Losing my groove

So, I never wrote a follow up post about our first trip away from the kiddos.  All in all, it was great.  Michelle was pretty exhausted from all the time spent networking and presenting at the conference and spent most of the trip limping from a combination of blisters and too many hours standing on cement.  I spent a lovely morning sitting at a coffee shop working with our friend Marty who flew in from Seattle to hang out.  We ate a ton of delicious food, enjoyed a couple of happy hours with Marty and classmates from Michelle’s program, and even did a bit of shopping.  The hardest times for me were when I would see other little ones in passing.  But honestly, it was shockingly easy to slip back into my pre-kids, big city lifestyle for a few days.  And we kept getting cute pictures of the kiddos off on a variety of adventures with Grandma and texts that they were doing well, which made it much easier to just relax and enjoy the time away.  

yes, we did spend a lot of time eating & drinking ;)

On Friday afternoon we tried to FaceTime the kiddos and that was a mistake.  They were super happy and excited to see us, but the internet was iffy at the convention center so we lost them multiple times.  And I think they realized we weren’t coming home right away and got pretty sad, especially Avery who just started crying. (Michelle and I were right that she would have the hardest time.) That was the hardest moment of the trip for all of us I think.  Denise said overall they did really well, but generally missed us the most whenever they were waking up in the morning or from naps. They had a great time with Michelle's family and went on lots of adventures!

We got home from Denver on Sunday afternoon and all three were napping so we didn’t get a joyful “run to mommy” welcome home, but they certainly were happy to see us when they woke up.  We got lots of good hugs and snuggles that afternoon.  

welcome home snuggles

We weren’t about to start a 10hr drive at 4pm so we drove home all day Monday making for a long long day.  And because I missed Monday and had a couple of quarterly review meetings my work week was jam packed Tuesday through Thursday.  And of course, Michelle has been trying to get a ton of work done this week too.  Between that and just having been out of routine for a week, this past week has been a rough one.  I’m sure it is a combination of factors, but I completely lost my parenting groove making this past week feel even harder.  I’m sure some of it is that we’ve all been off our normal routine for a week but I also think being completely “off duty” for five days  seems to have reset my sense of “normal” or made me forget how much energy a typical day with triplets requires.  I have just been off my game all week and even just having the mornings and evenings with the kiddos has felt so hard.  I’ve been more easily frustrated with their typical toddler refusals, constant dawdling, whining or crying for what they want, and what feels like constant fighting.  When I’m not completely immersed in it I can see that it’s really just typical two year old behaviors and no different than before the trip and that there are lots of cute and fun moments too.  But in the moment, it’s hard to see and feel that. I was looking for a crabby whiny kid pictures to add here, but

when I'm "off my game" I can't step back enough to take a picture so all I found where cute and silly pics and videos like these two!

Update:

I started writing this post on Friday or Saturday.  It is now Tuesday and I am happy to report that on Sunday things started to turn around.  I’m starting to get my groove back and can feel myself having more patience and having an easier time staying calm amidst the chaos.  That is the key to sanity I think when trying to parent triplet two year olds…finding a way to find, be, and model calm amidst the chaos.  I think I just found my own new internal mantra. =)  Here’s to a better week and lots more calm amidst the chaos!