Cereal and Toilets

I was trying to take a nap when I heard my wife scream.

I didn't jump up off the couch or anything to see what was going on. Screaming at nap time is pretty normal.

Usually you'll hear her scream because at some point during their play time together, Jack has grabbed a handful of Luke's hair and pulled him to the floor. Jack laughs. Luke cries. My wife screams.

Sometimes you hear it when, at some point during their play time together, Luke's arm inadvertently passes through Ben's play space. That's when Ben leans over and bites Luke so hard that he leaves a circular imprint of teeth on Luke's skin. Kind of looks like a little tiny dog bite.

Ben plays. Luke cries. My wife screams.

This time, though, the screaming had much more to do with the boys' newfound mobility. They've been walking for several months, and even running for a few of those months.

But now, they're into climbing. And beyond the earlier references I've made to the gender differences we discovered in the diaper changing process, the climbing has made it clear to us that boys and girls are different.

I just don't remember the girls struggling to get up on the couch. When they were big enough, and strong enough, and when they cared enough, they just hiked themselves up there. The boys, on the other hand, have been struggling for months to hoist themselves onto the couch for the sole purpose, apparently, of flinging themselves off the couch back to the floor.

They are so determined to climb that lately they've begun to build makeshift ladders. Luke prefers to use a plastic rocking horse as a staircase. And he has learned the hard way the risks of using an object that is built to rock back and forth as his support mechanism.

Just before Thanksgiving, Ben climbed up on a chair in the living room so he could flip the light and ceiling fan switches about four thousand more times. At some point during the flipping, he lost his balance, fell off the chair, and smacked the bridge of his nose on the arm of the chair on his way down.

Double-barrel nosebleed. Broken nose. Purplish-green bruise mask for Thanksgiving. Nice, Ben.

During my nap, though, the boys conspired in a new adventure. See, they're tall enough now that simply closing the doors in our house won't keep them out of rooms we don't want them in. They just get up on their tip-toes, stretch as far as they can reach, and open the door.

And now, there is no space in our house that is safe. During my nap, they pulled open the pantry door, climbed up the shelves, pulled down all the cereal boxes, and dumped piles of cereal on the floor. Cereal which they then, of course, ate. They would not eat it if they were sitting at the dinner table. But off of the floor? You bet.

The wax would have blown out of my ears if I'd opened the pantry door to see three 18-month-old boys sitting in piles of cereal and eating it off the floor. My wife screamed. And then took a picture.

Later that same afternoon, the boys pushed open the door to the bathroom (a realm that had been, up to this point, strictly off limits, because of their tendency to close each others' heads in the toilet seat, or to stir the toilet water with their arms), climbed up on the toilet and dumped a recently watered plant onto the floor.

This time when my wife ran to the bathroom to see what hell the triplets had wrought, she found an ecosystem of flowing black potting soil, a child with his sleeves soaked up to his armpits, and six blue eyes staring at her as though Elliot Ness had just shot the lock off the door.

She screamed. And then took a picture.

I just rolled over and went back to sleep.

Sometimes it's better just to pretend that you didn't hear it.

Invincible - Part 3

Fortunately, we are quick learners. Because we didn't plan our first day at the beach very well.

Being from Wyoming is no excuse - we have lakes, with, um, beaches. But we haven't taken a baby to the beach in years. And we've never taken three of them at a time.

So you'll forgive us if we didn't plan well to push, or pull, or drag the triplet stroller through the ankle-deep sand. In the end, it wasn't really that tough. But as I stood, looking past the thousands of other people who also decided to go the beach on a Thursday morning (what do these people do for a living, anyway?), I had no idea how we were going to get everyone down near the water.

We finally decided to take each of the babies out of the stroller one at a time and carry them to our chosen spot. Then all of our gear. And then, at last, the stroller itself.

By the time we got everyone within a stone's throw of the ocean, I was already tired of being at the beach.

The girls were so excited, they were all but uncontrollable. Chasing seagulls, kicking sand on innocent sunbathers, losing their sandals in the deep sand. Thank God we had the foresight to dress them all in matching swimsuits - it was like they were wearing pink uniforms that made them a little easier to find among the mass of Frisbees and tents and coolers and other little kids who were running around as crazy as ours.

