The New Bedroom

Bridget's room is a-l-m-o-s-t complete. Shawn had me help him install the ceiling light fixture and put on the outlet covers, and help him haul all the furniture into her room---nah! Just kidding! He did all that stuff by himself. He was a busy little bee this weekend. What is not done just yet are the baseboards, moving her clothes into her closet and dresser, ordering the new blinds, and some small finishing touches, like what toys are going in her room and what is staying in the living room. 

We were both surprised by the amount of space left in the room after getting all the furniture in. There should be no problem having the 3 girls eventually sharing that room. Next step is to put the finishing touches on the nursery. The crib needs to be set up, and clothes moved into the dressers, and the closet needs to be cleaned out, because I don't even know what's in that closet anymore. 

So what did we do today? A few days ago, Bridget saw a commercial for Grands biscuits and she said, "Mama, could we make those together or something?" ("or something" is her new catch phrase. She adds it to all of her sentences now.) I said, "Sure." so today was Grands biscuits day. In fact, it was yummy real breakfast day. I started making bacon and sausage. When I got tired of standing on my feet, Shawn took over and finished up the meat and made some scrambled eggs. He also put the biscuits in the oven too. We each had our favorite juices: Bridget had apple juice. I had orange juice, and Shawn had orange-strawberry-banana juice. It was nice. We've been in a cereal rut lately.  

Funny Bridget quote. Shawn gave me a piece of sausage, and I said, "No thanks, I don't want any sausage." Shawn said, "Why?" I said, "Because it looks a bit underdone, and I don't want to take any chances." Bridget said, "Why, Mama? Why don't you want sausage?" I said, "Because it could make the babies sick if I eat it." Bridget said, "Why? Will they choke and die, or something?" Ah, kids!

After breakfast was when Shawn finished up the ceiling light, outlet covers, hung some signs on the wall, moved the bookshelf, moved the books onto the shelves, moved her kitchen and dollhouse in. Bridget helped out a little too. After everything was moved, Bridget must have spent an hour or two just playing and reading in her room. It was kind of nice! We're trying to teach her that if she takes a book off the shelf, she needs to put it back. She is responsible for keeping her room clean, which means no toys on the floor. So far so good. Sure, she needs some reminding, but she's not complaining YET. 

Since we had a big breakfast, no one was hungry for lunch, so we just had an afternoon snack of cheese, crackers and grapes. Everyone was doing their own thing for awhile after that. Then we went to Target to buy a lamp shade for Bridget's big-girl lamp. Bridget fell asleep in the car, and somehow Shawn managed to get her into Target in the wind-storm and she didn't wake up. So we brought a blanket in with us, and let her sleep in the shopping cart. She probably slept for another half hour or 45 minutes while Shawn and I selected a lamp shade, and bought a couple Christmas presents. 

After Target, we had some dinner, then Bridget and I put the lamp together. She played with a white board and dry erase marker, and got black marker over her brand new white polo shirt. (That's not coming out!) Then it's rub-a-dub-dub, Bridget in a tub, and off to bed with her. Overall, a very busy but very productive weekend in the Morris house. 

Be sure to check out Tina's blog to see what Kaitlyn and Bridget did during their sleepover this weekend. Very cute, Auntie Tina!

A Kid-Free Day & Night

Ok, so we don't get a lot of kid-free days and nights, and I'm positive we won't be having kid-free nights once the triplets arrive, so I guess we should enjoy it.  Shawn drove Bridget to Tina's house at 8:45 am this morning. Dave, Kaitlyn and Bridget were going to a Halloween party event thing through the Bolingbrook park district. I'm sure they all had a blast. 

I really didn't do much throughout the morning and early afternoon. I watched the Today show for awhile. I took a shower. I did all things computer related. I took an hour and a half nap. I ate lunch. During this same time period, Shawn and Dad installed the laminate flooring in Bridget's new room. 

After lunch, I drove up to Plainfield High School for a visit. I've been meaning to visit for quite some time now, and I figured I'd be pressing my luck if I waited much longer. I got to school about a half hour before school was dismissed in order to get a decent parking spot before the busses blocked everything. That also gave me a half hour to waddle my way up to the second floor Math office. It was so nice seeing co-workers again! Even people that I don't usually talk to on a regular basis, stopped to say hi and see how I was doing. It's really a great place to work! I miss it a lot. So I talked to two hall monitors, a secretary, the copy clerk (all the most important people in a school setting) and all the Math teachers. I ran into 3 former students as well.  Again, it was very nice catching up with friends and just being in a school setting. I miss the students, I miss the familiar smell of the hallways (I'm not saying its a nice smell!), I miss living life according to bells and I miss doing math daily.

When I got back home, Shawn and Dad were still working on the flooring. They should be done by 6 pm. There were a few snags along the way, but they got through it, and the floor looks really nice. 

