Random

Here are some random pictures :)

Ella as Cinderella and Emily as Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty, Eeyore and Cinderella 

Ella wanted the whole pack n play for herself

Tripp as Eeyore with Emily. 

Ella

Sleeping Beauty would not go to sleep

Eeyore wouldn't keep still, so his hands are blurry in all of his pictures

Mark trying to get Emily to sleep

She put him to sleep instead

Then I stayed up with her because she was just so happy!  This new formula is really working so far.  She smiles a lot now!

The next night she was awake and happy again!

We dressed them up in their Bobcat onesies that their Aunt Laina got them 

Emily tried to eat Tripp's elbow while we were taking pictures

Mark with the babies

This guy really loves his pacifier 

The boys built a pillow fort and I wasn't allowed to participate because I'm a girl and there were no girls allowed.

1 month old

It's been 1 month since these 3 little blessings entered our lives.  I don't know where the time has gone, but I'm loving it!  They get bigger and more alert every single day and I love watching them grow.  I spend a lot of time during the day just watching them sleep!  

We went to the pediatrician this morning and putting them into their car seats I noticed they were all much bigger!  The padding in the seat that is made for a 4 pound baby was very tight around them so we will have to remove those pads.  We all thought Emily was going to be the biggest.  We were wrong!  She is the smallest and Tripp is the biggest.  Here they all are on the exam table waiting for the doctor to come in the room.

Emily

Emily is 7 pounds 12 ounces.  She's gained 2 pounds in the last 2 weeks!  Even though she has the most chins, she is the smallest.  She has still been pretty fussy when she has gas so the doctor gave us Nutramigen formula to try for her.  She said it might be that she has a hard time digesting the milk protein and this formula doesn't have that protein, so we will try it and see if it helps her.  We only have to try it for a month if it works and then reintroduce milk into her diet to see if her tummy matures by then.  Some babies' tummies just take a little longer to get used to the milk, so hopefully that's the problem and this fancy new formula will help her!  Other than her tummy issues she is a very sweet baby.  After she has a dirty diaper she is pleasant for a few hours until the crying starts again.  I do think she has become a little spoiled since she is held so often.  We usually let her cry for about 30 seconds before we pick her up because a lot of times she passes the gas and then she stops, but if she keeps crying we pick her up and try to comfort her.  Sometimes there is no comforting her and she just screams while you hold her, rock her, sing to her, or walk around with her.  There are other times when she cries, we pick her up, she stops crying immediately, and then starts up again when you try to put her down.  So she does have stomach pains, but I think she is also figuring out that if she cries we will pick her up.  It would be nice to be able to just hold her all day long, but with 3 babies, that's not always possible, so hopefully her tummy issues get resolved and she stops crying so much and doesn't have to be held constantly.  It would make our lives a lot easier!  

Until then, this is how we spend most of the day

Ella

Ella is 7 pounds 14 ounces.  She has gained 2 pounds in the last 2 weeks. She is the happiest baby!  Even when she is constipated and straining, she is still smiling.  It is the weirdest thing, but so cute.  She always has a smile on her face and is very rarely fussy.  She is held the least because she just doesn't really cry and seems to be fine being left alone.  I try to hold her during the day when I'm not holding one of the others because I feel bad that she isn't held and plus it's just fun to hold her and watch the little faces she makes.  She is the funniest of the 3!  Every time we take pictures of the 3 of them together, Ella is either smiling or making a funny face in all of them.  She is very photogenic and we don't have many bad pictures of her.  I can't say enough what a good baby she is all around!

She sleeps in the sweetest positions

Tripp

Tripp is 8 pounds 3 ounces!  I thought he would be in the 6 pound range but he fooled me!  He is such a sweet little boy.  He gets fussy sometimes but never too bad and he usually just wants his pacifier.  He is starting to smile more and more and he has these big blue eyes that just stare at you when he's awake.  He is starting to look more like me.  At first we didn't know who he looked like.  I thought he looked like Mark and Mark thought he looked like Kevin Spacey (...I have no idea).  His face is starting to change a lot as he gets bigger, but he still has a John Travolta chin!  I think he is the cutest little boy, but I'm a little biased, so who knows!  He loves cuddling up to Emily and prefers not to lay next to Ella. Ella moves a lot and tends to hit him in the face.  He doesn't like that at all.  I got this action shot of Ella punching him.  She barely grazed his face but he screamed like she was trying to knock him out!

