Happy New Year!

The first of the year is a special day for us as the children were, according to the math, conceived on January 1st. Here's the answer to what did y'all do last year...

Tried to get pregnant in 2009 and 2010, succeeded in 2011, making up for 2 bad years with triplets, visited my family in May and just as I hit the tarmac Mindy called to say she would be lying down in the hospital for a bit as baby A (Rianne) tried to come out at week nineteen...nine weeks of bed rest...why do they call it bed rest if she never really gets to rest. It should be called bed prison. I read somewhere that a woman said she had to stay on bed rest for 50 minutes of each hour so she planned the ten minutes perfectly so she could get up and clean...WTH? (What the heck?, it's the Midwest) Then, it was a tough 14 weeks in the NICU.

There are days we cry because of the overwhelm.

There are days we can barely get up in the middle of the night to feed them.

But we are so happy, so lucky and so thankful to have three healthy, darn cute baby girls.

On Wednesday Mindy is bringing Teagan to the doctor's office for a four hour visit to determine if she can get off her oxygen or not.  She has been doing really well at home without it. I mean, she has done well on the times she pulls it off, not on the times we throw our hands up in the air because she rips the oxygen off and we say, "fine."

Mindy has been doing spot pulse oxygen tests and she is always in the high 90's.  Hopefully we will have one less cord in our house soon. We will only have an oxygen tube for Brielle and three monitors which should come off sometime in late February, early March.

As the pounds have melted off of Mindy, Tony has, according to the Wii downstairs, gained 14 pounds in the last 199 days (the last time he was on the scale). So basically, he has worked out at Farrell's Extreme Bodyshaping every other day for two years and lost exactly 0 pounds.

So, this year, instead of spending all of that money and time on the gym, he's just going to wear this Jack Black T-Shirt and grow facial hair to cover his second chin.

"Muscle Shirt"

Tony has shown some skills, however. With husbands, you never quite know what you're going to get. In romance novels the guy usually starts as a jerk and then ends up as a nice guy, hero type. In the real world, husbands usually start out as nice guys and then it's really a roll of the dice. Here's how he keeps the girls fed when Mindy really needs another bit of sleep.

I know this looks like a set up, but this is really how we have to feed them when they get fussy at the same time

Soon, soon they will be able to hold their own bottles!

 Teagan, in this video, showing daddy that one should appreciate the belly. When she is old enough to see this, I'm pretty sure she will not forgive me.

Daddy, did you put the Buddha video up?

Brielle trying to suck her thumb...just a little lower, little lower...the oxygen cannula keeps her from getting in her nose...

Somebody push snooze, I just want an extra 5 minutes!

The shirts say, "I love Daddy", however, Rianne reminds us that they didn't put those shirts on...

Just kidding, of course we love Daddy, now where are our bottles?

Brielle is exhausted after another day at the office

Teagan again letting us know that she doesn't need this oxygen

Brian and Megan Pitz holding the babies for us, we tried to run, but Brian caught us. He's pretty speedy.

The girls are growing well and seem to change everyday.  We are hoping that one of these days they sleep through the night.

The last weigh-in for the girls was last Thursday and Teagan was 11 pounds 8 ounces, Rianne was 11 pounds 14 ounces, and Brielle is gaining ground at 10 pounds 13 ounces.