Don't know what we're going to do with the rest of our kid-free evening, but I'd like to go to dinner and a movie. Or dinner and a trip to the grocery store. Shawn wants to finish the baseboards so that they can be installed tomorrow. My oh my how life has changed. Before kids, we would have spent a day like today probably driving hours just to go to some mall we've never been to. Then we'd spend the rest of the day exploring whatever seemed interesting in whatever town we ended up in. Now, we get a "day off" and we're wanting to go grocery shopping or get house work done. 

Will update more later.

So we went to dinner at Max & Erma's because I had a coupon. They have a really good pretzel bread appetizer, so we ordered that along with our drinks. When the waitress came back, the gave me my drink and Shawn a beer. Shawn was like, "I ordered the same as her." the waitress thought he said, "I'll have the Sam (Adams)." No big deal, the waitress came back with the right drink quickly. Next comes our meal. Poor Shawn...he ordered fish and chips and his fish was WAY overdone. It looked gross! When the waitress came by and asked if he wanted another order or anything else, Shawn refused. He was full off of the appetizer and his fries. A few minutes later, the manager comes by to appologize, and she took Shawn's meal and the appetizer off of our bill. I felt bad for Shawn, he worked hard all day and he didn't even end up with a good dinner. Anyway, since so much money was taken off of our bill, I couldn't even use the coupon. 

After dinner, we headed to Dominick's to do a little grocery shopping. It was nice because it was rainy, it was Friday night, and NO ONE was in the store. So we made it home safely after the store. We watched a bit of tv and headed off to bed. 

How I Have Adapted...

There's been several things I've had to change about daily life now that I'm 28 weeks pregnant with triplets.  Thought I'd share a few thoughts...

Letting your husband be in charge of cooking and cleaning stinks! I'm trying to be patient, but let's face it...guys don't clean as well as girls do! And why is it that guys think the kitchen garbage can is the only can that needs emptying? Another thing I don't get is why are guys so incapable of working and taking care of the house? If women are expected to work full-time, take care of the kids and run a household, then why can't a guy do it too? I'm not saying that I keep an immaculate house, but it certainly wasn't as bad as it has been the past few months.

It's REALLY hard to do laundry with a pregnant belly! There's no way anyone but me is touching my laundry, that's just how it goes. So Shawn lugs the baskets up and down the stairs, and I take care of it from there. I never realized how many times you lean over the machine to get all those socks off the bottom of the washer! Then even trying to bend over to get the stuff out of the dryer is tough while pregnant. Being on my feet while trying to get all of Bridget's stains out stinks too. (See below)

Laundry accommodations...brilliant idea...I think I'm on to something here! So to cut down on time spent on my feet in the laundry room, I was inspired by Kramer on Seinfeld. If you recall, Kramer multi-tasked by washing his dishes while in the shower. So I figured, why not get the stains out of Bridget's clothes while taking a shower?  So let's say Bridget spills her chocolate milk down the front of her shirt. Now I take her shirt and just soak it in the bathroom sink and the next morning I bring it in the shower with me. Her tear-free baby shampoo works great on the stains, even better than Shout, or Spray-n-Wash. Seriously! Try it someday. I've been using Gerber's Grins and Giggles shampoo and it's gotten out chocolate milk, pasta sauce and various other food stains. I almost want to put grass stains on her jeans just to see if it will get out that stain too!

You probably wouldn't miss half of your house. Obviously stairs are not my best friend these days, so I rarely go to the basement anymore. I thought that would be really tough to handle but surprisingly it's not too bad. There's a few tv shows that Shawn records on "his" tv that we watch together in the basement, but that's maybe once or twice a week. Then there's the laundry. I have at least 2 weeks of maternity clothes, so laundry doesn't happen too frequently. Our arts and craft items are in the basement...I miss those!

Who needs socks or shoelaces? I haven't worn socks since at least June 2nd. I know that date well because that was the last day of the school year. I also haven't worn shoes with shoelaces since then. Only sandals. I don't think I could get socks or tie-shoes on my feet at this point anyway. I bought a pair of winter Crocs so that I won't have to put on socks until after I recover from the birth of the triplets.  Isn't life grand!?

Being pregnant and on "house rest" is really economical-well, sort of! Things we're saving money on since my confinement: make-up, gasoline, my spending money, entertainment (I can't go anywhere anymore, so no movies, trips to the mall, etc.), school supplies (I bought a lot of stuff out of my own pocket for school), soda, coffee. Now, once my paychecks run out, then this will all change, but for now, it's kinda cool.

When you have the opportunity to watch as much tv as you want, you realize it's not that entertaining. Most of the time that I have the tv on, I realized that it's just on for background noise. So I'm finding myself turning it off more and reading, doing puzzle books, napping and playing quietly with Bridget. 

