My Diary of Triplet Fatherhood

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.

Day two was hard work but we saw good progress. Mind you, I was exhausted by the end of it.

Even with both J and I there it was seriously hard at times to keep up with girls’ ‘needs’. Each wee (there havn’t been any no poos yet) required either J or I to first sweep talk whoever it was off to the potty then talk them through pulling their knickers down and sitting down, offer encouragement if they were finding it frustrating or boring waiting for their wee to come then finally shower praise, help them wipe themselves with a tissue, take them to wash their hands, let them choose a gold star (or red heart if no wee had come) and stick it on the star chart then, finally, to take the potty upstairs to empty into the toilet and wash out. All while helping the others with whatever stage they happened to be at.

Still, despite feeling run ragged by the end of the day, we did manage to keep on top of both helping the girls use their potties and clean up accidents. We even managed to have a few meals, too.

And the girls all did fantastically well. All three had managed to use their potties by the end of the day, and even when there were accidents we never had any tears.

The only difficulty was that Scarlett found it a bit more difficult than either Evie or Jem. So much so that by lunchtime she was asking to have a nappy back on. At the time I found this surprising. She’s always been the most focussed on doing grown up things – dressing herself, doing her shoes, drinking from cups without lids – and was showing off her ability to wee in the bath months ago (”Done a wee wee! Done a wee wee on Evie’s foot!”), so I expected her to hit the ground running. On the day, though, I think the pressure got to her. She just couldn’t go for a long time despite spending much long periods sitting there trying her hardest. Poor thing. She has a tendency towards anxiousness. Still, I was really proud of her determination. By the afternoon she also had a gold star up there with her sisters’.

In fact it was Evie who took to her potty with the greatest ease. By 9am, he was able to tell us when a wee was coming and do great big ones straight after sitting down. Sure, she still had a few accidents but only when distracted (damn you, Lego!). Maybe that was also an worry thing. Evie tends more towards obliviousness than anxiousness so probably felt little stage fright.

It was probably better that way round. If Evie can’t do something she generally tends to lose interest while Scarlett will work and work at things she has trouble with until she gets them right.

Today was even better. Not a single ‘accident’ (as our potty training in a week book so euphemistically puts it). Lost of new gold stars on the star chart. Growing confidence all round – including for J and me. I think we’re managing to maintain the right balance between encouragement and inducing stage fright.

Our only concern is that no one’s managed to do a poo yet. Everyone holding their bowels until the lunchtime nap. Within minutes of leaving the room I was back in to change all three nappies. Still, it’s early days yet and I couldn’t have asked for more from them.

Tomorrow… our first trip out. We’re all going to Jo Jingles, the girls weekly music and movement class. Hopefully all that singing and dancing won’t have the Lego effect.

I call it “day one” but we only really started at four in the afternoon. The two hours before bath time were a scary enough prospect. We’re saving a whole day of it for tomorrow. As it happened, the girls did great, all sitting nicely on their three little potties, all lined up in the dining room while J read them The Gruffalo.

That’s right. You guessed it. This week we’re potting training triplets!

J and I have both taken the week off work. We have a several bumper packs of cheap knickers. The rugs are rolled up and away in the spare room. A huge, pink “big grown-up girls’ super star chart” decorated with glitter, pompoms and feathers hangs on the wall. You might almost be fooled into thinking J and I were prepared when in fact were both terrified. Funny really – it’s not supposed to be the parents who are pooing their pants during potty training.

Evie, Tettie and Jem, on the other hand, are taking it al in their stride. The star chart already has a few gold stars on it for successful wees and poos they’ve managed to do during the morning and evening practice runs we’ve instituted over the last few weeks, together with lots of the shiny, red heart stickers the girls get when they sit on the potty for more than a few minutes.

And tonight, following the excitement of choosing and putting on the big girl knickers they”ve been coveting since we bought them a week or so ago, not only did all three girls got a new shiny, red heart on their section of the chart, but Evie and Jem got big, gold stars, too. I’ve never been so proud of anyone for doing a wee before. Or ever.

I just hope that the rest of the week goes so swimmingly.

My mum has come up for a visit. It is a warm October day and she, I and my girls have come to Kirkstall Abbey for a morning out. The girls love to play in the ruins, climbing on the low, stone walls, running around and, favourite of all, “having a bath”.

What they call the bath is a small, rectanglular space, once part of the refectory’s sewers, where the girls always play the same game. They all get in and sit down (it’s just big enough for them all to sit side-by-side) and tell me that they’re “having a bath”. A moment later, one of them will cry “poo poo in a bath” and they’ll all scream with laughter and scramble to get out. Then I’m told that it’s “ok now”, they all get back in and the game starts afresh.

This time, the cry is different as they all scramble out and there’s a genuine worry on their little faces. “Worms in a bath,” I’m told as they huddle around my legs and shoot nervous glances at the tub.

