Easter Sunday

Had to post the requisite Easter egg hunting photos ... the twins were not part of the egg hunt this morning. They stayed inside and played with the balloons we tied to their Easter baskets.

Miserable weather here today. Cold and rainy and all sorts of depressing.

A Few Good Days

Other than a class-act tantrum from Claire this evening, I've really enjoyed the girls the last few days. The highlights are from Friday, where I took the kids to free play at MyGym. Claire seemed mildly bored early on (until she found a girl her age to play with), but the twins were in awe of the ball pit, large trampoline, and all the climbing equipment. Molly had a small accident but other than that they loved the hour of play (and took super long naps afterwards!).

Today I had a nice morning with Claire at tap/ballet, Sam's Club, Home Depot, and Mr. Goodcent's. While the twins napped, we started Claire's "garden", which meant we had to plant the tomatoes and peppers indoors in those little starter pots. Claire is obsessed with doing a garden this summer and I'm all for it if it'll encourage vegetable eating. When the twins woke up, I took everyone back to Deanna Rose where we had a great time as always. Claire found a girl her age she wouldn't leave alone, so the girl's dad and I followed the kids around the park for a couple hours. Photos posted here. Note the car picture - the twins (and particularly Molly) are now obsessed with "driving" the car.

I just returned from my mom-the-easter-bunny HyVee trip where I picked up Easter baskets, balloons, and some candy. The girls are getting an outfit apiece for the holiday and Kyle is doing an Easter egg hunt for Claire with the candy I bought.

I'm catching up on posts after dealing with a migraine-like headache Thursday night that left me feeling "hungover" on Friday. Hope I don't do that again any time soon.

Undressed

Lily is my kid who can't keep her hands off herself. She diaper dives, she digs her fingers in her belly button all day long, she sticks her hands up her shirt and in any pockets she can find in an almost repetitive-motion kind of way (yes, it freaks me out a little). She has also figured out how to unzip jackets, and I've been battling her on keeping her jacket on for a few weeks now. So I knew this was coming ... and it happened tonight: Lily unzipped herself out of her pajamas. We happened to check on the twins after we had already put them to bed because they wouldn't settle down, and Kyle walked in to find Lily stripped down to her diaper. I'm actually surprised she still had the diaper on - I suppose that's the next phase of this houdini clothing act (or we caught her quickly enough). Urgh. And why did I get the kid with this disrobing fascination?!

I've already gotten advice from the pediatrician and from the mothers of multiples group on how to handle the stripping toddler, so I guess we'll have to start altering the PJs to account for this new behavior!

Marriage and Multiples

I can't seem to confirm the statistic anywhere else, but a couple days ago I read that parents of multiples have a 70% higher chance of divorcing compared to other parents. I don't dispute the factoid. Parenting multiples is tough, and particularly tough on marriage.

So in that frame of mind, I enjoyed another CNN.com link today - one written (again) from the man's point of view. And while I completely commiserate with the author (both men and women feel this way), I think his yearning for the past overshadows the learning point he tried to make: marriages change after kids, the day-to-day mundane chores and chaos often get in the way, and it's up to the long-haul couples to find new ways of relating and connecting within the context of children and chores. Yearning for the pre-kids days just doesn't get anyone anywhere. Adaptation is key to marital success.

The link:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/personal/04/07/p.missing.woman.love.with/index.html

Deanna Rose Again

Another great day for the kids (and me). Claire and I got the morning to ourselves - dance lessons, Waffle House, a little shopping - and then this afternoon I returned to Deanna Rose with all three kids for another two hours. Fantastic! The twins figured out they could feed the goats themselves and couldn't get enough of it. They were hysterical to watch (hopefully my photos capture some of that, and yes, Molly is trying to feed the poor goat a rock). Then tonight Kyle joined up with us for dinner at Pizza Shoppe.

Today at the park I met a father of 18-month-old triplet boys (oh my!), and yesterday at the park I met a set of parents with a 3-year-old, a 12-month-old, and 2-week-old twins. Ooooog. So clearly both of these families reset my concept of "family challenges".

One of the best parts of today? I did not clean the kitchen, or cook, at all! This was my reward for cooking dinner every night for the past six days. Or maybe it was seven. Whichever it is, I think I deserved a night off from kitchen duty. And it helped me focus on the kids and just have fun with them.

Deanna Rose Opens

Yipee - Deanna Rose (petting zoo/park by our house) is open again! And after spending too many (cold) days camped inside, I decided to get the kids over there for a long (long) lunch. We first ate lunch at Culver's, where the twins amused me with playing the "high five" game with each other. Then, I pushed the twins to a super late nap while we spent a couple hours at Deanna Rose, and they were so, so excited by the animals they didn't notice their fatigue at all (except on the swings, where Molly's eyelids got very droopy).

I got some great photos from the outing today.

Later this afternoon, Claire and I had a "mock" lemonade stand in the backyard, and we actually made real lemonade together. She was very excited, and obviously not used to me giving her this much attention on a work day.

A fantastic day for everyone.

I also had Claire's preschool parent-teacher conference yesterday (amazing it starts this early), where I learned she's a good kid but she still doesn't know all her numbers and letters. Hmmmm. Guess we need to work on that, or maybe not - she's got another year before kindergarten! I suppose I worry less about this than other parents. I couldn't read in kindergarten and I did just fine academically, so why the emphasis on reading in kindergarten now?

Tomorrow we're expected to hit 70 degrees here so I'd love to get the kids back to Deanna Rose.

Mothers Of Multiples And Depression

CNN.com had another timely article today for mothers of multiples:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/03/31/depression.multiple.births/index.html

The article notes the study didn't look into the causes of depression. Hmmmm. Let's look no further than my previous post.

Today: office day for me and a daddy-the-nanny day.
Tomorrow: parent-teacher conference at the preschool - hope I get a decent report!