Meanwhile, we spread our beach blanket out perfectly on the sand, set out our lunches, surrounded the blanket with beach toys for the girls and the triplets.

And then we took the boys out of their car seats. And that's where the fun ended.

Jack hated it. Despised it. Cried almost from the moment his little board shorts hit the blanket. He stopped crying just long enough to scoop up a handful of sand and shove it in his mouth.

More crying. And then, of course, he rubbed his eyes. Babies are apparently not fond of a cement-like mixture of sunscreen and sand in their eyes.

Luke took off crawling into the sand. He could not be stopped. He crawled off the blanket, and we put him back. He crawled off, and we put him back. Ben tried to crawl away, too, but for some reason, he didn't want to put his knees in the sand. So instead, he hiked his butt up into the air and elephant walked on his hands and feet.

It was funny, but there was no time to enjoy it. Jack had more sand in his eyes. And the girls were there somewhere, we were pretty sure.

And just when it seemed as though the agony had reached its apex, my wife (and God bless her for this) wanted to take pictures of the family at the beach.

I don't know if there is a single one of us in the picture who appears to be enjoying our little trip to the ocean. Maybe the only person who really enjoyed it was the random beach-goer who was chosen to take the picture.

It wasn't long before we lured the girls away from the beach with the promise of lunch on a patio and ice cream - and we got out of the sand as quickly as we could put all the boys back in their car seats, pack up our lunches (now fully coated in sand), organize our beach gear and toys, carry each boy back to the sidewalk, and pull the stroller through the sand.

But they, and we, learn quickly. We were in California for the annual TripletConnection convention, part of which was a beach party on Saturday evening. Suffice it to say, after our Thursday afternoon sojourn, we were not looking forward to the beach party.

This time, though, I put the stroller behind me, got low to the ground, and pulled it through the sand with the boys still attached. It looked a little like the training scene in Rocky III, but it worked. And we sat next to someone with a huge umbrella - and this time much closer to the water.

Turns out, when sand is wet, it packs. And babies have a much harder time eating it. And everyone has much more fun.

The girls played in some powerful waves, the boys played in the ocean, too, and we really enjoyed the last major event of the convention. The Orange County Register even took our picture and published it in the Sunday paper (you can see the picture here: http://www.ocregister.com/photos/convention-beach-triplets-2492123-one-three/pid2492125 ).

Good thing we're relatively quick learners. Or next year's vacation to the Caribbean would have to be in Wichita.

Invincible - Part 2

I have historically not been much of a joiner.

Oh, I have my pet organizations that I belong to. But after having been invited into a couple of prolonged bad experiences, I've gotten a little picky about the ones I choose.

So I'll admit that I was a little leery about going to a convention for families of triplets. First things first: the only practical way to get to the convention was to fly. Just thinking about that nearly gave me an ulcer.

And then there's the whole business of sitting in a hotel ballroom with people you don't know, talking about subjects that are either too vapid to merit attention, or too personal to talk about with this group of strangers.

And then there's the banquets and parties and kids' games and small talk.

So I try to be a little careful. But my wife has been a religious reviewer and participant on tripletconnection.com, a web site that has provided her with tremendous amounts of great advice from parents who have already lived the life we are just now experiencing. They helped her through the pregnancy, through the early days and sleepless nights, and still through the transition from crawling to walking, and from formula to solid foods.

Even as devoted as she has become, we still probably wouldn't have gone. Except that the TripletConnection convention organizers were looking for workshop facilitators. I've done some of that, and I thought it might be fun to run the workshop for fathers of triplets - forgotten as we often are in the whole multiples discussion (unless you're Jon, in which case you and Kate have generated enough multiples media attention for a decade).

I offered to do it, and the gracious Susan Holloway took me up on the offer. And with that, we were off to California.

I've read about the connections that people forge in difficult times, and through shared circumstances. Maybe in the way that two combat veterans need no introduction or small talk - they can simply plunge into a conversation as though they've known each other their whole lives.