Crouching down I can see that they’re right. In the corner, there’s a knot of four or five worms, tangled together and wriggling wildly. “You’re right”, I agree. “Look – they’re having a cuddle.”

The girls gather round and inspect the worms.

“Do you want to touch one?” I ask, scooping them all up in my hand. Little faces turn between me and the worms. “Go on. They can’t hurt you. Just one finger.”

And they do. First Scarlett, then Evie, and after a little encouragement, Jemima. We decide that they’re smooth not rough, and soft not hard. We count them. We decide which is the daddy, which the mummy, name the others Jemima, Evie and Scarlett. Soon they’re having so much fun touching the worms I have to suggest that we let the worms go for a snooze somewhere quiet.The girls agree with some reluctance, but before I take the worms somewhere where they’ll be safe from a sudden death by poking, each of the girls takes a turn at holding them in an outstretched hand.

“Aren’t they brave,” I ask my mum as I sit back down, proud of the way they got over their initial reservations.

“Only because you stop them being afraid.”

She she’s right, I realise it in a flash. It’s so easy to not notice how you influence your children, how much power the little things you do every day have over their attitudes and personality. And now it’s my turn to be afraid. Parenthood is such a great responsibility. For a young child, you are their interface with the world at large. Your fears become theirs, your choices determine their experiences. You are their model for how best to act.

It’s frightening. But I guess I’ll just have to be brave, too.

I read a little fact that you might not want to hear if you’re also a parent of triplets. In a recent TAMBA survey of twin and triplet parents, they asked what stage of the children’s lives was hardest. While most twin parents said it was the baby years, the majority of triplet parents said it was actually harder when their kids were toddlers. And, I have to say, I can see why.

Those early months with the girls were hard. I spent most of the time in a state of utter exhaustion, trying to function on less sleep than should be humanly possible. But toddlerdom has bought about a new kind of exhaustion. We no longer struggle to meet the exacting day and night feeding/changing/sleeping routine’s demands. In fact, in recent weeks something quite remarkable has happened. The girls have begun to lie in. For the first time in two years, I’ve been able to sleep past 6.30 in the morning.
The only grey lining to that wonderful silver cloud is that we’ve needed that extra sleep. Days alone with the girls have become more exhausting than ever. Not that they’re not fun, mind you. They are… as long as you constantly stay on top of the situation. That means more getting out of the house, more directed play, more channelling of three very energetic personalities. Because it takes only a split-second of inattention for chaos to erupt.

The reason? With the passage of their second birthday, J and I have become familiar with a wonderful, new event: the tantrum.

A common cause is the fact that the girls have become able to disagree with one another recently. Only, because they don’t always understand what the others truly mean when they say something, their arguments are, more often than not, at cross-purposes, meaning that, unless J or I come and settle them quickly, they often end in an explosion of frustration.

For example, Evie might say “sore knee”, referring to a fall she had yesterday. To which Scarlett will reply “no sore knee”, looking at her own uninjured leg. Within moments the house will be shaking to the sound of alternate cries of “Sore knee!” and “No sore knee!”.

As I’m sure you can imagine, the possibilities for such misunderstandings are almost limitless. Maybe Jem will see a dog out of the car window and shout “doggy!” – only, when Jemima looks round it’s gone. “No doggy!” she’ll shout back, outraged at having her hopes raised. And again we’ll have a rally of disagreements that can be hard to settle before someone reaches the tantrum setting on their frustration-o-meter.

Still, it only requires a moment of explanation to settle this kind of dispute (provided you’re not on the motorway, when it can be rather trickier). More difficult , though, is the lawyerly objection. Now we try to operate a policy of having only a small number of rules but making sure we always enforce them without fail, which seems to have worked quite well so far. Perhaps too well. The girls have picked up on the fact that breaking rules is naughty and get quite upset if any of their sisters does so (provided they don’t instead decide to join in, that is). Of course, this can be handy at times. Shouts of “no up the stairs!” have called my attention to the fact that the stairgate wasn’t properly closed on more than one occassion, for example. No, the problem really arises when the girls decide to add to the rules.

“No round and round,” is the most recent one I can recall; Scarlett getting apoplectic with fury that Jemima wanted to spin on the spot. On a bad day (read: when they’re tired), it can be almost impossble to get anything done as I explain, again and again, using my ‘reasonable voice’, that “it’s ok for Jemima to turn around and around/sit on Daddy’s chair/put her trousers on her head – it doesn’t affect you, just let her be”.

Poor things. I can often see why they’re objecting. They’re just getting real rules confused with things that are just silly or no one really minds about. It’s not as if they’re being naughty. They’re being too good, if anything; just trying to be like Mummy and Daddy, enforcing the rules.

