The babies have doubled in size

The triplets are now almost 3 months old. They have all more than doubled their weight. They are now:

- Mark: 8 lbs. 9 oz.
- Becky: 10 lbs. 4 oz.
- Jared: 10 lbs. even

They all seem to be sleeping better at night, but we still have to feed them every 4 hours at night.

Just after Christmas, Robert's brother-in-law, Curtis, came down to do some yard work for us in the back yard. He did a great job, but we didn't expect him to tackle the front yard. Well, we finally hired someone to do our front yard. We had it done a week ago. We had a lot of ugly vegetation going on that we had all removed. We have include a before and after picture.

From Rob & Shell's Blog

From Rob & Shell's Blog

Well, we've got to go. Two babies are crying now.

Triplet Announcement Created

Well, we have now found kind of a routine going now with having a toddler and 3 infants in the house. We have had someone here with one of us most of the time so we have at least 2 adults here or 1 has taken Luke off somewhere else.

In the last week since Robert's mom has gone back home, Shelley has spent most mornings alone with all 4. She has made it through most of them unscathed, but in the last couple of mornings, Shelley has been about ready to pull her hair out. Her mom has usually come in the late morning, which has helped the situation a lot. We can never thank our family enough for their help.

As all of you can imagine, we are both running on very little sleep. It is hard for us sometimes to sit down to feed the babies without nodding off. Robert has resorted to taking naps during work time. Of course he goes out to his car and makes sure he doesn't include the time on his time sheet.

Well, on a brighter note, (Just had to get the venting out of the way.) We were able to get a very nice announcement together and send it to a bunch of our family. We had to limit how many we could send, so I apologize to any of you that would have liked a physical copy and didn't get one. In any case, we have a digital copy of the announcement also. We are posting it here and in the triplets section of our web album. You can print a copy if you would like. The quality of what we have posted may not look the best on an 8 x 11 sheet. If anyone would like a digital copy of the announcement in its original quality, please let us know.

From Triplets

Click on photo see a larger copy.

Satisfying Everyone's Fix

You know, it's barely been 2 weeks and we've already been getting requests for updates on the triplets. Since Robert has started work again, neither of us has had any time to make updates, but Robert's mom came down for a week, so that has given us a little time to do some more updates.

We haven't taken the triplets to the pediatrician since our last update, but they have been really healthy. Robert did take Jared to a specialist last Thursday to be checked to see if he needs some surgery done on his little boy part. They said that he will need to go in when he is about 6 or 7 months old for the operation.

As mentioned before, Robert's mom is down to visit. She flew in on Thursday night and is staying with us. She has been helping a lot already with the triplets and Luke. Shelley got in a very good nap yesterday.

Since Robert has start work on January 17, things have gotten pretty hectic for Shelley, especially in the morning. Luke is getting much more capable of getting into things that we don't want him to, and he will continue to do so while Shelley is trying to feed the triplets. It makes her feel kind of helpless while she is holding a baby and Luke will start getting into something like opening the oven or dishwasher or turning on the water on the fridge. There is nothing she can do immediately to defuse the situation. Before Robert's mom got here, Shelley has had a lot of help from her mom.

We now have more pictures posted on our Web album. We post a few on the blog, but we have much more on the web album. You can get to each specific album by clicking on the name of the album under the pictures we have posted in the blog, but we will also post a link here that goes to our general album:

http://picasaweb.google.com/robertfletcher65


Here are a few pictures we have recently taken:

From Mark

Mark

From Becky

Becky

From Jared

Jared

From Triplets

Professional Pictures

We have gotten 3 pictures from the professional infant photographer so far. We have posted 2 with this blog.

From Triplets

Left to Right: Becky, Mark, Jared

From Luke

Luke

We took the babies to the pediatrician yesterday. They passed all their screens with flying colors. They have gained some really good weight. Mark and Jared gained about 14 ounces and Becky gained about 12.

From Triplets

Picture Day

We took the triplets out to a professional infant photographer. She wants to add some pictures of triplets to her portfolio and offered us a free shoot with pictures so that she could have the pictures in her promotional material.

It was another one of those treks of putting the babies in their car seats and then in the van to take them to the photographer's home.

From Triplets

We'll have this same trek again on Thursday because we have another pediatrician appointment.

We haven't gotten any picture yet from the photographer, but we'll post a few of our favorite when we get them. We did take some pictures of our own when we got back, however.

From Triplets

They're getting bigger

We took Mark, Becky and Jared to the pediatrician yesterday. They are all doing very well. Their weights are now:

Mark: 4 lbs 9.5 oz

Becky: 6 lbs 2 oz

Jared: 5 lbs 15 oz

We took Becky and Jared a week earlier, prior to Mark getting out of the hospital. Both of them gained 11 oz in the 7 day between appointments. The Dr. is very happy about that.

It's quite an ordeal to get them ready for the trip to see the Dr. Shelley's mom came before we left to pick up Luke, then we put all of the babies in their car seats. We then propped open all of the doors that led to the garage. Robert carried 2 babies and Shelley carried 1 to the van. We have barely enough room in the back seat to fit all three car seats. We'll make sure to get a picture of them in the back seat the next time we get them in there. Jared and Becky look small in their car seats, but Mark looks exceptionally small.

From Mark

The drama of raising 1 toddler and 3 infants reached a peek this morning. We were rudely awoken by our 7:30 feeding alarm. Like clockwork, within minutes, Luke started whaling from his bedroom. Robert went to take care of Luke to help him get oriented from just waking up. He played with Luke a little to keep him out of Shelley's way while feeding the newborns.

Shelley was feeding Becky when Mark started crying. Mark's crying woke up Jared and he started crying also. Shelley finally called Robert over to help, but of course Luke had to follow Robert to help out. Since Luke was just waking up, he wanted to be held too. We got a deep realization that we were outnumbered by children.

We were finally able to resolve the problem by asking Luke to help us feed the babies. I picked up Mark to start feeding him and Luke helped to hold the bottle. If Luke realizes he is still part of the whole family, he really does enjoy having the triplets around.

Mark is Home

I know it has been a week since we have given everyone an update. Having 2 babies home and 1 in the hospital has really stretched out our spare time.

We won't have to make any more trips to the hospital now because we were able to bring Mark home today.

From Mark

Just because we don't have to make trips now to the hospital doesn't mean we have all the spare time in the world. We still have a 3 hour feeding schedule. Meaning we feed the babies every 3 hours. Since it take about an hour to feed all 3, our day, through the whole day and night is 1 hour feeding, 2 hours off, 1 hour feeding, 2 hours off. That will be our life for a few weeks until they are on a 4 hour feeding schedule. Robert returns to work on January 14, so Shelley will be doing it all by herself. We fortunately have a lot of family around to help. Thank goodness for family. Anyone out there that has given any of their help, we tank you a great deal.

We have a few pictures we've taken of all 3 together, but we plan to take more soon. Click on the "Triplets" link to see the ones we have taken so far.

From Triplets