Due Date

It's hard to imagine that today would have been my original due date -Febuary 2! I'm so glad to not be walking around with 21 lbs. of baby in me. God chose just the perfect time for them to be born - and here we are with 5 week old baby girls! God is so good!

We were able to enjoy a family night out (minus the girls) - thanks to Rich's parents! We took the 2 older kids to Family Fun Night at their school. They had been looking forward to it for weeks and were so exctited that it wasn't cancelled due to the snow day - and so were we! Emma was thrilled to get her hair done like a "crazy rock star" as she put it. Boy is she growing up so fast! Luke enjoyed racking up the tickets at all the games! It was so nice to be able to spend some family time together as well as see lots of friends.

Sisters - Original Due Date Picture
Ava
Emma's "Darling Dutton Do"!
Tummy Time (aka: Sleepy time)

Week Three (and a half!)

The highlight of last week was our trip to the pediatrician - Dr. Jayne Rauwerda. What an awesome doctor she is. If anyone is looking for a doctor for your children, she is the bomb! Anyway - we don't get out much these days.

The girls have grown a ton! Addison is 6lb. 13oz., Ava is 6lb.even, and Elaina is 6lb. 1 oz! Elaina has grown to be the tallest of the 3 at 21inches! Way to go for the underdog! They have also developed reflux over the past week so we now have the pleasure of adding rice cereal to their bottles (as if we didn't have enough to do!). It seemed to help for the spitting, but they were still acting painful so the Dr. put them on Zantac. Hopefully that will solve the problem and we can take them off the rice. One box lasted 3 and a half days!

Emma and Luke are loving the new house and all the new friends they are meeting in the neighborhood! Emma even wrote up 1/2 birthday invitations and distibuted them to the friends with a "check yes or no if you can come" box. We made sure she knew it wasn't a "real party", but she was thrilled to get a good response! They had fun playing in the snow and building a bumpy ramp to sled down with their friends!

I hope to update once a week - sorry this one took so long! Here's the latest pics:

Emma enjoys her new duties

Elaina has become a Ron Howard look-a-like!

Addison, our "little Lukey"

Luke and his buddy Ava

Nightly fussy baby holding!

Week Two

Another week has passed by so quickly and I realized I hadn't posted any new updates. The girls are slowly starting to arouse from their lovely slumbers - much to Rich and my dismay! We have been lucky so far and can get them fed and back to sleep in 30-40 minutes in th middle of the night - but they have been waking up earlier and ready to eat. Thankfully, we have had Rich's mom here a few nights to help out and we have gotten some much needed sleep. Thank you, Mom!



Here are a few pictures from the past week:

Proud Big Sister

Elaina's First Bath

The Three Stooges

Grandpa and Addison

Addison Rae

We've Survived!

You can probably tell by our lack of blogging, that we have 3 newborns in the house! We have survived our first week at home with flying colors. Thank you to all of you who have helped out, brought meals, sent cards, gifts, phone calls and prayers. We couldn't have done it without you.

The first week went better than anticipated. Thank goodness God designed babies to be sleepy for the first days and weeks of their lives, to give parents a chance to rest. But what do you do when you have 2 not-so-sleepy big kids? I guess you just adjust!

We had our first pediatrician's visit on Monday to check the girls weight. They continue to amaze the doctors! Elaina, our smallest at birth, has plumped up to a nice 5 lbs! Addison is holding her own at 5 lb. 11 oz., and Ava has slumped behind at 4lb.13 oz. They say they are doing things they expect out of 2 week olds, despite them being 5 weeks early! Praise the Lord!

So far they are such sweet, patient, and easy babies. We can't get enough of them. Emma and Luke are always asking to hold one of them, and are becoming quite adept at handling them with ease. Luke still can't tell who is who - so we like to tease him and hear him go through the list of names. Emma is quite the young mother and is such a great help!

We'll try to post pictures and update more often. Here are a few from the past week.

Luke, Tembo (the Elephant) and his new sisters

Addison

Elaina

Ava

A few recent pictures...

Here are some pictures from our past few days:

Coming Home

Is this thing big enough?

Grandma with her girls

Four generations

Elaina (top)

Addison (left) Ava (right)

We're Home!

Today we were able to take all three of the babies home. What a blessing! Even though the whole pregnancy has gone so smoothly, there is no way we thought we would be taking home all three of our babies just three short days after they were born. Our mindset going in was that we would have a few days where Jenn would be home to prepare the house and get ready. But once again "our" plan was not His perfect plan.

Today Emma and Luke returned to school - so the pace of life was about to pick up. We were able to return from the hospital around 1:00 PM and as soon as we walked in the door, it was quite apparent that our lives were forever changed. It will take a little bit of time to figure out all of the timing for the various tasks, but we are confident we will adjust quickly. Our hope and prayer is that we are able to not lose sight of the needs of our older kids. We can tell how easy it would be to give our full concentration to the babies.

We will try and post some more pictures tomorrow. We are so appreciative of all the prayers, well wishes, gifts and meals. Our God is an AWESOME God!

Day 2

Just a quick update and a few pictures...

Addison was able to join us in our room early this afternoon - so our family is now complete. Each of the babies continues to eat well and we are just amazed by God's provision for our family. We received quite a few comments from different nurses today that they had never seen triplets all be able to be in the "general" newborn nursery like ours (except for the short stay in NIM for Addison).

Our prayer is that they all remain healthy and continue to progress so that we can take them all home on Thursday. Even though we recognize that it will be difficult once we get home, we also know that we will be provided the strength we need. We certainly appreciate all of your thoughts and prayers that have carried us through so far.

Here are a few more pictures:

Mom

Elaina, Ava & Addison

Emma, Luke and the proud Grandparents join Mom and the Triplets

One big, happy family

Big Brother with Elaina and Big Sister with Ava

"Bundles of Joy"

Addison, Ava, Elaina (l to r)