Week 37 with Triplets
Nicknames!
Knowing how difficult it can be to find information about raising triplets, we want to share as much of our experience with these three treasures as possible. However, we also want to maintain a level of privacy for the family.
Up to this point, we’ve referenced our trio in the blog as Babies A, B and C. This week, I’ve been given permission to assign nicknames to help our followers better connect with the kids.
Now, these are not nicknames that I picked. Their mother takes a rather unique approach to finding “everyday” names for the people and pets she loves.
From this point forward we’ll reference the babies as follows:
- Baby A = Melon
- Baby B = Bean
- Baby C = Bear
Go is the Goal
As we’ve discussed the last few weeks, Bean is our motivated mover. She gets everywhere she wants to go and refines those skills at an amazing rate every single day.
Now we’re working with her siblings so they can keep up.
Melon has all the pieces figured out, she just needs to put it all together in forward movement. At any moment it’s sure to click and she’ll be mobile.
Bear is a little further behind the girls. We got him to pivot, so he now has a sense of movement. He also started to get the idea of inching forward by army crawling on his belly.
Something a specialist suggested was jumping ahead to stairs. Although this is not a stage we’re excited to tackle yet, there is some sound logic behind it.
Bear’s biggest issue is staying up on four corners (hands and knees). He’ll go up on his arms but, once you tuck his knees under, he’ll collapse his arms and drop to his tummy.
By introducing the stairs, it gives him the mechanics of forward movement while reducing the effect of gravity experienced in floor crawling.
We’ll give this technique a try and let you know how it goes.
Climb Every Mountain
Bean is incredibly motivated to get up on her feet.
She doesn’t even fully crawl on hands and knees yet, but constantly wants to be pulling herself up to a standing position.
Most days I feel like the Empire State Building with a tiny King Kong grabbing on every time I’m within reach.
To be fair, there isn’t a lot in the daycare for her to climb on besides me. My mission this weekend is to find stationary objects she can pull herself up on that also allows her to practice taking steps.
It’s so difficult to know what you need and when you’ll need it. But when it happens, the urgency is great.
Sharing Toys
I may have unintentionally sprinkled some conflict in among the triplets this week.
It’s a point of fascination watching these three develop interpersonal skills between each other.
Although not extensive, you clearly get a sense that they’re communicating through verbal and visual cues. What I mean is that they look at each other to share smiles and expressions, and will pause after vocalizing to give the other baby a chance to respond.
Where I stirred the pot a little this week was putting them in a circle and placing a popular toy in the middle. The picture shows a ball but in this example it was actually a flopping fish toy.
Obviously there was some struggle over who got to hold the toy. It’s common for Bear to simply want whatever toy his sibling is playing with, but he was first to grab control of the toy.
Melon is also a big fan of this particular toy, but she would look for opportunities to grab hold and pull it away from Bear. When this happened, he would grunt his disapproval and try to wrestle the toy back.
Eventually Melon would lose her grip and Bear would take control again. No verbal objections from Melon, she’d just wait for her next opportunity to get a good handhold on the toy.
I’ve also seen occasions where they will hold the toy out at arms length where the other baby can’t reach it. Of course, that means they’re limited on being able to play with it themselves. It’s an interesting strategy that seemingly came about on its own.
And what about Bean? Mostly she chose to be a spectator in the whole situation and eventually crawled off to find a different toy. That may be a lack of interest in the floppy fish, so we’ll see what happens when it’s a toy that matters to her.