Two Year Old Triplets are Tiring!

Having three two year olds is really not easy. To be truthful, I’m really struggling at the moment. They are gorgeous. They bring me such joy, but oh my goodness that joy is accompanied by bucket loads of stress.

I just need to have a little ‘rest’ session at the moment before I continue to work on the myriads of tasks crowding my head… So I thought I would write a blog, because as a Mummy blogger this blog also serves as a little bit of a diary at times, for myself and my family in future years.

So let me share with you, as way of example of how my life is progressing at the moment with a seven year old, four year old and three 27 month old children. (If you are pregnant or have young triplets, perhaps you shouldn’t read on. Denial is awesome.)

Today. It’s my day with no help. I look forward to these days, but once they are in progress, I often get into survival mode. Sometimes I feel like I’m just treading water and holding afloat a boat full of children. Objective: No one drowns.

(Just a little aside, I just looked down at my fingers while I typed, there is a huge slice taken out of the middle of my fingernail. I have no idea how or when this dent in my nail has happened.)

The morning started by waking relatively early, so I reached for my phone and started reading yesterday’s Bible In One Year entry since I was behind. Before long, Trent, our early bird, arrives at my bed. He wants to play games on my phone. I refuse. He comes and checks every five minutes if I am finished yet. Even still I manage to read yesterday and today’s reading and then set the timer for 15 minutes and let him play a game while I shower.

I had a quick shower, well I thought so, I had purposely shaved the previous night to save time in the morning, but before I was dressed, Alex appears asking why I was taking so long. I retort that I haven’t been long, and he mutters something that it feels like a long time when you are surrounded by screaming children. Welcome to my life buddy.

The kids played nicely for awhile after Alex left for work. I managed to eat my breakfast, give the kitchen a tidy (you can’t tell that now) and do a few other tasks. And then, in between nappy changing, I printed out some Australia Day colouring-in sheets to do with the kids to decorate the walls for our Australia Day party on Sunday.

We sat down to colour-in. Actually, we went to sit down, then I noticed that the table had not been wiped, there were crumbs everywhere. Immy was desperate to draw, as was Trent, I set her up on a plastic box while I wiped the table and him on another flat surface. Meanwhile, the other three who had been playing contentedly now came out and started to fight over Immy’s space. She was fierce defending her textas and I quickly dried the table with a tea-towel before setting the kids up there. Immy refused then to be moved from her box, but was having trouble with the boys who were still getting down from the table to steal her pens. Toby is into biting at the moment, so had to keep getting sent to time out. Once when I came back with him I noticed that all the lids had disappeared, so then I was crawling around searching for them. In the meantime, another box of pencils was tipped over. You might think colouring-in is a low key activity. In our house, it is not.

The only way to get the kids out of the colouring-in meltdown was to feed them. Unfortunately I haven’t been fruit shopping this week, so rice crackers had to suffice. They were all happy because we made home made slushies.  Of course the contents of one full cup was spilled.

More play. More fights. More tantrums. More happy moments, more cute words and developing sentences. We read Immy’s favourite book, “Rawr” by Todd H. Doodler. Hopefully I will get the chance to tell you more about it, but if I don’t, keep an eye out for it. If you have a toddler who loves dinosaur, this book will be much loved. It’s so cute, and all the kids love it, not just my dino obsessed girl.

We made lunch. I couldn’t make the sandwiched quick enough. The triplets were literally standing at my knees begging for more and more and more. Thankfully it was soon time for their naps. Sigh of relief. I took the opportunity to have a quick check of Facebook. Wrote a Caitlin’s Happy Heart status. (Psst. Do you “like” me? If not come over to Caitlin’s Happy Heart and keep in touch, I love to connect with people!)

As I wrapped the computer time up, the two big boys came in asking to play Reading Eggs. Well, that means that Jonty plays it and Trent watches because he can’t participate because it’s linked to Jonty’s school account. But in any account, it’s a great educational game, so I said they could play it for half an hour.

In the meantime, I had my lovely sister and her man turned up. It was nice chatting to her, and we don’t get enough chances to do it during the week, so I don’t regret that at all, but it did mean that the jobs I was going to get done while the triplets slept and the boys played didn’t get accomplished. As my sister left, it started absolutely bucketing with rain. Our house, which is getting older, had two leaks with a lot of water pouring in, so then I was mopping up water, and shifting the unfortunate piano that was right underneath the largest crack in the roof. (I hope I didn’t undo the good work of my chiropractor from earlier in the week.)

Then I decided to do something with the big boys. Remember that facebook status I had written earlier? In it I declared that I needed the kids to go back to school so I could bake. But right then and there I decided to bake with them. They are going for a sleepover with their grandmother and cousins tomorrow night so I thought we would send a packet mix jelly slice with them for dessert. I had two boxes, so the boys made one each. It was very easy, except it had three stages, which made it more complex. Throughout the process, as is often the case when cooking with young kids, I had crumbs dropped everywhere, several near misses of catching licked fingers just before they went back into the cooking, tipped over chairs, and spills.

