Age three has been a tough age. They’ve been 3 since October, but January is the month where they are technically 3 had they been born at 40 weeks gestation. What we are seeing: More pushing back (much more telling us no), they are acquiring and refining new skills and learning at a faster clip, much much much more talking, and other new challenges. And unfortunately (for Angelique) Costco decided to stop selling the holiday egg nog already – boo! 👎🏽

Each of their unique personalities is branded with its own flavor of defiance – and they all manage to pull this off with style and grace.

It is important to note that they do all of this stuff while getting ridiculously cuter by the day. They each insist on challenging our patience daily. Angelique, being home all day long with them, takes the lion share of it. They save some for me in the evenings and on weekends. What they don’t realize (that we do) is that it is all part of the process of growing up. Also, they don’t realize that we are actually very patient people – we waited patiently for 7.5 years to have them, so the stuff they put us through is cake compared to the frustrations that come with trying to conceive and not succeeding for as long as we did. I don’t wish that reality on anyone.

As a manager/leader, I am firm, but fair. As a parent of multiples, the key is consistency. It’s one thing to have an older child and the youngest can learn from the mistakes the older child makes, but in our case, given they are all the same age things tend to have a cascading effect as everyone is observant. Someone is either good or bad by example. Michaela tends to be the first to do everything, and leads the way in the trouble department. Emma tends to learn from the other two’s mistakes and not make the same ones, much like I did growing up. Christopher tends to get sucked into the trouble vortex as he is Michaela’s partner in crime. Needless to say age three has found those two on timeouts the most. They try and pit their parents against one another, running to mommy for sympathy, but that doesn’t work…ha!

However, things change as the venue changes. For example, we were at Grandma and Grandpa’s for Christmas Eve dinner and Emma found herself on timeout repeatedly because she was throwing toys over her shoulder over and over and they came close to hitting folks several times.

Reading this probably brings back memories for you parents that have long since graduated from these challenging times. Accordingly, you’re welcome for the walk down memory lane 😊

M.