My Diary of Triplet Fatherhood

Sorry for the long gap in posting. We moved house recently and due to phone company red tape I’ve been without my umbilical cord to the internet for almost a month now (and still a week or two to go!).

It’s most unsettling.

Evie, Scarlett and Jem are also unsettled. We made a mistake on the day we moved in not bringing them to the new house until just before bedtime so they had been out all day in a strange house with their nannas, then only had half an hour in their new house before bed which proved to be exactly the amount of time it takes to get three fifteen month old girls thoroughly overexcited.

That first night Scarlett was awake for hours. Poor thing. The second strange bedroom in a day really trouled her and she’s still not fully recovered almost three weeks later. Those first few night all the girls would wake up and stand against the bars of their cots, eyes wide and tear-filled in the half light of their new room, wailing their distress at the unfamiliar environment. It was horrible. See, for all the wonderfullness of being a dad to triplets, there is one, inescapable downside: I can’t hold them all at once. Nowadays, in fact, even holding just two of my girls for any length of time is becoming impossible, so as they cried in the darkness, we had to move between them, comforting each in turn then leaving them to cry again.

Nights are better now but Scarlett continues to wake up early from her lunchtime nap and I can’t help wondering if she’ll ever return to the happy routine she was in before.

Anyway, setting aside sleeplessness, it’s such a relief to have moved. No more carrying the girls up a flight of stairs every time we need to move from one room to the next, no more three flights of stairs between kitchen and nursery, no more building barracades around the cooker when the oven is on. Now we have a seperate kitchen with a gate keeping the girls safely in the connected dining room where they can toddle around happily without setting their parents’ danger-sense tingling.

At least now they toddle around happily. At first all three would stand at the gate and cry, occassionally throwing toys into the kitchen to highlight their outrage at being cut off from their parents (or maybe they just missed the thrill of dicing with danger, I don’t know).

It was hard to know what to do except keep things as normal as possible, be there to give comfort and wait for the change to seem normal. At their age, the house you live in makes up your entire world. Without warning everything they held familiar was snatched away and replaced by a foreign world with strange features: a nursery where their cots aren’t squeezed comfortingly together, different stairs, rooms they can see but can’t go in, no playhouse in the front room. Fortunately, at their age, memories are also short. I wonder if they even remember their old house now as they slowly but steadily set about exploring, playing in and generally leaving their mark on (read: trashing) this new one.

And we still have one surprise left to spring. We have a garden now and as soon as both the weather and their ability to not fall flat on their faces on the concrete path (as happened with our one, abortive attempt at letting them out there – Scarlett’s bust lip has only just gone down) have improved, they’ll have one thing that was never available before: the chance to play outside. Already their playhouse sits tantilisingly on the lawn and if the triple swings on their Christmas list materialize, there’ll be another world for them to explore (and trash) come springtime.

What have we done? Oh, sure, we had the best of intentions but don’t the architects of all great disasters? And it’s my fault, really. J wanted to wait, to grow their hair out but, no, I insisted in cutting Evie, Scarlett and Jemima’s fringes for them.

I just couldn’t bear to see it bothering them anymore. The longest strands had reached their eyes but they didn’t know to push it away so all day they’d be blinking and squinting as hair tickled their eyelids and brows.

So, optimist that I am, I argued that we should just cut them a fringe. I mean, how hard could it be? Comb it down, snip, snip, snip, and it’s done.

Comb it down, snip, snip, snip and your little girls turn from cute, little, wild-haired urchins to sloping-fringed spods, more like. How hard can it be? Not hard at all… if you’re trying to fit in in a backwoods, red-neck trailer park.

It didn’t occur to either of us that cuttin their hair in the bath would mean that, it being wavy, it would spring back shorter, nor that doing it as quick as possible to avoid the risk of cutting something other than hair might not lead to the straightest cut. And it’s only now I look at them, I realise that a fringe should perhaps blend into the hair to the side of it and not just be cut directly across the forehead.

Poor girls. There’ll be pages now in the family album that I’m sure will get turned past very quickly when future friends and boyfriends show an interest. Either that or they’ll have been so scarred by what we’ve done to them that they end up moving to Tennassee so they can show their pictures without dying from the shame.

