Clumsy Genes.

I love the blog Mommyfriend. She recently wrote about the injuries associated with having toddlers. I started writing a comment on her post, and then realized it was getting really long winded, so I decided to blog it instead.

I am exceedingly clumsy, always have been, probably always will be. I think I passed the clumsy gene on to my boys. Sorry, boys! I remember when the boys were still babies and learning to sit up on their own, I had Owen sitting up on the floor, and holding him up. He threw himself backwards with so much force, I couldn't stop him from hitting the floor. We had carpet in the apartment we were living in at the time, but the floor was anything but soft, so I wasn't surprised that he started wailing. I sought medical advice, and was told that while the fall scared him (and me) and he did have a little bump, he was just fine.
Then there was the time we went to a friend's for a play date, and I managed to lock the house keys inside, it was summer and hot, and I when we got home, I wasn't going to keep my babies in the car while we waited for Daddy to get home with his keys. So I did what anyone would do, I decided to break in. I went around took the screen out of a window (the windows we had at our old apartment didn't lock), opened the window, climbed up onto a skinny rail to be able to climb up into the window. Trying to balance on this little rail and lean over to reach the window to climb in, I fell, and twisted my knee. I never did get it checked out by medical professionals, it swelled up, and hurt like crazy and it still sometimes hurts (this happened like 2 years ago). Anyway, I picked myself up off the ground and tried again, this time, I got in! So then I went around, unlocked the door and got the babies inside and sat down. A minute later, my husband got home with his keys.
Then there were the times the boys would be jumping on their beds when they were suppose to be sleeping. M got a pretty bad black eye, I was actually afraid he could have broken some bones in his face, which of course, he didn't, but it was a nasty black eye. Not long after that, Ethan earned his first trip to the ER. He was jumping on the bed (of course) and fell and put a big ole dent in his forehead, lot of blood, but turned out to only be a superficial wound. He had a lot of fun in the ER though, he showed off how cute he is, how well he could count, and he got some major practice flirting with nurses.
They still fall a lot, like I said, I must have passed on the clumsy gene. And even as clumsy as they are, they are fearless. I'm sure we'll have more ER visits, more black eyes, etc. So if you see us around town, and the boys and I are bruised and banged up, please know, we don't live in an abusive home, we just play hard.

Caption contest

Since only ONE person entered a caption, the winner is.... Natalie! Congrats!

Ok, everybody, come up with your best caption!

It's my birthday

I'm a quarter of a century today. 1/4 of the way to 100. And I feel like I'm still such a kid. Not because I act like a kid, or anything like that. I just feel like I still have so much to do before I'm really an "adult."
Because you know, being a mom to triplets, that's so not something adults do.
Actually, I don't know why I feel young. Maybe because this past summer I was still carded to play Keno (legal age in my state is 19).

In any case, I'm enjoying my birthday hugs from my little ones, and super enjoying the fact that my husband is actually cleaning the house so I don't have to. Yeah.

Plus, my awesome parents bought me a kitchenaid stand mixer. And I've only wanted one of those since I was, I dunno, 15 yrs 3 months and 2 weeks old. Not like I've been counting or anything. haha. (That age was totally just thrown out there, to drive the point that I've wanted one for awhile now.)

AND my sister got my a pretty kick-ass cookbook. And last month, for our anniversary, my husband got me a deluxe mandolin slicer (and running shoes). Good thing kitchen-y things excite me, otherwise I might be offended that I got kitchen utensil/appliances/cookbook. But I really love the fun gifts I received.

And just to prove how much of a dork I really am, I'm wearing a tiara and birthday button-ribbon thing today. And just in case you don't believe me... A picture....

As of late

I've always enjoyed cooking and baking and generally just playing around with food and coming up with yummy things that people love to eat.

Before I got married, I never really had to cook often, unless I wanted to. And to be honest, it was like an occasional hobby before I got married. I made a few things really well, and when my husband and I were still just kind of hanging out and dating, and I was still trying to impress the heck out of him, I would cook, but it certainly was not an every night thing. So then we got married, and had triplets, and eating out or getting take out or fast food was not financially sound. That first year of marriage we ate a lot of crappy hamburger helper, not that I couldn't do anything better, but being pregnant with triplets and then having newborns, I didn't have a lot of energy or focus to plan meals, grocery shop, and then cook. So I've really been improving and exploring recipes since that part of our lives. I love to cook. I love to bake. I love slice, dice, chop, mix, bake, braise, broil, etc...
BUT THAT'S NOT ALL....
I've discovered canning! AND I LOVE IT! We don't have a super extensive garden, so I haven't done much canning this year, because I don't want to buy a million pounds of extra produce when I go shopping. Luckily though, my parents have a decent garden, and my in-laws have a great garden. My parents will be great, but it's their first year having their garden, and I think they are planning on adding more stuff every year until they have everything they want/need.
Anyway, this year all we had in our yard was our grapes. We picked our grapes, washed them, made them into juice and from there made our own jelly! It's fantastic. A little over a quart of juice made 8 jars of jelly! And I also made my own sauerkraut this year. 6 pints! And I did my own pumpkin puree, but since they have lower acidity that other fruits and veggies, I didn't really can it, per say, I just made the puree from fresh pumpkins and then froze it for later use.
Can't wait to expand on this next year. Also, I plan on asking my in-laws if they have an overflow of jalapenos they wouldn't mind parting with. I really want to make/can candied jalapenos.

