It's Snowing Yellow Pee Pellets!

If I had a quarter for every mess I've had to clean up...........

Today I was thrilled to be able to take my shower before noon. I waited for the elementary bus and then the high school bus to come and pick up the boys. The girls were still sleeping at 7:40 am. It was a miracle. I dashed to get clean mom uniform out of the closet, a big tee shirt and flannel lounge pants of course. I jumped in the shower and tried really hard not to listen for babies and not to worry that a madman would break into the house and take all my kids while I was in there. About 8 minutes later I received 10 bonus energy points for getting a shower done before nap time! I felt great and when I came out the girls were awake singing and “counting” like they do each morning. I knew they were ok in the cribs, they haven’t been climbing out for a while so I ran in and set up for snack. I already made the sippies the night before and put them in the fridge so I just broke a banana into 3 pieces and set everything out on the little picnic table that now sits in the living room for them. I always give them a small snack to buy myself some time while I get coffee and make breakfast.
I also knew they would still have their pajamas on. I started putting the zip up footy kind on them backwards several months ago. That is the only way that they stay dressed in the cribs. I also put the pajamas on for nap and if one of them just won’t keep the clothes on, they get to wear backwards pajamas during the day too. In the beginning I cut the feet off but soon realized that if they were large enough it was not necessary because there is room to just twist the feet around comfortably. Before the backwards pajamas started I used to walk into the room after nap or in the morning to unspeakable messes that involved naked babies and poop.
Now that the girls are 2 years old I let them dress themselves. I just unzip the pjs and pass out pull ups and clothes and they do the rest as long as I leave them in the cribs. Ava needs some help but Chloe and Piper can do it on their own. If I let them out they would just strip and stay naked until I caught them to dress them. Chasing a 22 lb toddler may not sound hard but doing it 3 times is really exhausting and takes about 40 minutes-I timed myself one day.
Today is rainy and chilly here in Iowa and the house is cold. I had to go into the other room to get long sleeved shirts for them. I left for 5 seconds and when I came back Piper was naked, swinging a very wet disposable diaper around her head like a lasso. Just as I told her to give it to me the diaper hit the side of the crib and literally exploded. If this was a sitcom they would have played out this scene in slow motion as the pee soaked gel beads flew all around the room. like yellow snow. They were all over the pile of blankets, pillows and babies that the girls had tossed out of the beds. All over 2 of the cribs and some of them were in Piper’s hair. Everyone screamed. I don’t know if they screamed because they were pelted with pee pellets or because of my reaction of horror. I spent the next 30 minutes brushing the gel off every surface and changing sheets. Then I had to get out the dreaded vacuum. It’s a little Dirt Devil, kinda like the old Dustbuster but it’s on a stick. We only have 2 rooms in the house with carpet (and this is a great example of why) so when the last vac gave out I just bought this little one. For reasons unknown to me, Piper and Chloe are terrified of it. They don’t run away from it though they stand and scream at the edge of the room and won’t leave. Nobody else is home to pick them up and protect them I suppose that’s why, or else they think it’s going to eat me and they don’t want to leave me alone with it. This is strange because when they were about 4 months old Piper went through a stage where she wouldn’t fall asleep in the swings like the others. She would only fall asleep while nursing or if I put her in the sling and ran the vacuum. That worked out ok because that was before we tore out the carpet and put in the wood laminate floors. I have some cute pictures of Austin wearing a sling and running the vacuum with Piper but he probably wouldn’t want those pictures floating around the internet. So I got the mess cleaned up and it just goes to show you that if you have triplets you can’t ever get ahead in this game.

10 minute Repurposing craft-Go Rockets!!

This is Homecoming week at Eddyville Blakesburg so at the BAC they are celebrating with "Hat Day" Thursday and Friday will be "Black and Gold" day. We didn't have any school shirts yet for Logan this year so I dug out an old EBHS State Wrestling 2006 tee shirt that used to be Austin's.

I pulled out my trusty sewing scissors and cut out a Rocket from the part of the shirt that said Eddyville Blakesburg. Got the iron out and pressed it onto a plain black tee shirt with fusible webbing. You can buy fusible webbing from Walmart or any fabric store and it's cheap. I always buy the plain shirts from the Dollar Tree when they have them in my kids' sizes so I can make fun things like this. Tee shirt fabric won't ravel so you don't have to sew anything. I will let him wear it Friday and then I might go ahead and sew around it with a zig zag or satin stitch, I think it looks a little plain. Logan loved it though. I really need to get crackin' on the EBHS stuff before Wrestling starts. I plan on making bows for the girls and some dresses or something in black and gold, maybe some cute little leg warmers and skirts?

Eggrolls are easy!

When I get a craving for Chinese food I don't like to fork over $50 for a single meal for all of us so I make my own. I tend to do that with all kinds of though because I hate to pay somebody 4 times (or more) than actual cost to make or do something I can easily do myself. It makes no sense to me. Besides if I go out to eat anywhere I am usually wondering how many times the people touching my food actually wiped snot on their hands or if they actually washed their hands after going to the bathroom before touching my food. Grossed out yet?

Egg rolls are very easy to make and you can use whatever you like in them for filling. I usually buy the egg roll wrappers once or twice a month and they will keep in the fridge for over a week. That way I have them on hand when I get a craving.

