My Diary of Triplet Fatherhood

I’ve had a few comments recently asking if I’d post a more recent photo. To be fair, it’s about time I did. The girls have changed an incredible amount in the last few months. Every month sees them grow upwards by an astonishing amount. Trousers that were too long a few months ago are now ankle swingers. Age 2-3 clothes rarely fit. Puppy fat’s long gone.

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This is from a day out me and the girls went on to possibly their favourite place in the World: Tropical World. Terrapins, bats. Crazily huge Amazonian fish. Meercats. They know every inch of the place by heart, rushing through it, dizzily excited by the prospect of what’s coming up, at such a pace that we’re through the whole experience in half the time it takes most families.

On the day I took this picture, we’d got to Tropical World so early, in our excitement that we were there an hour before it actually opened so instead went exploring and found a fountain (or “mountain” as the girls call them) in the grounds which kept us entertained for a while. Until, to be more precise, the game of seeing how close you could get before the gusty wind sprayed the water into your face had us all shivering with cold.

Fortunately Tropical World is (as you’d expect) nice and warm inside.

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And here they are having their favourite story read by their one of their favourite people: Rara.

Rara is what they call their grandad, a leftover nickname from when “grandad” was too much of a challenge to pronounce. Actually, it’s generally said “nanarara”, nanna and grandad being conglomerated into some kind of super-relative.

Nanarara came to visit today as it happens despite it being Monday. They come every Wednesday to look after the girls during the middle part of the day so I can do the half day of my two and a half part-time days.

When I announced that they were coming over breakfast, everyone’s faces lit up. What a fantastic surprise. Then a worry crept in.

“Are you going to work, Daddy?” Jemima asked.

Three questioning faces turned to regard me.

“In a minute,” Evie pronounced on my behalf. They know the routine.

So when I said, “No”, they all looked astonished. “Not today, ” added, quickly. “Daddy’s at home all day. And Nanarara, too.”

The grins returned. Mine the widest of them all when Scarlett announced, “I love you, Daddy. I love you at home all day.”

Nappies lay scattered across the bedroom floor. I’d had to run for a new pack, leaving Tettie lying on the change mat waiting for a nappy to wear during her lunchtime nap. As I came back, I’d pulled perhaps a little too hard in my haste to get them open and sent the entire plastic-wrapped pack of fourty-eight flying in all direction.

Jem and Evie – already in their cots – burst into hysterics. Tettie though looked at me with only the trace of a smile dancing at the corner of her mouth. I could see she was thinking of the right thing to say as she raised a finger and wagged it at me. “You…” She paused, still looking for the right word. the worst word she had learned in her short life. “You blooming… “. Almost there. “You blooming bad, Daddy!”

I was rather expecting to be updating my blog on how potty training was going for at least a few weeks. In my mind, poo and wee would assault our house on a biblical scale, accidents and false alarms would send our routine into chaos and J and I would emerge from the experience in a similar state to men returning from the trenches in World War I (both terms of shell shock and appearance).

As it was, I think that buying sixty pairs of knickers may have been somewhat overcautious. It took Evie and Jem just a couple of days to get the hang of using their potties, and just a few more of detemined potty-sitting for Scarlett to join them.

Poos have been a little more difficult but we’re getting there. In a surprise turnaround, this time Tettie has been the first to come to terms with pooing on potties, while Evie prefers to wait until she has a nappy on and Jem has used the potty a few times but only after running around, flapping her arms and making melodramatic squawking whoops for about ten minutes first. Not entirely sure what that’s all about.

So, apologies for lack of anecdotes but there hasn’t been much to tell really.

So, in the style of Gordon Ramsey, I feel safe to say: Potty Training… Done.