On the Road
On Thursday through Saturday Preston had a fever over 103 degrees. It was scary because I have never had a child with a fever that high. I brought him to the doctor and since he doesn’t exhibit any other symptoms the doctor determined he probably just has a virus his body is trying to fight off. As a side note, the doctor said that if he gets a rash all over his body he probably has Roseola. Sure enough on Sunday morning his fever had broken and been replaced by an ugly rash. I just wish his fever wasn’t so high. He just wants to cuddle and sleep all day. Roseola it is. My poor buddy. So far his sister’s aren’t sick and I just have to hope it stays that way.
Ava had her last swim meet of the year last Saturday and within one minute of getting to the race at 6:30am I had already spilled my coffee all over my white shirt and Ava had already fallen and scraped her knee up. Ava did her best racing yet – I believe she was still last place but her time and her strokes were improved. She did her backstroke all by herself the entire length of the pool without a coach verbally assisting her along.
In other news, a week ago (July 14th) Violet decided she would get up and walk. We were all upstairs playing and the babies were running around laughing and falling and being silly and Violet got up and started doing laps around the room. She finally decided it was her time to walk. I was so excited for her. She was a good little walker and she was so happy about her new accomplishment that I could hardly put her to bed because she just wanted to walk.
On Tuesday we hit the road to Los Angeles on a seven hour road trip that could go very wrong and Chris and I had not a clue what to expect. On our previous road trips we had left at 6:30pm and the kids slept the entire way. This trip we were leaving at 6:30am and we hoped for peace, contentment and a few naps. The babies in the back can reach each other from their car seats so we see a lot of sweet interactions such as hand holding and games of footsie, and then there are naughty things like Elsa taking Violet’s blanket and Violet taking Elsa’s binkie and then they get mad at each other. Elsa is definitely the rebel rouser of the group, trying to take everything she can that belongs to Violet so she can get a reaction out of her. Most of the time Violet is very easy going about this kind of sisterly bullying, but nobody messes with Violet’s monkey. As soon as Elsa takes Violet’s monkey there is screaming, pinching, biting, or any other torture Violet can inflict on Elsa in order to get her precious monkey back.
About half way through our road trip we stopped at a gas station and brought all the kids in to pick out some snacks. Elsa had a candy paintbrush in each hand that she was waving around, nearly missing customers as they walked by her. Preston was on the ground sorting through a variety of chocolate bars and Elsa had chosen one candy and was coveting it calmly. Ava had chosen the most gigantic bag of sour gummy worms that she could find and coincidentally that was the same candy I had chosen. Like mother like daughter. We loaded up on snacks and packed them back in the car. So far no one had taken a nap so we were hoping for some shuteye from the back seats. Our wish was granted as right before we started the journey through the grapevine around noon we looked back and all four kids were sound asleep. I was so excited I could hardly contain myself. This was an easy road trip so far.
And then we made a terrible error in judgment. At 12:45 pm Violet woke up and then she woke Elsa up and then they woke Ava and Preston up. By 1pm everyone was already up from their nap and they were not just hungry, they were starving. There were four starving, grumpy, screaming kids and two stressed adults in our Toyota Sienna and we couldn’t get to food fast enough. I jumped in the back and sat on the ground trying to calm and entertain them. We finally found fast food heaven by 1:15pm and quickly stopped at McDonalds. We ordered our chicken nuggets and hamburgers with screaming kids in the back and I guiltily broke off pieces of the disgusting greasy chicken nuggets for my babies to eat. The children were temporarily consoled. We had 45 minutes of the drive left and let me tell you that was a long 45 minutes. The babies pretty much cried off and on the entire rest of the drive and Ava cried AND complained the rest of the way. It is a six to seven hour drive and the kids were done. I felt badly for them but we made it 5.5 hours with hardly a complaint so that was nice.
When we got to Dick and Sherri’s the kids were ecstatic. They played with all the toys that were laid out for them, waded in the kid pool and then went to bed and slept well until morning hallelujah.
Today we went had Chris’s cousin Jill and her two sons visit as well as his Aunt. It was a crazy house full with our four, my nieces Briana and Sophia who are also at Dick and Sherri’s for the week and Jill’s two kids– we were like Jon and Kate plus 8 without the crazy marital drama.
Later that day we visited Marshie and Hermie (Chris’s grandparents) in the Valley. Hermie has been suffering through Cellulitis and other ailments. He has been fairly miserable and was lying in bed when were arrived. By the end of the visit he was up and out of his room with a big smile on his face. He said that this made him happier than he has been for awhile having all the kids around him. It was nice to see Hermie so happy. It is funny though because as Chris describes, being in Marshie and Hermie’s house is like being in a Chinese museum. There are three low lying glass tables situated around the family room and each one is decorated with very breakable Chinese glass items. It was very funny trying to keep three 17 month old babies from breaking any of the decorations at their reach. They did all have fun messing with the vertical blinds though.
Tomorrow we are off to Zuma beach with the kids and then Chris and I are going out to dinner with a couple of Chris’s old friends.
Ava-isms:
In the car Ava was talking on a kid phone. We asked her who she was talking to and she answered Barack Obama. We told her to ask him something she wanted to know about her President and she said, “um, Barack Obama, can you please go into your pantry and see if you have any cookies?”
We were on our way to Costco the other day with all the kids and Ava asks out of the blue “when the babies get bigger can we all be twins?” and I said “sure you can”. Ava continued with “we can all wear the same clothes and the same shoes and we can die Elsa’s hair red.”
I thought it was such a cute thing to say because it was Ava’s way of trying to include herself in the triplet world. She wants to be one and the same with her brother and sisters and not feel like the outsider so she is imagining ways in which she can make that happen for herself. I asked Ava if she thinks that Elsa will feel left out when she grows up and realizes that she is the only one without red hair. Ava had a solution to that potential problem: we will just dye it she said.
