My Diary of Triplet Fatherhood

Now they’re singing:

“Shall we get out of bed,
No-o-o-o-o-o-OH,
Because we won’t get
An i-i-i-i-i-icecream”

to the tune of Once I Caught a Fish Alive.

I’m listening to them chat and sing to one another one the baby monitor, and can’t help finding that particular snippet hopeful.

It’s their first night in Big Grown Up Girl Beds tonight and, as you might have guessed, we are employing the most powerful of all incentives to encourage them to stay there all night… ice cream.

…

Hm. It’s five minutes later and I’ve just come back downstairs. Evie saying “stay in bed, Mima,” in a worried voice was all the clue I needed. When I went in, Jemima was stood by the window flapping the curtain to make shadows. I put her back in bed with a firm reminder of what’s at stake, what constitutes naughty behaviour (getting out of bed and pulling the curtains) and what good behaviour is (you guessed it – staying in bed and not pulling in the curtains – hey it never hurts to give clear messages).

Unfortunately, it appears Scarlett doesn’t need to leave bed to pull the curtains, forcing a second trip into their room to explain that pulling the curtains is without getting out of bed is also naughty behaviour. Hm. I sense a lawyer in the making.

Anyway, now they appear to be playing a game where they take it in turns to count to ten quicly. Apparently this is hilarious when you’re three. Oh, well, as long as they’re in their beds while they do it.

Their beds. Although not even full-sized, they girls looked tiny in them, lying on their new pillows, under their new duvets, suddenly seeming so grown up and yet too small to be so.

I don’t think that any of them understood what was going to happen properly until tonight. Not even when we all went out to buy duvet covers last weekend. They were just interested in the pictures.

We’d laid out the varous designs on the floor for them to choose from: butterflies, fairy princesses, pink stars and rainbows, pink love hearts. Sure, they were excited as they each carried their choices to the tills, but I don’t think they connected the blue space alien, robot and dinosaur designs they’d picked with a complete change in their sleeping arrangements.

Not until this afternoon when they saw the beds all made up and their rickety, old cots gone. They were so enthralled, in fact, that Tettie asked if she could go to sleep in her bed there and then, although it was only three in the afternoon.

The question is, will all three go to sleep in their beds here and now… at half past seven?