Royer Triplets: 11 months

The girls will be 11 months tomorrow and we are finally to the point where we feel comfortable taking them places. So far we have attempted the zoo and the beach. We went to the zoo over Valentine's Day weekend. They were not all that interested in the animals, but I think they really enjoyed getting out of the house and just enjoying the nice weather. Many times throughout the day, we felt like we were an exhibit with all the people stopping to stare at the "triplets", but in spite of all the attention, we were able to have a nice day as a family.

Last weekend, we tried the beach. We went with our family friends, the Byrnes. It was a hit! They loved the sand and shells. The water was still a little too cold but they loved everything else. We stopped on the way home from the beach at a fruit stand and got some fresh Florida strawberries. The girls loved the strawberries.

We had so much fun that we decided to try the beach again this weekend. This time we went with Derek, Jessica, and Mya, and this time the girls had more fun eating the sand than anything else. We tried very hard to keep it out of their mouth but with 3 of them...inevitably some sand was eaten. We were able to find a small patch of warm water and they girls LOVED it. They played in that water until it was time to go.

As far as their development, they are all walking along the couch and standing up on just about everything they can find. Everyone has mastered the correct way to crawl and Mark and I spend most of our time chasing them around. We have recently switched over to normal foods (not baby food). We were wearing more of the baby food than they were eating because they just kept spitting it out at us. So we decided it was time to switch. So far we have tried eggs, pancakes, jello, peas, carrots, bananas, mac-n-cheese, cheerios and watermelon. We can definitely tell Jillian is going to be our eater. Payton doesn't seem to like much of anything except cheerios and Gerber puffs. Hopefully she will grow out of this. As far as sleeping habits, they no longer sleep through the night. We had a good run there for a few months, but now that they can stand up and crawl around, they wake up and wake each other up. Their cribs are so close together that they will stand up and bang on each other's crib trying to wake someone else up. The bedroom they are in is probably the smallest of the 3 extra bedrooms we have, but we chose it because it was closest to our bedroom. We also chose it before we knew we were having 3. So during my spring break here in a couple weeks, we are going to paint our guest bedroom and make that the girls new bedroom. The new guest bedroom will now be the babies old bedroom. I am especially excited about this because we can paint it pink and make it super girly. We picked out a green color when we were told we were having 2 girls and 1 boy. Obviously they are all girls so now pink is the plan.

We still have challenges every day and life is no where near easy, but we finally feel like life is getting easier and we can really start enjoying our girls. This first year has been a blur and nothing short of crazy, but we wouldn't trade it for the world. Enjoy some pictures and videos.