My Diary of Triplet Fatherhood

As one of four boys who went to an all-boys school, girls clothing has always been something of a mystery to me, both more detailed and more complex than the straight-forward stuff us blokes get to wear. So it is that this second week of being a stay at home dad has turned out to be challenging in a way I’d not at all expected: dressing my girls.

In the early days, J and I made a conscious decision to dress Evie, Lettie and Jem only in baby grows, as things were difficult enough without adding socks into the equation. And then it started to get warmer and, for months, they wore only dresses. Admittedly, even baby grows can prove difficult. The only explanation I can think of for the poppers not matching up so often, despite carefully aligning before the popping commences, is that, down in Hell, the Devil occassionally checks his watch, and, seeing he has a few minutes before his next set of sinners arrive, smirks to himself as he diverts his attention to the change tables of a few first-time parents across the globe…

But nothing compares to dresses. All those cute, little buttons shaped like love hearts and bunnies were never designed for the big, clumsy, man’s hands God blessed me with. Even if I was dressing a doll, I’d probably need tweezers for some of those things. When trying to do them up on a baby spinning around like Taz… well, maybe the devil designed those, too. For when he hasn’t got time to do the popper thing.

Give me zips and velcro any day. Or, even better, elasticated necks and waistbands.

Of course, elastic is part of the problem on the trickiest bit of clothing of all. Tights. How do you do it? When it takes two hands to hold the leg open wide enough to get a foot to the bottom, where am I supposed to get the hand that holds the baby’s leg from? Let alone the one that keeps her from flipping over and crawling away. And even when I do get one leg in, it nearly alsways comes off while I’m trying to do the other.

So when I took all three of my girls to the supermarket yesterday with tights on under their dresses, I was a bit miffed no one complemented me on the feat I’d achieved. Mind you, the feet on all three sets of tights were pointing backwards…

It’s been a while since I posted any photos so this is just a quick post to show off how very big my little girls have become. They’re not babies any more, they’re little girls, and it makes me feel vertiginous to think of how fast it has all happened.

All three have said their first words (”Dada” in each case – how cool is that!), Scarlett and Evie have spent the last couple of weeks figuring out how to stand unaided and Jem, despite only bothering to have a go a few days ago has picked it up remarkably fast (just letting them do the hard work of figuring it out, I reckon), and, most exciting of all, on Friday, Scarlett took her very first steps.

Both her grandad and I have been trying to teach her to move on from standing to walking, and, finally, after much effort and concentration, she can just about manage two or three quick paces.

Anyway, the photos…

Here’s all three of them, taking turns wearing the dad hat my mum got me for Christmas. First Scarlett (posing)…

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…then Evie (chortling)…

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…and Jem, thoroughly overexcited by the whole thing (as usual).

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And finally, here’s all three in the same pic (something that’s becoming increasingly difficulty to achieve), helping me write my blog. That’s Jem on the left, Scarlett in the middle (of course) and Evie being slightly barged out of the way on the right.

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I have also posted pictures of their birthday on my Google gallery, here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/voidstate/FirstBirthdayPictures

I’d been meaning to write a post summing up this past year. Nothing in my life has been like it and I wanted to take a moment to reflect on what’s made it what it is. So much has changed. And despite the tough times, it’s been more fulfilling than I could have imagined. And, of course, without the tough times it never would have been so life-changing. It’s when we’re challenged that we define ourselves and grow and, over this past year, I’ve grown more than I can have done in five or more years beforehand.

So, forgive me if it sounds sickly but if you asked me if I had any regrets about my first year of fatherhood, I could honestly answer that there’s only been one: That no one told me earlier how brilliant it is to have children. It’s almost as if there’s a conspiracy among parents to frighten the childless of having kids themselves. At least, that’s the only explanation I can come up with for the negativity so many parents come out with. Either that or (and I don’t like to think this might be true) perhaps not all parents enjoy parenthood as much as I find I do. Perhaps, for them, the inconveniences outweight the joys and so it becomes a burden although I hope that’s not so.

In any case, I haven’t had time this week to write that post as I am now (for half the week, at least) a SAHD, a Stay At Home Dad. Half of Wednesday and all of Thursday and Friday it’s just me and my girls, home alone and unsupervised.

Unfortunately, though, this week they have all been ill. Even now, I can hear through the baby monitor that Scarlett is waking herself up coughing every twenty minutes and the chest infection that’s spread among them has meant that they’re all been feeling rather unhappy… or at least I assumed it was the illness making them sad but, after a morning of downturned mouths and moaning, when we visited J at work this afternoon, a transformation took place that made me wonder if it really was the illness. Durng the whole lunch hour we were with J, there wee no downturned mouths or moans, just grins of happiness and bellows of excitement all round.

Oh, well, I’ve had a year of being the one who gets cheered when he comes in from work. It’ll be nice for J to get to experience that rush of happiness as well.

The baloons are up, as are the shiny, pink Happy First Birthday banners. The playhouse we’ve bought the girls is filling a quarter (and possibly more) of the living room and, on the shelf, there sits a pile of cards and exciting-looking bundles. Yet, upstairs, Evelyn, Scarlett and Jemima Hadley sleep on, not only unaware that therir birthday arrives with the dawn but unaware of what a birthday is. It’s thier first, ever birthday and I’m excited enough for the three of them.

