Juergensen Family Blog

We just wrapped up a week of family vacation, which I would call a success. There were so many milestones to report, and I will admit to resurrecting my old “things are getting easier” thinking. Here are just a few of the highlights:
- It was our first vacation with three girls, without an au pair. As such we were prepared to rely on grandparents for babysitting, but found it wasn’t really necessary. However it was nice to go out for my birthday dinner and know they were in good hands
- This was the first flight for Kate and Sabrina, though it was Zoe’s fifth roundtrip. We’ll blame their lack of flying on the cost of buying five airline tickets, without any type of discount for kids.
- I bought all three girls luggage with wheels, in part because I was determined we weren’t going to be charged for bags when we had bought full price tickets for girls that weight only 25-30 pounds. (i.e. we should get at least 100 lbs of luggage weight free ? They really loved wheeling their luggage through the airport and were so cute doing it. It was one of those times you see everyone else looking on adoringly, and you think, gee I’m luck to have such cute girls!
- We made major progress on beach time, with the girls playing up to 3 hours in the sand, usually in the morning from 9 to noon.
- We rented a boat (a pontoon?) and they all seemed to have sea legs walking around comfortably and eating their snacks. It was at least an hour in before someone asked when we were going back. In contrast, on last year’s boat ride Kate and Sabrina stayed glued to a parent’s lap, and Zoe refused to put on her life jacket and had to go home.
- By the last day, I got some chairs low to the ground, planted them near the water and then went and sat in the shallow area. Kate and Zoe had a lot of fun playing chase in the water with Daddy, while Sabrina enjoyed sitting on Mommy’s lap in the wet sand, while some waves made it to us and created puddles.

Now that we know we can take all five on a flight, the possibilities for next year’s vacation seem endless!

This has been a great school year and sadly it is coming to an end in just a few days. (written week of June 14) A fellow mom said it is all downhill from Miss Noelle, which I can understand. All three girls have her this year (at different times), so we will definitely have an adjustment next year. This seems like a good time for reflection on the current school year.

Let’s start with Zoe. She entered school in the fall as a shy kid who still clung at the point of goodbye. Within a few weeks she was talking about new friends, i.e. ones she met on her own rather than through a parent-arranged playdate. That fall she went to the marsh with a good friend – Josie and her mom (my friend) Julie. It seems funny to say now, but having her go somewhere without me was a big step towards big-kid status, and she really had fun doing it. The pictures were so heart warming. Seeing her make new friends was a huge relief, given that just a year and a few months earlier she seemed very isolated at her first summer camp. (The camp where she waited until all the other kids finished eating lunch before she started.)

By the end of the year, some new developments were not so great:
- “you never ___”
- nail polish, though fortunately no princess

Sabrina
Sabrina loved school immediately, though I initially thought she was going to be the hardest. On one morning she had her backpack and shoes on at 8:00am and I had to break the news to her that we still had to wake Zoe up, and that it would be awhile (school starts at 9am.) It’s almost as if she needed a break from the social order of our house. She loves her sisters and they love her, but Sabrina lacks the crazy red-head gene and doesn’t always choose the activities that might make her sisters happy. Plus she is a little slower, though still an exuberant walker. At any rate, she started the year sitting down at one end of the room next to the doll cribs watching the activities go on. By this last week, she actually sang the A-B-C song to the whole classroom. Yeh Sabrina!

Kate has also done well at school, but doesn’t seem to relish it in quite the same way, probably because she is at the top of the social order at home and not at school. Her language is quite good, and she has always put a lot of effort into building complex sentences. At school she is still a bit on the shy side (which is hard to imagine), and at least for the beginning of the year liked to be near an adult. We know about the differences because two of our current babysitters are assistants at school, so they give me the scoop on how they are at school.

The experiment in separation has gone well, but takes a break next year due to scheduling difficulties. At least they get the concept that school is an individual activity, as is making friends.

My favorites:
- K/S running out, Zoe hug
- solo time with each girl

Z and Kyle sitting on steps.
Dinosaur museum.

To be finished later.

I just dropped all three girls at summer camp, which marks the beginning of a new era of everyone going to school at the same time! Given that they are only two blocks away and it is only for four hours, it was a great moment rather than a sad one. Adding to my readiness was the early wake-up at 6:30 am (typical wake-up is 8:00am), and a week of family vacation, aka childcare on the beach. I diligently packed lunches, which is not my favorite activity in the world, to say the least.

Enough for now – I’ve got to get to work!

I don’t know when the phase started, but everyone has started saying “I love you” a lot, even Sabrina who is the last hold-out. It seemed to coincide with Mary, our original nanny, returning and it may just be coincidence but she certainly does have a positive effect. The best part of all is putting Zoe to bed. When I ask for a hug, a kiss or an “I love you”, she says “all three” and gives me them all. It is such a wonderful feeling, which more than offsets all her talk about growing up to be 14 or 16. (Yikes – my girls are going to grow up!) They have been saying it to each other a lot too, and sometimes to both Mommy and Daddy. I hope it keeps up.

This weekend marked 2 weeks since we moved the girls up to their new bedrooms on the third floor. It has been a surprisingly smooth transition, and is a big milestone months (if not years) in the making. Zoe was the first to move up. Her furniture arrived on a Wednesday, she wanted to sleep in her new room, and I didn’t see any reason for her not to. Kate and Sabrina moved up on a Saturday.

