Imagination Movers

The imagination of a two-year-old is an amazing thing and our three busy toddlers' imaginations are no exception. They are little mommies (and daddy), chefs, cats, policemen, mechanics, and newborn babies all in a single afternoon. We recently visited the Children's Museum with my friend Anna and her daughter, Reese. The kids absolutely loved all of the fun rooms and activities. Payson, Madison and Reese suited up as firemen before they took the firetruck for a spin.

Hayden drove too and all four of them loved pressing the button that made the fire
station's bell ring.

Next up, the kids did some gardening by planting "seeds" into the holes and picking and sorting fruits and vegetables.

They even had the chance to collect "fresh" eggs from under the chicken coops.


They just loved milking the cow. Actual water squirted into a bucket so their imaginations didn't have to do too much work.

During story time, the kids got to shake out their wiggles, listen to a story and do a craft.

Next up, the kids got to "discover your town" at the museum. The girls sang "Jesus Loves Me" as they played the xylophone at the "Music Hall".

Hayden played scientist at the "Science Museum."

And the fun mirrors were just too much fun!

Play the video below to see the kids enjoying their funny reflections...plus, some general two-year-old silliness.

Madison loves to play with her baby doll, stuffed animals and Little People. I just love hearing her talk softly to herself as she plays.

We have several pregnant friends and the girls love to pretend that they have a baby in their belly by putting their baby dolls under their shirts. Madison loves stuffed dogs and she now often has "a doggy in my belly." The girls are learning to smile for the camera, but it's not always natural looking, as you can see here. Hey, they're learning!

Payson is big into fixing things and often says, "Mommy, I fix it for you!" He and Madison lined up their "cars" and fixed them for nearly half an hour. Total cuteness!

We recently took a fun trip to a local dairy farm to give the kids an up close look at the cows and the milking process.

After our tour, we enjoyed some great quality drinkable yogurt and brought home a variety of dairy items including fresh raw milk. Sweet and tasty!

First Pool Party

During the first week of May we had our first pool party of the summer. While it only consisted of an inflatable kiddie pool and one toddler friend, it was a party nonetheless! They especially loved sliding down the slide and into the water over and over and over.

Payson was concerned after he stepped into the pool saying, "My shorts are wet, my shorts are wet." He immediately climbed out, and it took a good five minutes to convince him that his swimsuit was supposed to get wet. It has been so long since they swam last back in September that he's forgotten how it all works! Soon he was soaking wet and declaring, "They're supposed to get wet!" as he played in the pool.

We had a great family day together on Mother's Day. It started with a yummy pancake breakfast that Daddy cooked while Mommy slept and watched a little TV in bed. After church Keith had plans for a picnic, but it was too cold and windy to pull off. Instead, Keith set up the picnic in our foyer. The kids were super excited to get to sit in their booster seats on the floor. And Keith was pleased that he had successfully packed everything he needed in the cooler, therefore, not having to make a single trip to the kitchen. In other words, the picnic would have worked outside too! That afternoon my mom joined us in celebrating Mother's Day. Thanks, Keith, for a fun and thoughtful day!

Following our picnic the kids immediately ran off to do a picnic of their own with their baby dolls and Mickey Mouse. I love to see how the kids learn and how they can imitate things so quickly and easily...

Such as Hayden reading a book to her baby doll the same way we read books to her...

Or Payson playing Cop with his Policeman jacket. What? Policemen don't wear army helmets and Miss America sashes or carry a purse? Well, don't tell him!

After a month of refusing to wear his new Superman shirt for some strange reason, Payson finally got excited about wearing it when I offered it to him one morning. That day I showed the kids pictures of Superman online so they would at least be able to put a face with the superhero's name. Now they all talk about him.

Speaking of what the kids like, Hayden loves her sweets. She couldn't get enough of this homemade chocolate cake and kept smearing it around her face!