Anyway, I’ll let you judge for yourself…

Here’s Jethro.. um ,I mean Jemima…

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… Scarlett (eating her morning grits)…

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… and Evie (with the wonkiest,widest, shortest fringe of all – she was unlucky enough to be the first to have her’s cut).

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And here’s Lettie and Jem in their dungarees, waiting for the ho-down to start up.

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Everyone has their little bedtime rituals – winding watches, saying prayers, double-checking the front door’s locked – the habitual activities that allow them to sleep soundly. For me it’s checking in on my kids.

I always try to tread carefully as I slip upstairs, worrying with each creak that someone will stir. I don’t want to disturb their slumber. Their sleep is special. For me, I know that if I don’t sleep well tonight I can catch up tomorrow, or later in the week, or (as I had to learn to believe in the early days of triplet fatherhood) just sometime. But life is so new to my little girls. Each day is a new journey, full of surprise and revelation, each moment within it lived to the full. And, equally, each night is completely free of care – perfect, of-the-moment sleep it seems a crime to interrupt.

There is also an element of selfishness in not wanting to wake them. Being about to go to bed myself, I’m hoping that I won’t have to rock a crying baby back to sleep, but, also, with a diferent kind of selfishness, neither do I want to be denied my chance to check on them. A slight stirring would see me slipping back downstairs, my chance to check lost, the risk of all of us sleeping too great.

Their room is blackout-blinded and the only light eminates from the baby monitor and electric heater, so when I first enter I can’t see a thing. I can hear, though, and smell. That heady newborn fragrance is long-gone, of course, replaced with the individual mix of scents all people have and which I’ve learnt to love this past 15 months. But it’s the sound of breathing that I really want to hear. Those reassuring snuffles, breaths and snores that tell me they’re OK.

Sometimes I’m only quick, hovering inside the door just long enough to be sure I’ve caught the sound of breathing from three different directions, while other times I linger longer, wait for any disturbance caused by the burst of light as their door was briefly open to fade away, allow my eyes to become accustomed to the gloom.

I find myself reaching out to touch each one in turn, to reassure myself that they’re there in the darkness. As my eyes adjust, the sillouette of a body forms, outlined against the white of their bedsheet, and I dare to put a hand upon a little body, risk waking up whoever lies there and shattering the silence. But I have to. I need to feel her breathing so I lay my palm on a back or chest until I’m sure I’ve felt movement.

What am I checking? Although too horrible to normally admit it to myself, I guess I’m checking that my little girls are still breathing, perhaps because of some anxiety left over from those worrying days of J’s pregnancy when we were bombarded with warnings of the many, many risks we faced. Or perhaps it’s just the morbid disquiet that affects all parents to one degree or another.

On a deeper level, this nightly check is something more essential. I’m checking that these three, little girls exist; affirming the reality of my life. This new life sometimes seems just so unreal. Not many men become a father of three with so little time to prepare. It’s still all sinking in.

An irrational part of me worries that I’m tempting Fate when I slip into their bedroom each night, that somehow by checking that my girls are safe I’ll encourage the very dangers that scare me. Which makes me want to stay longer, as if somehow they are safer with me in the room than just a couple of rooms away, and sometimes I do. Sitting down on the floor, I’ll listen to three patterns of heavy, slow breathing intermingle. I’ll let my thoughts wander. What are they dreaming? What have they learnt today? Do they think of tomorrow? Who are they? What will they be?

We slept away a few weeks ago, J’s parents babysitting overnight so we could go to a wedding, and, as I lay in bed that night I asked J if she thought the girls would be OK. Of course, she told me, and reassured me that we would have been called if we were needed, that their grandparents would take every care with the grandchildren they loved so much. But that wasn’t what I meant. As I drifted off to sleep myself I asked another question.

“But what if they need their mum or dad?”

As promised, here’s some pictures of my girls playing with their dolls. Evie is definitely the most taken with them which is interesting, as from an early age J thought she would be particularly kind. She likes cuddles most, was the first to kiss, is the most likely to be cuddling a teddy when we go in to the nursery to wake her and her sisters.

I took this ne while she was playing quietly with Jem’s doll, the little boy. As he sisters romped noisily around the room, she’d taken the doll and sat queitly out of the way.

