Story Time with Emily

Auntie Em and Uncle Eric Visit

Auntie Em and Uncle Eric flew in from Singapore for a two-week visit. To prepare the kids for them, we had been looking at their pictures and talking about them. We explained that Eric was tall, and Betty signed "giraffe." This plan backfired a bit, though, when Arthur came up to Nana the other morning, signing "sad," "scared," and "tall." Evidentially his imagination had taken off. But the introductions went well, and Arthur was able to point to Eric and call him by name.

Earlier this morning, we had been watching a cartoon episode of "Maisy," in which all of the characters were given piggy-back rides. Arthur climbed around the couch, got behind me, and put his arms around my neck. He said "Ride?" and I gave him a few piggy-back rides around the house. Afterwards, he noticed his toy plastic piggy. The gears in Arthur's head started turning, and he decided he'd try out a true piggy-back ride...

New Sprinkler

We set up a new elephant sprinkler in our backyard for the kids to play with. But even though it was in the upper-80's today, the water coming out of the hose was still quite frigid. Betty didn't want to approach it, and Coraline didn't stay too long either. Only Arthur willed himself to keep playing in the water, even though he was literally shaking from the cold.

So after we shut off the sprinkler for the day, Arthur had to warm up in the sun with Erin.

Heat Wave

Because of the heat, we made a quick run out to Walmart to purchase a new swimming pool for the kids. (Arthur had quite a shock when he woke up from his nap to discover the giant blue pool crammed in front of his seat!) Arthur loved wearing his swim cap (he likes wearing hats now), and Coraline refused to wear her swimsuit.



(The girls decided it'd be fun to pour water on Arthur, and he was glad he had worn his cap)

Sisters

A Day at the Park

Today we met Erin and her students at a local park to have a picnic. Arthur was excited about it, and kept saying "pic pic" all day long until we finally left. It was a very hot day, and their jello snack quickly melted. But Coraline thought it tasted great, and drank from all three of the bowls. The hard-boiled eggs were also a hit, but the kids wanted to carry them around all day instead of eating them.

The Pushing Game

Lately the triplets have gotten a lot of amusement out of the "pushing game." At the moment they think it is fun to push each other backwards, and then come back for more. We're trying desperately to curb this activity, as we all know that the pushing game never ends well...

Arthur's Dry Day

Arthur managed to last the whole day with a dry cloth diaper (in fact, I guess we could reuse it tomorrow...). He peed in the potty at least a half dozen times today, sitting down for half a minute before jumping up and cheering for himself. To celebrate, we took everyone out for ice cream (it helped that today was Ben & Jerry's free cone day).

Arthur had orange cream, Coraline had strawberry, and Betty had chocolate. It seemed, at least from her face, that Betty enjoyed her ice cream the most!

Moms We Love

A while back I entered Erin in a "Moms We Love" contest, sponsored by "Birds Eye Voila!" - I just got an email from them stating that they had featured her among a few dozen other moms on their website:
Moms We Love

A Year of Visitors

A year ago I started tracking visitors to this blog using clustrmaps. In that time, we've had 18,617 unique visitors from around the globe. Countries that have stopped by include (in order of most visitors to least): United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Singapore, Australia, Mexico, Colombia, Germany, France, New Zealand, India, Sweden, Switzerland, Brazil, Netherlands, Italy, Jordan, Ireland, Portugal, Austria, Europe, Belgium, Malaysia, Argentina, Spain, Czech Republic, Poland, Indonesia, Norway, Japan, South Africa, Bulgaria, Denmark, Russian Federation, Romania, Hungary, Estonia, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Uganda, Israel, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Iceland, Malta, Croatia, Lithuania, Finland, Pakistan, Turkey, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Venezuela, Nigeria, Morocco, Kenya, Ecuador, Korea, Fiji, Peru, Nicaragua, Saint Lucia, Taiwan, Kuwait, Bermuda, Bangladesh, Lebanon, Guatemala, Serbia, Iran

Thanks for stopping by!

Two Years...

I can't it has now been two years since the tragic events took place at Virginia Tech. We had planned on taking the kids on a 3.2 mile walk of remembrance today, but all of us are fighting colds (and the kids had a slight fever last night). Maybe next year.

