Photo's With Santa   🎅  Virtual Visits with Santa!  🎅 🎅  Santa's Wonderland at Bass Pro!  🎅 🎅  Photos with Santa Bossier & St Vincent Malls  🎅 🎅  See Santa of Shreveport  🎅 🎅  Storytime With Santa  🎅 🎅  CHRISTMAS IN ROSELAND - See Santa In the Garden  🎅 🎅   Santa at Cabo  🎅 🎅   Christmas Cheer: Santa, Crafts & More   🎅 🎅    Santa Comes to SOuth BOssier    🎅 Breakfast With Santa 🎅  Breakfast with Santa  🎅 🎅  Breakfast with Santa #1 - Marshall, TX  🎅 🎅  BREAKFAST WITH SANTA - Jubilee Zoo/Tejas 3 Dates  🎅 🎅  BREAKFAST WITH SANTA - Joe's Crab Shack  🎅 🎅  Breakfast with Santa #2 - Marshall, TX  🎅 🎅  Cocoa & Cookies with Santa & Mrs. Claus  🎅 🎅  RUDOLPH RUN & Pancakes With Santa  🎅 🎅    Christmas Brunch with Pappy Claus    🎅 🎅    ...

As you probably already have already realized, as a triplet family, my husband, son and I are seasoned NICU vets.  We pretty much knew from the moment that we were given the news that we were expecting triplets that they would be in the NICU instead of the normal nursery after their birth.  Nothing can really prepare you for what it’s like, having to see your three very tiny babies hooked up to all those wires and IV’s and even the ventilators (which I pretty much missed because I myself ended up spending nearly two full days in recovery after having failed anesthesia 101.) Over all, my family handled the entire experience rather well.  We had watched those Discovery Health Channel programs as a family, where the babies all were born early and had various problems that resulted in NICU treatments, all of which were caught on camera somehow. Even my 11 year old (at the time) seemed fairly prepared to see his tiny siblings hooked up to scary machines that make them seem mor...

Today is my trio’s fifteenth month birth date. They are good little babies and drink only from their sippy cups and eat in their feeding chairs like real toddlers (even if they can’t quite toddle just yet!)  They drink whole milk instead of formula and eat real table foods.  That’s the problem, really. They are old enough to eat real table food, not the pureed variety that comes in a jar or little plastic container.  In fact, they have stopped eating anything that remotely resembles baby food.  If it’s soupy or mushy, they simply will not eat it, won't allow it to pass their lips. Also, they have apparently made some uniform decision not to eat anything that they cannot pick up all by themselves.  I know this should be a phase and all, but we are going on three weeks of this (le sigh: those were the days, we're on year 14 of this, actually!) All they seem to want to eat is chicken tenders or ham chopped into tiny bite-sized pieces.  They will eat cheese cu...

Every new mom has to adjust to life with her new baby.  Prior to birth, they read articles in magazines, excerpts from books, and get countless amounts of advice from their peers on how they will have to adjust their lives, from the unsuspecting and care-free days they enjoyed prior to giving birth, to the hectic and often blurry days to come once baby arrives.  None of this can quite prepare any mom for those first few outings with their new baby.  In fact, my triplets are fifteen months tomorrow, and I STILL haven’t quite figured it all out yet.  In the beginning, the NICU thought they were being nice and helpful by releasing only one of my tiny trio from the hospital.  This was meant to help me adjust to life with one newborn preemie before I was suddenly faced with life with three.  We later figured out that Kai was really sent home for bad behavior, lol.  He was forever screaming at their suitemate to BE QUIET in baby-language for example. He als...

We received the bad news at our last Doctor’s appointment which also happened to be our One-year Well-Baby Appointment.  We needed to kick the bottle habit, get on the wagon, join ye-old baby-bottle twelve-step program, ASAP.  The doctor had mandated that we get rid of those much-loved bottles.  These are NOT the words any mother wants to hear: Them's fighting words, too. ANY Mother knows that weaning time means uncharted, unhappy territory ahead! We thought we are doing well just to have arrived at the doctor’s office on time and with all three of the triplets AND the twelve-year old in tow, only to be given THE NEWS.  “Bottles are addictive,” we were advised by our pediatrician.  We were advised that we had about a three month window to try and wean the triplets off of theirs before they entered the “Needy” stage which would make it really difficult, in fact, next to impossible, to wean them off of THE BOTTLE without a fight.  Wait, isn't EVERYTHING a fig...

After they were born, the triplets were put into their own little isolette’s in the NICU. Vivienne and Kian shared an area and Kai was right across the walkway. It was observed on many occasions, that when one would cry, the others would answer.  That was just the beginning. Once testing began, if one baby seemed to be getting “Special” treatment, then the other baby’s would find ways to mimic their symptoms so that they would also get special treatment as well. This behavior held true and seemed more predominant with the boys than with Baby Vivienne because she was always babied more than they were and received FAR more attention from literally everybody else's nursies including their own. When Kian started looking a little yellow, he managed to blow his I.V. and they had to put it in the vein in his head.  This meant that he ended up with a huge gauze hat looking contraption that sort of resembled a dunce cap. This ALSO meant that he also got to sun himself under t...

Mornings are very peaceful at my house. Each day I wake up to breakfast in bed. Not you’re usual breakfast mind you, but one for my triplets. My husband gets up for the day and turns on the baby monitor so he can listen for the baby’s to wake up while he gets ready for work each day. Once he hears them begin to stir, he makes their bottles for them and brings them to me in bed. Next, he will deliver my daughter to me for her morning bottle while he picks up both of the boys and lays them side by side on the bed. They usually will all lie in bed with me together and have their bottles while we change them and cuddle and play with them. It’s really the most peaceful way to start off a day. After they eat, the baby’s will sit there and play with each other while they wait their turn to be burped. This is the time when they will usually say and do the silliest things. Each day brings new baby tricks! Kian usually starts his day saying, “I get up! I get up! I got up!” This is ...

As a triplet mom, I hear all sorts of things being said both to us as a family and about us as we go about our daily lives. People always are surprised to see me out shopping with my baby’s or going to the doctor by ourselves. I know we must be quite a site to see. Our stroller seats three, one behind the other and has foot rests for each baby. It is very, very long. So long, that I call it our limo. It doesn’t drive well for a stroller; however strollers rarely do drive well. Complete with our diaper bag and bottle bags for three and my purse and adorned with three sippy cups hung over the sides of each compartment, we must appear quite a site. We stop traffic, that’s for certain. Whether it is grocery shopping at Brookshire’s for our 97 cans of formula or shopping at Sam’s for our case of diapers and wipes, you can be assured of seeing quite a spectacle when I push that limo sized stroller loaded full of baby’s and pull that shopping cart. People react in many different ways....

When I first told my friends that I was pregnant with triplets (late September was when we found out & they would be due late April if they had proven to be a singleton birth), they promptly decided that I was having a litter of kittens and one actually dared called dibs on the calico one. The first question on everyone’s mind?  What are you going to name them? Well, after finding out the gender of everybody in December, we set about trying to find the perfect names. Of course this all brought to mind something written by T.S. Elliot that seemed appropriate at the time! “The naming of cats is a difficult matter, it just isn’t one of your holiday games; You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter when I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.” Yes, ONLY ME...I know, I know...I had Elliot's “The Naming of Cats” running through the back of my mind constantly. I figured that I might as well be having a litter of kittens. After all, there are three babies in there...