moody eaters

When my boys were babies and on baby food, I thought I was so lucky, the didn't seem too picky. And now they aren't so much picky, as they are moody eaters. One day they will love something, the next time I make it, they act like they're being served prison food. Sometimes they like hot dogs, sometimes they hate them. Sometimes they won't touch any meat at all, sometimes they love meat. So, as a mom, it's tough to make sure everyone is eating well. I decided to share some tricks to get my moody eaters to eat just about anything.

1. Put ketchup on it. My kids used refuse eggs, until we put ketchup on them. If they don't eat their veggies, we put ketchup on it. I personally, think ketchup is gross anyway, so getting them to eat this way is not my favorite, but if it gets them eating, I can deal with gross.

2. Re-invent the recipe. Last night I made sloppy joes, total kid food, right? Well, they didn't touch them. I wasn't going to make anything else, it was a long, rough day. So, they got crackers, cheese, lunch meat.. But today, I had leftover sloppy joe, so I boiled up some pasta for lunch and heated and mixed in the leftover sloppy joe. They actually LIKED it!

3. Let them help make food. When they are being especially moody, I let them help in the kitchen. If we're making something that isn't really safe for them to help with (something involving lots of cutting and hot stoves/ovens) I fill the sink with soapy water, give them cups and spoons OR I give them bowls and spoons and let them pretend to cook.

4. If all else fails, go to their all time favorite. My kids love spaghetti or any kind of Italian food. We eat a lot of spaghetti and ravioli around here. I've started expanding on the Italian foods I make, and so far, they love all of it. A new household favorite, which I was surprised the kids loved so much, is Eggplant Parmesan.

Do you have picky/moody eaters? What do you do to get your kids to eat?

Let's get organized!

I have been in a cleaning,organizing, and dust-busting mood lately! I have re-organized my kitchen, freed up a ton of counter space, and de-cluttered the cupboards. The next day I cleaned and re-organized the bathroom. So I was extremely pleased when I read that this month's Project Marriage was to change something in the bedroom. Either something big or small. Well, the timing of this challenge couldn't be better with my "Let's whip this place into tip top shape" mood and all. I have SO many ideas for the bedroom. We have two closets in the house. One in the boys' room and one in the unfinished basement. So, not having a closet in our bedroom means that our room gets pretty cluttered at times. We have a dresser and a clothes rack type thing in there. We actually have two dressers, but one is filled with junk. SO one idea I had for the room is to buy my husband an inexpensive, yet functional filing cabinet for his office, and all the papers from the junk dresser can be filed away. Then we can sort through the rest of the junk and either put it in storage, or sell it or find some functional use for it, and open up the dresser for actual clothes. Replace the flimsy little clothes rack thing with either a sturdier rack and get some sort or canopy or curtain to put around it so it has more of a closet-y feel, or fashion some sort of wardrobe to hang clothes in. I've also told my husband that the little chair in our room has got to go, either up to his office, or to a yard sale.
We also have a hand-me-down headboard. One with a mirror in it. I don't really love the mirror headboard, and I'm having a lot of trouble convincing to let me make changes to the headboard. I want to take the mirror out, and make a chalkboard to put in there instead. Not that we need a chalkboard in our headboard any more than we need a mirror, but I think it would be cute. And the final change I'm planning on making is pulling out the sewing machine and making some fun accent pillows, and maybe new curtains. But if all I get accomplished is creating more functional space and finding a tidy way to store clothes with having no closet then I shall be pleased.

A technology free date night.

I really love my husband, so I was really excited when July's Project Marriage was to have a date night.
Did my husband wine and dine me? No. Did we go to a movie? Not a chance. My parents are partners in a ranch, so we loaded up the kids and went up to the ranch for a weekend. We had our own cabin, and the boys had their own room, so while we saw our kids much of the time, the grandparents would watch them and give the Mr. and I some time to go off together. I love that our date was a weekend away from neighbors, and falling asleep listening to big rigs, traffic and sirens.
What types of things did we do? While the boys were up where my parents were staying, we caught and removed mice from our cabin, one night, after the boys were asleep, my parents sat at our cabin and babysat the sleeping boys, we took an off road jeep ride, did some sunset hiking, saw a lot of deer and wildlife, when we got back from our drive, we sat outside of the cabin and had a couple of owls join us. The next night the ranch was hosting a 4th of July dance, so the owls weren't aroud too much, so we sat outside and star gazed. During the day we got to go fishing and go to the shooting range. SO much fun!
I sure love my husband, and I love that we like to get dirty on our dates! Plus I LOVED that the Mr. had no cell phone signal or internet while we were up there, so we actually really spent time talking and listening to each other!