Saturday Post.

My Saturday mornings for the past few weeks have been spent with the girls, as Sarah as either been working or sleeping-in (from working late during the week).

Many of these Saturdays I'll take the girls for a short ride to run an errand and the girls can have a change of scenery. These trips are usually to the bank drive-thru or local coffee shop drive-thru. Last Saturday, the girls and I were all set to go when I realized the battery to the van was dead! In our haste the prior evening, we had left one of the doors ajar overnight, which was enough to drain the battery. I called AAA and, of course, I had let our membership run out. Rather than spend the $40 or whatever the membership fee is to renew that day, I figured I could jump start it myself when Sarah got home. No ride with Daddy today girls - sorry!

Sarah's brother Pat came by on Sunday and got the van going for us. Not the first time Pat has helped us out of a jam - he knows his car stuff (especially Volvos)!

Anyway, I wanted Sarah to sleep in today. So, before Sarah woke up, I got the girls ready to run some errands. And yes, the van did start this morning. (The garage door was a different story, though.) We went to the bank, drove by our old house, and then went to the town recycle area to drop off some batteries. The attendant at the recycle center was making small talk while I waited to pull in to a spot. He was nice enough. I don't think he saw all three of the girls so he just said something like "...you got your little bambinos in there, eh?". I responded with a simple "ya" and then he said something like "..they grow up so fast...". No triplet comment, no "you must have your hands full"! Ahhh...what it must be like to be a singleton parent!

Anyway, I got a picture of the girls before we headed out the door. The GAP sweatshirts were a gift from Sarah's aunt Ellen and uncle Joe. Amazingly enough, when I said to the girls "...Daddy wants to get a picture....", after a little help, they sat next to each other for this photo:

Sitting still didn't last long at all, of course, as you can see from this picture. Allie - exit, stage left. Em - exit, stage right. Anna, meanwhile, sat quietly holding her "peas". Too funny.
This was later, after I came back - Sarah gave them all magazines to "read". I think it is funny when they sit and flip through the magazines, one page at a time!

It's cold here today - stay warm.

A man among women.

I spend most of every day surrounded by females. At the office, I manage a staff of four - all women. My boss is a woman. At home: my wife Sarah, my girls Allie, Em & Anna. During the week we have mother-in-law Sheila stay with us. That's a 5 to 1 ratio at home and at work!

Sarah will tell you that when she asked me if I wanted to start a blog, I responded with soemthing like "...it's a chick thing, isn't it?" Blogging, in general, may not be a chick thing, but I bet, if I were to get the demographics of the readers of my blog posts, it would be at least a 4 to 1 women to men ratio. I do realize the ratio is somewhat skewed because many readers have arrived on my blog via either TC or Sarah's blog, which are female dominated. However, the fact of the matter is, even when I am on the internet, I am "surrounded" by women!

Being a male among females isn't necessarily a bad thing - some men cannot get a woman to say hello to them! Ha ha ha... So, for the record: I'm not complaining, I'm just taking note of the facts. Remember, I grew up in a family of ten boys and three girls so its not like I haven't gotten into, nor seen my share of stuff that boys and men get into. Just ask my mother!

So, given that I am constantly in the company of women, I try to remain vigilant of how my time is spent. An occasional episode of Jon & Kate Plus Eight, The Bacheleor, or What Not To Wear is OK. Conversations with Sarah about so and so's pregnancy or so and so's children is also OK. Maybe even flipping through a People magazine could also be viewed as harmless. I also do the stereotypical "guy" stuff like flip through the depressing, boring Wall Street Journal, clear the snow in the driveway, take out the trash, lift weights...alright maybe I haven't been working out too much lately but I do exercise!

Anyway...I have been poking around the internet a bit and have found blogs written by fathers of triplets, which may help get the female to male ratio more toward a balanced ratio.

Stay tuned.

Technical difficulties.

Ever since we recorded the girls "figure skating" in the living room, Sarah has been on me to figure out how we can upload video clips to her blog. I haven't had chunks of time the past coupl e of months to figure it out, so I have been intermittently educating myself on the technicalities of transferring video to my pc and how to use the dvd software on my computer.

But, it looks like Sarah's work schedule is back to some sense of normalcy, so I should be able to make some progress now. BTW - it's not like I am an idiot when it comes to things electronic. I did some research before we bought the video camera, the girls were born and...well, uh...like I said, the girls were born. Newborn triplets = zero to little time for "fun" things like learning all the cool features our camcorder and computer have to offer.

Today I consulted my brother Chris, who is the most knowledgeable of the brothers nine when it comes to computer stuff. He agreed with me that the issue is probably the file format/extension of the dvds I have attempted to upload and edit. The software on my computer will not read the file extension so I need to convert the files to a format which the dvd software will read.

Long story short is that we think it will be really cool to share the girls' voices, movements, gestures, etc. with you. So I will continue to diligently work toward getting some video clips!

What are you talking about Willis?

Sarah emailed me today, suggesting we think about getting a front-to-back, foldable, triple stroller. She found one on the internet marked down to $100, which is a good deal. It would definitely be nice to have this type of stroller for situations when either one of us is home alone and wants to take the girls to the store, etc.

If we do purchase this stroller, we will have a total of five strollers! There is, however, a reason for the number of strollers we have...

We have a single Britax from when Sarah was pregnant with Abigail. When our girls were born, we did research on triple strollers. We decided, however, to pass on purchasing a triple at that time. A good, practical triple stroller cost in excess of $500. In addition, the ones worth purchasing are only good for neighborhood walks as they will not fit in most vehicles. So...we decided to buy a Graco double, which was a good choice. For the first year, having the single and double worked great - they both fit easily in the van with room for groceries, etc.

As the girls approached their first birthday, we started to look at getting a jogging stroller, since we both enjoy running so much. We decided on a single Baby Jogger, thinking one adult could push the double, while the other ran with the single jogger. I found a Baby Jogger single on CL for $125 - not bad. When I met the seller to complete the transcation we had the girls with us, so the seller guy made a few standard triplet comments. One of the comments he made as he was leaving was "...you are going to wish you bought a double jogger..." Ya, right. We now had three strollers.

About a month or two later, we starting to think that it would be nice to be able to take the girls for a walk with just one adult. We did more stroller research and discovered that many parents of multiples use jogging strollers for walking because of the ease with which the jogging strollers roll. Again, to purchase a new triple jogging stroller would set us back close to $700. To Craiglist I returned in search of a used triple jogging stroller - I found a Baby Jogger triple for $150!! And the woman selling it lived in the same town as us, thank you! Buying the triple Baby Jogger was probably one of the best purchases we made. Sheila (Grammy) wore a path in the sidewalk this past summer pushing the girls all around town. We may have caused a few accidents from drivers turning their heads too! We now had four strollers.

So, here we are thinking about buying another stroller. If anyone had told me two years ago that we would be considering purchasing a fifth stroller, I would have probably responded with a "Whach you talkin' 'bout Willis?"!

Napster.

Allie finally broke her pattern of short naps with a 2+ hour nap yesterday. Can you tell from the picture she had just woken up from a nice nap?:

Anna and Em only had their usual one-hour nap, of course!