Fall Has Arrived in Doha

A taste of what our lives are like now - everyone in different directions at once . . .

Well, our lives have picked up quite a bit since Aidan finally got independently mobile. Everyone is on the move and has their own ideas about how and when and what they want to do. a few recent stories:

Gavin goes for a ride in the toy box!

We had taken a walk over to the clinic that has opened for our compound to get the boys their followup flu shot. There is a HUGE open space outside of the clinic (there will be a medium sized grocery there soon) and curt was goign to let the boys walk around while we were waiting. Some of the ladies in the reception were entertaining Aidan and Brady and Gavin were having a blast running around. All of a sudden Curt sees Gavin walking toward the side of the GLASS doors. he began to slow down as he approached them as though he saw them and then apparently sped up and BONK! walked right into the glass. OF course he got lots of cuddles, but we couldn't help but laugh a little bit too. poor kid . . .

Brady Boy!

OK, we need some help on this one . .. Brady seems to have some "self-injurious" behavior. In the last month or two he has begun banging his head on the floor when he doesn't get something he wants or when he is upset that something was taken from him. in the last week or so he has escalated things. now, if there something he wants but doesn't get (full water glass, remote control, book, to climb something dangerous, etc) he will hit is head or face several times in a row on something, or he will PUNCH himself in the head while he stares at you. I was changing his diaper the other day (he was upset b/c he had to stop playing to get changed) and he hit himself in the head so hard i could HEAR it - 2 or 3 times. WHERE DOES THIS COME FROM?! The only reference i have seen on self-injurious behavior was around Autism Spectrum Disorders and 1) it didn't define it and 2) he doesn't have any of the other symptoms they discuss associated with ASD, so we just aren't sure what to do. we thought maybe it was for attention because we will see Tess and MArie freak out a little bit when he does it, but we have been with him all week and we try not to react when it happens and it almost seems like it is getting worse. There was one part i read about having to do with self-soothing and head banging - it said 6% of kids do this (the top 6%?:) ) , but this punching himself in the head seems to be 1) not very self soothing and 2) just plain weird. should we be stopping him? ignoring him (what we are doing now)? giving him whatever he wants even if it is dangerous?! any advice will be taken lovingly . . . :)

Brady likes reading!

Brady also is in need of a haircut - he has a SERIOUS mullet going on - business in front, party in back. Curt calls him Billy Ray. but we don't want to get a haircut now since they will be having pictures in a week and a half - not enough time for it to grow out if something happens! The funny thing is we stopped at a place that supposedly focuses on kids cuts and when I tell the woman that they are really wriggly, she says "Oh, no problem. I have a Sri Lanken boy who is very fast. cuts VERY fast!" i just didn't know what to say . . .

Aidan and Gavin enjoy reading in their new easy chairs!

And Aidan. people here say the craziest stuff that is totally rude when they mean it to be nice. This is the second time someone has said to us about the boys that "he [Aidan] is the most handsome/cutest [of the three]". why would you say that even if you thought it?! do you actually expect a parent to agree with you - publicly or privately??? "Why yes, he is the most handsome - the other two had better deveop killer personalities or they will have no chance at finding mates in life . . . " i mean COME ON. at least it is equal opportunity rudeness - i had a woman tell me as a pregnant woman i needed to now wear dresses as pants were unattractive on pregnant women. i was wearing my favorite pregnancy pants at the time. Or they will ask you in the middle of the hallway (or at the pediatrician's office): "My, it looks like you have gained weight - how much?!" umm, none of your frigging business, thank you very much . . .

Aidan the baby rapper . . .

It's finally cool enough for hoodies and socks and shoes! We thought this picture was emblematic of our family - parent trying to get them together while they are trying their darndest to do whatever the hell they want.

one month until vacation . . .

Curt and Belle enjoy the Brazil-England Football match - a night out without the kids!

Aidan is COOL!

