Little tricks

After stating that I have my hands full, the second most common comment is, "how do you do it?" as they stare with mixed amusement and horror at my three, wiggling boys. My most frequent responses are, "I don't" (which I'm not sure what I mean by that), "It's nuts but it's fun" (for those who can't imagine not loving every minute of it - obviously, people who have no clue), and, if the boys are really acting up, I just grunt and shrug my shoulders while controlling my urge to throttle the person who is somehow challenging my already limited amount of patience.

Of course, I could be a bit more helpful, though, so I'm going to try to start writing periodic emails on little tricks I have come up with to manage the chaos. No one likes long lists so I'm going to keep this relatively short and sweet. Hope these are helpful to someone out there:

* One of my most recent tricks that has proved handy is pouring a 1/4 cup or 1/2 cup of water (I totally don't measure - I'm just giving you an idea) onto the tray of the twins' high chairs at the end of their feeding but before I want to get them out. The high chairs we have have a nice large tray that is recessed enough to hold the babies' foods. Benefits of this are: babies are supremely entertained by splashing like mad in it which helps wash their already messy hands and their face to some degree depending on how enthusiastic their splashing is; it cools them off when it's hot; and it helps to begin cleaning the messy junk off the tray.

* In an effort to reuse things around the house, we found a fun way to reuse the Graduates Veggie Puff containers. After the boys have finished eating one, we clean it and tear the advertising label off so that it's just white. (For those of you who haven't had the privilege of getting these, they have a unique shape that is cylindrical but with a curve in it.) It dawned on me that they're shaped like bowling pins. We have collected enough of them now that we place them on the hardwood floor in our living room like they are set up for bowling and we let the big buy (and us when we can't control ourselves) have at it with a fun game of bowling using whatever balls we can grab at the time. It's fun, it's cheap and it keeps garbage out of the trash.

* Our oldest is a very passionate dude. When he likes doing something, particularly an activity that he hasn't done before, he goes absolutely nuts. An example is that he has been introduced to alphabet games on the computer. His first experience with the games was so amazing to him that he absolutely flipped out when we had to stop. Flipped out. Rather than avoiding the activity altogether I started using a timer to give him a clear idea how long he could play. So, I set the timer for 30 minutes and he knows now when the timer goes off it's time for some other activity. The first time we did it he was a little grumpy but the second time he just jumped and ran out of the room. It was super.

Anyway, these are some things that have helped me and perhaps they could help someone else. Although some are "original" to me in that I came up with it without having heard about the idea from someone else (i.e., they're probably not totally original), the timer idea for sure is something I had heard about and wanted to pass on.

I'd love to hear from you too. If you'd like to share a trick of yours, please comment to this post so that we can all help each other out.