I've received lots of comments lately about how grown up the kids look. I am reminded daily more by their efforts to be independent and their growing vocabulary and communication skills than by their looks. I don't share many of these stories because they can be lengthy, but here's one that just has to be posted:

So, I had a babysitter on Tuesday night. Wednesday morning the kids woke up early and were chit-chatting. Then, it got quiet, followed by lots of giggles and squeals. The next thing I know there were three hyper toddlers running around the gameroom. Somehow the girls got out of their crib tents. So, I began to think about how it happened: Either the sitter did not zip one of them up all of the way and that girl climbed out and released the other girl only to have Payson follow suit, OR Payson climbed out and let the girls loose. I still don't know what happened but I now have good evidence that it was likely the latter.

The kids woke up extremely early the next morning. While I was getting ready, I heard this through the monitor and quickly grabbed a pen to write it down.

Remember that the crib tents can only be zipped down from the outside and that Payson does not have a crib tent.

M: I want to get down Payson.

H: Hayden first!

P: Hi Madison.

M: Hi Payson.

P: I made poo-poo last night.

M: Stand up Payson! I want to get down, Payson! All the way!

H: Zip it down all the way.

P: I put books in there. (They like to fill up each other's cribs with lots of books.)

M: Get down, Payson!

H: Hayden needs it, zip it down!

M: Zip it down!

The begging continues..."Zip it down!" is demanded over and over by both girls.

P: I went poo-poo.

M: Go poo-poo in the potty, okay?

P: Where did Mommy go, Madison?

M: Get down, Payson! Get down!

H: Zip it down!

P: Where did my shoes go?

H: They're downstairs, Payson.

M: Get down, Payson! Get down!

And then "Get down, Payson! Get down!" is repeated until I go up to greet them.

After they broke out of their room that first morning, I told Payson that he needed to stay in his crib until I came in to get him and to not unzip the girls' cribs. I told him once and the very next time he obeyed.

So this second morning I gave him lots of praise for staying in his crib despite his sisters' demands for him to do otherwise. He smiled back proudly at his accomplishment. What a good, confident and strong little boy we have!

And what determined and persistent girls we have! I am sure all of these qualities will suit them well in their futures, but for now, it makes for harder work for Mommy and Daddy... and gives us some good stories too!

Capturing Family- It's a Tradition!

Springtime in Texas brings beautiful wild Bluebonnets, and it's a Texas tradition to take pictures amongst them. We somehow managed to get this family photo of all three kids looking forward (the rejects were awful but, hey, we got our one shot!). We must have had a great photographer jumping up and down to get their attention, right? Not quite. Our master photographer of the day was a step stool that held our camera, set on self-timer mode.

The kids lasted all of about 2 minutes getting the family photos so the rest of the time we let them run freely, and I captured them as they played and explored. Picking our battles, we didn't protest when Hayden picked a flower or two.

I love this sweet moment we caught between Hayden and Payson as they admired each other's flowers.

Payson sharing his sweet smile.

Payson and Daddy

Daddy and his girls

The girls frolicking in the field of wildflowers

It's a Melker family tradition to take photos together each spring. The kids did great although Keith and I were all a bit exhausted after wrangling our toddlers for half a dozen poses. We even got a few smiles this time!

The whole family

Grammy and GP with their six grandchildren

The girls!

The boys are a bit outnumbered. And with two girl cousins on my side too, Payson is going to have lots of exposure to girls over the years. What a great husband he will be one day!

The Sweet family. Older cousins Chloe and Mikayla were so good and helpful which allowed us to focus our efforts on the four active toddlers.

By the time we got to our family photo, the triplets wanted nothing to do with posing or sitting still. So we had to scoop them up into our normal holding pose, but, hey, we managed a pretty good shot!

Warriorlicious

Last weekend Keith and I participated in the highly anticipated Warrior Dash along with 17,998 other modern Warriors. Keith's sister, Chelsey, and our brother-in-law, Barry, joined us in the fun. Here we are clean, fierce and ready to go at 7:30 in the morning.

Soon after checking in we ran into an Avatar. The Warrior Dash encourages participants to dress up and this girl definitely did! We later found out that she won the costume contest, and rightfully so! We went as "Team Warmonger" to show our steep competition that we were ready for war. The girls wanted to go as Team "Warriorlicious," but the men, of course, didn't want anything to do with that.

My brother, Grant, got the craze going in our family and encouraged us all to sign up. Always the older brother, he gave me a good ole' fashioned knuckle sandwich before game time. Check out his mohawk!

