ChezPerky

Can you believe my babies turned 9 months last week? They definitely did not ask my permission to get all growed up!

They've changed so much in the short time that I've been entrusted with their little lives – they're not the fragile little beings that once rested in tiny little incubators, covered in tubes and wires. The noise I hear around them isn't the beeping of their monitors anymore, it's the gleeful squeals and happy giggles and excited babbling of healthy 9 month olds (7mos adjusted).
They are regular little people now, and it's just fabulous. They are doing all kinds of baby-things. They are doing the combat-style crawling that babies do where they aren't doing hands-and-knees crawling just yet. Abby and Sam will get up on their knees and rock:

(for some reason, I can't get the YouTube video to properly embed here… the direct link is http://youtube.com/watch?v=eALdKd51RrM …. now it seems to be working, but I'm leaving the direct link here just in case!)

What else? Oh! They're finally all on their charts! Their relevant stats are:

Sam: 18 lb, 14 oz (25th %ile); 27.5 inches long (25th %ile)

Eliana: 17 lb, 11 oz (30th %ile), 27 inches long (32nd %ile)

Abby: 16 lb, 10 oz (15th %ile), 26.75 inches long (24th %ile)

Between them, they have 8 teeth. Abby got her first two teeth about a month ago (on the bottom). Sam got his first two about two weeks ago. Ellie finally sprouted her first two on Friday. Sam and Abby both surprised me on Saturday by sprouting a top tooth as well. They are dangerous!

All in all, the 9 month check up went quite well. Dr. B said he was impressed with them and impressed with me. I am not certain what he meant by that, but it was nice to hear anyway. My babies certainly ARE impressive. They are doing really well and doing all the right things. They're a little behind in where he'd like to see them with feeding skills and fine motor coordination (their feeding skills would be better if their fine motor skills were better), but this is not surprising given their prematurity.

When I was describing what each one was doing and what each baby was like, I said very clearly, "You should never label your children, particularly when you have multiples. Ellie's the good one." He laughed. 🙂 I told him that I have very easy babies and that it was about time… I've paid my dues with J (I adore J, of course, but low maintenance, he is NOT). He said not only did I pay my dues with J, I more than paid my dues with the early days of triplet parenthood. I guess I never really thought of it that way, but he reminded me that I had a longer-than average stay in the NICU for 33 week triplets, worked hard to breastfeed them (or, in Abby's case at least provide her with breastmilk), had Ellie on a heart monitor for 45 days after coming home and then shortly after that had to start dealing with bi-weekly visits to the doctor for her failure to thrive.

Honestly, at the time, I never really thought of it as anything other than what I had to do. Looking back, I see how far we've come and I'm so grateful that I was discussing three perfectly healthy, happy, developing babies with him. Really? What more could I ask for?

Okay, I mean, I could ask for 26 hour days and five MILLION dollars, but that would just be greedy, considering the four amazing children I have.