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And here Evie has Scarlett’s doll, and is feeding her with the toy bottle that came with here. Unfortunately, the bottle has ‘disappeared’ after Evie took to toddling around with it in her mouth and terrifying her parents that she’d fall and hurt herself with it.

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And here’s Jem. She shows the least interest in the dolls now the initial excitement has worn off, preferring toys that you can climb on, rattle, shake or bang togather.

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And this is Lettie taking a bite out of her dolly’s hand. Not the kindest thing to be doing but definitely better than biting her sisters.

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It regularly astonishes me how much my girls are capable of communicating. Their vocabulary is so small, the words thay can speak remaining limited to different variations on the Ba, Da, Ga, Ma and Na they learnt several months ago. Not much to work with you might think, but they get by remarkably well.

Take Ba words, for example. “Bearbear” is teddybear, “ba!” is “ta” (as in thank you, or, perhaps more accurately, “here you go” -the girls are copying me asking for things and haven’t quite conceptualised that thay should say ta when they want things rather than when giving), “baybay” is doll, “mmm-ba!” means kiss, “bee” means “beep” (the noise I make when playing the I’m-a-gonna-beep-your-nose game,) and then, of course, there’s “banana” (or “barara” or “bamama” – they still haven’t quite nailed that one down).

One of the first things I read about multiples was that they tend to acquire language later than singletons. Being one of two, three or more not only means there’s less impetus to make themselves understood but they also receive less individual attention. If I’m honest, I have to admit that while I have always been prepared for them to pick up language a little later than others their age, I’ve also never quite been able to escape every father’s illusion – that my children will, of course, be very advanced for their age (multiple birth or not).

So it’s good to remind myself that I shouldn’t allow my own competitiveness to cloud my expectations for my children. Being advanced for your age is just as much of an illusion, after all. Kids develop in leaps and starts and no snapshot is going to tell you anything meaningful. And besides, what difference does it really make what your child learns and when? What matters is that they are safe and loved, and trust those facts enough to be confident, happy and kind.

Plus, there’s more to communicating than words. The girls have developed several mimes, from such generally useful things as asking for something they want, letting me know they’re thirsty or pointing out exciting dogs in the park to such specific requests as that I sing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star to them (they just do one of the actions and look up at me expectantly), and between those and the words they know (and the many more they understand), we get along just fine.

I guess I’m also secretly hoping that they might develop a secret language. I’ve always found the idea fascinating and would love to not only watch them form their own lexicon but hopefully understand, too. On the other hand, I also worry that they will – it might lead to them isolating themselves from other kids and set back learning English properly – so, as cute and as interesting as it would be, I try not to encourage mistakes they make (”bearbear” instead just “bear” for teddybear, for example) so I doubt it will happen.

I guess it all comes down, just like so many other things in parenthood, to allowing your children the space to grow at their own pace. It can be hard sometimes to just stand at the sidelines cheering when you care so much but I guess that’s just the lot of a Number One Fan.

I bought the girls their first dolls the other day, nipping out to Toys R Us during my lunch.

I’m generally not too keen on gender-specific toys but, apparently, every time they go to play group, all three head straight for the baby dolls and spend much of the time cuddling them and carrying them round which just sounded too cute to miss out on. And besdies, I spent my entire childhood shooting or hacking at everything in site with toy guns and swords and I assume my girls will have inherited at least some of my contrariness.

After an initial period of confusion as I wandered the girls’ toys isles bewildered by the difference between the gazillion dolls they sell – rather like lingerie shopping, I thought; I mean, how many different types of pants do you women need? – I managed to figure out that, thankfully, the vast majority of the dolls for sale weren’t suitable for one-year olds, posessing as they did all manner of chokable accessories, strangulable ribbons, smotherable hairdos and the like. And of those that were suitable, all were black.

Until that moment, I’d not really looked at the skin colour of the dolls Toys R Us sold but stepping back to take it in, I was startled by the plastic apartheid I was witnessing. All the white dolls came not only with accessories – car seats, outfits, pushchairs, prams – but were in possession all manner of interesting talents – they cried, moved, weed, had beautiful hair – while the black dolls didn’t even come in boxes and were just piled haphazardly on one end of a shelf.

I wanted three different dolls, though, and the heap of black babies only had a boy and a girl so I had to go back to loking at the others, eventually finding a single white doll that was suitable for under threes – a girl in a car seat – which I bought along with the black boy and girl.

