Mother of the Year....

Murray's entry for the newspaper's recent contest. Although I didn't receive the newspaper's grand prize, after reading this, it's hard not to feel like a winner anyway!

I am writing to nominate my wife Kelly for "Mother of the Year".

In June of 2004 we became the proud parents of triplet girls Honey, Lovey and Sweetie. Kelly, was a personal banker at the Royal Bank prior to becoming a mother, but left her job once the babies were born to become a full-time mother. Kelly has worked extremely hard to become an excellent mother to our three little girls: she has endured countless nights of little or no sleep, changed literally thousands of diapers, breast-fed, bottle-fed, spoon-fed, made "toddler-friendly" meals, taught our children basic sign language when they were a year old, helped to teach them to speak, sing, laugh, dance, say "please" and "thank-you" and grow from infants into little girls. She loves them like no one else can; she can joke around and play with them, yet at the same time maintain enough discipline and structure to keep things from getting out of hand. In dealing with their daily squables and disputes she has the skill of a seasoned diplomat: of course she can't keep all three of them happy all of the time, but she is very fair, and I believe she is doing an excellent job of teaching our children right from wrong.

During the first year of our childrens' lives especially, we received a great deal of help and support from family, church, friends, and in some cases from people who barely knew us. Now that she has a little bit more time, Kelly has felt a strong obligation to help others in similar situations: during the past year and a half she took over the presidency of the local support group for parents of multiple birth children and has grown the membership base of this organization substantially during this time. She is also the monitor of an online group of triplet mothers based in the U.S.

Volunteering for these organizations takes a substantial portion of the little free time that she has, but she very much enjoys being able to help other mothers with twins and / or triplets.

I hope that you will please consider Kelly for your "Mother of the Year" award - I feel she really deserves some big recognition for the work that she does!