Grand Cayman

We had a wonderful trip last week, and committed ourselves to accomplishing everything on our vacation to-do list: which was to do absolutely nothing. It was such a nice change of pace to not constantly be on the go- no meals to prep, no diapers to change, no baths, no chasing babies. A whole week to ourselves to do whatever we wanted was blissful. 

We spent each day alternating between relaxing at the beach or in the pool, drinking far too many frozen fruity drinks and buckets of beer, and then at night moved on to enjoying delicious dinners over evening cocktails and gorgeous sunsets. We were in bed early each night, (I think our latest night out still had us back at the hotel and in bed before 11:00 pm) which worked out well for being up and at the beach before 9:00 am every morning.

The water on Grand Cayman is amazing- the color is out of this world! I have a pretty big phobia of the ocean (I've seen one too many shark movies!) and didn't plan to spend much time, if any, actually in the water. But the beach was just too inviting, and the water was so clear it felt like you were swimming in a saltwater pool. We probably spent 90% of our time in the ocean, which is unheard of for me! I was brave and took out my own jet ski when we went on a snorkeling safari. And I snorkeled without freaking out. All successes for me! 

Where we spent the majority of our days

The sunsets were amazing!

The hotel we stayed at, The Westin, wasn't the best by any means. The front desk staff wasn't overly pleasant or hospitable, and the lobby area was under construction which was a bit of an inconvenience. But to make up for it, we were able to use their non-motorized water activities for free while we were there. So we took advantage of that amenity a lot! I discovered that I'm pretty decent at stand up paddle boarding, which is great as I've been interested in getting one to take to the lake. And we took out kayaks a couple times, too. 

View from our balcony...my toe polish matched the balcony rails perfectly

Inviting waters

This rain never actually made it to our part of the beach, but it was awesome to watch! The thunder there is INSANELY loud, especially during summer storms.

The highlight of the trip was definitely the sunset cruise we took on our own private sailboat! It was just Will, me, and the Captain, Orneil. He was a great person to chat with- he knew a ton about all the Cayman Islands and we learned a lot about the Island culture. He is also a very active member of the pirating community on Grand Cayman! It was fascinating to learn about their pirate week and all the prep that goes into getting ready for the island's big celebration. I likened it to prepping for Mardi Gras each year in New Orleans. Our sailing adventure ended with us helping tow a stranded eco-tour boat back to shore! Quite an exciting evening. 

Some info about Pirates Week: http://www.piratesweekfestival.com/
And Orneil's (AKA "Captain Wes") Pirate Group: https://www.facebook.com/LasTortugasPirates/?fref=ts

"Our" boat for the evening!

Will loves to get these sail photos

On the water, in his happy place :)

The boat we "rescued"

Another beautiful sunset

Towing the boat

Basically the only photo we took of ourselves the whole trip

We were fortunate to get to see an amazing sunset immediately followed by an awesome full moon rising!

And of course, we missed our babies like crazy! They thoroughly enjoyed being spoiled by their aunts and cousins, though, and I am pretty sure they didn't miss us nearly as much as we missed them! Thank goodness for FaceTime, dropcam, and text messages- we still saw them and talked to them every day we were gone. I know they had a great time when they weren't thrilled to see us when we walked into their room on Friday morning to greet them!

Taking the wagon for a spin

Taking Cooper for a spin

Enjoying the ball pit (that Mom and Dad wouldn't open for them but Aunties would!)

Happy morning baby!

Happy morning baby #2!

Rub a dub dub, 3 babies in the tub!

I'm so glad we were able to get away for a perfectly relaxing vacation, just the two of us. It was good for all five of us to have a break from our normal routine! We were certainly excited to see the boys, but Will and I are already dreaming about our next trip, and can't wait until the boys are big enough to enjoy a family trip back to Grand Cayman!

Last But Not Least!

With just hours to spare before we left for vacation, I was able to catch some of Will's first steps on camera, too! I'm so glad we were there to witness their first steps as it would have killed me if they started walking while we were gone!

Prayers for all of us this week as Daddy and I take a much needed recharge break and leave the aunts in charge!!

Walker #2

Griffin is getting the hang of this walking thing, too! He's a little tipsy, but I'm sure he'll be cruising in no time...

A Day in the Life: 12 Months

In preparation for our big trip to the Cayman's and leaving the boys for our first extended period of time, I have been prepping a binder for Sue that's full of information about the boys. I'm sure it's information overload, but I am admittedly anxious about leaving them for a week and want to be sure that I have all the bases covered in case something happens while we're away. I've pretty much wrote out my newest "Day in the Life" post to include in the binder so I figured I'd go ahead and copy/paste it here to save me from having to re-write it in the next couple weeks. So, here's a look at what life is like for us at 12 months old:

7:30-8:30 AM: the boys will wake up on their own any time between 7:30 and 8:00 AM. They are pretty quiet and content to hang out in their cribs for a bit as they first wake up so you don’t need to rush in there. When we do go in, they all need diaper changes and into their outfits for the day. If we plan to take them out and about, we put them in “real” outfits (rompers, or shorts and t-shirts or onesies); otherwise, we typically just put them in a clean onesie and no pants. 

