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.

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!

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.

A quote by Zoe in August, that I couldn’t have said better myself. It has been an interesting few months, and I’ve decided to give up my former “things are getting harder, or things are getting easier” paradigm and just accept that every day can be a roller coaster in itself with no apparent trend line. Where to start?

SCHOOL
Though I’m long overdue in writing, I will try to fill in the 6-month gap since the last major posting, so that all my memories are not lost. We’ll start with school, since it is a major change and the title of the post. August was a very long month, made longer by the departure of our au pair Corinna, the late Labor Day, and the lack of summer camp or vacation as a distraction. (We vacationed in June.) Kate and Sabrina were eager to go to school – in fact Kate has wanted to be a big girl going to school for a long time. They each have a separate day (I’m unofficially known a the mom who separated the twins), and a combined day. The first week, they grabbed their back packs and eagerly walked to school. The other kids were not so happy to be there, and when everyone else is crying it makes you reconsider your situation. Surprisingly Sabrina is the easiest to hand over, though she had been clingy up to that point. This past napless Monday I actually put all three in “after-care” from 3:30 – 5:00, half expecting the school to suggest it wasn’t a good idea for the future, but I came back and they were all running around the room playing together. Sabrina even said “I’m happy”.

Zoe’s transition has been a little longer, but is now complete. Unfortunately most of her class from last year went on to pre-school, while she went to an afternoon class instead. She will do pre-school next year, but we decided to not have her do it twice. (Why do we have to decide in January what is best for our child in September?) So she started with few friends (Josie, Honey) but now has many that she talks about regularly. At first I was taking mental notes so we could invite them to her birthday party, but then I realized there were so many it wasn’t feasible. I am so happy that she has friends, and that she has the ability to make friends on her own.

SLEEP
After 3 1/2 years of good sleep, Zoe’s routine broke down causing up to an hour of crying at night “I want ___ to lay down with me”, middle of the night wake-ups, and premature morning wake-ups when she really needed an other hour or two. You don’t appreciate what you have until it’s gone. It started before vacation, cemented during vacation when we stayed in the room with them until they fell asleep, and then became intolerable when we came home. After about a month, I decided to do her put-down (previously it was all John) and it has been that way ever since. At first she did three puzzles, and I offered her a sippy cup, Linny, a cushion on the floor, and to check back on her.

Here are some other notes I had taken over the past months:
Zoe
- finally trying some foods, even if it is with bribery.
- acting the part of the big sister “It’s just water Kate”, It’s just
- understands cranky vs. happy. hard to find logic – baby wyatt doesn’t want to listen to crying
- back on her bed!
- loves polka dots
- loves puzzles

Kate
- sentences “me help mommy”. sometimes they don’t come out right – “Kate eat horse” probably meant she helped the horse eat by feeding him
- funny tip toe run
- superstrong and adventurous, does everything Zoe does on playground
- mature, very good at sharing, knows clean-up song, should be a star at school
- good memory – will talk about a big boo boo or a time-out (for biting) hours or days later

Sabrina
- after boycotting slides the entire summer, we went to boardwalk with tons of rides. She love them and that evening started going down slides. It was awesome!
- keeps us guessing on her true personality. Always thought she was easy, lacking the redhead tantrum mode, but she is definitely a no girl. Very particular about what color her cup, bowl, spoon is. Learned from the best (Zoe) about being demanding
- my favorite Sabrina development was when she started having fun playing with Kate and said “Kate, horsey, yeh” meaning she wanted Kate to ride the rocking horse with her, but lacked the language to say so in a regular sentence

We all went to Kids Kuts in Livingston Mall on Saturday for Kate and Sabrina’s first official hair cuts and a trim of Zoe’s bangs. Hard to believe they’re over two and hadn’t had a hair cut yet – there were many reasons, but it was probably procrastination. Growing weary of hair in their eyes, I had clipped their bangs myself and it was painfully obvious that it was not a professional job. So this time, we took them to specialists. The place has tv’s everywhere so the kids can watch whatever they want, they have fun motorcycle and dune buggy chairs for the kids to sit in (which our girls always decline), but most of all they have hair cutters who know how to cut hair when the owner of the hair does not want to have it cut. My favorite (and the only stylist I’ve gone to) is Lisa, from a few years ago when Zoe got her first hair cut and kept putting her arms up to block any attempt to get near her hair with scissors. Lisa persevered and somehow managed to deliver a decent hair cut despite the circumstances. But this trip was not about Zoe.