Negeen and I geared up for the race with our Warrior helmets.

And we're off! To get an idea of how truly awesome the race was, check out this video. We scaled hay bales, crawled through mud and under barbed wire, jumped over fire, ran through a muddy creek, climbed up a muddy slope... are you seeing the theme here? MUD, MUD and more MUD! It was so hard to run in mud and people were slipping and falling everywhere. It was so much fun!

After the race we were a proud muddy mess!

Tough girls! Me with my favorite sisters-in-law, Chelsey and Negeen.

Chelsey and Keith after they had been hosed off.

Negeen and Grant were also caked in mud from head to toe.

Although our shoes were covered in mud, the attached time chips still worked great. Although it's more for fun than competition, it was fun to see our results and how we compared to average. I was so surprised (and admittedly excited) that I came in 18th place out of nearly 600 girls in my age bracket.

There was no where to change clothes besides a porta-potty, so I climbed inside the stack of large tires...

... and miraculously came out in clean clothes. I guess this is the closest I will ever get to popping out of a giant cake!

I, along with thousands of others, donated my old muddy shoes to charity. This was just one of the many growing shoe piles.

Once we were somewhat clean, it was party time! We munched on turkey legs and barbecue sandwiches while mingling with fellow runners for a few hours. It was good ole' fashioned fun!

I wrote about my Warrior Dash experience on the Dallas Morning News Moms Blog. Check it out below with my other recent entries:

Warrior Dash - Moms need adventure too!

Perfecting imperfection with triplets

Leader of the Day: a concept that cuts quarrels among triplets

Simple ways to keep things creative for kids (and busy moms)

My Little Cupcakes

My sweet little helpless babies are nowhere in sight. I now have outgoing and energetic toddlers who want to do things themselves, make decisions on their own and mimic all things grown-up. Recently, at Grant's 2nd birthday party, sweet Mommy Dana let each kid pick out his/her own cupcake. It was so cute watching all of the young toddlers make such a big decision. While some contemplated the decision, mine took just a few moments to decide and then made their choice with confidence: Hayden= pink icing with colorful sprinkles; Payson= chocolate with chocolate sprinkles; Madison= bright yellow with colorful sprinkles. Their choices fit each of their individual personalities perfectly.

Despite the awful bacteria infection we picked up one year ago at a friend's petting zoo, we have managed to put it past us enough to allow the kids to participate in petting zoos. But, we follow up with about three rounds of hand sanitizer afterwards and eventually a hand and arm wash down in the sink!

Hayden was shopping at home, pushing the grocery cart with one hand and pulling the baby doll stroller with the other. Hmm... sounds familiar! Did she appreciate the difficulty of it? Not exactly. Although, she did run into some frustrating and tangled up moments. If only her stroller were 150 pounds of toddler and stroller like mine is!

My precious baby dolls and loving husband showered me with love, presents and flowers leading up to and the day of my birthday. Hayden helped deliver a present nearly as big as she is!

We started to open the present together when Madison realized "Miley" wasn't there to help. We had to put the present on hold and wait for Madison to go find her baby doll (seen here sitting in her lap).

We also celebrated my 30th birthday with my family, and the cousins enjoyed eating BBQ together.

And big cousin Avery took Payson for a spin in her Jeep.

My little model, Hayden, swinging at Logan's 2nd birthday party.

Luke and Payson played at their buddy Logan's party.

The triplet's friend Charlotte fit right in with our crew that day with her coral and pink dress and her blonde curly locks. The kids loved their birthday party cupcakes. Hayden finished hers in less than 5 minutes and Madison nibbled on hers for nearly 45 minutes! Whoever heard of a cupcake babysitting a child? She began with little licks of icing off her finger until all of the icing was gone and then she slowly ate one crumb at a time to complete her sweet treat.

I have found an excellent activity for the kids to do that also helps Mommy. After I wash the grapes, I have one of the kids pick all of the grapes off the stem and put them in a bowl. They LOVE to do it and Hayden's favorite part is taste testing them.

Payson playing peekaboo with a box over his head. Love that smile! As I type this, Payson is looking over my shoulder at these two pictures saying, "Two Paysons!"