In fact, helping like this is another common bone of contention. How do three little girls all help carry a carrier bag back from the shops when it only has two handles, for example (answer: tie another handle in the bottom… and next time divide the shopping betwen more bags). Or what do you do when you’re in a hurry to get out of the house but they each want to help clean the table after breakfast, clean the floor, put everything away in the kitchen, choose hairclips, brush hair, change nappies, choose clothes, get dressed, put shoes on, bring in the post that’s come, put whatever toy they still have in their hands back in what they consider the right place, put the key in the door, open the door, close the door, lock the door again, carry Daddy’s bag to the car… It takes a long enough time to rush though those things alone; with three helpers it can take forever.

But it’s hard to know what to do. Only one of them can reasonable help with any one job, so I can either direct them all to different jobs which takes so much attention there’s no opportunity for me to do things myself, and besides, there’s nearly always one job they all want to do, or I don’t let them help, which means we get through everything quickly but there’s likely to be tears along the way, or I try to enforce taking turns, which they understand well enough but don’t always have the patience for (and woe betide me if I get the order wrong). Whatever we do, I have chaos on my hands once more… and risk tantrums.

What’s more, nowadays, they all want to be so independent. When in the house, being carried has almost become a punishment. They climb upstairs to bed and down in the morning, walk themselves to whichever room we’re doing our next activity in, walk to the car, carry their own teddy bears, get up and down from chairs themselves. They really want to be able to brush their own teeth and put in their own hairclips. Cries of “no helping”, “Evie do it” and “No carry you” are prompted by almost every attempt to hurry, direct or help, to which J and I have our own ritual responses, again in our best ‘reasonable voices’: things like “if you don’t come up the stairs right away, I will have to carry you”, “I’m sorry but you can’t hold the toothpaste because you just ate another mouthful when you said you wouldn’t” and “I know you want to put your own top on but your head is stuck in the arm hole now, just let Daddy get you out- you can help me do it”. Our own attempts at keeping control without adding tension to the situation.
And, to be fair, while it can be tiring to keep resolving disputes while keeping one eye on the tantrum gauge, I love the fact that we can resolve so many things through talking nowadays. It wasn’t long ago that I was posting about how the girls knew more animal noises than real words and now they can explain why things are upsetting them (however irrational they might seem to us grownups) and we can suggest solutions.

And there’s anything unnatural about all these tantrums and arguments. It’s just that my girls are able to express the how difficult understanding and relating to world is for the first time. No parent can expect their kids to suddenly be as civilised, patient and restrained as an adult. They need to learn these things.

At first, I used to find myself being drawn into the heat of the moment, chaos multiplying as I tried to stamp out one conflict after another, all the while the girls frustration feeing off my own. It’s upsetting to hear my little girls argue, stressful to see them upset. I hadn’t developed the discipline to stay aloof when I was finding the situation so stressful. But being calm and in-control rubs off on the girls just as much as becoming frustrated used to. I try to end conflicts by explaining misunderstandings, if possible, or by suggesting solutions that allow everyone to stay happy, or providing a distraction, or, if needs be, by taking charge and preventing things from escalating too much. and if a tantrum happens, it happens and I let it run its course.
Of course, that rather makes it sound like I never get it wrong and end up provoking a tantrum that could have been avoided or at least helping things escalate towards one, which is patently not the case. Nor do I have some amazing ability to prevent the conflicts that naturally arise as three little minds grow, learn and begin trying to assert themselves on the world and people around them. But I have learnt to take a deep breath, take that vital moment to size up what’s going on and think what creative solutions there might be, then appearing on the surface at least to be a font of calm and control, to try to channel things into a better way of being.

At the risk of sounding hackneyed, parenthood is a road we and our kids walk together. They learn about living, we learn how best to help them as they struggle along. Even as we learn to deal with their needs, they’re moving onto something else. Our greatest success is to make ourselves unnecessary.

I wrote this post in August but never got round to finishing it until today. As they do, things have changed since then. Not that we no longer see tantrums. Instead, the provocations they’ve changed a little. Currently it’s all about testing boundaries. Ah, well. Can’t say those litttle girls don’t keep us on our toes…

What rhymes with “Hoop on the Shed”?

Soup on the head, of course. And her’s Jemima to prove it.

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There’s an enormous sandpit in the park near our house, big enough to contain a slide, a see-saw and various other toys to climb on or pour sand through. And it also contains a play house.

My girls have always loved the big, plastic playhouse we bought for them when they were little. FOr a long time it was set up in the living room, and even now it’s in the garden, they still haven’t tired of playing peekaboo out of the windows, busying themselves at the sink and cooker, and opening and closing the door (sometimes even without another sister on her way through it). So, I guess it was only natural that all three would gravitate towards the sand pit’s playhouse when I’d finally managed to herd them all there from the car (no mean feat nowadays, I assure you – but that’s for another post).

Anyway, when we got there, two much older boys were already in residence had, they soon made clear, no intetnion of sharing. They looked like brothers and must have been at least four or five years old.

“We don’t want you in here,” one announced as Jemima walked in through the door.

“No,” the other agreed, And they went back to their game of piling sand on the table as if the matter was now settled.