8:30-9:30 AM: Breakfast time. They eat all meals at their triplet table now. They get milk with all meals now- some days they are more enthusiastic about drinking it than others. We typically put Cooper in the middle seat because he has had a tendency lately to throw food on the floor. He still does it from the middle seat, but not with the same enthusiasm and determination that he does from a side seat! Be sure to give Cooper 1 ML of his Ranitidine meds before breakfast.

9:30-10:30 AM: Play time. We take them on a walk around the neighborhood if it’s not too hot. If we do walk, we rotate the baby up who gets to sit up top in the stroller and usually bring some water along for them to have. If the weather doesn't permit for walking, they are perfectly good playing upstairs for a bit. When we are upstairs with them, they can roam the bonus room freely and will generally play well together. They are not allowed to play on or near the entertainment center (though they will surely try!). We have toys strategically placed to try and block their access but they will still squirm through- they’ll need to by physically moved away from the TV. Often.

They are also drawn to the window, so we will open the shades about halfway to keep them safe from any choking hazards. A current favorite activity is to bang objects against the window. 

We don’t really keep them in the baby jail for extended periods of time any more as the space is too small for them to have a lot of roaming room. We do keep them in the baby jail area if we have to leave the room to grab something. And we also have baby gates set up now that we leave closed at all times (especially the one at the bonus room doorway). We’re trying to get into the habit of always keeping the one at the top of the stairs shut, too. Just in case!

10:30-11:00 AM: Snack time. Back to their table for morning snacks. We offer them a sippy cup of water with their snacks, then they head back upstairs for naptime. They may fuss a little bit when we put them down, but that’s OK…they typically quiet down really quickly. 

11:00 AM-1:00/2:00 PM: Nap time. The boys usually will nap for at least a couple hours in the morning, if not longer. We typically clean up the kitchen and get their lunch prepped during their morning nap.

1:00-2:00 PM: Lunch time. Same as morning routine- except a bit messier as we usually feed them a combo of finger foods and spoon fed foods. 

2:00-3:30/4:00 PM: Play time back upstairs. Depending on how late their morning nap lasted there may be time to give them a quick afternoon snack before putting them down again. But if they took a long morning nap there is often not enough time, and that’s OK. They usually go down for their afternoon nap between 3:30 and 4:00 PM.

4:00-5:00PM: Afternoon nap. This nap is not normally longer than an hour or so. If they wake up on the earlier side we give them a snack right when they wake up…but if it’s closer to 6:30 we skip it all-together. They don’t always have 2 snacks in a day so we don’t stress if we don’t get both in! We only have one set of the EZPZ mats so they’ll need to be washed so they’re ready to go for dinner time.

5:00-6:30: Play time and dinner prep. We generally play with them upstairs until about 5:30 or 6:00 then bring them all down to the kitchen and let them play in the baby jail area while we prep dinner.

6:30-7:00/7:30 PM: Dinner time. We typically let them have all finger foods at dinner time and try to time it so we are eating dinner at the same time they are. I usually keep some extra food diced up and ready for them as backup in case they power through what’s on their plates (Griffin and Cooper!) They will often try to steal food off each other’s plates. I don’t know what is so tempting about the other plate when they have the exact same thing on their own… but alas we deal with that every night. We've noticed lately that they haven't been as excited about eating as they used to be. Sometimes we have to grab a fork or spoon and feed them off their plates that way. Will, especially, is a slow eater but gets very excited about trying to feed himself with a fork! After dinner Cooper gets another 1 ML dose of his ranitidine medication.

If there is time to clean up the kitchen after dinner we will; often Will and I will tag team and split up the work. One will work on dishes while the other cleans up the baby area- clorox wiping the triplet table and sweeping and mopping under the table every night. It's always a good day when the dishwasher is nearly full and we can justify throwing the EZPZ mats in there and starting it as opposed to hand-washing everything.

7:00-8:00 PM: Bedtime routine. We take them back upstairs and let them hang out either in a crib or in the upstairs baby jail while we get each one ready for bed. If it’s bath night, we bathe each one individually- it doesn’t matter who you start with.  Bath time takes about 45 minutes start to finish to get all three bathed and into PJs. All 3 boys get lotion and fresh jammies on bath night. Then we let them play upstairs for a bit before bed.