And the girls were thrilled. Too thrilled, perhaps, as I made the mistake of giving them their present when I got in from work which meant none of them wanted to go to bed.

It was amazing. I never knew children so young were capable of make believe. Evie, in particular, as well as rocking her doll, pretends to feed it while making slurping noises and puts it in the car seat which I’ve placed in the quad bike she got for Christmas before pushing it around the front room. Of course, she also pokes it in the eye and drops it on it’s head which I’m pretty sure she can’t have picked up from me.

It’s so cute to see them cradling their dollies, glistening patches on their plastic foreheads form the kisses they’ve been given, or to cuddle one of my children while she cuddles her own little baby. Knowing they can give affection like that really warms my heart, reassures me that, despite my attention being split three ways, I’ve been able to teach them what it is to be loved.

Arms outstretched they lurch towards me, grasping, hungry. Their legs jerk stiffly as they walk, threatening to send them toppling to the floor. But they don’t collapse, they just keep coming – three of them – cornering me. Can’t anything stop them?

One of them lets out a gurgle, white liquid dribbles from its mouth. It’s chewing something. I shudder, try not to think what it might be. An incomprehensible groan escapes the second, “Brrrrrraaannnaaaaaa…”. My god, what did it say? Brains?

The third one screams and lurches forward, its sudden speed surprising me. I turn, scan for an exit, dodge out of reach. But I’m tiring. Can’t run forever.

And still they keep coming, determined intelligence filling staring eyes that follow my every move.

My back hits a cupboard. There’s no escape. I’m cornered.

So I give up and share the last banana.

Experimenting,
You try putting your nose in
A kalaidoscope.

Looking up at the toy
I’m balancing on your head.
It falls off again.

It isn’t easy
Putting on vests if you start
At your tummy.

Autumn days, gentle days. Happy memories pile one upon the last like waves. Pleasantly-cool-beneath-bright-sunshine days, whistful, memory-heavy, heavy-scented already with tomorrow’s nostalgia. Sepia, soft-focussed, super-8 days. Fly-in-amber days. Forget-me-not days. First love days.

I feed geese from my fingers, Brave Daddy, his example setting nervousness at ease. Leaning sideways from their pushchair, each girl clutches her piece of bread protectively away from the edge.

Three faces dappled red and white, tomato first then yoghurt. Unaware that whacking won’t help get the last of her afters onto the spoon, Jemima’s eyes light up. She’s seen me through the kitchen window. I watch her shriek “Dada” in silence. She drops her spoon.

The same old questions. But I don’t mind any more. “One year old last week,” I’d say at first. “One year old two weeks ago,” “… three weeks ago,” “…a month ago”. One year old. Each time the words bring me out of myself. Time passes so quickly.

Breakfast’s over. Strawberries, kiwi, sliced banana. Then cereal, which they mostly feed themselves. I scoop the last into their mouths. More banana (”mamama”, “nanna”, “raraba”), gather toothbrushes. Jem holds her mouth wide open, shouting “aaah” in imitation of what I always ask. Evie wants to clean her own. Scarlett gets bored three brushes in, turns her head away… until I use her toothbrush myself and she pulls it back protectively.

I’m sitting on the kitchen floor, knees up, back leant on the cupboard. Three, full, little mouths hum “mmm” the way I do when I’m tempting them to eat. No temptation needed this time though – they’ve eaten the entire banana I peeled for my own breakfast.

The four of us alone seems normal now; routine carries us happily from hour to hour. Coccooned in the moment, the workplace seems a distant dream.

Little triumphs. Evie turns the pages of a book, carefully, one at a time, pokes each page in imitation of me tracing the words as I read. Jemima makes a diamond, forefingers and thumbs, an action from Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. She wants me to sing. Scarlett clambers up to her feet beside me, plants a beautiful, dribbly kiss on my cheek. Stumbling steps, little legs thrown forward, one, two, fall, I catch her, one, two, three, I catch her, “try again”, “well done”. Balancing blocks. I clap them every time, smile, cheer my encouragement. Scarlett tries to dress herself. Jemima passes toys as I tidy up. Evie claps her sisters when they balance two blocks.

