The beauty of short-term memory loss ...

I don't think that it was quite three weeks ago, that I was stuck on the side yard for 30+ minutes during our debut safety harness pilot test. When I think back to that time, I can just barely make out the image of three babies dangling from their harnesses while I tried to keep them from eating rabbit poop.

It's a good thing that I have short-term memory loss. Without this characteristic, I don't think I'd ever leave the house. That's the honest truth. Somewhere in my mind I'm churning out thoughts like ... "Surely it wasn't THAT bad. I'm sure I could do it better, NEXT time. "

Let me preface all this with the fact that just this week, we have modified our nap schedule. We made the big reduction from two naps down to one. This is a huge change. HUGE. Whereas the babies use to go down for their first nap at 10:30 ... I have pushed this time back to noon, because otherwise, I found that the kids were exhausted by 4 PM, and were requiring another nap in the late afternoon, which was subsequently, pushing their bedtime back to 8 PM or later (by the time they'd actually fall to sleep).


This morning, my good friend Grace called and invited me to the local Mom's Playgroup that meets at a different park, each Wednesday morning. Since we now have a big gap of "free" time in the morning before our noon nap ... this sounded perfect.

As I was packing up the essential items we'd need during this outing ... I wondered how I'd transport the kids. All I needed to do was go from the CAR to the PLAYGROUND, so it made the most sense to leave the big bulky triplet stroller at home and just take the safety harnesses. (Thank you, short term memory loss.)

When I went to get the safety harnesses out of the garage (stashed away in our pile of "baby stuff we'll never use again" - including our bottles), the kids took one look at them and literally ran crying in the opposite direction. I felt like I was taming a wild horse trying to get the harnesses on the kids ... all the while I was enthusiastically shouting "Come on guys, this will be fun ... we're going to a playdate!!"

Once at the park, it took me a solid 20 minutes to get the kids 20 feet from the car to the playground. Similar to the last time our kids were in the safety harness get-up ... they were falling all over themselves and each other. As one would start to fall down, they'd try to stabilize themself by grabbing a hold of another's harness and then, PLINK PLINK PLINK ... down they'd go like dominoes. The one advantage to these harnesses, I found, was that I could conveniently clip their loveys right to them.

At one point, a woman came up to me and said "You have no idea just how much I admire you. It's just amazing that you dare attempt something like this on your own. How do you do it?" I smiled and said "Well, I'm a glutton for punishment. And, I'm blessed with short term memory loss."

Because we’re relatively new to this “one-nap-a-day” routine, I didn’t want to push our luck. We stayed for only an hour … which gave us sufficient time to play on toys and participate in a game of Ring-Around-The-Rosy. I did, however, notice a few new behaviors during this outing.


First - any time another other kid got within 2 feet of my trio, they'd clutch their loveys and scream. And, it wasn't just older kids that would set them off. A 14-month old baby, just barely able to walk came and stood next to William and he went mental. You'd think that someone was jabbing him with a pin. This didn't bode too well with the other two, because - as I would expect - all three of them started to scream. Oy vey. Get me out of here.

Second - the kids were wrapping themselves around me and wouldn't let go (example: Elizabeth in the photo to the left). When I would try to take a step, I'd do so with a baby stuck firmly on each leg. It was just a matter of time before my pants succumbed to the force of gravity. Yep. You know what I mean.

As I was driving home with three overtired kids, crying in the backseat ... I thought "I'm not doing that again." But already, tonight ... I'm re-evaluating the day. It wasn't THAT bad. Surely I can do better NEXT time. One thing is for certain ... I'm going to leave my drawstring pants at home and don a pair of overalls.