I was watching a DVD of Star Trek: Voyager last week and somehow my mind filled with an image of Seven of Nine, half borg and half human, looking at our triplets, all standing shoulder-to-shoulder with their heads tilted up to her. I know what she’d do. She’d regard them detachedly, arch her eyebrow, and say with an air of approval, “Very efficient.”
Then there would be Seven after spending some time with triplets… Read More…
When my triplets were three months old, I cracked. No sleep, little food, and showers… what were those? I’d lost all the baby weight I’d gained during my pregnancy, but then the pounds kept going, dropping until I weighed less than I had since tenth grade. I didn’t take care of myself. Everything was about the babies. My husband had to go back to work—he couldn’t stay home forever, no matter how much I begged—and I felt all alone. Read More…
More than 60 beachgoers were stung in the surf along La Jolla Shores yesterday, with three victims needing hospitalization. That would be the same La Jolla Shores where I learned to surf on Sunday and was told to shuffle, shuffle, shuffle instead of walk while in the water.
Guess they weren’t kidding. Read More…
So there I stood, a pen in one hand and a yellow legal document waiving responsibility should I be “maimed or killed by a carnivorous or poisonous creature” in the other. To sign or not to sign? Or more correctly, to surf or not to surf? That was the question. Read More…
Ok, I’m game. Or rather: YES, I’m game. On Saturday my spin coach issued a challenge to the class: To say “yes” 70 times a day for 7 days. As I recently blogged, she likes that word, “yes.” And of course I like that word, too, because who doesn’t like it?, so I got to thinking about her challenge. Seems like lately I’ve been saying “no” to my sons a lot, and I’ve been sensing a negative vibe around the house on far too many days. True, we’ve been trading colds and that makes people crabby, but still. In addition, I’ve been editing a positive-thinking book, a fun one for tweens by a truly upbeat guy, and that project has me noticing that the vibe I, Mom, emit in this house affects everyone else’s mood. I can actually see that when I’m in a bad mood, everyone else is, too. So that old saying is true: When Momma ain’t happy, nobody’s happy.
So, I’ve decided to apply the lessons of that upbeat writer and take my gloriously yes-happy spin coach’s challenge: I am going to say “yes” 70 times a day for 7 days. My goal? To find out if the flip side of that saying is true: “When Momma’s happy, everyone’s happy.”
I am now two hours into Day 1 of the Yes Challenge. Read More…
My son has Youtube to thank for this spankin’ new ‘do. I studied up on clipper techniques yesterday morning and then asked for a volunteer from my aspiring hair models. My firstborn triplet bravely stepped forward. What do you think? I think it’s pretty darned good! He really wanted spikey hair, and while I still canNOT go full faux hawk, his styling technique with my spritz gel (and his very liberal use of it) gives this cut more of a faux hawk look than the spiky we aimed for. But that’s really just splitting hairs, isn’t it? The point is that this child gets to have a spiky ‘do that falls within the limits of his parents’ 5-year-old hairdo parameters. I think it’s a win-win, don’t you?
Okay, Jessica, do I pass the no-longer-a-COMPLETELY-uptight-stick-in-the-mud-parent test?
Things are about to get ca-RAZY! Or perhaps deadly. Definitely funny. Why? Because I have just signed up for surf lessons, that’s why. Wa-HOO! That’s right, after almost four decades of living minutes from the beach, I’ve finally decided that I want to ride the waves that’ve been knocking me off my feet for so long. You hear that, waves? I’m gunning for you! This time, I ain’t going DOWN.
I won’t be alone in challenging Mother Ocean. I’ve talked two of my triplet mom friends into joining me. It’s a radical way to get a few minutes away from five-year-olds, indeed, but we are radical ladies. We have survived Year One with Triplets and then the Terrible Twos with Triplets and now nothing scares us Read More…
I have crawled under 4 beds and 3 tables, looked behind 6 bookcases and opened 12 cabinets, extracted 3 dust bunnies from my hair and pulled 2 couches, 2 dressers, and 2 nightstands away from the wall. Still, just 39 library books found. 1 remains M.I.A.
After 2 solid minutes interrogating my 5-year-old trio, zero new clues.
Why does that last library book ALWAYS hide?
Want to know a sure way to ruin Easter? Undercook the Easter eggs.
Yeah. So now you know how our morning egg hunt went.
To save the day, we coaxed our three crying egg hunters out to the van, loaded them up, then drove them to the local lake. There, they tried out their new insect-catching nets. Talk about a mood change! We all had a wonderful time, and the boys really got the hang of swooping insects from mid-air and then flicking their wrists to flip the nets over, trapping the little fliers. We now have an insect house full of Damsel Flies, and little boys who are smiling now instead of sulking. Saved by the nets! Read More…
We almost lost our triplets in the London Underground a year ago. It was a crazy moment, when we almost lost them, and I’d rather not be thinking about it at all, but I am. I’m thinking about how my husband and I were inside the train, gaping at our shrieking four-year-olds out on the platform as our hands grabbed wildly at luggage and dropped coats and fallen mittens, all with the closure of the train doors imminent. It was one of those incidents that, while quite scary at the moment, grows closer to mind-numbing terror each time I think about what could’ve happened. Read More…
I was right to be frightened yesterday. Look at these mud monsters! When the three of them were done playing in the puddle our big rains left them, I had to strip and carry each one upstairs to my shower, lest they trudge through the house like that, dragging their feet along the floors and their hands along the walls. I was sorely tempted to strip and hose them in the yard—a treatment given my sisters and I by my parents many a times after sandy beach adventures in summertime—but Read More…
This is what I see out my back window right now.
Eventually those mud monsters will want to come in… and I am frightened.
A friend in England turned us on to geocaching last year. That’s where you take a GPS and march out into the middle of nowhere to find treasure caches filled with goodies by other geocachers. It’s a fun way to spice up hiking, and it gets kids excited about what might otherwise be viewed as one long trudge by cruel, torturous parents who know nothing of what kids actually like to do. Read More…
…but I can’t help being amazed that this time last year, no moment of my life was spent without long johns on. Day or night, inside or outside, awake or asleep, I wore thermal underwear under my pants. Seriously, Lowestoft, England was COLD during the month of January. The kicker of it is, this January Lowestoft is even COLDER. In fact, our British friends are enduring their coldest winter since 1981. On Friday, when I checked their weather forecast, the temperature was six degrees below freezing, and the image above was what I saw on a webcam shot of their seafront. A second webcam wasn’t viewable—it was covered with ice.
Twice in two minutes tonight my jaw dropped open. Yeah, I know, jaw-dropping is hugely cliche, but it really happened—twice—and it was a reaction from the heart: I was completely astounded. Let’s see what your reaction is to the things that people can create.
First, from weburbanist.com, 32 gingerbread houses that I’d pay to actually live in. Oh. My. Go ahead, take a look at them and tell me that you don’t have a sudden hankering to move into a home with walls you can eat.