The ingredients I use most often are ground pork, coleslaw mix, soy sauce and garlic. To make enough filling to use up the whole package of wrappers I use:

1 lb ground pork
1/2 bag of coleslaw mix
3T Soy sauce
1T minced garlic

I put a couple T. of water into a hot skillet and throw in the garlic (from a jar) and coleslaw mix. Just stir it around and cook on medium heat until the cabbage softens a little. If you cook it too long you are on your way to Sauer Kraut-you will smell it and know right away. Even if you get it too soft it's still usable don't worry. Line a mixing bowl with a paper towel and dump the mixture in the bowl to drain, you don't want any extra liquid in the filling or your egg rolls will get soggy. Using the same skillet brown the ground pork until done and then drain it in it's own paper towel lined dish. Some people actually rinse the meat but I don't, I just let it sit while I lay out the wrappers on the counter. Lay them out in rows so you can put the filling in and roll them. I plug in the fryer now and get a small dish with a little bit of water for sealing the egg rolls as you roll them. Some people use an egg mixture or some cornstarch and water mix but it's not at all necessary-plain water works just fine. If you don't have a deep fryer you can use a couple of inches of your favorite cooking oil in a pan.

Now take the paper towel out of the cabbage mixture bowl-the cabbage should be well drained now. Dump in your cooked pork, Soy sauce to taste and stir it all up-that's your filling.





Put 2 T. of filling in the middle of your wrapper. Now fold one corner in and then the 2 sides. Make it pretty tight so you don't lose any filling. Dab bit of water on the last corner and then roll it up tight. Smooth that last corner down so it sticks. Fry them for a couple minutes until they start to turn light golden brown. It's the secret to keeping them from getting greasy. I had a toddler emergency so the ones in my picture are a bit darker on the back side but hey this is real life not the Food Network right. Drain them on end in that dish lined with a new paper towel. If you lay them on their side the grease or oil will not drain out and that's gross.

Now if you have some left over wrappers you can use pie filling or do like I did. I had 2 left so I put a tiny bit of the filling I had made and I added a couple of chunks of apple to fill them out. The apples were left from snack time and since they were just sitting there in the dish already cut and peeled I stuck them in and they were yummy! The girls really like to eat these and I find it easy to get lots of veggies in their diet this way. I like broccoli slaw and zucchini, onion and ground turkey or ground beef with fresh baby spinach. Just use what you have on hand and experiment with leftovers too.


These freeze well both ways, cooked or uncooked. I freeze them uncooked and then drop them in the fryer frozen like you would some boxed store bought ones. I have a lid on my fryer though because there is a lot of splatter with the frozen ones. You could thaw them and fry too.

We play with milk jugs!

The triplets are really into playing with doll babies and doing things like Mommy. It's so cute to see them rocking and singing to the dolls, changing the clothes and diapers and feeding them. They talk to them in a sweet little soothing voice and I just love it. They have strollers to push the dolls in but we didn't have any beds, investing in 3 isn't something I can do right now with our 1 income budget. I love to make things out of recycled items or re purpose something that isn't being used. So I dug into my scrap stash and whipped up 3 sets of blankies and mattresses and sliced some plastic milk jugs in half being careful not to leave any sharp edges. Taa-Daa baby doll beds! They were so thrilled and they played with them all morning. Piper liked her little mattress so much she took it to nap with her. I stuffed them with cut up fleece off of a sweatshirt that was in my stash, not too full, I wanted it to be flat like a mattress. If you have time you could decorate the jugs, I did not. An older child may want to paint or decoupage them. If you are going to decoupage don't buy that expensive stuff, just use school glue mixed with water and cut up some old catalogs or ripped picture books. Remember it's not material things that make great childhood memories it's the experiences-so if you have a preschooler this might be a fun craft.

*WHAT* was in that diaper??

Yet another post about poo. Sorry but when so much of my day is devoted to changing diapers, potty training, cleaning messes of all kinds and mostly all of my social time involves counting and ABC's, singing and pretending to cook when I'm not in the kitchen cooking for real. Well I can't remember the point and I'm sure my grammar was incorrect in that last sentence but it's late so you'll have to forgive me. I'm not even going to change it lol.

So anyway...I finally got out of the house today to interact with some real adults and what did they have me doing? Looking into diapers filled with melted candy bars made to look like POO!! The blonde in the picture (who answers to Rachel the Beautiful) is responsible for this fun filled game. I digress, this day was not for me so I will let it slide this time. This day was Trisha's special day, she is going to have a sweet little baby girl soon. This will make 2 sweet little girls now. I didn't get everybody's picture at the Baby shower simply because I didn't want to have to ask permission to put them in my blog, no littles in the pics either, same reason. I will add a pic of my present just cuz I made it myself. I also have a baby blankie and some booties but new baby doesn't have a name yet so I will wait until she arrives and gift those then since there is a large blank space on the blankie for her name. I had fun today even if it involved pseudo poo.

Just an interesting note, well I thought it was anyway, Piper has been picking the sequins off of a little purse that the girls play with and well. I found out yesterday that she ate a few of the red ones, you can guess how I knew.

For the Birds

We had a bad day earlier this week when Logan found a little baby bird and fell in love. Long story short, the dogs got it and we had to have a funeral. So in honor of his little friend we made some pine cone feeders to hang out in hopes the the mama bird would get a treat. We used up some old salad toppings that were getting stale and we had the pine cones from the other day when we gathered them from the yard.