So it is with parents of multiples. We met the first family at the convention while standing in the lobby waiting for an elevator. They are quads from Ohio, in their early 20s, and they are the most remarkable young people. Our elevator came and went while we talked with them.

And before we could catch the next elevator, we met a couple from California whose triplets are five months old. Leave aside for the moment that the father reminded me very much of an old baseball buddy of mine. What surprised me is that when he began talking about the last five months of his life, I knew right where he was. I've been in those shoes.

That night I had the opportunity to tell a little bit of our story, a speaking opportunity that normally requires a lot of background and explanation. Not every audience understands what you mean when you say you had to build a fence in your family room to trap the triplets. At this convention, they just smiled at each other and recalled their own fences.

The next day I facilitated the Super Dads workshop - a candid exchange for men only. An opportunity, I hoped, for men to talk about the challenges they face, and to share some of the solutions we've developed. Our 90 minutes passed in a blink, and I think we could easily have stayed another 90 minutes. Our discussion was entertaining, our solutions were enlightening, and our issues were deeply personal and universal.

A great group of men, who are doing an outstanding job of dealing with the difficulties - and enjoying the blessings - of having triplets. I am grateful that they let me share some small portion of their lives.

I'm glad my wife convinced me to call about facilitating the workshop. We met so many wonderful people, from California and Ohio and Washington and England. And we made connections so effortlessly. One triplet dad we met had no issue with just taking one of our boys out of the stroller and playing with him. The family from England took Luke during breakfast and played with him for the better part of an hour.

And we let them. It felt a little odd to be so comfortable with a group of strangers.

In some ways, they aren't strangers at all. Maybe we are combat veterans of a sort.

And we are clearly more alike than we are different.

Invincible - Part 1

Editor's Note: We didn't die, or move to a country without Internet access. We are still here. It's just that the boys can move around now. A lot. And we are tired. But we'll write more often. There is so much to say...


We could see it in their eyes.

And the closer we got to our gate, the more clearly we saw it.

The TSA officials in the security lines were fascinated by the spectacle. At first they wondered how would they get all of these people, and all of their stuff, through security. But they jumped right in, passing babies and carseats and the triplet stroller through the metal detectors, and reuniting us with our children and belongings on the other side.

Passersby were delighted, stopping us to look at the boys and compliment the girls. Triplets? they would ask. Yes, we would answer again. Fraternal. And no, their sisters are not triplets. And yes, we're glad they're ours, too (and not yours...).

It got a little repetitive, but it was wonderful. All of those people who were so interested in our little traveling circus.

As we got closer to our gate, though, their attitudes began to change. Their smiles were a little less open. A little short on the sparkle. A little more guarded. And worried. You could almost see them praying silently behind their fake grins that we wouldn't be on their flight.

It wasn't until we reached our gate that we really began to see it. Because that's when it hit them, those poor cursed souls sitting at the Frontier gate at Denver International Airport who had just realized that we were getting on their flight. All eight of us - three little girls, triplet boys, my wife, and me.

They were very nice. Cute family, they'd say. Adorable babies, they told us. And are these their sisters? Oh what a wonderful family!

I appreciated and agreed with everything they said. But at the same time, I was sure they were offering up that one last prayer, their final hope, the possibility - however slim - that we wouldn't be seated in their row.

Well, not to worry. We took up an entire row ourselves. My wife, two of the boys and our oldest daughter on one side of the plane. And me, one of the boys, and our two younger daughters on the other side.

It was our first flight as a family - slightly more than two hours in the air to Orange County, CA, for the TripletConnection Convention. And there were babies screaming on that flight, as well as on our return flight to Denver.

But it wasn't our babies doing the screaming. Nope. They slept most of the way to California, and they slept from gate to gate on the way home. Our advice: plan your flights around nap time.

So now we think we are invincible. There isn't anything we can't do.

I mean, we traveled successfully from Cheyenne to Orange County and back (and by successfully we mean that we returned with all of our children and most of our wits) with three babies, three bickering girls, four Hyundai-sized suitcases (one of which was packed almost entirely with food and booster seats), one triple-decker stroller, and three bags of seashells from Newport Beach.