Life has been relatively good these last few weeks. About 2 weeks ago, everyone came down with the snots - no fever (thankfully), just snots. Then it began to turn into a cough for brady and gavin. then it was labored breathing for gavin and no one was getting better, so we took them to the dr. THe treatment was at home breathing treatments. and then 3 nights later the poor kid did not stop coughing for more than a half hour at a time. after a 2:45 AM breathing treatment, we decided that we couldn't wait until the dr that morning, so I took him in.

His oxygen saturation was fine, but basically he had 1) so much snot that was irritating his airway that 2) he had to cough a lot which in turn 3) irritated his airway. VICIOUS cycle. so we were admitted around 5 AM , but they spent nearly 45 mins trying to take blood from the kid but couldn't find straight veins. he was poked 3 times and they then called nurses from the NICU (who remembered us from when they were born) to do the IV (since they deal with difficult IV insertions more often). They stuck him 2 more times and i finally asked if he really NEEDED the IV, or if we could just get blood work from a heel prick. so he was stuck a 6th time on the heel and they sent us to get a chest x-ray and to our room.

Gavin is a pacifier salesman - he knows his merchandise!

When we got to our room there was ONLY a crib - no bed for the parent. there was the long couch on the wall of the room - but no pillows, blanket, etc for me. i asked for them to bring in a bed for me since a month prior when we had been there (same room if you can believe that) i had been given a bed. they said it was a 2 week old policy that they no longer gave beds to parents and that i could talk with the head (Qatari) nurse if I wanted to. They said it was a "safety" reason - they didn't want people to put their infants/toddlers on the adult beds. I told them I would be HAPPY to talk with the head nurse, and they needed to go ahead and send one of the guest relations people to talk with me as well - they would hear about how ridiculous this new policy was. And another thing - if this was about safety, i wanted to talk with them about their crib. In the first two minutes I put Gavin in it, he had slipped one leg between the mattress and the side of the crib, which was about a 4 inch GAP. We had had this same situation when he was admitted with the seizure, and we had used all of the blankets and sheets they had given us to fill the gaps. I said that I had done my best with the blankets and sheets they had in the room, but this crib was unsafe by design. It also did not seem to have a mattress that could be lowered. as the crib was about chest height on him (maybe lower now) all he had to do was drop something over the edge and then look down to see where it went (you know, like 14 month olds do) to then topple over with his giant head. so if they were concerned about safety - they needed to get a new crib for toddlers. they didn't know quite what to say. i got a bed a couple of hours later after i had gotten in the crib with him to calm him and try to get him to sleep (and try for shut eye myself).

he ended up staying overnight with curt and came home after lunch the next day. he and brady are still having breathing treatments with their at home nebulizer and aidan treated us with getting a fever thursday afternoon. and passing it on to brady friday night and gavin woke up with one this morning (sigh). Gavin was also diagnosed with our first ear infection. like my friend tracy said, "i'm actually kind of glad there was a medical reason for his behavior", otherwise i would go hide in a closet until he was 8 years old . ..

Happy Birthday Daddy!

otherwise, aidan's light turned on last weekend with walking. we were at the Education City (EC) soccer league games and our friend's daughter Leila is 2 days younger than the boys and has been walking for over a month now. I think Aidan saw her being able to be so independent (and wanting to follow her around?) that he decided to get with it. Being sick he has slowed his efforts a little bit, but he is definitely making it happen for himself - it's very cute!

Halloween 2009 - we dressed as a Hawkeye Family! OR each of the boys dressed up as each other . . .

there is a little girl in the park named Johanna whose family is from the chicago area. mom was a former german HS teacher and speaks german to her kids. it's AWESOME to see. Anyway, brady and aidan have a CRUSH on this little 10 month old. Brady leaned over and kissed her forehead the other day (a big open mouthed slobbery kiss) and she leaned her head into his stomach really gently. Then Aidan toddled over and leaned down and gave her a big open mouthed kiss on the cheek and stood up again. She GRABBED his t-shirt and pulled him down to her and she gae him a big kiss on the cheek. it was SOOOOOOO adorable! Gavin has made a friend with an older boy who he just thinks is the bomb. The boy will try to hug him and talk with him and Gavin just shrieks with delight and falls on him. so funny. i'm sure he will have lots of fun with cousins when we are back in the states!

