The ongoing flu saga...

Attention Princess Pamela: these dresses are still near & dear to their hearts, starting to get a little snug but they wore them all day yesterday! Sweetie was enjoying a twirl here.

Lovey spent the entire morning yesterday in the LaZBoy 8-noon straight.

The afternoon went well & the nap seemed to have done wonders for Lovey.

Art in progress!

Sweetie called my mum yesterday and said "you better not come today Grammie, we're sick" and although it had been an incredibly long, tiring, messy week, she was right, no one needs this flu! The day went better than I anticipated considering it started off with synchronized screaming at breakfast time. Not a great beginning! Lovey had been up a lot in the night, sick again and after eating a piece of toast, fell asleep in the rocker and stayed there til lunch time. With her out of commission, there were only 2 girls to contend with & they were in good humour and played nicely. We all crawled in my bed & read books for awhile. After lunch, Lovey was awake and looking much better. I got them to create some new artwork for our wall and the rest of the day was fine & I thought we'd kicked this nasty bug.

When will I learn not to be over confident???? No sooner had I left a voicemail & phoned Murray's parents to tell them of this health breakthrough, than I heard Sweetie. Puke-o-rama. I was so sure we were done with that! the bed was a write off, Sarah had to go in the washer which was very traumatic for Sweetie who can't stand to be separated from her bunny! I got her cleaned up and changed & tucked into the rocking chair while I changed the bedding, put the old sheets in to rinse. Her stomach bothered her all night though because I was up with her many times but luckily there weren't any more messes.

At 7am I could hear someone talking but I couldn't budge & told Murray he was on duty. He's coming down with a bad cold & was so tired he never stirred once when Sweetie and the others were crying. I thought it'd be better for him to get some rest so I let him sleep through the night but come morning, all bets were off. MY TURN! At 9am I could hear what I can only assume was a tribe of rabid banshees invading the bathroom, the kitchen, the hallway... but when I came out of the bedroom there were just 3 little girls left behind.... strangely, Murray didn't seem to be enjoying his 'quality time' with them.

Apparently Sweetie's stomach must have been very empty. Murray said she was standing in her seat, crying and screaming in pain as diarrhea ran down her leg and pooled at her feet, all the while shoving her peanut butter toast in her mouth. She was too hungry to leave her food, despite her uncomfortable situation! That girl does like to eat.

It seemed to be one thing after another today as demands & irrational tantrums were thrown at us left right & centre. It got harder & harder to remember that they're not feeling well and are not intentionally trying to push us over the edge! I decided that after my long week with them every day, I was getting the heck out of there & going for groceries. However, Murray looked like he was suffering pretty badly so I took pity on him & decided to take one of the kids with me. Honey & I got new craft materials at the dollar store, hand puppets & sparkly bracelets for everyone & took care of the food shopping. She quite enjoyed the outing and was happy to show her sisters what she'd gotten them while we were out.

Everyone's asleep now but hard to say for how long.........

Foolishly Optimistic

I woke up this morning feeling fine, everyone seemed better today, no one thew up all day. There were still some squabbles but that's not unusual around here now is it? There's still some diarrhea with Lovey & Honey but the throwing up part is behind us & this must just be the last of this flu thing right? WRONG! Lovey's spewing again. At least I'm better & Murray's still ok so we can manage. But it's awfully hard to see them suffer! The other night as she stood by the toilet, Lovey looked absolutely miserable and THEN she looked over at us so sadly and said "help!" Talk about break your heart!

From the land of the sick....

Ack! what a night! what a day! as I was typing up my "please stand by" post yesterday, I could feel my stomach quaking and knew it was only a matter of time before I got hit. I was initially hoping the upset was from cleaning up after Lovey's mess but no such luck. I got to bed early, hoping some extra rest would fend off the bug but it didn't work. Murray had already been up several times taking Lovey to the bathroom when I felt the wave rising. I tried to be quiet and thought I'd just get the bathroom door shut & flip on the fan to mask some of the noise but apparently there are only so many things you can put off. Vomit isn't one of them. What a mess.

I felt bad for Murray being constantly woken up to run Lovey in so I tried to get up a few times with her but every time I carried her, it made me nauseous again so after the 3rd time, I gave up and lay there uselessly. By morning he was pretty sure I was in no shape to look after the kids and had to take the day off to stay home when he was supposed to be putting the final touches on an order at work that was due to ship out and now it won't be ready for the customer on time. He did go in to the office to get files so he could try and work at home and everyone gave him a wide berth and the VP even held up his fingers in the sign of the cross to try and ward off the evil germs Murray was exposing them to. They didn't really want him there so he got what he needed and came back home.

I napped on and off all day and Honey slept most of the morning & Sweetie most of the afternoon and Lovey crashed for the night at 6pm. Between them they were busy and demanding enough that Murray couldn't really work on anything at all. Sweetie isn't throwing up but she's having a terrible time with the other end and is in a lot of pain whenever she goes to the bathroom, sensitive skin is not her friend at the moment. We thought Honey was all better but she was right in there with the others today. Murray really had a rotten day and is now at the office trying to get a bit of work done before his rumbling tummy does him in!

Now do these look like the girls in the midst of a flu??? This was last night though, before things got bad & we thought that Honey was on the mend.

Here they demonstrate their love of 'nastics

Lovey on the "tumboline" (trampoline)

Synchronized tumboline manoeuvre?

Earlier in the day, we played memory for awhile as I went through every activity I could think of to keep them entertained on the wet miserable day. (little did I know that today would be even worse!)

The other day I tried to see if I could blow dry Sweetie's hair straight. I only managed to tame the curls slightly! She has so many funny expressions!

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!

Please Standby...

Argh! the flu is back AGAIN! Has it even been a month??? Honey seems to be on the tail end of it while Lovey has just succumbed tonight & is on her 4th set of bedsheets & it's not even 10:30.

One quick quote from Lovey today when she fell & hurt her knee. "I want you get the owie off Mumma!" They must think I'm awful powerful!!!

Blogging will be postponed til further notice!