Jemima just stood and watched them.

Then Scarlett wandered in, and, ignoring the boys, bent and began filling her bucket with sand before emptying it in a pile on the floor.

“I said,” the first by petulantly announced, “that we don’t want you here.” And, to mark his point, he strode over and stamped on Scarlett’s pile of sand.

Scarlett just watched as he went back to the table and his brother.

A short while passed, in which I wondered if I was going to have to intervene, and the two boys began to look a little nervous. Jem and Tettie were still watching them, little faces impassive and perhaps a little quizzical. But the standoff seemed steady enough, no one had been anything but a little rude and I always feel a little cautious at places like this, generally being the only dad, surrounded by mums who I can see watching me from where they sit on the benches at the play park’s edge. I decided I’d wait and see if things escalated.

Then Evie arrived. She carried a bucket, too. And a spade. And went straight up to the table where she put them to use taking the very sand the boys were piling up themselves.

“No,” said he first boy and put his arms around the sand to stop this little one-year old girl from taking it.

“We don’t want you in here,” the other chimed in. Both stared hard at Evie.

Evie stared back.

Then, Scarlett stepped up beside her, the tension in the playhouse grew palpable, especially when, a moment later, Jem, came to join her sisters. The bigger boys looked worried

Evie cocked her head slightly to one side. The boys began to shuffle in their seats.

Perhaps the first boy did something to draw their attention, I’m not sure, but, as one, all three girls turned to look at him directly, which was when it all grew too much for him. He turned and ran from the playhouse, closely followed by his brother.

Without a word, Evie, Tettie and Jem picked up their buckets, and began playing quietly in the sand.

After watching that exchange, I have a feeling they’ll have little trouble with being bullied when they grow older.

“Can you say ‘I’?”

“Aye-eee”

“Good. Can you say ‘love’?”

“Yuv!”

“And can you say ‘you’?”

“Yoo-ooo-ooo”

“Daddy?”

“Dadda.”

That was a few weeks ago, and at the time I have to admit I felt a little ashamed. Evie didn’t know what she was saying. For her, the fun was in copying the sounds while, for me, I just wanted to hear those four words said by my little girl.

When my girls were very young, I used to wonder every day what they were thinking. What it must be like to be thrust (well, more ‘yanked’) into this world and be exposed to so many novelties at once: colours, shapes, spaces, textures, smells, sounds, voices, people… most of all people. Even after just eight hours at work, I would never be completely sure that they remembered who I was.

I’d contrast their reactions to me and others, watch their eyes, listen to the sounds they made, hoping to find some reciprocity. From the moment I saw my three little girls, I loved them so much it gave me vertigo. Surely it was only natural to desire a demonstration of love in return?

But it was only some time after they passed six months in age that real interaction began. Recognition, signs of memory, familiarity, bonding, playing. Maybe it’s a dad thing, but as much as I loved my three little sausages when they were still babies dazed by the world, being able to interact with my children pushed our relationships onto a new level. It was like we all needed those six months to get used to their arrival but once we began to be able to bounce off one another, that’s when the relationship became truly rewarding.

I guess that’s why, when people feel compelled to approach me in the street and tell me “That must be hard work”, I can honestly reply that it gets easier all the time (and by easier, I, of course, mean better). Sure my girls are heavier, and more active, more demanding and less passive, but I like that. I find my children engage me in a way few things do. Every day they make me laugh. They make me think. They challenge me in ways that comfortable pre-parent life rarely did.

And recently, all three girls have taken a great leap forward. In the space of a few weeks they learnt colours, became comfortable with numbers and, most exciting of all, they began to put words together to make sentences.

Still, easier is not the same as easy. This morning, when the alarm went off at 6.30, I reached over and slapped the snooze button. The music stopped, but I knew immediately no snoozing was going to be possible. Voices were chattering away from the girls’ room so I dragged myself up and went in to say good morning.

Evie rolled over, pulled out her thumb and smiled at me as I came and sat heavily on the rocking chair near her cot.

“That’s was such a nice smile, Evie. What a lovely way to start a day.” I smiled in return. “Aww, I love you.”

“I love you, Daddy.”

As I say, fatherhood just keeps getting better.

“Fie. No. Bye-bye.”

Jemima’s telling her story again. For some reason, this event has really stayed with her. Probably, I guess, because, since the weather began to warm, we’ve been pointing out all the newly appeared insects to her and her sisters. Bees, butterflies, ladybirds and flies are suddenly real instead of just being another strange picture they know the word for from a book.

In this case, Jem is recounting the moment, last week, when a fly appeared on the kitchen table at tea time. I guess it must have been the first fly they’d seen up close because all three girls sat right back in their chairs and regarded it with deep suspicion at first. Then, as so often happens with new animals, Evie shouted “boo!” at it and all as well. Still, I tried to do my own part to reassure them.

“Don’t worry, girls. It’s just a fly. It can’t hurt you. Remember the Peter Rabbit song? Even if it landed on your nose it wouldn’t matter. Just flap it away.”