One of my favorite things about him is the way he sleeps with both hands behind his head :)

Being home with them everyday is so much fun!  I take about 100 pictures a days.  Yesterday I had to delete some because I didn't have room on my phone to take any more.  Luckily most of them are 40 pictures of the same thing just waiting to get one where they all look cute and aren't moving.  On Tuesday they were awake so we played dress up and had a photo shoot.  I got a fancy little boy outfit from someone and since Tripp won't be able to wear it anywhere, I wanted to get a picture of him in it, so the girls dressed up, too!

This one shows how Emily and Tripp are best friends.  If they're next to each other they are usually staring at each other.

Last week we dressed them in their "womb mates" onesies that one of my coworkers gave me

And here are just random cute pictures of them!

The girls with their arms linked

Ella sleeping

Ella and Tripp

Tripp

Emily

Tripp

Ella really likes being alone in the pack n play

Tripp looks like me in this one :)

I wanted to see what Emily would look like with long hair

When no one is around to put Tripp's pacifier in his mouth, he sucks his thumb!

Emily loves when Mark comes home.  

I got to meet my niece Gwen this week after my doctor's appointment.  She is so precious and so big (Well, compared to my little ones)!

3 weeks old

The babies are 3 weeks old!  It does not feel like it's been 3 weeks.  They've gotten so big, but they're still so tiny!  Emily is still the fussy one, Ella still smiles constantly, and Tripp is still the calm one.  We have been putting them together in the pack n play during the day and it is so fun to watch them together!  I've noticed that even if they aren't right next to each other, they reach their arms out and are usually all 3 touching each other.  It is so cute! 

Both girls were being really fussy so we put them right next to each other and they calmed down and went to sleep like this

Tripp and Emily talking to each other

Then he tried to eat her hair

We've noticed that Emily has a very strong neck for being so tiny.  Even in the NICU she would hold her head up on her own.  I decided to prop her up on a Boppy to see how she'd do.  She did great!

Then we tried to prop Ella up in front of her to see if they would stare at each other.  Ella's neck is not as strong as Emily's so she just cried.  We turned her over and they had sister time while brother was sleeping.

This is our baby train that we set up

The girls with their headbands :)

Even though Mark was disappointed that Tripp doesn't "drink like a Beyer man," they still had a sweet moment!

Today I was thinking about how I don't know what we did before the babies were born.  What did we do when we weren't changing diapers and feeding babies every 3 hours like clockwork?  Then I remembered... we slept.  I slept a lot.  Mark didn't sleep as much, but still more than he does now!  Not that I would trade them in for sleep, but the lack of sleep does start to build up.  I wish it was as easy as just waking up every 3 hours at night, feeding babies and then going back to sleep, but it isn't.  After the feeding is done, I have 30 more minutes before I can go to sleep because I have to pump.  Pumping exclusively is not easy.  I've tried to breast feed but the babies get impatient and then I give up and just give them a bottle.  I try to give them breast milk in each bottle, but it is usually mixed with formula.  I am producing a lot more, but still not enough for each baby to get 3 full ounces at every feeding.  They seem to be doing fine with it and they aren't as constipated as they were before, but I am still trying to figure out if we need to change their formula.  I will talk to the pediatrician about it next week.  For now, this is what I do every 3 hours:  pump and try to find another chore that I can do while sitting there pumping.

On a very positive note, I have lost 55 pounds in the past 3 weeks!  I was having problems with my blood pressure for 2 weeks after they were born and I was still swollen but for the past week the swelling is gone and I'm dropping weight pretty quickly.  I'm not dieting, so I think it's just all of the pumping that's helping so much.  And of course the fact that I'm not carrying 3 babies anymore.  I'm hoping to be back into my normal clothes soon.  Right now I'm in this awkward stage where my regular clothes still don't fit, but my maternity clothes are really big.  Luckily I don't leave the house very much so I can just wear yoga pants and tank tops most days!

I will leave you with this picture.  I wanted to try to get one of me with all 3 babies.  It's not easy when they can't hold up their heads!  This is the best we got!  It's hard to believe that 3 weeks ago they were all inside of me.  They've gotten so big since then!