It’s my birthday. We dare a visit to a swanky Italian restaurant; the same one J and I went to on our first date, where she told me whe was pregnant the first time round. The waiters crowd our table, competing to make the girls laugh in English and Italian. Even when they’re gone Jemima keeps trying to catch their eye, screaming in excitement. The girls are ordered seasonable vegetables and, because it’s a special occassion, chips, too, as well as eating pieces of our dishes – spare ribs, pigeon, monkfish, squid, jugged hare. So grown up, so well behaved. I give them each a little ice cream for dessert and Jem screams louder.

J makes risotto and we eat it at the table. Our first real family meal, we each have plates and spoons and cups of water. I can tell the girls feel grown up. Scarlett puts her bread and butter on top of her rice, insists on attempting to eat it with a spoon. Such good table manners already.

Crystals in the window make rainbows across the wall. I tell the girls they’re fairies as they laugh and scream and point them out to me wide-eyed.

In pictures from just two months ago they were chubbier, rounder-faced. Are they babies still?

Scarlett can’t sleep. She fell today and banged her head on a marble floor. I pluck her from bed and we slip next door in silence, sit on the bed in the empty spare room. “Shhh,” I whisper, arms around her. “You’re safe now, Sweetheart. Daddy has you. I’ll always, always keep you safe.” Scarlett relaxes, leans her head into my chest. I hope I can.

With thanks to Jemima for inspiring this one.

No wonder women
shave thier legs; walking’s easier
with leg hair handholds.

“Hey, girls… what’s this?”

“Namama!”

“Barara!”

“Ma-baba-Ba! Ma! Ba!”

“Nearly. Come on, you know what it’s called. Evie?”

“Baraba!”

“Very good but not quite right. Scarlett?”

“Banara!”

“Fantastic! You’re almost, almost there. Jemmy?”

“Rarara-Baaaah-Ba!”

“Ooh! So close, so close. Here’s a clue: it begins with ‘B’. ‘B’. Got that? Ok, try again…”

“Bababababannnnnnnnnnnnnn-Ba!”

“Ba! Ba! Ba!”

“Baaaaaaaaah-Ba! Baah-Ba! Bababababa-Ba! Ba! Ba!”

“Ok, OK, Jem, Shush a moment. That was good, really good. You’ve all got the first bit. One more try now. Ready? Ok, what’s it called..?”

“Barara!”

“Banana!”

“Ba! Ba! Baaaaaaaaa-Baba-Baba! Ba! Ra! Ba!”

“So close, just… hey, wait a minute there! Someone said it. Banana! Someone said it.” I turn around from mixing Weetabix and pear. “Who said it? Who said banana just right?”

Cue silence, of course, plus blank looks, innocent gazes flitting about the ceiling, a sudden interest in highchair trays, the works. They’d probably have whistled and rocked back on their heels if they knew how (and weren’t strapped into highchairs). Still, I flush with pride. Evie has managed the word a couple of times, her first with varying syllables any of them has learnt, but, still, she only gets it out occassionally. And her sister are just on the cusp of getting it right, Lettie tending to use Rs in place of Ns and Jem generally getting too carried away with how much fun shouting is to pay much attention to the exact sounds she’s making.

It seems strange now to think what a small part pride played in my life before fatherhood. Sure, I felt it sometimes but I doubt I felt true pride as many times in the decade before having kids as I have in the year since I did.

What a child does is just so thoroughly impressive. They start with nothing; no knowledge, no ability, no skill, just a bundle of needs and raw instincts. And then, bang!, it’s as if a starting pistol fires and they’re off, growing up. I’d never imagined just how fast they gro when seen close up nor how they grow in so many different ways at once. They take in so much, learn so many things, become so much more capable so quickly. It’s astonishing to watch them at it, building themselves into a person from nothing.

For much of this first year that’s all there was to do, though – just to watch. And then, around the age of six months, it changed – they started to interact. Where as before, if I moved they’d watch, if I spoke they’d listen, now they wanted more than to take things in passively.They see me use an item and they want it too, they hear me say a sound and they’d try to repeat it. Just a little encouragement is enough to incentive to make them try and try, again and again. It’s flattering to be one of the people they use as a model for their growth but, more than that, it’s engaging to be part of the process. Their triumphs become my triumphs. Both they and I are no longer spectators.