Of course, they all began to flap at it, making the poor creature dart around the table in confusion… until, unable to find any safe tabletop to land on, it opted instead for Jemima’s nose.

She went rigid. She tried so hard to keep still, in fact, that she shook with the effort, her little fists clenched, her eyes crossed as she watched the fly take a rest from being wafted from three directions. Her sisters just looked on in amazement.

And then it was gone to a chorus of “bye-bye”s as Jemima turned to me and explained, in what was going to become a familiar anecdote, what had happened.

“Fie! No! Bye-bye!” she shouted, thoroughly excited by the whole event, which translates as “Fly! Nose! Bye-bye!” or “Father, how remarkable! A fly just alighted on my nose for almost a minute before flying away.”

As I sit on the end of the sofa, I experience one of those rare moments where time seems to slow to a standstill. As is usual at bedtime, all three girls sit on J’s legs, teddy bears balanced on their own laps as they drink cups of “mi” (that’s “milk”) and wait for a go at turning the page of the book.

Tonight, Evie has had the idea of demanding Bearbear be allowed to have a turn. For a short while this means she, as the power behind Bearbear, is getting twice the number of turns her sisters do but, of course, it doesn’t take long for Coco (Scarlett’s bear) to want to a turn and, loathe to miss out, Jem soon chimes in with a demand of her own witha cry of “Raf!”. To those uninitiated into my girls’ fondness for single syllables, this means something like “Excuse me, Mother, but may my stuffed giraffe be allowed to partake in turning the pages of this evening’s excellent tale?”

J holds out the book to Raf but Jemima just looks concerned. Unlike Bearbear and Coco, he has no hands. She holds Raf up to the light and peers carefully at his shoulders as if closer inspection might reveal previously unnoticed appendages hiding there. But then, with a look of inspiration filling her face, she turns him round, lifts his tail and uses it to flick over the page.

“Who knows what this is?” J asked, pointing to the picture of a football on the newly-revealed page.

“Ba’. Free!” Evie shouts, excited. (That’s “three balls”)

“No, there’s only one ball.” J points again. “One.”

“Free!” Evie demands, wriggling off J’s lap and running towards the other room.

“Oh, I see. Yes, there are three balls in the other room. But stay here… it’s story time.”

“Free!” Scarlett replies, twisting to get down.

“Ba’!” Jem agress, following her sisters. And they’re gone.

J and I exchange exasperated smirks.

And then they’re back, clambering up onto J again, holding one ball each as well as their bears and milk.

“Raf?”

I can’t say why this moment struck me so.

Perhaps it’s something to do with the fact that I could see so clearly the thought processes my daughters were undergoing… those early months came back to me, months when I would wonder so much what was going on behind those distant gazes, if they remembered me day to day, what they were seeing when they looked around at a world raw and enormous before their senses. Now, we hardly ever don’t understand them, or, at least, in the case with the three balls, we soon get corrected on our misunderstandings. They communicate their experiences all the time and, once you get to understand their monosyllabic take on language, it’s possible to have drawn-out discussions.

Or maybe it’s how self-possessed they are. No more lying around and waiting for the world to come to them.

Or just how funny and unpredictable they are. They make me laugh every day with their impulsiveness.

All of which is to say, I suppose, that I realised suddenly, how much my daughters are growing up, and how very fast time is passing. It’s only when a moment in jumps out at me that I realise how much things are changing all the time and how there’s just not time to both live each moment and reflect on how wonderful it was. That moment when they’d all run off to find balls gave me just a few seconds to assimilate everything that had happened, to smile and share my happiness with J. Too many things passed unremarked.

For someone with a less-than-brilliant memory, I find that, nowadays, I know a lot of literature by heart. Not, unfortunately, great works of poetry or fiction, nor the kind of fact-packed books that would help me at work. No, I am now a human repository of nursery rhymes, childrens’ poetry and toddler books.

If you asked me to recite a Shakespeare sonnet, I’m afraid all you’d get is a blank look. Maybe, if you were lucky, a mumbled “Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day, something, something, something, temperate and beautiful?”

A quote from a great thinker or famous wit, then? Still, you’d get nothing more than the sight of me looking alternately purplexed, befuddled and discombobulated*, which, if it hadn’t been you that asked the question, would probably incline you to point the way to the nearest public convenience.

Ask me to recite Us Two or Disobedience by A. A. Milne, though, or The Owl and the Pussycat and I’m there’s no stopping me (as much as you might wish there were). Or a trickier question – keep singing nursery rhymes with a tune to keep young children entertained for half an hour, an hour even? No problem. Songs with actions? Fine. The entirety of Fidgety Fish by Ruth Galloway (With Pop-Up Surprise)? “Tiddler was always fidgeting…”

The things is, though, that I don’t mind, really. I’m afraid that Evie, shocking as it is, doesn’t much like Shakespeare, Lettie finds the tunes in computer programming books just don’t meet her exacting standards, and while great thinkers and famous wits are all well and good, Jemjem reckons the actions to their quotes aren’t a patch on Wind the Bobbin Up or The Grand Old Duke of York.