We try to have them down for the night between 8:00 and 8:15. Before bed, we’ll read books while they brush their teeth. I put all 3 in the baby jail and let them brush their teeth in there while Will reads the 3 bedtime books to them. We always read “Goodnight Pookie” last. I sit in the baby jail with the boys to be sure that they don’t steal each other’s toothbrushes, stand up and walk around with them, or use them as weapons against each other. J Once we’re done with books we take their toothbrushes away and then put them into their cribs, one by one. I let the first baby who gets taken to bed “help” me turn on the tranquil turtle before I put him down. They may fuss for a couple minutes (Will especially) when you first put them down, but they usually fall asleep pretty quickly.  

First Birthday Party

I just realized I never posted any pictures from the boys' first birthday party, except for the party details. I'm so thankful that Pete and Sue brought their nice camera along and took some pics to document everything as I didn't take as many photos as I would have liked. It was a great, albeit H-O-T, evening to have a BBQ and the boys loved their 2nd smash cakes even more than they loved their first ones the day before.

Cooper Is On The Move!

All three boys have been doing a great job of standing on their own lately, and have been testing the waters of walking by taking a wobbly step here and there. Cooper, though, has really started to get the hang of it and just in the past couple days has taken multiple steps in a row. We finally were able to catch it on camera this evening- we have our first official walker!

It doesn't surprise me at all that Cooper is the first one to walk. He may have been the last one out of my belly, but he's been the first to do everything else since then!

New Normal

One year ago today we brought Griffin home from the hospital, and our party of five was together in the same room for the first time! It is really hard these days to not feel nostalgic and a bit weepy when I think of just how far we've come in the past 365 days. One year seems like a lifetime ago, but in other ways it feels like just yesterday that we were dealing with our new role as parents and round-the-clock caregivers of 3 newborns. As we ease into their 2nd year of life it feels like we are once again adapting to a new normal. It's certainly not as exhausting, stressful, and overwhelming as where we were a year ago, but there are certainly days when the adjustment feels easier than others.

We have a tendency to change up the boys' routine just as soon as we get comfortable and adjusted to a particular schedule. The past couple weeks has been no exception. We've basically rocked all of our worlds by drastically changing their daily schedule. We dropped all their bottles cold turkey right after their first birthday, with the exception of their bedtime bottle, which we continued until we ran out of frozen breast milk. Admittedly, we went through the frozen stash much, much quicker than I anticipated. I had hoped that we could make it to 13 months with the frozen milk...we didn't even make it 2 weeks past their first birthday.

We gave them their last official bottle on July 1st, and that was it. No more bottles. We've replaced their bedtime bottle and books with bedtime books and teeth brushing. The first few nights went relatively well- there was a minimal amount of crying when we put them down for the night, but they slept all night like champs. I think they were enjoying their new toothbrushes and it was a good distraction from the missing bottles. But it seem like the novelty has worn off. The past couple nights we've had more tears than usual when we put them down and the tears have lasted longer than this mama is comfortable with. We try to let them self-soothe and they generally can calm themselves down on their own within a few minutes. But Cooper especially has been wailing for extended bouts of time the past couple nights. It's been especially tough for me, I admit. We have been lucky, fortunate, spoiled- whatever you want to call it- but our kids don't cry at night when we put them down. At least not for more than 5 or 10 minutes max. So when Cooper cried and fussed for 30+ minutes without letting up, I had to go in. Last night I brought him back out to the play room and rocked him for a bit before putting him back down. He still fussed a bit when I put him back in his crib, but he was able to fall asleep on his own pretty quickly. But tonight was a different story- even me holding him wasn't cutting it. He was NOT happy at all. We finally caved and gave him a 6 oz bottle of whole milk...and he went right down after he finished. Clearly we are all working on this abrupt adjustment to our schedule. I'm sure there will be more frustrating evenings like this as we battle through the transition, but we'll get through it. I will have to start toughening up my skin because I can't keep teaching Cooper that I'll come in an rescue him if he cries loud and hard enough!

Speaking of adjustments to a new normal, it feels like I have endless amounts of free time now that I've finished pumping. I truly have forgotten what it feels like to be able to relax at the end of the day and enjoy some downtime before bed. Before it was a mad rush all night from the moment I walked in the door to the moment I laid down to go to bed (get home, get dinner prepped for both us and the boys, have dinner, clean up dinner, diaper and change the boys into PJs, prep lunch for the next day, prep bottles, bedtime bottles, bedtime books, put the boys down, wash dishes, prep pumping bag for next day, shower, and pump). Nowadays, it is a little more relaxed. There is still the initial rush for the first few hours to get dinner prepped and the boys fed, changed, cuddled, and off to bed. But once they go down for the night I don't have to rush straight into the next thing on the to-do list before bed. I have noticed that my blogging has suffered since I did the majority of my writing while pumping. It will take some focus to sit down and write updates at night now. But the call of the couch and mindless television has been far more enticing the past couple weeks!