So when someone says banana, or takes a step, or balances one brick atop of another, I’m proud because I know how far they’ve come but also, at least a little bit, I’m proud that I’ve helped them on their way.

I received a call today from a very upset J. She’d taken the girls to Emsley Farm to meet the animals and, from the quaver in J’s voice and post-tears sniffing in the background, I could tell that the meeting hadn’t gone well.

The first thing that sprang to mind when J told me the donkey there had bitten Evie was a story her mum passed on last week about a boy who had the middle part of his hand bitten away by a horse. My heart gulped up to my throat, stopping me breathing. I had visions of blood, hospital waiting rooms, waining for doctors to tell me what was happening.

“Is she alright?”

“Yes.”

Apparently, Evie had just done what she does every day, and with the very same result. She’d poked her finger into the donkey’s mouth and poor J had seen it happening but just couldn’t get past our massive triple buggy fast enough to stop it. She heard a crack, could only imagine it was the donkey biting through.

But it wasn’t. When she did get round to Evie, the donkey had her tiny finger clamped between its teeth and would only let go after a minute or more as J tried to pull it out without hurting her baby. But, eventually, she managed it. Evie was OK. She wasn’t injured.

As I listened down the phone, the relief was astonishing. I collapsed back in my chair. I couldn’t have born my littlest girl getting injured; not any of them, for that matter. I recalled that in his youth, my uncle Ronnie (an amateur boxer) once knocked a donkey out with a single punch when it dared to bite him and I wished I’d been there today to do the same. Then I realised I probably would have just hurt my hand, too (and possibly been reported for animal cruelty) so it was probably good I wasn’t.

Evie cried and cried. Other mums gathered round. The donkey, presumably, watched on, content with its morning’s work. Bastard. I know a tower in Spain I’d love to send him on holiday to one way (and that’s down, at terminal velocity). Just by looking at the picture from the Emsley Farm website, you can tell there’s something sinister about him. It’s in his eyes…

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What’s such a shame, though, is that Evie is delighted by animals, so much so that our walks round the park now zig-zag from dog owner to dog owner so she can scream, laugh and bellow in glee at their pets. She finds them hilarious. Recently, she’s even raised the courage to stroke some of the less frightening ones and I hope this doen’t knock her confidence too much.

On the other hand, maybe, now she knows what real biting is, she’ll quit poking her finger into her sisters’ mouths.

Evie has a new nickname. I call her Gnasher.

See, after months of being helpless to prevent herself being barged out of the way, crawled over, pushed down, relieved of toys and generally suffering the fate of the small guy everywhere, she’s discovered she has a weapon that evens the odds. All it takes is one hard bite and, as if by magic, her sister backs off, she stays standing and she keeps that toy she was so happily playing with.

It’s scary. One moment she’s the mild-mannered, little cherub I’ve come to know and love, the next she’s launching herself forward like a rottweiler to savage the arm, hand (or in one instance, bottom) of her sisters.

It’s horrible to see my daughters, who I want so much to be friends, hurting each other. And it’s so hard when I have to tell her off for it. I guess I knew there was going to be a period of parenthood where the word “no” would loom large in my daily vocabulary but I’d never expected the strange mixture of futility and guilt that having to repeatedly say it would bring on.

“No, Evie. That’s not nice.”

“No, Evie. We don’t do biting in this family.” (What family does?!)

“No, Evie. Look what you’ve done. She’s crying.”

or, sometimes, for variety:

“No biting, Evie. You’ve hurt her.”

I try to add an explanation when I say it because I want to get in the habit of ensuring they know why they’re being disciplined (and so I have to reflect on what I’m doing, too) and to say her name, too, because Scarlett, big softy that she is, gets really upset if she hears me being stern nearby and thinks it’s her being told off.

But it doesn’t seem to do much good. Why would it? Sure, on one hand Daddy does bend down and point a finger at her, saying something in a cross voice. But on the other, she gets to avoid being crawled over. And whatever her reaction, I feel terrible. I hate having to tell her off anyway but if she takes no notice it’s worse for feeling pointless and if she cries it’s worse still because I feel even more guilty for not being the nice, kind daddy she expects me to be.