Besides, books play a special role in our family. It can be hard to find ways to spend time in quiet, thoughtful activities when you’re alone with three one-year olds. It’s rare, for example, to find when building towers of bricks that all three girls are in the mood for building rather than demolishing, and any game involving carrying, lifting or climbing on Daddy generally ends prematurely when Daddy’s arms give out under the combined weight of three, wriggling twenty-five pound children.

But get out a book and it’s a race to clamber up on the sofa and sit in a line, to see what the story will be.

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Very observant readers may notice there’s a ring on J’s finger where before there was none. That’s because I recently proposed. It has three diamonds on it. One for each of the treasures she’s given to me.

* OK, I admit, my brain does seem to have quite a large compartment for keeping pointless words in. Anyone for defenestration?

Every day for over a week I’ve been asked the same two questions.

“Nana?” Evie looks hopeful, her eyes flicking between me and the front door.

“No, love. Nana’s not coming today. She’s not coming this week because Mummy’s on holiday.”

“Rara?”

“No, Grandad’s not coming, either. They’ll be here next week, though.”

A pause. Thoughtfulness personified. Another question.

“Nana?”

I laugh and hold her shoulder as I break the news once more. “Sorry, but no, not today. Just six more big sleeps, though, and they’ll come.”

A moment’s silence.

“Nana?” It’s Scarlett this time.

“Not today, love.”

“Rara?”

“Not Grandad, either.”

“Rara?” Jemima’s turn.

“No, sweetheart. But both Mummy and Daddy are home today. That’s good, isn’t it?”

Another pause. By now I know what’s coming.

“Nana?”

And so it went on. They couldn’t understand my explanations, of course. But, this morning, I got in quickly with a question of my own aAs they were still coming round, bleary-eyed in their cots.

“Do you know who’s coming today?” This is a question they do understand. And there’s only ever one answer.

“Nana! Rara!” three voices chorus. All three girls struggle to stand despite a whole night’s getting entangled in their sleeping bags. “Hurray!”

How many children, at one and a half, I wonder, could have the following foods listed among their favourites? And, yes, these are favourite foods, not just ones they’ll put up with for want of anything better.

Olives (black and green), gherkins, pickled eggs, mustard, horseradish sauce, pickled onions, capers, vinaigrette-dressed salad.

I can only assume it’s the result of our rather strict policy on sugary foods – namely they’re not allowed any. Not, mind you, that this means they never have any. I can’t remember the last playgroup we attended where one or another of my girls didn’t sidle up to me bearing a corner of dropped biscuit and wearing a whattya-gonna-do-about-it-huh? look of triumph on her face.

And both J and I are guilty of having our resolve crack on several occasions. No parent wants to be the ogre who has to deny their child a little slice of happiness, no matter how good you’re convinced it is for them in the long term. Especially, if you’ve been caught allowing yourself that “little slice” when you thought they weren’t looking.

Plus eating an ice cream loses much of its enjoyment when you’re being regarded by three reproachful faces.

I always hated that “one rule for us” thing when I was a kid, though, so, as they get older and more aware, I guess I’ll have to either allow them to eat sweet stuff if I do or not have it either. What a scary thought.

No, on second thoughts, moderation is probably the key. Any member of the family should be allowed sugary foods… after 7 o’clock at night! I mean, what’s the point of making up the rules if you can’t make them wokr for your benefit?

Seriously, though, I do think moderation will be the way forward. Once Evie, Lettie or Jem are old enough to ask specifically for that stuff, we’ll have to come up with some arrangement. Otherwise they might end up like me: When I was little – maybe 6 or 7 – outraged at not being allowed more sweets, I made a promise to myself. One day, when I was grown up and no one could stop me, I’d eat chocolate for every course of every single meal for a whole day. And I did, a few years ago. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so sick.

Jemima is clapping frantically, little arms thrown out-and-back, out-and-back with the kind of force that makes me want to rub my shoulder joints defensively. At one and a half years old, however, she still has the kind of babyish flexibility that allows you to happily diregard the possibility of injuring yourself through overenthusiasm. A good thing in Jemima’s case. And besides, if it gets the fairy to appear and wave back, what price would a little dislocation be?

The fairy, I should explain, is a dot of light on the dining room wall. When the sun is shining, the fairy sometimes appears and flies around the room, stopping to kiss the babies photos on the wall, dancing on the tabletop just out of reach, landing on toys, teddies, maybe even a tummy or two, fleeing to the corner if anyone shouts “boo!”, only to return if her name (”Fairy”) is called, and, if waved at with enough enthusiasm, she even darts back and forth in a wave of her own.

