Our Triplets have lived with us for just one week!

Greetings from our home in Lafayette, Colorado. We are now adjusting to the changes that our dear miracles have brought us. We now find holding, loving and changing our babies to be the focus of our lives. All of our meals, movies, and walks are scheduled precisely around our predictions of their next "care" session. We are feeling stronger as parents and my dear mother, Pat, is a huge angel to us all. There are many new experiences as parents and/or as a grandparent of premature children; for starters, the idea that the louder the noises and the need for a swing to rock them to sleep are just going to have to wait until they are all at least full term which will occur just after Thanksgiving.

As the leaves change colors and begin to fall, we shed our own life as a couple and embrace a winter of nesting together as a family of five plus Grandma. We embrace the new and look forward to a spring where the kids can more freely be enjoyed by dear children and friends in our lives. We are so grateful for the support from all of you.

Our friends' meals shared with us have been the fuel that keep us going to love on our triplets every need; this nourishment that we share as a family gives us a sense of calm in our busy storm and a chance to regroup as a team and renegotiate the upcoming twelve hours of caring for our love bundles. Without friends' generosity this first week as new parents, my family and I may have all suffered. We thank you all for your support!

As we look over the week in pictures, we can gather a sense of what has happened. We managed to take our triplets on their second car trip of their lives to see Dr. Diana Tanney at the Boulder Community Hospital Medical Center. Each of our children has gained his/her necessary one ounce a day! Yahoo.

We've also just been living in our nursery upstairs with the kids about 12 hours per day and troubleshooting different and hopefully more efficient ways to feed, swaddle, and bathe our little ones. We are getting better. Now, if any of you know how to manage with sleep deprivation, we certainly are open to your ideas. We've all quickly learned after a few sleepless nights that we all cannot be awake for each of the kids' feeding times; we must rotate and share the responsibilities. We are open to any comments, advice and questions, just drop us an email to SuziMark@VanAlstyne.com


We hope that those of you who are far away or near can enjoy a few photos by clicking on this one of Maarten with his green frog, Monique with her red dog, and Marek with his yellow bird!

Kids' first week

Create a great day and know we appreciate your ongoing support!
- Mark, Suzi, Grandma Pat, Monique, Maarten, and Marek

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We're attaching a neat list of "What changes when you have a baby? A better question may be: What doesn't change? Here, writer and mom, Rebecca Woolf, lists her most notable post-baby observations," as posted on BabyCenter.com. Please add your thoughts and comments at the bottom of this blog as well so others might share in them!

1. You finally stop to smell the roses, because your baby is in your arms.
2. Where you once believed you were fearless, you now find yourself afraid.
3. The sacrifices you thought you made to have child(ren) no longer seem like sacrifices.
4. You respect your body ... finally.
5. You respect your parents and love them in a new way.
6. You find that your bab(ies) pain feels much worse than your own.
7. You believe once again in the things you believed in as a child.
8. You lose touch with the people in your life whom you should have banished years ago.
9. Your heart breaks much more easily.
10. You think of someone else 234,836,178,976 times a day.
11. Every day is a surprise.
12. Bodily functions are no longer repulsive. In fact, they please you. (Hooray for poop!)
13. You look at your bab(ies) in the mirror instead of yourself.
14. You become a morning person.
15. Your love becomes limitless, a superhuman power.