THe boys are also really beginning to give us some animal sounds. Gavin's favorite is a bear sound - he does it over and over again with a book grandma and grandpa V sent about how these three bears are "all my favorites" - it's so sweet. Brady likes to quack like a duck - only it sounds more like "Caa! Caa!". And Aidan likes to roar like a lion. it takes a few tries to get him going, but then he will just keep doing it. too funny. :) Aidan also likes to talk on the cell phone. He will be blathering away with the cell phone held . . . about 4 inches behind his head. he gets the general area it is supposed to go, but not quite . .. :) Aidan has also begun picking up on the basic signs we have been using for everything from "more" to "food" to "thank you". that last one was a shocker because we have only been using it for a couple of weeks and I know Tess and Marie aren't using it at all. guess he is ready to communicate!

Today curt and i decided we ALL deserved some time watching a Baby Einstein video. I have no qualms about this. I also have no ill-conceived notions it will make me or my kids smarter. though curt and I think they are magic. there are certain parts of the DVDs we both SWEAR we have never seen before. i mean, this is a 22 minute video and there were at least three 30 second scenes today that both of us were like "have you seen that monkey before? me neither" so anyway, the happy family was cuddled up on the couch coughing and breathing heavily through our snotty noses (yes, curt and I are sick too) while we watched Vicent Van Goat do some Van Gogh paintings, and some orangutang stuffed animals play the drums, etc. i think it was my best 22 minutes all day . . . :)

4 minutes of joy . . .

Who doesn't have 4 minutes for some joy in their life? Enjoy :)

Gavin gets tickled . .

Brady gets tickled . . .

Aidan gets tickled . . .

Brady begins to walk and Gavin pushes . . .

The day to day . . .

Gavin likes spinning his wheels . . .

The boys are appraoching 14 months old and are BUSY. Gavin is on fire with his walking. He has begun to stand up by himself without using anything for leverage. It usually takes a few tries (and he's usually whistling while he does it - really) but he is able to steady himself and then off he goes!

Brady must have decided that even though he was last to sit up by himself, crawl and pull up, he was NOT going to be shown up by Aidan and Gavin AGAIN. It's like his light went on this week and he is a walking FOOL. Where Gavin would steady himself and slowly take one step after another in a very deliberate way, Brady has adopted a different approach. He will steady himself, and then make fists out of his hands as he laughs LIKE CRAZY at what he is about to do. He will then walk for 8-10 steps giggling and laughing the whole time. You can't help but laugh - it's just too sweet! Aidan is happy holding a finger as he toddles about. He has begun to get more brave himself and you can see him deciding if he will try to walk to the coffee table from the loveseat, or crawl. Most of the time he will walk toward a soft object (i.e. coffee table to loveseat) and crawl toward a harder object (loveseat to coffee table). Smart kid. He is our climber though. As you can see from the photo below, it is the end of the swing. Curt was showering and I left the boys in the living room as I went in the kitchen for approximately 2 minutes. I come back to find Aidan having climbed into the swing and standing upright. I HAD to take the photo before I got him down. Is that awful of me??? To compromise his safety for a funny photo?

The beginning of the end of the swing . . . Aidan climbs . . .

Tonight after dinner the boys were playing together. It was so fun to watch i didn't even bother to get the video camera. Curt had tossed a blanket over Aidan's head after he climbed on the couch, then anotehr on Brady as Gavin and Brady played peek-a-boo with each other burrowing their heads into blankets and then popping up and laughing at each other. Aidan then threw all of the burb cloths off of the back of the couch one by one, because, hey, that's pretty fun to see them fly!

This morning we came into their room to see that Brady had thrown ALL of the items in his crib onto the floor. His blanket, his small blanket i made for him, his stuffed dog, his stuffed giraffe, his snuggle frog. . . and his pants. Yes, he had taken off his PJ pants and tossed them on the floor. I SO wish we had a camera in there to have seen that little display. Tess reports that during nap time she will peek in and see Gavin and Brady holding hands and laughing (their cribs are closest) and talking while Aidan lays in his cribs and moans about wanting more sleep. We moved Gavin out for about a week since he likes performing for his brothers so much (i.e. waking them up) but he was also beginning to be upset he was by himself. Maybe we will move Aidan this weekend so the kid can get some more sleep since Brady and Gavin don't seem to be bothered by earlier wake up calls . . .