Jemima and her sisters love the fairy. They scream when she appears, shout “fairy”, wave, offer it food from their spoons. They laugh when it lands on their tummies or when a “boo!” sends it fleeing. Quarrels are forgotten. They’re enraptured. And when it disappears every corner of the room is earnestly investigated to find the errant sprite.

Of course, apart from Jem throwing a few quizzical looks at my waving wrist (which I now disguise by waving my other hand), none have realised that it’s just sunlight reflecting from my watchface. To them the fairy is a creature, independant, fascinating and magical.

I guess I love the fairy, too. Engaging my children, making them happy, having fun with them, it fills me with the kind of helpless joy I don’t remember having before becoming a parent. I find myself as caught up in playing as they are. None of us want to stop. And when the sun slips away we’re all equally disappointed.

But right now I feel more guilty than enraptured. It’s tea time. The sun has set. And I don’t know what spurred her to try and lure it out, but however hard little Jemima waves, the fairy isn’t going to make an appearance.

“The fairy’s gone to bed, sweetheart. She’s sleeping. Come on, let’s read a story…”

As I slipped back into the bathroom, my attention was first drawn to J, as her and Evie played peekaboo round the glass screen that runs along the bath’s side. But even as I watched them, somewhere in my mind alarm bells were ringing. I looked at the other two. Both quietly were sitting in the tub, absorbed in using various toy boats to drink bathwater with… Drink. Bathwater. The alarm bells rang louder but I still didn’t heed them. Everything seemed fine. Everyone seemed happy. I shrugged.I was about to turn away and start a game of something when it hit me.

The bathwater was cloudy. That was what had been wrong. The bathwater they were drinking was cloudy and, in fact, when I looked closer, not only cloudy but, among the mass of floating plastic toys, there was other things floating in it, too. And they definitely weren’t made of plastic.

Depth Charge!

Even though it’s not uncommon for Evie to allow the relaxing bathtime environment to loosen her bowels, I’ve never snatched her sisters away quicker. Urgh!. Jem and Lettie drinking their sister’s poo-water beats even Jemima standing and weeing then scooping up the same water to drink, as happened a few weeks ago.

Having triplets – having any kids I suppose, but more intensely with triplets – is like an exercise in aversion therapy. Poo, wee, puke, being woken up, staying up all night, screaming, snot, saliva; it’s hard to remember being revolted by these things any more. Partly it’s just that we can become accostomed to anything with enough exposure, I guess, but also, with children, the disgust is tempered with love. Is it wrong to find your own children drinking poo-tainted bathwater amusing, endearing even?

They don’t care, and as long as they don’t get ill (fingers crossed), I guess I don’t either. It’s just another anecdote to store in the family archives until they start bringing boyfriends home.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, I wonder what the exchange rate for animal sounds is? See, J and I made something of a mistake towards the end of last year, in spending lots of time teaching our girls the noises for all kinds of different creatures, to the extent that until this week, the number of animal impressions they’ve been able to do has vastly outnumbered the real words they can manage. I mean, that kind of thing’s fine if you’re Mowgli but in Leeds, English is generally easier to get around with.

Here’s how the lists compare…

You may have noticed that, while Evie and Jemima are in the list, Scarlett isn’t. We did think about choosing three names that would be about the same difficulty to write but never considered the fact that Scarlett would be a little trickier to say. Although I think part of the reason it’s not joined their vocabulary is that it’s often Scarlett who manages words first and she rarely has need to point herself out. More surprising, though, is the fact that the girls only seem to get these two names right about half the time. I wonder, can they not distinguish who’s who? Or is it the concept of names they haven’t yet fully grasped? J does occasionally get called Dadda and both J’s parents get called Nanna, so the second option is quite feasable but equally, children are so very self-absorbed it wouldn’t surprise me if they just thought of each other as “me and those other two pests who are always hanging around”.

Looking at those worlds, it’s surprisingly comprehensive. They paint a picture of the world my little children inhabit quite precisely. A world of relatives, sister and toys, where only the most prominent features of the outside world are paid much attention. There’s so much close at hand to investigate that it’s only dogs, bright flowers and celestial objects that draw the attention of a girl of one and one-third years of age.

Apparently, I was a very early talker and could say rhododendron by the age of one. But then again, I grew up surrounded by adults. My parents were still at university when I was born and no one else among their friends had kids. For our girls, it’s almost the opposite. They never spend a minute without the company of other children and, rather than being spoilt for attention and conversation, being mostly at home with just one parent means there are long periods where they occupy themselves as housework, cooking and all the other necessities are seen to, interspersed with periods when their carer has their attention split three ways. ONly if one wakes up from a nap early do they really get their mum or dad to themselves.

