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We have officially decided to cap off our baby count at 3. Effective approximately 2 weeks after August 14th, Billy will be sterile. After 3 years of struggling with my own infertility, I have now forced my condition on Billy. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, here's the deal: VASECTOMY!


We had to go see a urologist for a pre-procedure appointment, where he basically explains what is going to happen. He said that we should think of the procedure as irreversible so we should be certain that we don't want to have any more kids.


I asked Billy if he was okay with it, since maybe one day he might kill me off and decide to marry a young, hot chick who wants to have kids. He said he would tell her he had all the kids he could ever want. I asked, "What if she really wanted them?" He asked, "How exactly hot is this other chick?" Typical.


Anyway, the procedure sounds pretty awesome. The whole description included lots of talk about shaving his scrotum, cutting and tying off tubes, and then cauterizing them, just to be sure. Then, he has to "take it easy" for a few days, which he will certainly milk for much longer than that.

The day for the procedure is actually August 14th, but he won't be sterile that day because there will still be spermies left in his tubes that he must get on out of there. Billy said it's TMI to describe how they get out, but you probably have a good idea. Clearly, I don't know what's TMI (see posts about breastfeeding, constipation, etc.), so it's a good thing he's around to let me know.

The Water Table

We played with one of the babies' new toys last night for the first time. The pictures were so cute, I had to post them right away. Enjoy! (Thanks for the table, Liany!)

They loved to splash. I ended up soaked! You can see from my expression that water is going everywhere!

Billy liked the crazy faces Abby and I were making in this picture.

Look at Marie's face. She looks excited and angry all at the same time.

The water was quite cold until I asked Billy to go inside and fill up a cup with warm water so that the kids wouldn't get the shivers each time they splashed.

Look how happy Will looks. Hilarious!

Baby free evening

We loaned out all of our little ones last night so we could enjoy some "us" time. We grabbed a quick bite and had some water ice at Rita's...YUMMY! Then, we came home and I worked on my dissertation. Doesn't that sound like fun? I'm determined to get this thing wrapped up by the end of 2009. I can't have it looming over me any longer.

Marie went off to Vivian's, and Viv was a bit concerned about how she would react, since Marie tends to get anxious around people she's not used to. Vivian's exact quote was, "That kid is gonna FREAK OUT." However, she did just fine, if you don't count this morning when she projectile vomited all over Vivian's car. It must have just been a random puking incident because she was fine after that. Vivian's car, however, was not fine. Poor Rose kept holding her nose and complaining about how stinky it was.

Speaking of Rose, she's obsessed with having a brother or sister. She told Liane that she prayed and prayed at night for a baby, but that she thinks that sometimes, God doesn't hear her. How sad is that? Liane then proceeded to tell Vivian that it was child abuse that she wouldn't just get pregnant for Rose. Easy for Liane to say, right? Vivian told Liane, "I'm too old for all that baby shit. I'll just get her a dog."

Rose told Liane that she doesn't want twins because they might have to cut her mom open to get them out and that might hurt her mom. Vivian blames this fear of c-sections on me, since I told Rose how they got my babies out. What was I supposed to tell her when she asked? A magician came in and said abra-cadabra, and there were my babies?!

Liane overheard Rose telling Cooper that her mom was getting a "7 passenger" SUV and that there would be room for her, him, Chloe, Carley, her mom, her dad, and their baby. Liane said, "Wow, that's a big car." Rose looked at her like she was so dumb, and said, "Yeah, 7 passenger." Liane then had to count it up on her fingers and realized that Rose was right! She's a math genius.

My Abbers is also quite a genius. Alice took her last night, and she has family pictures all over shelves in her family room. She pulled down an older picture of me, my sisters, my mom, and Drew. This picture was so old that I was still blonde! Alice asked Abby, "Donde esta mama?", and Abby pointed right to me. How can she be so smart? When we went to pick her up, Billy showed her a picture of her with her brother and sister, and he asked, "Donde esta Abby?", and she pointed right at herself.