Kate, who we anticipated would jump right on the motorcycle, instead got nervous and had to be coaxed into a chair. She sat on Daddy’s lap while her hair was cut, looking skeptically into the mirror not sure what to make of it. When it was over, she eagerly chose her preferred lollipop and all was well. She then showed interest in sitting in one of the kids chairs, and had fun the rest of the time. She will probably be easy the next time around.

Sabrina cried or whined (hard to remember the intensity) while Kate had her hair cut, mostly because she wanted to be on Daddy’s lap. She is a real Daddy’s girl these days. Fortunately a Thomas video did the trick and instantly her crying lost steam. By the time she got to Daddy’s lap, she seemed resigned though not happy, and endured the cut. Sabrina is not a sweets girl, so she was somewhat indifferent to the lollipop except that it signified that her suffering was over.

Next we went to Mrs. Fields cookies and everyone got a big cookie. Admittedly it probably wasn’t needed after the lollipop, but I’m a fan of anything that makes infrequent difficult tasks a little easier. Looking back, I’m not sure how I took all three to LapCorp for Kate and Sabrina’s bloodwork solo, when it took two parents to get through a hair cut. Fortunately it’s all over and the cuts look good.

Today is Memorial Day, and Zoe and I have spent the day at home, but had a wonderful time. We were supposed to go to Pennsylvania with John’s family, but Zoe threw up in the car before we left Montclair, so we stayed at home while everyone else went. It was nice to get a little solo time with Zoe, and with a little imagination I could almost envision what life would be like without her younger sisters, who I have avoided talking about all day.

After we were dropped off, we spent four hours at home in the living room resting and then playing on the couch. It is surprising that this was so much fun because I usually consider being stuck at home to be a form of imprisonment, due to the seemingly neverending mess, laundry to be done, work waiting upstairs and lack of change in scenery. (Working at home is a contributing factor, because you never really leave.) Freed from the need to be productive, with taking care of Zoe as my only job for the day, it was relaxing and fun to be with her without taking care of the needs of the other girls.

After some morning rest, we hung out on the couch as she generously shared her Honey-Nut Cheerios with me. The crunching sound prompted a long discussion of Caramel, the guinea pig at school and what she likes to eat. Next she decided to dress me in blankets, uses part of the doctor’s kit to strap a blue band around my wrist. I brought out a new big-girl kitchen puzzle, which she had fun taking apart but not putting back together. After about four hours of nothing-in-particular, we went for a stroll on a mission to get some Goldfish and we succeeded! (The day was productive afterall.) We went for a walk around the flower garden nearby and picked a few dandelions on the way home. Then instead of wanting a snack, she said “I want a nap” which never happens! It was a perfect end to a perfect afternoon.

Since I never really finished my comments on Zoe on the last post, this seems like a good time. Her enthusiasm for every day things is really wonderful. She still loves saying hello to the diggers every day (fortunately there is a construction site a few blocks away), and the expression “stop to smell the roses” in my mind has been replaced by “stop to see the diggers”. We always walk home from school that way, and sometimes walk that way to school too.

I love listening to her talk in her room at night, and am always amused by the connections she makes. She often uses adjectives, and then says “just like….” with a connection that is usually correct, but not one our conditioned adult minds would make. A mild example today is the leap from crunching cheerios to Caramel (the guinea pig) crunching carrots. While I would probably think of other food I’d like, she thinks of animals eating food. Today I also learned that school is good, which is a relief, and she seemed happy at the thought of going back to school. I started calling summer camp (which she apparently doesn’t want to do) summer school in the hope that some of that enthusiasm would rub off.