Today also marked the first day of pacifier weaning. We decided that they were becoming too reliant on their pacifiers, and it might be impacting their speech development (we can't understand them when they talk with their pacifiers in). We took a bunch of their pacifiers and cut a hole in the tip, to make it harder for them to suck on. We'll keep you updated with how this goes.

Group Play

I managed to catch another video of the triplets playing together. The girls decided to start feeding Arthur imaginary toast (which evidently comes from the toaster's orange lever). As you watch it, notice:
1) Coraline often dominates playtime now
2) Arthur often plays on his own (violently)
3) About halfway through, Betty sneaks a few pieces of imaginary toast for herself
4) Coraline goes to hug Betty, but is refused (it's hard to get both of them in the mood for hugging)
5) Coraline puts a piece of "toast" in the microwave, before Arthur jams in his truck
6) The video ends when Arthur gets frustrated and tries to bite Coraline

In related news, Arthur got in his first cuspid (bottom left). Only 3 more to go!
Tooth count: A-13, B-16, C-16

Children's Museum II

This hopefully will be the last post about last weekend's Richmond trip. Since this was our first vacation with the family, and since we had so many amazingly successful outings, I took a lot of pictures and videos. With this one, you can see why we went and purchased a year-long family pass to the Children's Museum. We look forward to going again in June.

More Giraffe Fun

The kids had so much fun at the Richmond Zoo this weekend, that I thought I'd share some more of the time they spent feeding the giraffes.

Easter in Richmond

The kids had a great Easter in Richmond with Grandma Toni and Grandpa Carter. They all enjoyed eating breakfast at Bob Evans, and then ran around like crazy trying to find Easter eggs "hidden" in the living room.

We spent the rest of the day hanging out in Maymont Park, and the kids were finally able to spend some time with Grandpa Ken. However, because we had spent the past few days taking the triplets from one new activity to the next, they were quite worn out - the girls were clingly and Arthur had a case of stranger danger around Grandpa Ken. Hopefully they'll be more at ease for the next visit.

Visiting the Children's Museum

Easter Practice

It was a busy day today. After the big zoo trip, we stopped by to visit Erin's friend Sarah. She quickly set up an Easter egg hunt for the kids, and they all enjoyed scouring the yard.

Richmond Road Trip

We left our house at 5 in the morning today, for our first-ever road trip - to Richmond! We arrived at Grandma Toni and Grandpa Carter's house, and decided that we would all spend the day at the zoo. Uncle Matt came too!

The kids loved seeing all of the animals (at our local zoo, we don't have any traditional "zoo" animals...)



All of the kids got their turn to hand-feed the giraffes. They enjoyed it so much that we had to return to the exhibit for a second visit. All of them would call out "Gir! Gir!" - expecting that the giant beasts would come on command. And when all was done, we were glad to see that they still had all 30 of their fingers.


Here's a picture of Arthur admiring a peacock from afar. Shortly after this, it hopped over a fence, and Betty almost had a nose-to-beak encounter with the bird.

Nose?

While we were gardening outside today, Betty came up to Nana with a piece of chalk, and asked her, "Nose?" Though it took Nana a bit to understand the question, soon Betty was crouching amidst Nana's statuary, putting a pink chalk mark on each of the seven dwarves' noses.

Arthur's Bike

Here's another cute video of Arthur enjoying the new bike we got him at a garage sale over the weekend. In addition, we purchased a basic pedal-less tricycle, which the kids also try to ride by jumping up and down in the seat. They don't get too far in it.

Mirror Fun

Erin took this video during the kids' bath time, and we thought it was quite cute. Try not to pay attention, though, to Betty calling out "All Done!" from the bath and being ignored, or the fact that for the first half of the movie Coraline thought her reflection was Betty (however, perhaps the girls are mirror image twins....)

Trip to Virginia Tech

Today we took the kids to an International Festival at Virginia Tech. They loved eating Israeli food for lunch, and listening to the musical performances from around the world. Afterwards, they got all their energy out by running far and wide across the drill field.