Merry "Lift"mas

Daddy and The Monsters Visit the Doctor!

So today has been the day I have waited for since the girls were just born! What could that possibly be you ask? Well if you buckle up, keep your trays in an upright position and hands and feet inside the plane I will tell you all!

        Waking up this morning I just knew it was going to be an adventure, my alarm started going off at 5:15 as with everyday I reached over and hit the snooze button because I honestly want to get up at 5:25 but if I set it for that then I would still probably hit snooze and it would just be a never ending loop of me hitting snooze, but regardless I am already steering off course lol, so as I had mentioned I hit the snooze button and the next time my alarm went off I rolled right out of bed just ready to take on the world! Stumbled through the house which if you have small children I wonder if you feel that your home becomes a minefield in the early hours, I spend so much time navigating around the toys that make noise, the toys that roll around, the toys that sing songs and of course the toys that cause mind numbing pain when you step on them at 5:30 in the morning. So after I safely make it into the kitchen and begin prepping the early bottles, which the last few mornings means dropping everything I touch, almost dumping the milk, it seems that my hands move way faster than my mind at this time but I always prevail in the end.

        So bottles done, TV on and set up like it is every morning, though you will be glad to know that I have switched my television viewing over from HSN, QVC and everything else that wants to sell me something to "My Name is Earl" followed by "Married with Children". It seems that these two shows have a way of keeping the girls focused on their bottle and less on TV which makes things flow so much smoother in the mornings, HUGE improvement over "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse" which caused nobody to eat and Daddy to lose his mind! Girls are eating like champs and within minutes I have them laying back down but it's hard for me to because I am just so excited about today so I head back into the kitchen to make me some oatmeal, eggs and kill some time before Heather wakes up and realizes I am not in bed, I have always been a morning person though, as soon as I open my eyes my body kicks into overdrive and I can't seem to slow it down until the sun sets. SO let us fast forward past all the boring details, you all just want to hear about the girls!

        Girls are up, fed and just finished dressing them. I will be taking Aurora and Bristol first with me to the doctor, their appointment is at 10:00 so it should be a quick in and out since I am only bringing two of them instead of the usual four. Look how cute this monsters are in their strollers!

Aurora

Bristol

        So we get there with plenty of time to spare, it's just now 9:45 so I sit down and begin playing with the girls, had to take a quick time out so I can fill out some Lead Poisoning paperwork, which started me thinking about some parents and what they allow because who in their right mind would allow their kids to eat loose soil next to major roadways, or teeth on old metal pipes.... who comes up with these questions... So the time keeps ticking their appointment was set for 10:00 and yet it is now 10:45 and still we wait. A few minutes pass and we finally get called back, we go see the nurse do all the measurements and initial screening before seeing the doctor. Was pretty happy to know that everything was good with them and that they are as fit as a fiddle, though they would be getting 3 shots each... I know that soon I will have 4 girls who will not be happy.

        Girls have been given their shots and were such big girls! They whimpered for just a minute or two after their shots and we were on our way out the door. Both of them were knocked out before even getting out of the parking lot, thought it was awfully weird that there were no little sounds coming from the back. We hurried home though because it was already noon and I had to leave at one with Ryleigh and Arianna, plus I really needed to go pee and super hungry so I didn't think I could possibly get home any quicker. Quick call had Heather waiting for me outside to help bring in the two sleeping monsters and make the quick Nascar change over, ate a bowl of Jambalaya, took a bathroom break and started getting the next two fed and dressed. Took a matter of 45 minutes and we were back on the road!

Arianna

Ryleigh

        This appointment seemed to go so much quicker but when it was all said and done it took 2 hours just like the first one did... I learned a few things today though that I would not have thought in the beginning... 

Number 1 - Taking four kids to the doctors at once is an adventure in itself but at least you do it all at once, you're in you're out in about 2 hours. Trying to be clever and act like you are going to save time by splitting up the appointments simply means your are going to spend ALL DAY at the doctors. By the time I got back home with Ryleigh and Ari I had pretty much been gone from 9:30 through 3:30 and I never would have thought that.

Number 2 - When you take kids anywhere make sure you have enough things to keep them occupied, by the time I was done they had went through almost an entire thing of yogurt drops, a thing of puffs and I am sure they took a few bites out of my phone...

Number 3 - This is more or less with parents of multiples but I am curious when the time comes that everyone just knows who you are, do I need to draft a nice little pamphlet that explains how the girls came to be and just pass them out to people. Come  on we have been going to the same doctor for a year now and I am still answering the same old questions that I have already answered before.

        All in all I was very pleased with today and I honestly surprised myself. Even though I was only taking two at a time I was doing it alone, I wanted to really test myself to see if I could do it and I did, with flying colors if I must say so myself. I am just now curious as to how I could try taking all four of them out by myself one day... But that my friends would be the equivalent of "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure"! Before I take off I wanted to share one last photo of Rori which pretty much sums up how all four of my girls feel tonight and when you take a look at this photo if you can just try and imagine what she could possibly be thinking...