Zoe was potty trained a few months after her third birthday and I was amazed at how elated I was. I think I didn’t really believe it was ever going to happen, and that she would be going off to high school and then college still in diapers. I started a post called Potty Power – the video of choice for all the girls, but never finished it because it seemed a bit much. Zoe takes such pride in her “huge” poopies that for months she wanted us to take pictures of them. (Sometimes when she sees huge items, she says “just like my__” – you get the idea.) We obliged because it seemed like a good way to reinforce the accomplishment. Fortunately there hasn’t been much regression though naps are still an issue, and make me wonder how we will ever give up the night-time diaper.

Zoe was a very easy happy girl today. I hope that someday she will be this way with her sisters around, but today I started to really see things from her perspective. It can’t be easy to be the only child and suddenly have twin sisters. Yes, most of us have siblings but most of us don’t have twin siblings. While there are advantages to everyone being the same gender, at this age it may make it harder because she is no longer the only girl. Fortunately our new school schedule in the fall may help, because built into every week is 3 hours on Wednesday morning when her sisters are in school and she is home. I also realized today that it’s not about where we go or what we do, it really is about the quality time.

Kate and Sabrina are 18 months old today. In general we’ve stopped noting the monthly birthdays, but this was a big one because it was the cutoff for Sabrina to walk (or seek medical explanations). More importantly, a friend with twins said things would start to feel normal when the kids could toddle out to the car. She was right!

Everything feels like it is getting a little easier, and the likely causes are better sleep, improved language ability, more mobility, self-entertainment, and of course having an au pair! Sadly, Corinna (our au pair) will be leaving at the end of July, so look for a “Things are getting harder” post sometime in August.

Let’s start with the sleep. As recently as February (15 mos) Kate and Sabrina were still taking bottles, and I was carting the bottles upstairs in the event of an early wake-up (before 6am). However when they got sick and starting throwing up milk, it seemed like a good time to move off of the bottle because trying to coax more milk in them was not a good strategy if it was going to prompt a throw-up. In early March friends brought pizza over for dinner, and since they had none of it, I decided to give them a cereal snack close to bedtime. They slept past 7 until almost 8:00, and we’ve been giving them cereal snacks ever since – especially high fiber cereals because they absorb liquid and make you feel full. Kate and Sabrina are sleeping more quietly now, and I feel better rested all around. Plus it is nice to remove the assortment of bottles from our tiny kitchen – sippy cups are next!

- The other big development is language, which has been a nice bonus for Kate and Sabrina. It is difficult to determine what their first word is, because they aren’t perfectly enunciated but we’ll go through a few. Kate now knows Mommy and Daddy (both are very well enunciated), up, more (possible first word), tea, and done. Sabrina knows up (pronounced upitda), more (ma), all done, but rarely says Mommy or Daddy though she seemed to say them a few months ago. I believe her first word was “no” (prounded “na”), which is funny since she never listens when we say no. They understand far more than they can say, and we communicate with them in a more adult-like fashion than with Zoe.

- Entertainment has greatly improved as well. They love a range of videos, which I try to limit to an hour an evening, and get very excited when big cows come on the screen, taking their cue from Zoe. They have also started doing puzzles, which is a lot of fun and probably good for their development too. Books are still a favorite, and playing chase with Zoe has become a favorite activity for Kate. Zoe seems entertained by the world, and loves going by diggers, and counting cars, and finding school buses and police cars. If this keeps up, driving 8 hours to NC for vacation will be easy for her!

- On the discipline front, we have started time-outs for Kate and Sabrina. We initially called them “baby time outs”, but now that they’re older, they’re the real deal. Fortunately they don’t last nearly as long as Zoe’s, because Kate and Sabrina immediately are upset and cry when they are put in.

