Tanner will say things like, "Remember when we saw that frog yester-night?" or Riley will say "Did we go to the pool laster-day?" And Bailey thinks that everything happened last year. She'll say things like, "Oh, yeah. We went to the park laster year when I was two" when in actuality we went to the park last week when she was three.

So I guess time really is relative. It goes way too fast for me, but lately the days are dragging for poor Tanner, who has been anxious for his birthday since the girls had their party in April! He has said to me several times over the past few months, "Isn't it August for my birthday yet?!? I've been SO patient!" We kept telling him (for months now) that he had to wait for May to be over and then June and then in July we'd see fireworks and then shortly after that it would be his birthday. So he woke up today and said, "I'm so excited! Today is my birthday!!!" Huh? We finally figured out that he thought it was his birthday literally the day after he saw fireworks. We tried to explain to him that it's still July and that his birthday isn't until August, but he was insistent that August is today. Poor kid! It's going to be a loooooong few weeks for him!

Speaking of Tanner's birthday, I've had this whole pirate birthday party idea planned out for him since like January, and he gets so excited about it. I told him we are going to dig for buried treasure in the sand box and do a pirate scavenger hunt and then "walk the plank", which he has translated into a "pirate walk" somehow. (He insists that we are all going to put on our pirate outfits and hold hands and walk around the block. In mid-August. In pirate garb. Uh, I don't think so.) But he tells everybody we meet about his pirate party and recently invited the dental hygenist who cleaned his teeth to come! She was so cute with him and said she'd love to go because she only has daughters so she never gets to go to pirate stuff, and- I swear- Tanner waggled his eyebrows, batted his lashes, and said, "Bring your girls, too!" (Like, hey baby, what's your sign? Why don't you bring some friends along with you to my party?) What a player!

Scripture study with the kids is interesting lately. We do a "little kid" scripture and then put the four youngest down and do a "big kid" scripture with just Carter and Taylor. The little kid scripture is generally something simple that they all repeat after us like, "Jesus says, love one another" or (my favorite) "Jesus says, honor your father and mother." We have a little scripture/prayer wheel and when it was Tanner's turn to pick the scripture he asked, "How about we do a scripture about Monster Trucks?" When this request was denied, he acquiesced, "Okay, then let's just do a scripture about Transformers."

Following suit, last night Bailey wanted to do a "pretty princess scripture." When we tried to re-direct her efforts, she put her little hands on her hips and said, "I either want a princess scripture or a flower scripture. The end!"

As for prayers, Riley's still take the cake. She says stuff like, "Thank you that we could eat little yummy goldfish, and thank you that my sore neck is feeling all better, and thank you that I can have lots and lots of beautiful crayons... etc. etc. etc." We have to prompt her to finish, or it could go on for hours, which is hilarious considering that she's our "quiet one."