Cute Photos . . .

WHO likes blueberry pancakes? BRADY likes blueberry pancakes!!!

Aidan the day after we got back from Dubai - "Don't LEAVE me Daddy!"

Gavin is happy daddy is home too . ..

Gavin can shove his pancakes in without chewing!

Dad and the boys . . .G, B, A

Tess & Marie taught Brady to do a "stinky face" - can you tell we have lots of dirty diapers for him to practice with?! :)

Aidan digs playing with clothes . . . and wearing mom's scarf as a hijab. Adorable. :)

6 Years of Wedded Bliss!

Swim Time! (G, B, A)

Well, curt and I just celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary by abandoning our kids and going to Dubai for 1 night/2 days. It was GREAT! here's how it went down:

we woke up earlier than we wanted on sunday to hearing our kids talking and bouncing and jumping in their cribs. By the time curt had showered and i had put breakfast together for them it was about 645 AM before I went in. I was struck by the OVERPOWERING smell of dirty diapers when I entered the room and just figured all three had given us anniversary gifts. boy was I wrong. I give Aidan, then Brady kisses and then i head over to Gavin and put his head in between my hands as I give him a kiss on the forehead to then see over his shoulder POOP all over his sheets. ALL OVER. I then realize he also has poop in his hair, which I just touched. He isn't upset at all, just poopy. i couldn't stop laughing at his going away present for us.

Curt comes in and I have determined that the only way to come close to cleaning this kid will be with a full bath (luckily he LOVES bath time). we do our best on a towel to get his shirt off, and wipe him down, get the diaper off and wipe him down and then i take him to the tub. He is completely confused since this is NOT his normal routine - baths in the a.m.??? he then decides to not look a gift horse in the mouth and go all out enjoying it. Curt cleans up the crib area (uggh) and gets the other two changed. we are still laughing at this mess of a child. he sure knows when we are going to leave him and how to send us a message!

we proceed to have a normal family breakfast, and some playtime (with clean up intermixed - i mean it was REALLY dirty - take the mattress top off and do some serious cloroxing dirty) before Tess and Marie get here. We put the boys down for their morning nap before we jet off to Dubai. The funny thing is while it was hard to leave them, it also felt really good knowing they were being left in good hands and curt and i could spend some quality time together.

We are now "silver" members with Qatar Airways which means we can check in at the business class lines AND we can use the business class lounges, even though we decidedly fly economy. As their tagline says - "Privilege has its priveleges". Ridiculous. and yet, i will not ignore a free lunch. We stayed at a LOVELY resort with beach access, several pools and CAMELS being walked up and down the beach! We had late afternoon tea at the Burj Al Arab (the 6 star hotel that looks like a sail), shopped for a friend's child's b-day and then enjoyed the SUITE we were upgraded to when we told them it was our anniversary!!! (since we almost never get anything for having triplets, we were HAPPY to take this!) Today we slept in (7 AM doha time/8AM dubai time), had REAL bacon for breakfast at the outdoor cafe downstairs and then spent the rest of the morning by the pool. There was plenty of people watching for me and the water was refreshing (which means it is chilled) for Curt (it's still in the high 90s people). We splurged and each had a massage and then caught our 7PM flight home to Doha. We missed putting the boys down, but went in to see their sweet sleeping bodies flung about the crib. Tess and Marie of course, took great care of them and reported the boys were just delightful while we were gone. Let's hope they will be as happy to see us in the morning!

In other news, Gavin is our first active walker. It's only a few steps at a time, but he is the only one who is REALLY into it. Let's hope the others catch on that this is a cool thing . . . He is also into wearing a hijab . . .:) enjoy!

Gavin wears hijab . . .

Seizures are Scary

I will start this post with letting you know EVERYONE IS OK.

