If we could hang out, I’d invite you in, offer you a seat and something to drink, maybe apologize for the baby and baby-toy land mines you’d need to step over and then I’d ask your advice.
But since we most likely can’t hang out in my living room, I’m bringing my living room and request for advice directly into your Internet-reading device.
Care to help?
Our living room has been going through an evolutionary phase as we and the babies adapt to life together. We’ve always planned to make changes as we go, hoping to eliminate wasting time on making the wrong decisions ahead of time. Would we really need to cushion every sharp corner? (Not so far.) Just how much needs to be moved up or out? (Kind of a lot.) What’s safe for them to play with even though it’s not a Baby Toy? (More than They’d lead you to believe.)
We made a pretty big change to the layout this week, replacing our old entertainment center with something simpler (and lighter) from IKEA. We moved furniture around and broke a big design rule by pushing everything up against a wall.
Design don’t rule in this house anymore. Functionality does.
Since we made the big (2 a.m.) move, we’ve been restless. We’ve moved the sofas, chair and tables three or four times. The changing table, which will stay in the living room for now, is currently doubling as a blockade until we get a second baby gate to block the second entry that used to be blocked.
We’ve stood back and scratched our heads, moved this here and that there, and we still aren’t settled. The thing is, Rob and I have run out of ideas and are quickly approaching the I Don’t Care And I’m Sick Of Moving It Just Leave It Alone territory.
Except it’ll still bug us, and we won’t be able to quit until things are just right.
We obviously aren’t experts on furniture placement, but maybe some of you are. Or maybe you’re just smarter than we are and can see a brilliant solution. Maybe? What do you think?
Pardon the mess. Naptime had just started, and I didn’t think to clean up before snapping the images. Oh, and the sofa on the left seats three – the one on the right seats two. Both have reclining ends. Also, all wall stuff you see is temporarily there.
And because you’re such gracious guests, have a peek at our three little amigos. They kill me with cuteness.
Eleanor, Callista, Toby
A zillion little things make up all that is Life. All we can hope for is that the number of good wonderful small things is greater than the number of bad downright shitty things.
I’ve thought a lot about the small things this week, trying to stick Post-Its to my brain to remember them. Of course I want to remember them years from now, but I also need help remembering them on the days when Downright Shitty seems to be more prominent.
Lately, I’ve noticed:
Eleanor is obsessed with her little pointer fingers. I call them pointer fingers rather than index fingers because she uses them to point – not at things, per se, but … maybe I should call them her pusher or poker fingers. She uses them to poke at screw heads, at buttons she isn’t quite strong enough to fully push, at her bottle nipple while she drinks, at me as she nurses, at the crumb on her tray, at a hand that’s asking for a high five. Those fingers are so tiny, yet they’re so precise.
Toby discovers by licking. If something looks interesting, he sticks out his tongue to test it. He doesn’t extend his tongue and lick with the tip, though, he sticks it out flat – probably for maximum taste-testing. Cabinet? Lick. Floor threshold? Lick. Puppy’s nose? Lick. That’s right, he licked a puppy’s nose. I almost keeled over from copious amounts of swooning.
Callista looks a lot like me. There’s no denying we share DNA, but it shocked the crap out of me to see her suck her thumb just like I did, rub her index finger along her nose, along the eyelashes of her right eye and then grip the satin edge of her blanket with her fingers, rubbing while she sucked. I thought this was a technique of comfort I had mastered on my own. Apparently, it was written into my DNA.
The way Eleanor dances; the way Toby curls into me and wiggles his toes against my legs while he’s breastfeeding; the way Callista spins in circles while she sits – a zillion little things that make up our crazy days, changing day to day, week to week.
How am I going to remember them all?
Toby, Eleanor and Callista already have formed such a strong bond. They laugh with and at each other, and I’m pretty sure their collective laughs are competing for top spot in My Favorite Thing About Triplets.
Minutes before I grabbed my camera, Toby and Eleanor were doing the same schtick I recorded between Eleanor and Callista. Since she’s the common denominator, I have to assume Eleanor has some killer jokes about blocks.
Get your minds out of the gutter, dirty birds. This here entry is about coffee. And pumpkin. And spices. And syrup.
Magic, right? I KNOW.
I’ve had Green Mountain’s pumpkin spice K-cups sitting in my pantry since last year, when triplet-pregnancy GERD had me avoiding all things coffee related (even Prevacid couldn’t help that particular reflux nightmare). I’m sure it isn’t in its finest condition, but I’m too cheap to toss it out.
Hence the homemade journey I embarked upon today. Oh, and there’s a smidge of impatience behind today’s adventure, too.
In my entirely too-picky opinion, the K-cups had too much spice and not enough pumpkin, so I’ve been stalking the refrigerated section this year in high anticipation for the return of pumpkin spice creamer to help the K-cups.
They aren’t on any shelves near me yet. I’m tired of waiting, so I went to the googles in hopes of finding a homemade syrup recipe that wasn’t too difficult.
I used those two link as inspiration. Frankly, I gag at the thought of ginger, so I cut that out, and I used freshly grated nutmeg, so I didn’t measure that. In the spirit of full disclosure, I didn’t measure anything but the water and sugar.
That’s just how I roll. Bastard, half-assed finger-quote recipes un-finger-quote are kind of my thing.
Enjoying delicious stuff from my own kitchen is also kind of my thing. You know, when there’s time.
(Callista’s in the swing; Eleanor is getting help from Ethel; Toby is wondering what joke he’s missing.)
