Our triplets are now 14 months old and they get funner and funnier all the time. We just came back from our first trip to Canada. Though our kids are American they automatically are Canadian citizens. And this trip was to meet the family. The flights down were during the day, and were shockingly smooth. The flights back, scheduled at night on purpose to allow some sleep were more difficult. Little sleep and much yelling - more yelling than we have heard from the trio yet. Sarah our friend and neighbor came with to help out. All of our kids have their own set of sleep "friends" and each has their favorite. Bryce loves a one foot square blanket that is shiny on one side. Darcy has a blanket that is attached to a stuffed doggy. Sometimes Darcy reaches into Bryce's crib to try out her blanket and gets upset when we give it back to Bryce. Cooper has a blue stuffed cow. He loves his cow very much. Each night when he goes to bed he mashes his face into the cow and hugs the cow closely to his face. Cooper also sucks on the cow's ears and head to the point it is now discolored despite being washed multiple times. The cow is also stinky.
Cooper. Cooper loves to laugh. He has a great smile, and now has some teeth. Cooper likes to play chase. He likes to be chased more specifically. He waits for you to come close and then tries to speed away. He puts his head down and crawls frantically in the opposite direction. It is quite cute. (All our kids are cruising but no walking yet). Cooper for a long time was different than his sisters in that he never put anything into his mouth. That has changed and he now feeds himself. He loves bread and I call him the chipmunk. He shoves bread into his mouth but does not swallow, filling his cheeks with bread. Soon after it comes out the same hole it went in. He also loves Cheerios. Cooper loves to clap. As soon as he hears the beginning to the song, "if you are happy and you know it" he is applauding wildly.
Darcy. Darcy is now bigger than Cooper in weight and may have caught up to Bryce. She is a good eater. Darcy has hit a bunch of milestones earlier than BC, she clapped really early and stood up really early. Today as I was describing facial anatomy and mentioned and demonstrated the tongue, her little tongue was jutting back and forth from her mouth. Darcy is our most sensitive child. She does not like to be reprimanded. Any sentence with "no" and "Darcy" in it brings tears to her eyes. Bryce and Cooper are still oblivious. Darcy is already into the "by self" phase. I really have no idea when that should begin but it seems early. She has to feed herself, and refuses to be fed. Darcy has an incredible high pitched yell when she feels pure joy and excitement. Darcy loves cheese.
Bryce. Bryce is really really funny. She makes funny faces. She is always trying to mimic everything she sees, (even people with facial ticks). She wakes up happy even though she is groggy. Bryce still likes massages. I am fearful Bryce's money will go to get massages for the rest of her life. She loves rubs on her arms and back. She still freezes in position when she gets an arm massage and her eyes glass over as she stares into the distance. More recently she has learned to lie down on her stomach, which she does only because it is associated with a back rub. She also puts her little hands behind her back to show you where she wants her rubs. Bryce loves to play with her new squeaky toy Sophie the rubber giraffe from France.
The uniqueness of sleep patterns in our kids is truly amazing.
From the beginning our kids have been great sleepers and I mean GREAT. It is rare for all three NOT to sleep through the night. Audrey and I know this is extremely lucky. During our pregnancy with the triplets we bought the recommended text on sleep by Richard Ferber, and so far have not referred to it once. (Hopefully, saying this aloud does not now curse our sleep fortune).
Based on a few recommendations and books, that the kids like having their siblings around when sleeping, from when we came home from the hospital, we put all three kids in one crib. The kids were lined up perpendicular to the long axis of the bed, 3 across, on their backs and swaddled. Initially, an occasional arm would come free but most of the time they were exactly as we left them when we came back for the next feeding, (about 2 hour later).
At 6 months they moved more and they started to flip over in bed. That's when we had to stop swaddling. At the time our daughter Bryce was bigger and more coordinated than her siblings. Bigger is a relative term, she was about a pound bigger than Darcy and half a pound bigger than Cooper. Does not sound like a lot but when you are 13 pounds it is a lot on a relative scale. I was fearful our Goliath (Bryce) was too much for Darcy and Cooper to handle so Bryce was separated from her siblings and moved to her own crib for naps and sleep. It was actually a hard decision to make. There is irony in Bryce being separated from her siblings but more on that later. Immediately, after the swaddle was removed for sleep, our kids always flipped over and slept on their stomachs despite being put in their crib ,"Back to sleep". Their sleep positions were mostly always bums up in the air. Bryce was cute in that sometimes she would tuck her hands under her stomach to keep them warmer.
It is hard to describe the limited amount of interaction or feedback you get from your kids at this age, and now looking back it is hard to remember as the feedback and interactions increase as they age, but at the time there was little from their side and a lots of love from us. It is with this that I write that Darcy made it clear to us that she loves sleeping with Cooper. We would put them in the crib to sleep and when we came back, Darcy had found a way to scoot over to sleep next to her brother. It is a beautiful thing- her head resting on his shoulder, or them spooning together.
Now that they are 10 months their sleep patterns are unique. Cooper our son is generally the first to fall asleep. From about 8 months he had trouble with his before bedtime bottle, as it was a fight between eating and sleeping. Usually, sleep won and he was fast asleep as soon as his body hits the mattress. His sleep position is best described as the body that gets a chalk outline at a crime scene - on his stomach, one leg bent at the hip and knee, the other straight, one arm up over his head the other down by his side. Cooper wakes up ready to eat and lets you know right away.
At 10 months Bryce still loves sleeping in the balled up bums up position. She like Cooper falls asleep soon after hitting the mattress. The irony of moving Bryce into her own crib first is that once she falls asleep she does not move. We cover Bryce with a blanket, that is only slightly wider than her body and that blanket is still on her in the same position 11 hours later.
Darcy is very funny. Darcy tells us when it is time for a nap or time to go to sleep. When it is time she takes her thumb and puts it into her mouth, mostly her left thumb, sometimes the right thumb and sometimes, both thumbs. Darcy's has created her own bedtime routine. She does not go to sleep immediately. Darcy chooses to practice all that she has learned at bedtime. We leave the room and Darcy then practices. Darcy practices talking, tongue clicking, clapping, or whatever she learned that day. We would peek back in the room and though it is dark except for the night light Darcy is on all fours rocking back and forth, getting herself ready for the next stage of crawling. After her routine, about 25 minutes, she puts herself to sleep. She mostly sleeps on her side bent at the hip, in the shape of an"L".