Maybe Gavin will go into EMT or rescue work

On Saturday, the last day of our Eid break, Gavin decided to scare the living crap out of us. He had been having an up and down (but pretty high) fever since Friday and we were just treating him with Tylenol/Motrin for the fever. He also had some lower GI stuff (let's just say LOTS of dirty diapers. LOTS.) but when his fever was down he was playign and happy. When it was up he was fussy and felt crummy.

They had been woken up from their afternoon nap about 3:40PM and he was due for his next dose at 4:30PM. Curt was changing Aidan , Brady was crawling around and I was holding Gavin. I had just said, "Man, this kid feels like he is burning up! I need to take his temp" When suddenly he sort of threw his body back (like he does when he is fussy) but he didn't come back up to my shoulder. I looked at him and in a voice that now seems like it came from someone else said "He's having a seizure." Curt looks at me and says "What?!"and as I put him on the floor and proceed to cry and say, "He's having a seizure! Oh my God!". Then it was chaos. Aidan and Brady were both crawling around and crying, but not coming over to us on the carpet. Curt ran to get our chart for tracking meds doses, then the baby book so I could look up about febrile seizures (since I had read about it and was CERTAIN it would never happen to us, i had skimmed this section) and what the F*%@ we were supposed to do. I don't know if you have ever tried to look something up while you are 1)crying 2) freaking and 3) trying to comfort your baby who is STILL SEIZING - it's not productive. at all. It ended up lasting about 2 or 3 minutes and seemed like a lifetime.

Curt called our life safer Jen S. and asked her to come and stay with the other two since we were going to need to go to the hospital. Curt then picked Gavin up as I went to call the ambulance. When Gavin stopped seizing he went completely limp. Curt says this was scarier than the seizure - i have to beleive him since he was holding Gavin. It looked really scary from where i was. We then had Gavin on the couch in his diaper with cold wet towels on him, a bag of frozen cauliflower (he may never eat that again) on the towels and me kissing his head and tryign to calm him and give him his tylenol dose early as he cried and curt got stuff togther for what we would need for the hospital.

Basically, he had a febrile seizure which can happen as a temp rises VERY quickly. By the time he had vitals at the hospital 30 min after his tylenol dose his temp was 40.6 C (105F). i can't even tell you how wired curt and I were. Luckily Jen and her husband are AMAZING - he called other friends of ours to help her out while we were gone and they came over right away (stanfield's and aunt coco) for moral and physical support. By the time I came home to get stuff for my overnight stay with Gavin, the boys were ready for bed and GLAD to see mom with all of the commotion. They did NOT want me to leave and fought going to bed. They knew something was wrong.

Gavin and I stayed overnight at the hospital and he was checked pretty much around the clock to control his fever and try to ensure he had no more seizures (which he didn't). we now know that his brothers could be prone to this and he is most definitely prone to this until he is about 6 years old, so if we sound paranoid about any fevers in our house, you know why. If I never relive that afternoon, it will be too soon.

Gavin was released the next day and while he still had a fever it was lower and we have some strategies now with meds to treat it more effectively. On tuesday, his fever broke and he woke up with a nice RASH all over his torso and face. Can you guess this common childhood disease? That's right folks, Roseola! Exactly what Aidan had this summer, only with more drama. Had we just had the 4 days of fever i think we would have recognized it as roseola right away, but since saturday and sunday felt like ETERNITIES, i said "kids don't "just get rashes" after fevers like this" and took him in. The Dr. was great for both examining Gavin and reassuring me (and yes, I did cry a little in her office going through our recent history).

It wasn't until Monday night Curt and I were both able to put the boys down and unwind a bit - and have ourselves a good cry together. We were both OBVIOUSLY scared. And so thankful that he was going to be fine. It just reminds you of the paper thin edge we live on between life being excellent and then feeling like you are careening out of control. We have definitely been counting our blessings - the small, medium and large ones. :)

When one boy swings, everyone wants in on the action - B, G, A

Aidan looks like he has tanning cream on the lower half of his face!

Brady likes Star Wars