I’ve been rockin’ the boys’ school snacks and lunches. Creative, healthy, tasty, fun. Seriously, their lunch supervisors have been trying to place orders with me for their own lunches. And lunch supervisors don’t mess around, not when it comes to food. You give your kid a lax or unhealthy lunch, and they let you know. My boys’ school is all over the healthy food initiative, and I’m on it like white on rice. Make that brown on rice. Much healthier.
But yesterday I went a bit overboard. Dried seaweed snacks. I know, I know: Dried seaweed snacks?! WHAT possessed me? Even I recognized the craziness of that idea, once I got home from Trader Joes, that is. See, the cashier had recommended the snack, swearing that all the kids were going nuts for it. “Really?” I asked. “Oh, yeah. Weirdest thing,” he said, “but totally awesome. I like it—I feel like a turtle when I eat it.” Then he made a chomping turtle face. I thought I could use that with the boys.
Then I got home and thought again. Dried seaweed snacks. How was I going to sell this to them? Read More…
Five years ago I rolled my suitcase past the sliding glass doors of L.A.’s Hyatt Regency Century Plaza hotel for the first SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) National Conference since my triplets had been born. This was to be my first weekend away from my three babies, who were just seven months old. A few steps into the hotel, I came upon a writer and the SCBWI staffer who’d set up my stay at the conference. The writer looked at me in surprise. “What are you doing here? Didn’t you just have triplets?” she asked. Before I could answer, the staffer, the amazing Kim Turrisi, said, “That’s why she’s here!” For emphasis, she picked up the pillow I’d tied to the top of my suitcase and waved it. Indeed, I was determined to get at least one night of solid sleep that year, if I had to leave town with my favorite pillow to do it.
Apparently I only cry over the thought of 
Heartbreak! My firstborn, the loser of the first tooth among the Halverson Trio, lost his second tooth today . . . in the plastic ball pit at Ikea’s playroom. No joke: My frantic boy couldn’t find his pearly white in that pool of red, yellow, and blue plastic despite the help of his equally horrified brother.
On Tuesday we took the boys to their first in-theater movie—Toy Story 3. I’d been told I’d cry by the end, but I’d just poo-poo’d the prediction. What I hadn’t taken into account was how much a certain scene would resonate with me. When Andy’s mom cried about her baby growing up and going to college, I crumbled. Or rather, blubbered. 
I kinda sorta know how to play chess. Which may explain why we had a chess set stashed in our toy closet. Or maybe the set was my husband’s from forever ago and he kinda sorta knows how to play chess, too? Regardless, the youngest of my five-year-old triplets found the chess board a couple of months ago and asked me to teach him to play and now he kinda sorts knows how to play chess, too.
My boys are getting their first real taste of that. Triplets they’ve known since all six children were infants are moving tomorrow. To the other side of the country.
Their Daddy will be so proud. My boys are in the back yard right now, making “chemical sets”, as they call it. Water, mud, a little soap for bubbly affect… It’s quite a concoction. It makes me smile, as I remember how my sisters and I would do that with the contents of my mom’s spice cabinet so many years ago. A little cream of tartar, some curry powder, paprika, cayenne pepper… then we’d get the neighbor girl to taste it. She always did. You’d think after the first time she’d have learned her lesson. But no, whenever we cooked up our concoction, we always asked her to taste it, and she always did….
First my five-year-olds insisted on wearing flip-flops just like the other boys in their jui-jitsu class. Now they want to wear their hair like their classmates, too. This has created a bit of a hair affair at Casa de Halverson. You see, the boys want faux hawks. Extreme faux hawks. And Mom and Dad say, “Not while we’re in control of the clippers.”
I managed to get through this whole day without crying–even when one of my sweet babies showed me how loose his front tooth is (”You’re losing a tooth already? How is that POSSIBLE?!?”), and even when my other sweet babies WROTE THEIR OWN NAMES on my card, and even when I realized the card they’d pick out all by themselves said “Happy Birthday” on it. Then my friend had to go and send me a link to 
When my triplet sons were born, my husband and I stopped watching T.V. With infant triplets, where was the time for it? When the boys were six months old, we canceled the cable. Why spend hundreds of dollars a year for something we didn’t use? And since our T.V. has no antennae and so doesn’t receive non-cable T.V., that was it. No T.V.
Does anyone else think five-years-old is too young to elope? I do. My firstborn son does not, and neither does his new “wife,” a five-year-old girl who happens to be a triplet herself. Now, I do appreciate that he chose for a mate someone who can relate to his own life experience. That’s a very mature move. But it’s not so mature to keep the relationship secret from both sets of parents until after vows are exchanged. That’s not right, and I’m not afraid to say so.
Dear Misters Gee, Collins, and De Lorean—
I’ve got a mystery niggling at me, and I fear I have no hope of solving it. It all began with butterflies.
Twenty years ago, when my husband and I were first dating, that tall, charming new boyfriend of mine led me down an alley, extracted a wad of chewed-up gum from his mouth, then stuck the gum to the brick wall in the shape of a heart with the letters “D” and “M” on either side. I remember standing back to admire his creative expression of love and thinking, Yes, he’s The One.