Moving on to individual developments, we’ll start with Sabrina since she has the biggest news:

- Sabrina is finally walking! Her transition was actually on her 18 month birthday. It’s as if she knew that it was the cutoff for normalcy, and that she’d have some doctor’s appointments to go to if she didn’t start. It was really fun to see how excited she is about it, and it has made her a happy girl again! (after a few months of fussy and clingy) Now she insists on walking everywhere, including at the zoo, going to the car, down the sidewalk, etc. As for other not-so-exciting developments, we’ve realized she is going to be our problem child because she just doesn’t care when you say no. In fact she finds it funny, bats her long eyelashes and smiles at you until you almost cave in (Daddy does). This happens a lot when eating when you tell her no dropping.

- Kate still loves performing and loves figuring things out. Her newest trick is blinking her eyes when asked “what does the girl do?” She loves playing with Zoe and doing everything she does. She has started responding “yea” when asked a question, and seems to know she is answering in the affirmative. She doesn’t say no, preferring instead to nod her head and say uh-uh (19 month development). On the down side, Kate has quite a temper and will routinely clobber anyone who is annoying her, usually over toy squabbles. Recently I tried a new method of letting Kate & Zoe work it out on their own, so Kate looked to see if I was watching and then hit Zoe double-handed. Kate is our only good eater – she will almost always try something at least once before reaching a verdict and actually eats chicken, in addition to bacon and ham.

-

Things seem to be getting a little easier], though admittedly it is hard to determine the cause of “easier”, since we now have more help (45 hours vs. 24) and Zoe is in school part of the day:

- Sabrina has finally decided that she would like to walk, and did a lot of it yesterday evening. She took 9 steps and giggled with pride as if she realized – hey, I can do this. Since she is not a performer by nature, this was quite a breakthrough. Several weeks ago she was cruising along the couch with this look of pride that said she knows she can walk, and I stopped worrying as much. Since she is almost 16 months, it is quite a relief! She is also going through a Mommy clingy phase which I thought we were going to skip altogether. I guess it’s nice to know that at a brief moment in time, I have been the number one person in each of my girls’ lives.

- Kate’s entire personality changed when she started walking. She loves walking and is starting to walk on sidewalks and in the shopping mall. It is fun watching how gleeful she is. She also loves pointing at everything and saying Da. (In Russia I’m sure they would love this.) Kate loves performing and has so many tricks – what does the sheep say? “Baa”, Where’s Mommy? she points, touch your nose, waving, etc. She smiles so widely it is starting to look like a grimace.

- Zoe has now decided that Mommy gets four kisses at night. I’m not sure why four is the magic number, but beggers can’t be choosers and I am thrilled that it is not zero or one. I think she must know that she’s a high maintenance girl, and it is to reward me for the work I do in the day. Our morning routine is now a bit easier – she puts on her clothes, jacket, mittens and hat and we generally make it to school on time, which is pretty good. It is fun talking with her, but as we look at school options next year, the time seems to be flying by a bit too quickly.

They all keep us on our toes, and love switching places, a little like Freaky Friday. Sabrina will start eating well though Kate is usually the good eater, and Kate will start refusing to eat. The sleeping switches back and forth too. Should be fun when they start doing this intentionally.

So I was watching the playoffs this Sunday with Zoe, which happened to be the day the two “home” teams were playing (Giants for me, Steelers for Deb). I’ve been trying to make sure that Zoe becomes a fan of the right team, and coaching her to say “Go Giants, Go!”. And somehow she’s figured out (and I suspect some behind the scenes mommy coaching here) that she can totally get my goat by intead yelling “Go Steelers!!!”. And the more I try to get her to root for the Giants, the more enthusiastically she cheers for the Steelers (who of course aren’t even playing).

Later in the day, when the Steelers are playing I figure I’d at least give Deb a grin. So I lean over to Zoe and say in an obvious stage whisper, “Zoe, tell mommy ‘Go Steelers’”. And so she looks back at me, with a great big grin and yells at the top of her voice: “GO GIANTS!!!”

Deb just looks at me and says, “Boy are you going to have a hard time of it when she turns 16.”