Cranky Pants

Sorry I didn't post yesterday. It was one of those days as a triplet mama that makes you want to salt your children and eat them whole. Or at least eat a gallon of premium ice cream.

No one napped well and everyone had their cranky pants on all day. HA! That's an understatement. All of the boys power napped in about 30-minute increments. That doesn't sound too bad, right? Until you factor in the time it takes to get them all down and come up with 10 minutes at stretch without a crying baby.

Nothing made them happy. Not bottles, not bouncies, not peekaboo, not rocking, not walking, not being salted... (Just kidding! Had to make sure you were still paying attention!) Jeff, also known as World's Best Husband, came home early after we talked at noon and I was entering my fifth hour of non-stop crankiness. (The children's, not mine. Though come to think about it...)

A quick, hot soak in the tub to unwind muscles that had literally been holding two babies at once most of the day made things look a whole lot better to me. And while one or the other of us still spent much of the evening holding two babies at once, just having a second set of hands here cuts the stress level at least in half.

Perhaps the hardest part about yesterday wasn't the crying and fussing, but knowing the whole time that if I had just one baby and he/she was having a bad day I could have held and soothed that one baby much better than I could help my triplets. Sometimes it's very frustrating to do half a job or one-third of a job in comforting a child. When do you set down the one that's still crying in your arms to pick up ONE of the two children crying in the crib? Who do you pick up first? How do you soothe the babies you can't hold or even pat because your hands are already full? And then there's the gymnastics of holding two babies, setting one baby down while holding another, jiggling one on a hip while trying to pat two others in the crib.

When we had Amelia I remember someone telling me that nothing in this world could make you feel more inadequate than a crying baby. I found that to be very true. But THREE crying babies will make you feel even more inadequate. Trust me

Even though it was a challenging day, it was still a day that brought the occasional smiles and giggles in and amongst the fussing. And those things will make even the worst day seem pretty darn good.