The hardest thing wbout telling her off, though, is that Evie has actually become a lot more confident since she learnt to bite. For a long time it wasn’t unusual to find Jemima and Scarlett bombing around the room while Evie sat and played quielty in the corner with whatever toy they’d last discarded. Now she bombs around with them, safe in the knowledge they’ll think twice before using their size against her.

Not, to be fair, that it is just Evie who bites. All three girls have picked up the habit in recent weeks (I think that’s called proliferation) and each one of them currently sports as least one set of double-semicircular indentations on an arm somewhere (if you look closely you can tell who did it – they have different numbers of bottom teeth).

And not only that, they have started to do something that leaves me completely at a loss for what to do. Putting a single finger out and moving it towards a sister’s mouth, a look on their face which I can never decide is mischief, cunning or mere curiosity, they poke it between their teeth… and get bitten, collapsing, distraught, into tears. Who do I tell off then? It’s as much the fault of whoever poked the finger as who chomped down upon it. And why do they do it? It’s happened enough times now that they must know what to expect but that doesn’t seem to stop them, and I can’t help wondering if it’s a sign. Do they want more attention? Are they so desperate to be cuddled that they’ll hurt themselves to get it? Or is it just another period of experimentation and I’m falling victim to that parental guilt that hovers over every dad’s shoulder?

I don’t know, and until my girls can talk, I guess I’ll have to accept that I won’t. All I can do is to keep trying to do the right thing every time these difficulties arise. So – anyone have any idea what the right thing is?

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.

Some people seem to immediately understand when I ask if they would mind not referring to my daughters as “the triplets”. Others require some explanation. But everyone, I’ve been relieved to discover, respects my request.

Being a multiple is a rare experience but it’s that very rareness which can cause some problems, and I want to head these problems off before they become a burden on my girls. Sure, I can see why it’s natural to lump all three of them together: Their looks, their sizes, their ages; so much about them is similar. But that doesn’t mean they are the same.

They’re only similar, in fact, until you come to know them, then you see that they are as different as any three sisters, despite sharing an environment since the moment they were born.

Take personality. Jemima laughs easily and shrugs off falls or disappointments, she’s fearless and yet well-meaning; it’s often her that makes the others laugh, initiating games of peekaboo or exploration. Scarlett is strong-willed and quick; she picks up activities easily, often seems to decide what everyone will play, and generally ends up with whatever toy she has her eye upon; yet she’s also thin-skinned and finds being challenged or disappointmented hard to bear. Evie is thoughtful; more likely to sit alone, playing quietly with her toys, she cuddles for longer before pulling away to investigate whatever happens to have caught her eye and is good at copying words and sounds; yet, despite being smaller than her sisters, has already learned to not let them take her toys or push her around and despite her thoughtfulness takes the most joy in bellowing joyously at the top of lungs when the mood is upon her.

Personality, of course, demonstrates itself in how we act, not just how we interact, and all three already show different interests and ways of expressing themselves. For Jemima, the leap from rolling to crawling was a wondrous thing and yet it’s Scarlett who loves to walk. If ever I try to put her down she arches her back to end up standing, and becomes furious if I fail to take her hands and walk with her several times around the room. When we play with stacking blocks, Scarlett tries intently to balance them like I do while Jemima has most fun waiting me to build towers so she can smash them down or just quietly goes around putting the blocks back in their box, and Evie cares little for stacking, a few attempts and then she’s off to find which blocks make the best noise when whacked together.

And while they may be monozygotic they are not identical to look at, either. Despite having the same colouring, to me, at least, they look very different. In part, I think it’s that they hold their faces differently. Their personalities are already becoming written on their features. It’s especially noticable in the midst of emotion. Their smiles are unique. Jem’s is lopsided and cheeky; Scarlett’s, raucous; Evie’s, giggly and slightly shy. And the same holds true for when they cry. Scarlett’s crying is tinged with outrage; Evie’s with desperation; Jem’s, great disappointment.

I realise not everyone can see these things straight away. But I also realise people never will if they place all three girls in a box as “the triplets” and never give their uniqueness a chance to shine.

So, please, if I haven’t asked you already, while they are triplets, they are not the triplets. And if you cannot get “Evelyn, Scarlett and Jemima” out in one breath, perhaps just ask after them singly. Trust me, getting to know them each as individuals is worth every moment of effort.