Will was off to Marmie's. Billy and I were kidding about how she never gives a bad report on the babies. They are always perfect for her. We said that Will could burn the house down, and she would brag about the beautiful fire he made was and how inventive he was to start a blaze. It's so funny.

We saw the pediatrician on Friday for their one year appointment and here is where everyone currently stands:
Will-20 lbs, 30 inches
Abby-20 lbs, 9 ounces, 29 3/4 inches
Marie-19 lbs, 28 1/2 inches


Marie is our little petite flower, and Will has taken over in length. We always thought Abs was our tallest, but I guess the little man has had a growth spurt. Developmentally, they are all doing fine. All of the nurses came in to see the babies, and the doctor said that the whole office was abuzz with talk of the Zeigler triplets 1 year appointment. Nobody could believe that a year had gone by. Let's hope Year 2 is a little easier!

This is Will's "gopher face." He has on his new muscle-man tank top with Thomas on it. Thanks, Aunt Toni!

You'll see this smile in almost every picture. Whenever we pull out the camera, he makes this face now. Lovely.

The pool ball pit is a huge hit. We got more balls for their birthday, and we have balls everywhere now. They climb in and out of it a million times a day.

Marie and Abby both like to offer the food they are eating to others. Here is Marie offering some of her delicious broccoli. Most of the time, they offer it to Winnie, and she gladly accepts. They now think that feeding Winnie is hilarious. Winnie is so gentle with them. I thought she would bite off a hand by now.

Abby was making faces in the glass, and it was cracking us up.

Will decided to go for a ride in the dump truck/wagon that is supposed to haul around Mega Block pieces.

Does Abby look ready to play tennis? She was going out to dinner with Marmie and Teri, and we decided to dress her up. Unfortunately, she fell asleep on the way to dinner, and they got takeout. Oh well.

After any meal, Marie is now covered in food. For every piece of food that makes it to her mouth, 3 fall on her, or she smashes them into her hair. I guess we'll have to switch to daily baths, instead of every other day.
Marie also decided she wanted to cruise around the the wagon.

We are 1!

The babies turned 1 this past weekend, and I still can't believe it. Where did 1 year go? Between diaper changes, bottles, breastfeeding, staying up all night, etc., I completely lost track of time. My babies are now toddlers. Are they officially toddlers when they are 1? I'm not sure of the rules.

We had a little family party for them. Abby was the life of the party, and Marie did great also. Will, however, was completely overwhelmed by all the people in his house. Whenever he was around a big group, he would cry and cry. It was just pitiful. He's typically so goofy and smiley. It was sad to see him like that, and I felt bad that nobody got to see his cute little personality. Maybe next year.

They have all been picking up new skills. Everyone now pulls up to a stand and cruises around. Abby will even stand for a few seconds at a time without holding on to anything. Marie is an eating machine. She loves finger food. She will eat pretty much anything you put in front of her. I'm always careful to cut everything up into tiny pieces, but she picks up 5 or 6 little pieces and shoves them in her mouth at the same time. Her favorite food is what we call "cheesy poofs." These are basically baby cheetos, and they are delicious. She also likes broccoli, tortellini, strawberry cereal bars, and veggie meatballs. Abby also likes the finger food, but she's not quite as good at it as Marie. Will doesn't even let me put the food tray in front of him. He wants nothing to do with finger food.

Michele said that yesterday morning, she put the cereal bars on the trays in front of all the kids, and Abby and Marie started eating theirs. Will, however, looked at them like they were the craziest thing he had ever seen, and he looked at Michele and made his gopher face (I'll upload a picture of that in the next post). Sometimes, Will couples the gopher face with a strange dolphin-like sound he makes. I don't know where he comes up with this stuff.

Abby is probably the most advanced with how much she understands and interacts. She waves when you say "hola" or "adios." She loves our wedding pictures that we have hanging up on the wall. When you ask her "donde estan las fotos de mommy y daddy" she points up to the pictures. She is constantly pointing to things, and we have to identify what each and every thing is.
They all love the "Hot Diggity Dog" song from "The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse." When it comes on tv, they stop whatever they are doing and stare at the screen. Then, Abby and Will dance...well, they sway a lot. Marie just smiles.


