"I am Hope."

I started this post at 2:00 this afternoon. It was originally titled "Dry Shaving and Ice Cream" but I have since decided to change that based upon what happened later in the day.

Here's how the post started:

I am going to be honest here and tell you the truth. It is not all sunshine, roses and giggles here. As I type this right now, it is 2:02 in the afternoon and Allie is in her crib crying. We put the girls down for a nap right before 1:00. There were different levels of crying, someone telling someone else to stop, someone singing, someone playing peek-a-boo and then just when the crying stopped, just when I thought we were in the clear, I heard a thud followed by, "Uh oh, Elmo. Uh oh, Elmo."

Allie had dropped Elmo out of her crib so I had to go into their room because there was no way she was going fall asleep with him on the floor. I noticed that Em was already asleep. As I tried to sneak out of their room, Anna handed me Baby Boy and said, "Fix Baby Boy." She had taken his shirt off and had dropped it onto the floor.

Of course, Allie and Anna both started to cry as I left their room and Allie is still doing so one half hour later.

Friday night was extremely difficult. Anyone who wants to debate that there is not that much of difference between parenting triplets and parenting three children close in age has never had three children teething at the same time. Yes, the girls are identical and their teething is identical. Allie has been doing this middle of the night thing where she tosses and turns and yells out, "Uh oh." I went in one night last week (it was actually at 4:00 in the morning) after listening to her do this for more than 20 minutes. I handed her Elmo and rubbed her little forehead. She went back to sleep without incident.

Here's where I stopped typing at 2:20 because I could not stand to listen to Allie cry any longer. I obviously needed to step in. Well, it turns out that she had pooped. I removed her from the bedroom and she remained nap free for the rest of the day. Here she is as cute as always while we spent a few minutes alone waiting for Anna and Emily to wake up.



I'll continue the post as (somewhat) originally planned here.

Well, she started the same thing Friday night. Actually, it was 1:30 in the morning. Saturday. Rich and I waited. And waited. And hoped that she would go back to sleep. Our plan backfired BIG TIME and Anna and Emily woke up SCREAMING. Rich went in there and all I heard was, "MOOOOMMMMY!!!!!!" So I go in there. Long story short. I ended up sleeping with Allie in our bed and Rich "slept" with Emily in the guest bedroom. Anna, amazingly enough, slept in her own crib. We learned a few weeks ago that Anna NEEDS to sleep in her own crib or she won't sleep.

Now, Allie is like me in that she likes her sleep. She didn't roll around or chat. She just slept. But Mommy and Daddy did not really slept much that night.

So now it's Saturday morning and we are into our crazy weekend routine. Grammy, Papa and the girls' cousins, Beth and Grace, arrive for a visit. Beth and Grace were going to stay over at Grammy and Papa's house that night as well. Grammy, Beth and Grace ended up spending most of the day at our house, which was great fun for everyone, especially the girls.

Next thing I know, it's after 5:00, I have not showered and I need to drive Grammy, Beth and Grace to their overnight destination. And I need to run into a store on my way home. Now, the shower part is not that big of a deal. I'm going to be honest and tell you that on the weekends, Rich and I do not shower regularly. Big whoop - we are stinky.

Does anyone else out there dry shave? I had not shaved my legs all week - I was wearing pants to work - so to say that they really needed to be shaved is an understatement. It was HOT outside yesterday and I was not in the mood for pants so I dry shaved. All you do is run the razor lightly over your (dry) legs.

Although the girls took a decent nap yesterday, Allie was still very fussy at bedtime and Rich ended up sitting in their room so that she would fall asleep. Our fear is that they are going to regress and we are going to end up in their room everytime one of the wakes up. We both work full time and need sleep. We can't do that.

Neither one of us wanted anything in particular for dinner last night and to be honest, I couldn't even eat anything until the girls were asleep. There's only so much crying I can listen to and eating at the same time is not pleasant. I ended up making myself a little ice cream sundae for dinner. I believe I deserved it.

So now onto the title change.

I don't ever for one minute not love and appreciate my girls. I really just want to be honest here. It's tough sometimes. Really tough.

Early this evening, Rich had taken Anna and Em out to the van while I finished putting Allie's socks and shoes on her. She was sitting in a chair in the hall, looking absolutely adorable, and I said to her, "Are you a good girl?" She responded with, "No. I am Hope."

I nearly fell off of my chair. How did she know that I needed to hear that?

"Yes, you are Hope."

"Alya Hope." (She still can't pronounce 'Allie.')