       

The Girls and The Beach!

So this post will be roughly a week old but things have been so crazy over the last week that I was unable to truly sit down and put all my words down into one coherent sentence let alone an entire post. So without further waiting let's take a trip in my magical storytelling time machine and let me tell you the tale of four little princesses and their first trip to the land of endless water and gritty sand!

        It was a gorgeous Sunday morning, I do believe it was that magical day that all the Mothers in the world are celebrated as being one of the toughest and least respected jobs there is (we as a whole really need to start doing this on a constant basis and not just showing our gratitude one day a year...), regardless I awoke this morning to cook my amazing wife breakfast and begin to put in motion what I thought would be an incredible day (more on this later). So Heather wakes up and I present her a gorgeous plate with what could be described as the "Worlds Greatest Omelet" as well as the cards from the girls and I as well as the girl's present. Mine unfortunately was stuck in the infinite loop that is Kay's Jewelers... which I might add is still stuck in this loop.

        After presents were given and cards were read Heather got up and began getting ready for our trip which at this time I REALLY wish men came with the ability to read minds because I might have been able to pick up on the vibes that my wife was putting out but unfortunately this is not a sci-fi story and as a male I was about as clueless as Alicia Silverstone in the critically acclaimed movie "Clueless" which in turn means this is going to bite me in the butt. So fast forward a little bit and we are now in the car heading towards Gulf Breeze to spend some time with friends and have fun at the beach, not sure how many of you out there reading have multiples but I am sure that even having one kids in the car screaming you would have an inkling of what it is like to have 3 screaming while one giggles, needless to say it was a very long ride.

        This now brings us to our second to last destination. We decide to stop by at the splash pool and let the girls get acclimated to the water and all the people since this really is the first time they have been around something to this magnitude and I personally was a nervous wreck because all I was thinking about was the girls running off into the deep end and how am I supposed to jump into lifesaver mode without my short red shorts and my whistle! Regardless we splash around with the girls who are just loving the pool!

 Aurora and Ryleigh

Bristol and Arianna

        This is where everything begins to go downhill because at this point I come up with what will probably go down as one of the worst ideas I ever had and let me give it to you now verbatim, "We should go down to the beach and I mean they can't drown playing in the sand like they can in the pool". So we gather all the kids up and begin moving down to the beach itself, we knowingly make this call already aware that the girls are missing their nap and have not eaten lunch yet (for those of you who know the girls you know they love their food!). So we reach out final destination which just so happens to be the shore of the Gulf of Mexico and boy does it look dirty because of the storms and boy did those storms bring some sharp shells up onto the beach... 

       Have any of my readers ever taken a one year old to the beach? If so I would really like to know how they accomplished this task because as soon as we put the girls down something in their brains triggered and in this moment they believed that the sand beneath their feet was edible and that they wanted to eat as much of it as humanly possible! Literally for the next 30-45 minutes we do nothing but chase kids, dig sand of out their mouths, their hair, their clothes, their diapers. Stop them from beating their sisters with shovels and buckets. It was a very uncontrolled chaotic moment and let me just remind everyone this was suppose to be a day of rest and relaxation for mommy yet somehow I turned this into one of their most stress filled events of the year outside of their birth and bringing them home for the first time!

        So we could literally only take about an hour of all this so we gathered them all back up and decided we would just take everyone home, sandy and all which just added to the mix of everything. We now had four little girls who were VERY tired, VERY hungry and VERY not happy with their daddy who just put them through this whole ordeal. As a father of multiples I learned a very valuable lesson this day and that was above all else when it is Mother's Day plan something special and very relaxing for mom and just let hell break loose for daddy at home with the girls. I also learned that taking four little girls to the beach for the first time requires a lot more planning than what I had. I also think if you are going to take your kids to the beach choose a better beach, Gulf Breeze if gross! Destin is so much nicer and the water is blue with white sands, it's also only 35 minutes away compared to an hour for Gulf Breeze.

        I really do hope everyone had a great Mother's Day and that all your plans went accordingly. I know I am going to have to make up for this one for years to come but I will steadily work at it until everything is good again and I will make sure that next years Mother's Day is a huge success!

Hope you enjoyed the post and I will really try and make sure to keep my post going on a more constant basis. Though if you did enjoy the read please like, share, follow and spread the word! 

Happy Mother's Day

I just wanted to hop on here and wish every mother out there the greatest day ever! You all really deserve it and I really don't think there is a tougher or more rewarding job than that of being a mother!

Rekindle The Fire!

So it has been 2 months shy of a year since I have last posted about the girls and let me tell you that is has been one heck of a year! I have so much to share with everyone and so many pictures to post!

It will take me a couple of weeks but once I get into the flow of things it shouldn't be that bad. Just want to apologize for taking such a long hiatus but that first year of a child's life is very important and with so many moving parts in our lives and theirs I just couldn't get the time to type away.