No matter how hectic things may seem, everything that absolutely needs to get done eventually gets done. These will probably be the words I live by after the babies arrive, but its true for now too. So although our day-to-day lives have changed dramatically since August, we are dealing with it. Bridget, Shawn and I are happy and healthy and that's all that really matters. 

A Much More Interesting Day

Ok, so I had to make up for my incredible laziness as a parent yesterday. Shawn woke up with Bridget, while I slept in for an extra half hour or 45 minutes. That was nice. Though I did hear Bridget ask Shawn where her iPod and headphones were. He said he put them away for awhile. She did some whining, but got over it quickly.

When I got up, Bridget wanted to read books. So we read a few together. A cute story stemmed from our reading Chicka Chicka 1, 2, 3. Now, although I teach math, I prefer the story behind Chicka Chicka A, B, C. If you're not familiar with the Bill Martin Jr./John Archambault stories, in A, B, C, the lower case letters march one by one up the coconut tree. When z makes his way to the top, the weight of all the letters knocks everyone out of the tree and the upper case letters come and rescue their little ones. It's cute. In 1, 2, 3 the story doesn't make any sense. The numbers 1 through 20 climb up the apple tree one by one, all the while zero is crying "chicka chicka 1, 2, 3, will there be a place for me?" Then after 20 climbs up, 30-40-50, etc. climbs up. What about 21? or 35? Where'd they go? So 90 climbs up, then for some reason 99 gets to climb up, and triggers an attack from some bumblebees. All the numbers tumble out of the apple tree, and the story "counts" backwards from 99, skipping numbers as they wish. Then I don't get it at all...after all the numbers tumble out of the tree except for 10 for some reason, the whiny zero hops up the tree and joins with 10 and makes 100. Apparently all zero is good for is to turn a ten into a one-hundred, because zero proudly exclaims, "Here's the place that's just for me!" All the other numbers gather around the apple tree proclaiming zero as the hero of the number tree.  Strange! I don't get it at all! Maybe zero chased away the bumblebees in the process, the illustrations show bees flying away as zero climbs up, but I still don't get it!

Anyway, that's not the story. Here it goes...On the first and last pages of the books are the numbers from 1-20 and 1-100. So Bridget and I were practicing counting. She can count from 1-13 just fine, but then skips to 16, so the math teacher in me was showing her how 1-4 makes FOURteen and 1-5 makes FIFteen and so on. She really got that. So I let her read the numbers on her own and she did great. 1-13 was perfect as usual, she got 14, 15, 16 as well, then it fell apart from 17-19. She just said "one-seven, one-eight, one-nine". Ok, so that needs more work. I figured we'd try the twenties, since they're a bit easier to read. She picked up on that in no time at all. "twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two," etc.  and we stopped at 30. Awhile later, Bridget was playing on her own with magnet numbers on a lap desk, and she was making different numbers, and reciting the numbers she had made. I wasn't really paying attention to her, but my ears perked up with I heard her say "two-teen". I looked over and she had 12 displayed on her desk. I was quite impressed because I never mentioned two-teen, in fact I stressed twelve and thirteen and fifteen were "tough" numbers because they sound funny. So I let her go, and sure enough, the next number she displayed on her desk was 13 or "three-teen". Not bad! After that, I explained that there is no "two-teen" it's pronounced twelve and three-teen is really thirteen. We'll try counting later today to see if she remembers this. 

As we approach mandatory "rest time" here's what else Bridget has done to make up for the lack of activity yesterday...She played with me and her doll house. We read even more books. We began a Christmas arts and crafts project in which she had to glue things together and help me cut out shapes. Finally, she played in the basement while Shawn played Rock Band. 

After rest time, Bridget and I drew pictures in a notebook and practiced writing her name. She can make a decent B, I, D and E, but the rest of her letters need lots of help. She also doesn't get that she needs to write things from left to right in order for it to make sense when we read it. She'll just write her letters where ever there's room on the paper.  And that's fine. She's doing very well for her age. Since she loves to read books, I have been trying to teach her how to sound out simple 2 and 3 letter words.  Today we tried some so-called "sight words". I showed her the words I, a, to, in, of, and, the and or and then I'd say the word and she'd repeat it. After doing that for awhile, we took one of her books and found those words in the book and I asked her what words they were. She got a few of the words correct.  I figure with 3 kids on the way and several months off of work, I better take advantage of this time with Bridget to teach her all that I can. She likes it too. It's not like I'm forcing her to sit at the table and drilling her with words, letters and numbers. These lessons come up very naturally. Like today, she wanted to draw in her notebook. I wrote her name, and then she wanted to write her name by herself. Shawn is the same way with her. Only difference is that Shawn teaches her things like how a car works, what a construction zone is, or what all the things on a fire truck are. He's also much better at teaching her what new words mean using words she already knows. 

Well, not much happened after that. We had dinner. Bridget took a bath. Bridget got cranky. Bridget went to sleep.