Running too hot...

We have some hot and miserable babies on our hands right now.  Avery has been spiking a fever very sporadically over the past few days and then been fine, but today all three woke up pretty toasty from their morning nap.  Hope was home with them and did what she could to snuggle them and comfort them.  I came home before their usual afternoon nap time to this

We do NOT have babies who randomly fall asleep while playing.  They are very used to their schedule and I honestly don't think they've ever done this before.  They have napped in carriers and in car seats, but this is a first.  I wasn't really sure what the best plan was from here.  Tried to transfer with no luck so ended up nursing Ellie while Hope occupied Avery for a bit.  (Avery was in the best shape.)  Isaiah sort of transferred but in the ten minutes it took me to nurse Ellie and try to bring the girls in to sleep he was up.  So we did more nursing, read some books, and then I put them all down in their cribs.  I had to listen to a few minutes of super sad crying, mostly from Ellie, when I left the room, but since I don't have go go gadget arms & couldn't just sit in the middle of the room giving them all backrubs I just had to walk out.  I got laundry switched and started kitchen clean up and about 30 minutes later Avery was crying and up standing in her crib.  I went to get here right away so I could hopefully keep the other two sleeping and snuggled my sad pathetic little girl on the couch for a bit.

not ten minutes later the other two were up.  So I got lots of alone time with three sick babies who only took 30-40 minute naps. =(  My first plan was to try to take advantage of the novelty of a "movie," aka Sesame Street from Netflix on the TV..

 

That bought me just enough time to make them each a green smoothie for a snack...

 

which gave me another three minutes to sit on the couch with them and figure out what was next...

 BEANS!!!

 

which lasted about 2 minutes for Ellie who then wandered around whining & sucking her thumb while I tried to eat a few bites of food since I hadn't gotten time for lunch during their nap.  She & Avery mooched a few bites of my food.  You can see in the pic below that Isaiah needed a "break" from the beans because he had a hard time remembering that the beans stay in the pool, but he sat pretty contentedly playing with a plastic spoon in his highchair so that was fine with me!  Avery was in the best mood & loves "bee bee bee" (aka bean bean bean) time!

 

And when even Avery was done with the beans & it wasn't even 4pm yet it was time to pull out all the stops & offer a pre-dinner bath! As you can see in the first pic, despite her initial enthusiasm, Ellie quickly decided that a bath could not distract her from her misery!

 

 but that was fine because she could get some one on one snuggle time while the other two played pretty happily for quite a while...

 and snuggle time turned into "milk" time...

 

 Avery was having a pretty great time in the tub too & was happy to cheese it up for a couple pics

 

 

 Isaiah on the other hand....

 

 Ellie finally got happy & enjoyed pushing the air out of my puffed cheeks...

 

 

but we couldn't play that game for long because Mr. Man decided he was "all done" bath & was pretty clear in communicating that fact... 

 

So then I had two snuggle buddies.  And though Ellie had been doing better, as soon as Isaiah was sad and needing snuggles she was also right back to being sad & needing snuggles.  Such an empathetic little girl she is...

 

eventually even Avery got a case of the blues and suddenly I was back to not having enough arms to snuggle all the sad pathetic babies...

 So we headed back to the bedroom for diapers & jammies, which involved a lot of crying and whining and Isaiah almost fell asleep with his head on my lap. In this pic Ellie was backing away from me because she didn't want me to put a diaper on her!

 

 Thankfully just after everyone was diapered and in jammies I got a text from Michelle saying she finished class a bit early and was on her way home!  Mama to the rescue!

 

after a pretty pathetic dinner, well for Isaiah anyway, Avery asked to "dance dance" so we did a couple minutes of dancing before heading back to the bedroom for a little bit of an early bedtime.

 

Isaiah fell asleep nursing and the girls were falling apart too so everyone was in bed and out before 7 tonight.  Of course we've already had two or three little bouts of fussing and it's only 8:30.  Michelle and I did some frantic clean up, folded the mountain of clean laundry on our bed, and I'm quickly writing this blog post and then we are getting in bed because we are expecting a long night ahead.  While we were folding laundry Michelle and I both agreed that when all three are sick is when having three babies seems the hardest.  Of course anytime kiddos are sick it's hard because you just feel bad for them, but we also feel bad because we literally don't have enough arms for all of them and they are too little to understand that.  And even when only two want to snuggle it's usually tricky because they don't really like to share snuggle time, particularly when they are sick.  So then they push each other and mess with each other and of course because they are sick they are more fragile and anything pushes them over the edge.  And then there's the domino effect of crying, where one starts and the others follow suit.  (That happened today in the bathroom because Isaiah was crying so loudly that Ellie got scared and then super sad. )  And of course someone, or all three of them, need to be constantly entertained or snuggled so all the "other things" like cleaning up, washing dishes, laundry, etc all gets pushed until after bedtime.  So like I said, it's time for us to get to bed!  Hopefully we can get a couple hours rest in before the first real wake up!