A year ago today I couldn’t conceive of what it meant to be a father, of how much the coming year would change me, of how different it is to live parenthood than to hear about it from other people. And, to be honest, even now I’m only just coming to terms with it all.

But if I’ve learnt one thing, it’s to wring as much enjoyment out of every day as there is to be had because you don’t ever get that day again. So now I’m off to bed. Because tomorrow I’m planning on doing a hell of a lot or wringing.

Good night. And thank you to everyone who’s read my blog over the last year, and more. It’s been a privilege to share the thoughts, feelings and experiences I’ve had and if the next year’s are one-half so good, I’ll be happy to share them, too.

Poor Jem is jealous. In the last few weeks both Evie and Scarlett have really got the hang of stacking stuff and every time they manage to get two to stack both J and I encourage them with claps, smiles and cheers. So much so, in fact, that both now clap themselves and look up expectantly whenever they get two blocks or cups to balance.

Unfortunately, while the encouragement has definitely helped to motivate Evie and Scarlett, it has had the opposite effect on Jem. Whenever she sees stacking games starting she powers over and makes a big show of pushing the towers down and purposefully scattering the blocks across the floor. Until yesterday I just assumed that, because she laughs while she does it, she just preferred whacking to stacking, and would, in her own time, begin to take an interest.

Yesterday, J was playing at stacking with Evie, as usual J clapping delightedly whenever Evie successfully placed one on another, and I noticed that Jem was watching, her expression somehere between worry and hurt. Then, having stared at her sister’s activity for a while, she charged over, joining in in her own, inimitable, Godzilla-reducing-downtown-Tokyo-to-rubble-like way.

So, this morning I tried to sit and do stacking with her alone. Only Scarlett spotted us and came over, stacking her two blocks over and over (of course expecting a cheer each time) while Jem could only heavy-handedly whack one block down on the other so hard it bounced off, eventually getting frustrated and, pausing only to push over Scarlett’s stack, crawling off to find something less stupid to play at.

This is something I’ve worried about from the start. With each girl so close in development, competition was always going to be on the cards. But how do you encourage one sister without making the others feel inferior? And how do you find the time to give each the attention they need? And how do you play games that require concentration when there’s two other sisters who’ll likely barge in halfway through for some attention of their own?

Things have gotten much easier, in many ways, but they’re also starting to become more complex, too, and it’s hard, as a first-time dad to know what to do because any mistakes are going to be in triplicate and I’ve no chance to learn from my mistakes.

At first it felt like this is all we ever did. You’d lie on my lap, in pairs or alone, and I’d hold bottles. From dawn to dusk and well beyond, feeding like this was our interaction.

Tiny, immobile, at the whim of your instincts, you’d lie where I lay you, suck when I offered you milk. I’d wait for your eyes to meet mine and I’d wonder…

.. at your beauty. True beauty – The kind that leaves you not just wordless but uanable to form a thought, all reason overwhelmed.

…at how old and otherworldy you looked with your wrinkled eyes and faraway gaze.

…at how, one day, you’d come full circle and look this way again; with a whole lifetime under your belt you’d once more be tiny, helpless, your thousand-yard stare seeing things no-one else could know.

…at what you must be seeing. Did you know me yet? Could you tell that I loved you more than, just weeks before, I had known was possible? Imagining the world without context – a dazzling cornucopia of lines, shapes, colours, sound and movement – your gaze resting on me became the greatest compliment you could pay.

Those times were so still, so thoughtful. Both you and I were new to this.

And now?

Now it’s tea-time, as we’ve come to call the last milk feed of the day. I have a pillow across my lap and a cushion against each hip. Scarlett and Evie lie head-to-head atop the makeshift platform and still their legs dangle past the cushions’ ends. Evie’s crying in frustration. She’s seen me bring in three bottles and doesn’t want to be the one who has to wait to be fed. Scarlett just wants the bottle cap and is trying to grab it, making getting milk to her and Evie take longer, Evie to cry louder.

Teatime is the last feed we do like this. Where once we fed the girls eight times a day, taking an hour and a half each time, they now only have a cup of milk in the morning and this bottle at night.

Both girls fall quiet as I feed them. At eleven months old, each day is so busy. What with crawling, coasting, climbing, whacking, stacking, dropping, a girl hardly has time to breathe. But now, for these final ten minutes of the day, that business is over. Eyelids droop. Little fingers hold my little finger as Scarlett clutches the hand that holds her bottle, Evie’s tears are forgotten, and, for a moment, I can see the stillness of their newborn selves.

Tiny and immobile, I can feel Scarlett’s heartbeat under the heel of one hand while, with my other, I use my little finger to wipe tear streaks from Evie’s cheek. And I wonder…

…what the next year will bring?

…will I ever stop being new to it all?

…will time ever stop passing so quickly, each stage slipping away before I’ve finished enjoying it?

And then the spell is broken. Jemima reappears. Popping up from beneath my knees with a cry of “da-da-DA!” she reminds me that maybe growing up isn’t all bad.