Unfortunately my sleep suffered greatly the first few days, due to a combination of early empty-nest syndrome (which quickly passed), fear of them falling out of bed (which happened quite a few times), hallucinating cries for mommy, use of our old monitor, removal of the sound machines, an perhaps closer proximity to my computer. Even this morning I thought I heard cries of mom when our heater came on, but I checked and everyone was fast asleep. Zoe is now propped with pillows to slow down any potential roll out of the bed. Sabrina rolled out one night but by the time John went up to check on her, she had shrugged it off and just got back into bed. Now Kate and Sabrina have bed guards to prevent them from rolling out.

What seemed like a weekend move will probably end up being a month or so, with more finishing touches every weekend. This past weekend the dresser went into K&S’s room which made things a lot easier. We also moved up a couch so that we could all sit in one place to read books or watch the iPhone. We also moved up toys so we can reclaim the first floor! The second floor is different too because now we have a guest room, and can wander freely at night without risk of waking the kids.

All in all, it has been a huge success!

Today was a really nice Zoe day. She seems to be having more and more of them, with the tears in the day becoming minimal. This morning she walked to church with Kate as usual, while I carried Sabrina. (Zoe and Kate definitely have a bond either from red hair or liking the same activities, or gene similarities in general.) But on the way home, she and Sabrina held hands walking, and Zoe said “I’m so happy Sabrina is walking” and told her “I love you”. Later they took a bath together. It was nice to see the bonding.

The best part of the day though was a moment with Mommy, when we were talking in the car in the parking lot waiting for Kate and Sabrina to wake up. I was telling her about when she was a baby, and she thanked me for a compliment, and then said “I love you” unprompted. It was very touching and made my day!

A few weeks ago I took the kids to Wendy’s for dinner. (Have I mentioned they are a new client – yeh!) I got them settled in to our usual booth, and about 5 minutes in to the dinner, a man on his way out stopped over and complimented me on how well behaved they were. I told him I’d never heard that before and he chuckled. Then I quickly escorted him to the door to avoid a behavior change that could ruin the moment. But after the dinner was over, a man sitting closer echoed the same sentiment. It made me feel pretty good, that despite was has become my least favorite time of the day at home, my pre-coaching worked and we are able to get through a dinner out. Pre-coaching is reminding them of all the “restaurant rules” – no running in the restaurant, no screaming, no crying, etc. I haven’t returned yet, because I’d like to preserve the good memory.

Tonight we went to Wendy’s near Grandma’s house and it was considerably harder, though ended up okay. On the way out a nice grandfather of 15 offered to help, and did so by carrying our frostees out to the car. He said he enjoyed listening to them talk, and that he knows it is a lot of work for me, but that he loved those days. He was very sweet and parted with a “god bless”. Perhaps that is why I like taking the kids out – recognition from others of the job of being a mom. And there is the side benefit of better behavior than at home.

On a semi-related note, Sabrina can eat an astonishing amount. She gobbled down 5.5 chicken nuggets and 2 mandarin orange containers, which is huge for a 2 year old. Zoe tried hard to be “a good chicken nugget eater” but she just isn’t crazy about meat and I’m not sure how much I should push it. Kate is a good eater, but only did 3 nuggets today along with Zoe’s 3.

Okay, maybe it’s not quite that dramatic, but yesterday Kate started saying her sister’s name “Sabrina” correctly for the first time, or at least very close “Sa-Bi-Na”. Prior to this she had been saying Damana, which started to sound like Donna when said fast. Her original name was Badamana. It was all very cute when it started at under 18 mos, and stems from the fact that Kate doesn’t enunciate S’s or F’s, usually substituting a hard C sound instead.

It didn’t start bothering me until recently, because Sabrina can hear the difference and once said “No Damana”. Also, Sabrina rarely says her own name unlike Kate who is always saying “K for Kate”, etc. and Zoe before her who spoke in the third person incessantly, Zoe this and Zoe that. I started worrying that Sabrina’s lack of name recital came from confusion with having her closest sister call her something else.

Fortunately the worry is ending because Kate is now saying it unprompted, and Sabrina seems to like it. Kate is also starting to say Zoe instead of Goe, and saying S on a range of words.

We had our parent-teacher conference last Friday with Miss Noelle, and it was probably the only time in our lives that all three girls have the same teacher. It was quite a relief to find out that all three girls are doing well in school. Apparently Zoe hasn’t thrown a tantrum since the first day of school. Her language was described as good, since she uses tenses and pronouns correctly most of the time. Of the twins, Sabrina was the quickest to adapt to school which was the opposite of what we would have guessed. In the beginning they both sat near the doll cribs watching what was going on, whether it was their solo day or combined day.

What a relief!

Kate has taken to saying this and I must admit I love it. I’m not sure what she means by it, or what her definitions are, but it sounds nice. Recently we were reading an animal book and she said “that’s a pretty anteater”, and later “that’s a pretty octopus”. She sounds so earnest saying it and you just have to laugh and return the compliment. Sometimes she even says it in public – maybe she knows I could use a pick-me-up.