And in the meantime, we spent five wonderful days on the beach and attended a terrific convention for families with triplets or more - there were two sets of quads and one set of quintuplets at the convention.

We understand the look in their eyes. We probably wouldn't have wanted to sit next to us on an airplane either.

But our kids were amazing. And we feel invincible.

Nature vs. Nurture

EDITOR'S NOTE: THIS POST BORDERS ON THE INAPPROPRIATE. BUT WE THINK IT IS CRAZY FUNNY, AND WE HOPE YOU ARE NOT OFFENDED :)

When I was in college, we called it the sleep button.

It was that magical place, just below the belt line, somewhere between your belly button and your nether regions. You'd slouch on the couch to watch David Letterman, slide your hand just under your belt - and fall asleep. Instantly.

Sometimes the sleep button was so effective that you'd be asleep before Letterman got to the Top 10 list.

And on any given night, you were likely to find one of the three young men who shared our apartment snoring on the couch with his hand on the sleep button.

This phenomenon is but one of the many mysteries of men that have sparked the classic Nature vs. Nurture argument at my house. It goes something like this:

"Look what you've taught your son to do," my wife might say. "He's sleeping with his hand in the front of his pants!"

So I did look, and Jack was indeed asleep in his swing, in front of the TV, with his hand in his pants. It was like a preview of his college apartment 20 years from now.

"I didn't teach him that," I'd say defensively, secretly wishing I could have taught him that. "It must be natural."

He fell asleep in front of the TV. With his hand on the sleep button. Manly. Perfect.

But it gets better, and more primal.

We learned the hard way that changing boys' diapers is operationally different than changing girls' diapers in at least one important way. With our girls, we just took the diaper off, performed the open-air clean up, and put on the new diaper.

Those of you with boys are already smirking. You know that when we used this approach with our boys, they peed on us, on their changing table, and often, on their own faces.

There was another peculiarity we discovered during the diaper changing, though. Luke just can't take his hand off of it. He grabs it, he pulls it. In some ways, he really is not very nice to it. And he giggles the whole time. He loves it.

Same thing during bath time. He sits up in the sink with his hand under the water, and he just laughs and laughs. We have to physically remove his hand from it in order to get him dressed.

I'm a baseball fanantic, so I'm open to the possiblity that some of this, ahem, adjusting could be learned. But not by an 8-month-old baby. It has to be natural.

Triplets are a great opportunity for biological and sociological experiments. They are all growing up together, in the same environment and with the same influences. So we should be able to draw certain inferences from their behavior.

As a 36-year-old man, here are some of the inferences I've drawn from my boys:

We didn't 'learn' to fall asleep in front of the TV. We didn't 'learn' to put our hands in places they ought not be, at least in polite company. It's nature, not nurture.

My boys taught me that. Thank you so much boys.

Just Being Honest

I'll be honest. I haven't always been happy about having triplets.

I have never done harder work in my life. And I worked in a lignite plant for a while in college. I delivered newspapers in hip-deep snow as a boy in my home town. I was a newspaper reporter.

I think I have a fair appreciation of hard work. So trust me when I say that unless you have multiples, you just can't know how difficult this is.

I remember the day we found out we were having triplets. We had been in to see the doctor a few weeks before, and the ultrasound had revealed that we were having twins. It was a bit of a shock, but we already had three daughters, so what could the difference between four and five children really be, anyway?

During the ultrasound at the follow-up appointment, the doctor just sat back in his seat and said, simply, "Oh my."

When he told us it was triplets, I decided right away that I could not go back for any more ultrasounds. Every time I went, more babies were discovered in there.

Shortly after making that decision, I think I slipped into a coma. I didn't say a word for the better part of an hour.

And then there was the pregnancy. We've forgotten most of it by now (a tip of my hat, here, to the fallibility of our memories), but it was extremely difficult. And then there was the sleep deprivation. And the restrictions on our lives that came with adding three babies at once.

And even after all that, our house is filled with baby gear. If your eyes don't bulge out a bit the first time you visit our house, you either work in a kindergarten classroom or a daycare. Otherwise, the bouncy seats, the baby toys, the boppies, the swings, the walkers, and the three-seat feeding table will take your breath away.