Towards the end of one of the slice stages, the triplets all emerged. Of course, when they saw the activity in the kitchen, they instantly wanted a part of the action. So I decided to bake ANZAC biscuits with them. I had wanted to make some for Australia Day. Cooking with two year old triplets is not for the faint hearted. But it is very cute, and I love seeing their enthusiasm. They love it all so much, like sniffing ingredients. (Go and see my Happyheart75 instagram video. I can’t seem to load it here.)

They also like pouring and stirring. The stirring will always end up with ingredients outside the bowl. By the time I stirred in the hot ingredients and had multiple hands diving to hold the hot saucepan and tears over who stood where, etc. I banished them all to watch ABC kids while I rolled and cooked the biscuits. (Notice a theme here on my alone days, electronic devices become my survival mechanism.) As I was finishing up the bikkies, I got the boys in to do the last stage of their slice, at which point Trent spilled a jug of half made jelly (you know, when it’s not stirred properly, but in the really sticky point…) so that was a joy to clean up.

I extracted the kids from the TV by serving the warm biscuits and momentarily everyone was silent and happy, until another drink was spilled. During the clean up Trent decided to have a meltdown over not receiving another biscuit. (I wanted enough for Australia Day in a few days time.) Between that and his initial refusal to help clean up after cooking, he now has a large chuck of his favourite toys residing on the top of our fridge as a direct consequence.

Favourite toys. (I still have some sELFies on the fridge that our Elf On The Shelf took. I know I should take them down, but they amuse me.)

The kitchen floor had started the morning sticky, and was already high on my to do list, was now feeling positively awful, but I realised that I really needed to get the children bathed. I did that, one at a time for the youngest four. By then I had barely enough time to get dinner ready. I had mince, and decided to use my new pressure cooker I got for Christmas to speed up the process and cook the potatoes in half the time for just a simple savoury mince. Simple savoury mince still requires lots of vegetable chopping, which always feels like more time than you anticipated. I was relieved when I finally had everything in the pan with the lid on.

At this point I retrieved my eldest, who I had allowed to play outdoors in the rain. He was soaking all over and filthy, on account of jumping in muddy puddles. (Peppa, I normally love you, but sometimes I rue the day you put dirty ideas in my children’s heads.)

Oh, and talking about puddles, Alex received a water cooler for Christmas. Which is a great gift, except the triplets are still in the training phase and are constantly overfilling and/or spilling. I have had a lot of soggy towels today. Still better than the first day we set it up. We went through 10L of water in one day. I kid you not.

The infamous water cooler. Complete with water drops due to a recent triplet visit.

By the time I got back to the kitchen I expected dinner to be made. Except it wasn’t. I hadn’t turned it on. Frustrating to the max. In the final minutes I could hear the inevitable sounds of tired children falling apart and I was literally pacing in front of the machine. At this point my husband told me before disappearing somewhere that he was leaving soon for futsal. I just fell apart and started bawling. The thought of doing dinner, teeth and bedtimes on my own for the five kids was just too overwhelming. I continued to howl throughout dishing up the meals. The big boys were concerned and wanted to know what was wrong, I had no good answer. We sat at the table, my eyes red and streaked and the triplets spent the first five minutes saying, “Mummy crying” over and over again. Bless them. I didn’t mean to be so dramatic. Alex offered to stay, but he was fully dressed ready to go, and I know how much it meant to him, so I didn’t want him to miss out. It all was pretty easy getting the kids to bed, thank goodness.

The beauty of being a mother, is that even when it’s tough, you look over and see this and your heart feels refreshed. I was so glad the camera was handy to capture my beautiful daughter.

I left a little bit of time in between getting the triplets down and reading the boys stories where the big boys played in their room and I got the kitchen floor mopped finally and the slice cut and put into containers, so I felt good about that.

After bedtime, I have sat down here. I’ve got a giant to do list. Here are things in no particular order that are up the top of the list:

Cover (most) school books.
Buy last bits and pieces of school uniform
Mop and sweep floors
Tidy office and bedroom (they are both in appalling messes)
Organise a meal for a friend that I said I would deliver for Saturday night
Tackle enormous ironing pile
Tidy Kitchen (Although I’ve heard The Accountant out there since he’s got home, so I’m hoping that he has worked his magic and tidied it up. He’s good at that.)
Pack bags for the children’s sleepover.
Pack bags for Mummy and Daddy’s night away! (Hooray!)

The last item is the silver lining. It’s Alex and my 16th wedding anniversary tomorrow. We’re going to eat out and spend the night in Brissy. I’m looking forward to it. We’re returning to the same place that I went when I was 23 weeks pregnant. That will be a nice trip down memory lane of that time as well as remembering our wonderful wedding day. Last time we went to that hotel, I had started contractions the day before so we were very cautious and careful. I’m so grateful the babies didn’t arrive for another 11 weeks after that. It will be nice to be carefree this time!

Anyway, I have now been at the computer blogging for so long, (well done if you have managed to read right to the end!) that I don’t think I will get any of the to-do list tackled in this sacred time while the children sleep. Fingers crossed for productivity tomorrow!

Linking up with