Until next time, the mothership is signing off.
Ava had her last swim meet of the year last Saturday and within one minute of getting to the race at 6:30am I had already spilled my coffee all over my white shirt and Ava had already fallen and scraped her knee up. Ava did her best racing yet – I believe she was still last place but her time and her strokes were improved. She did her backstroke all by herself the entire length of the pool without a coach verbally assisting her along.
In other news, a week ago (July 14th) Violet decided she would get up and walk. We were all upstairs playing and the babies were running around laughing and falling and being silly and Violet got up and started doing laps around the room. She finally decided it was her time to walk. I was so excited for her. She was a good little walker and she was so happy about her new accomplishment that I could hardly put her to bed because she just wanted to walk.
On Tuesday we hit the road to Los Angeles on a seven hour road trip that could go very wrong and Chris and I had not a clue what to expect. On our previous road trips we had left at 6:30pm and the kids slept the entire way. This trip we were leaving at 6:30am and we hoped for peace, contentment and a few naps. The babies in the back can reach each other from their car seats so we see a lot of sweet interactions such as hand holding and games of footsie, and then there are naughty things like Elsa taking Violet’s blanket and Violet taking Elsa’s binkie and then they get mad at each other. Elsa is definitely the rebel rouser of the group, trying to take everything she can that belongs to Violet so she can get a reaction out of her. Most of the time Violet is very easy going about this kind of sisterly bullying, but nobody messes with Violet’s monkey. As soon as Elsa takes Violet’s monkey there is screaming, pinching, biting, or any other torture Violet can inflict on Elsa in order to get her precious monkey back.
About half way through our road trip we stopped at a gas station and brought all the kids in to pick out some snacks. Elsa had a candy paintbrush in each hand that she was waving around, nearly missing customers as they walked by her. Preston was on the ground sorting through a variety of chocolate bars and Elsa had chosen one candy and was coveting it calmly. Ava had chosen the most gigantic bag of sour gummy worms that she could find and coincidentally that was the same candy I had chosen. Like mother like daughter. We loaded up on snacks and packed them back in the car. So far no one had taken a nap so we were hoping for some shuteye from the back seats. Our wish was granted as right before we started the journey through the grapevine around noon we looked back and all four kids were sound asleep. I was so excited I could hardly contain myself. This was an easy road trip so far.
And then we made a terrible error in judgment. At 12:45 pm Violet woke up and then she woke Elsa up and then they woke Ava and Preston up. By 1pm everyone was already up from their nap and they were not just hungry, they were starving. There were four starving, grumpy, screaming kids and two stressed adults in our Toyota Sienna and we couldn’t get to food fast enough. I jumped in the back and sat on the ground trying to calm and entertain them. We finally found fast food heaven by 1:15pm and quickly stopped at McDonalds. We ordered our chicken nuggets and hamburgers with screaming kids in the back and I guiltily broke off pieces of the disgusting greasy chicken nuggets for my babies to eat. The children were temporarily consoled. We had 45 minutes of the drive left and let me tell you that was a long 45 minutes. The babies pretty much cried off and on the entire rest of the drive and Ava cried AND complained the rest of the way. It is a six to seven hour drive and the kids were done. I felt badly for them but we made it 5.5 hours with hardly a complaint so that was nice.
When we got to Dick and Sherri’s the kids were ecstatic. They played with all the toys that were laid out for them, waded in the kid pool and then went to bed and slept well until morning hallelujah.
Today we went had Chris’s cousin Jill and her two sons visit as well as his Aunt. It was a crazy house full with our four, my nieces Briana and Sophia who are also at Dick and Sherri’s for the week and Jill’s two kids– we were like Jon and Kate plus 8 without the crazy marital drama.
Later that day we visited Marshie and Hermie (Chris’s grandparents) in the Valley. Hermie has been suffering through Cellulitis and other ailments. He has been fairly miserable and was lying in bed when were arrived. By the end of the visit he was up and out of his room with a big smile on his face. He said that this made him happier than he has been for awhile having all the kids around him. It was nice to see Hermie so happy. It is funny though because as Chris describes, being in Marshie and Hermie’s house is like being in a Chinese museum. There are three low lying glass tables situated around the family room and each one is decorated with very breakable Chinese glass items. It was very funny trying to keep three 17 month old babies from breaking any of the decorations at their reach. They did all have fun messing with the vertical blinds though.
Tomorrow we are off to Zuma beach with the kids and then Chris and I are going out to dinner with a couple of Chris’s old friends.
Ava-isms:
In the car Ava was talking on a kid phone. We asked her who she was talking to and she answered Barack Obama. We told her to ask him something she wanted to know about her President and she said, “um, Barack Obama, can you please go into your pantry and see if you have any cookies?”
We were on our way to Costco the other day with all the kids and Ava asks out of the blue “when the babies get bigger can we all be twins?” and I said “sure you can”. Ava continued with “we can all wear the same clothes and the same shoes and we can die Elsa’s hair red.”
I thought it was such a cute thing to say because it was Ava’s way of trying to include herself in the triplet world. She wants to be one and the same with her brother and sisters and not feel like the outsider so she is imagining ways in which she can make that happen for herself. I asked Ava if she thinks that Elsa will feel left out when she grows up and realizes that she is the only one without red hair. Ava had a solution to that potential problem: we will just dye it she said.
Until next time, the mothership is signing off.
Oh you are so brave. I am just now contemplating a trip a whole one and a half hours north with the kids for a week. 7 hours would have been broken up into 2 days or something for me. You sure do have more guts than I do.