As it turns out, all that can take the space in your house away as well.

We had to buy a minivan. Enough said on that point.

I'm 36 years old, and suffice it to say that I was not eager to start over. To deal with mountains of poopy diapers, puke stains in the carpet, unrelenting crying, or children who can't buckle their own car seats.

My boys are eight months old now, and as it always does, time has provided me with a somewhat more informed perspective.

We do have a lot of baby stuff in our house. And yes, despite our best efforts, the trash can next to the changing table does occasionally overflow with messy diapers.

But we have three healthy boys. They survived a recent bout with RSV, and although the next round of sickness is never more than a week away, they are healthy now.

And happy. They smile and laugh constantly. And we learn new ways to make them laugh every day.

They never had colic, not even for a moment. We never spent a single moment walking the floor with any of them, trying in vain to get them to stop crying. Oh, they've cried. But any of you whose children have had colic know the difference.

We've never had a moment's worth of rivalry. We were excessively worried from the beginning about making sure the arrival of our boys did not overshadow the lives of our girls. And maybe we've avoided any sense of rivalry because we were so focused on preventing it. But our girls love their brothers incredibly. The hug them, and kiss them, and carry them around the house. They are, I believe, truly happy that their brothers are here.

We have terrific children. Most parents probably believe that, and count us among them. They are smart, well-adjusted, polite, loving, fun children. They make our lives full and happy. They give us so much more than they require of us.

I'll be honest. I wasn't very happy about the idea of having triplets. But after eight months of this exquisite chaos, I just can't imagine my family any other way.

And I wouldn't want to.

The Day Ben Blew Away

At risk of serious understatement, the wind blows in Cheyenne. A lot.

The Chamber of Commerce suggests that the average wind in Cheyenne is somewhere between 12 and 15 miles per hour. For that average to be correct, there would have to be days with no wind at all.

I've lived in Cheyenne for 14 years, and I have never experienced such a day. In fact, by my own measure, if you've only been slammed in your own car door twice in any 12-month period, you're having a pretty good year.

But you get used to it. You pull your hat down a little further. Cake the hair product on a bit thicker. Hold onto your grocery bags a bit tighter.

And never, never take your eyes off your small children.

One day not long ago, it was my job to get all six children in the car and get them home safely. My wife had an evening meeting, and she trusted me to get them home, fed, bathed, and to sleep.

No problem. I have done this before.

I've written in this space about the rubber-necking that occurs when we take the triplet stroller out in public. But I've never had occasion to mention that it, too, exhibits many of the same qualities as a sail. That's because until that same day not that long ago, I didn't know.

I had managed to wedge all the girls through the back door of the Expedition and into their car seats. And I had even gotten two of the boys out of the stroller and into the car (working from back to front, of course; if you take them out from front to back, the damned stroller will flip over with the remaining baby still attached...not that I have ever experienced that).

When I crawled out to grab Ben, who had drawn the short straw and was left in the wind until I could get his brothers fastened, he was gone. The entire stroller was gone.

I looked around the parking lot, and caught sight of the stroller/schooner just as it approached an eight-foot-high retaining wall, below which is an alley and all the dumpster-style accoutrement you would expect to find in an alley.

Ben was barreling right for it.

See, I normally put their baby bag in front of the wheels to keep the stroller from rolling away. But there was snow on the ground that day, so I didn't think applying the makeshift brakes would be necessary.

As I slipped and slid across the parking lot to catch Ben before he plummeted into a dumpster, I gently reminded myself that this could all have been avoided if I had only put the bag in front of the wheels. If only.

I caught the stroller a few feet before it reached the retaining wall, and I pulled it back to the car without looking to see how Ben was taking all of this. The wind had really whipped up, it was getting very cold, and I had five other kids waiting in the car.

So I pulled him across the snow to the car, and pulled the cover away from his face to check on him before putting his car seat in its base.

There looking up at me were the two brightest blue eyes and the gummiest smile I've ever seen. He even giggled a little when he saw my face.

The wind was still howling, and a few seconds earlier my smallest son had blown away. And he loved it.

I wish I had that kind of attitude.