If I’m honest it does make me feel guilty. I wonder if their development is suffering, how it’s affecting them to never have intensive one-on-one time with a parent, whether they get enough hugs, let alone conversation. But, like so many things, all you can do is try your best. They’re read to several times a day. We have meal times together and I try to keep our chatter going. I make an effort to always respond when they call on my attention, even if it’s only a “Hello, Scarlett. I’m just making your dinner/loading the washer/letting Jemima climb on my head, I’ll be with you in a minute”. And everything I’ve read says that although triplets often have delayed language, they catch up by the time they go to school and it has little to no long term effect so maybe the guilt is just another incarnation of that lurking parental guiltiness that sprang into life 16 months ago.

And besides, is it so bad to have a vocabulary that includes fairies and flowers and people who love you but not a single sad or scary thing, to be able to ask for things but not refuse them, for every word you know to ones you can exclaim in joy? Maybe not.

All through the summer, each Sunday, the whole family plus a volunteering god-, or grand-, parent would drive over to a private school on the other side of Leeds. Each adult would take a baby and change them and the girl in question into swimwear and for an hour we would try to teach them to swim.

Everyone’s heard about how babies hold their breath automatically if they’re submerged in water but actually doing the submerging is a rather frightening affair. Especially towards the end of the course where we moved on from mere dunking to dunking and letting go. Nothing I’ve experienced since become a father (or possibly even beforehand) has combined awe and terror so completely. Watching your child float, arms outstretched, eyes wide beneath the surface of the pool is magical but as much as my rational side told me it was perfectly safe – thousands of babies take these classes every week – my irrational side would be hollering words to the effect of “Arrgh! Your baby’s in the water! No! Save her! She’ll drown! Get her out! GET HER OUT!” from the recess of my mind I was trying to banish it to.

I can only imagine what my reaction might have been had we proceeded to enroll in the second 12 weeks of the course, at the end of which parents stand at the side of the pool and drop their baby in so the baby can turn under water, swim back to the side and hold on. I’m sure I wouldn’t have been the only dad to jump in, too, just in case.

These classes brought home some of the difficulty of life with triplets. Unlike every other family there, we always needed a volunteer to swim with one of our girls which, due to holidays and other commitments meant that our girls couldn’t swim with the same person each week. On the other hand, of course, it did mean that both me and Jan could always join in, never being relegated to the poolside to watch like half of the singleton parents were. And it was nice for others to be able to join in with such an intimate activity, to share a little of the magic.

Anyway, the reason I’ve posted about our swimming lessons is that we just got the photo of all three girls underwater. Hats off to the photographer for managing to get a shot this good.

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If I thought life s a triplet dad was busy, it ain’t got nothing on life as a toddler. They just don’t stop. There’s so much to do; there’s toys to move from place to place, chairs to push along, alcoves to wedge yourself into, tabletops to reach up onto, sofas to pop out from behind of, fireplaces to post things in, curtains to hide behind, safety gates to rattle, toy boxes to unpack; the list goes on, only limited by the apparently boundless imagination (and energy) of three sixteen-month olds.

It exhausts me just watching them, especially now that they have a whole new house to explore. So, I thought I’d post a little video of them on one of the first mornings after we moved so others can marvel at their busy wanderings, too.

“The moon’s gone to bed now. Look, it’s all gone. Come on, time for your bed, too, Evie. Wave bye-bye to Mr. Moon.”

I remember thinking once, with the directness so natural to teenagers, how strange it was that parents lie so often to their children. Not just the biggies – The Tooth Fairy, Santa, “We’re nearly home” – but little lies, every day. It felt wrong that parents should lie to the people who trust them more than anyone else the world.

Of course the moon hadn’t gone to bed. And if you’re being literal, I was lying. It was just covered by cloud and I took the opportunity to distract Evie from howling at it. Yes, howling. OK, to be fair, what she was really doing was urgently pointing it out to me now that she knows the word for it. Except, in her excitement, the “m” and “n” had become lost, leaving only frantic cries of “oo” as she snapped her head between me and the silvery full moon that hung outside the living room window.

What my teenage self didn’t understand, however, is that these little lies aren’t meant to conceal – how funny that defensiveness of teenagerdom seems now – but represent, rather, the parent indulging themselves. The sad fact is that real life, after 30-odd years, loses some of the novelty that lets you see the full moon as possibly the most exciting thing ever. Well, until the next most exciting thing ever comes along (current favourites: dogs still holding strong at number one; planes and birds jostling for second place). By introducing Santa or the Tooth Fairy, or anthropomorphising the world around us, we’re introducing a little magic into our own lives.

And it’s also a way of bridging the massive gap in experience and understanding that divides adults and young children. We create a shared, imaginary world which we can all explore. Somewhere simpler, where unknowns wear friendly faces and good things happen to good people and where children can interact on terms they understand.

It’s much easier to see the moon as a friendly face than understand astronomy. Plus if you happen to currently enjoy waving hello and goodbye, it’s nice to have one more person to do it with.

So, while reality may still be novel as a teenager, as an adult, what I can’t resist the opportunity to recapture a little of the magical innocence of childhood. And if that safe and friendly world’s alluring to me, why shouldn’t I share it with my children, too.