We put their triplet table outside and gave them each a smash cake. We thought they would make a huge mess that would need to be hosed down, but nobody smashed his/her cake. Marie just skimmed her hand over the frosting, but that was about it. They all started to cry, and we had to give up on it.
This is how Will looked for the entire party.

Here is our VP in Charge of Gift Opening, Rose Clarke, hard at work!

Miss Marie with her cake. I'm surprised she didn't dig in with her love of finger foods.

This was right before we opened up the cake containers.

Abby got unhappy after a few minutes.

Here is Willers with his Papa. He gets excited when he sees Papa, and he says, "Bob." I'm not sure who "Bob" is, but Will talks about him all the time.

They got so many new toys for their birthday, but Will just wanted to play in his diaper box. Typical. He was very happy when everyone left his house.

Here is Dabs showing off her smile. They hadn't played with their exercise mat in forever so I broke it out, and it was like a new toy.

Here is Marie trying to unwrap a gift. She didn't have a chance, though, because Rose opened every gift.

In honor of their favorite show, they had a Mickey Mouse-themed cake. Thanks, Marmie!

Croup all around

We landed back at the emergency room at Children's last Friday. This was our third visit, if you are keeping track. One year, three visits to the e.r....averaging about 1 visit/child/year. Is that about right? How many times do new parents end up in the e.r. with their first baby? This time, it was Marie who had the more severe symptoms.

On Thursday, Will and Abby went to the doctor because they were coughing, feverish, barfy, etc. I was pretty sure we had some ear infections going on, and I was right. They were put on antibiotics and sent home. They passed out when they got home, but when they woke up, they had a new symptom-dry cough, like a seal. I instantly thought it was croup so I called the doctor's office right back, and they said that it was probably just hoarseness.

Then, on Friday, Marie started developing symptoms. It wasn't too bad so we weren't very worried. Abby went off to spend the night at my dad's, and I put Marie down to sleep. Billy put Will down. About 30 minutes after Marie fell asleep, I heard some weird sounds coming from her room through the monitor. I went up there, and she was gasping for air. I picked her up, and after a few seconds, she started breathing a little better. I immediately called the doctor, and she said that it was going to keep happening all night, and we better head to the hospital. I decided to take along Will because I figured it would just be a matter of time before he started the same thing.

She was diagnosed with croup right away, and so was Will. They were given oral steroids, and we were told to keep them on Motrin every 6 hours to help alleviate some of the swelling in their throats. We were also instructed to bring Abby back to the e.r. the next day to get her steroids.
Since then, it's been lots of sleepless nights. I also caught adult croup, which is basically a bad cold, and my nose won't stop running. I cough some also, but it's not that bad.

Billy's dad (Pop-pop) stayed with us Friday night. Marmie spent last night, and my dad will be with us tonight. They help a lot with Will, but Marie only wants me at night. I told Billy that we have an unhealthy attachment, just like the unhealthy attachment that Winnie has with him. Abby, who we use to refer to as Crabby because of her terrible night crying, is now the poster child for sleeping. Who would have thought that? I hope the other two get better once they get over this latest illness.

Here are the pictures:

His shirt says, "I'm a Big Deal!" on the back. I was trying to get that in the shot.

Abby is just relaxing in this picture. She looks high.

Marie has the iPhone and Abby is biting her to try to get it. They love the iPhone. Someone needs to invent a baby version.

Abby is striking her big, gummy grin here.

This face that Will makes is so funny. It's his fake smile, and he does it just to make everyone laugh.

Here's Will showing off his big man crawl-up on all fours, instead of the army man scoot.

We brought in the baby pool and filled it with balls to make it a ball pit. Thanks, Aunt Liane for the balls and the idea!

Marie is posing in her business casual attire. She had on a button down and skort.