Life In Triplicate

My friend Maureen came up with that line, and I had to use it.

And it got me thinking that there are a lot of things that come in threes, or have three parts, or involve the number 3. It turns out that 3 is a significant number that turns up, well, just about everywhere. In design, three is the minimum number of objects needed to create visual tension. Many schools of philosophy include three-way ideas, such as Aristotle's 3-in-1 idea (Mind, Self-knowledge, and Self-love), or Francis Bacon's three tables (presence, absence, degree).

Things that come in threes, involve three, etc:

My newborn grandkids, the most perfect little people in the world
Flute Trios
Good luck
Bad luck
Little Pigs
Billy Goats Gruff
Blind Mice
Bears (Goldilocks and the...)
Wise Men
Wishes
French Hens
Half of a knitted 6-stitch cable
Catholic Holy Trinity
Wheels on a tricycle
Movements in a sonata
Holiday weekends
Pigs In A Blanket
Months in each season

Image zones (not to be confused with the Zone System)

First odd prime number

Dimensions

Dog Night

Populations in Plato's Utopian city

Tic-Tac-Toe

Stooges

Phony dollar bills

Waltz time

Bean Salad

Is the third unique Fibonacci number

Cheers
Social group types in Great Apes

Meals a day

The adhesive company that makes sticky notes

Tenors

Geological divisions of the Earth

Strikes
Outs

Tolkein's rings

Days between Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection

Asimov's Laws of Robotics

Distinct species of the genus Homo

Semicircular canals in the human ear

Types of galaxies

Leaves on a Shamrock

R's

Letters on eight of the eleven numeric buttons on a touch tone phone

Power states: on, off, pause

Points in a right angle

Types of relationships between database table

A type of bet, and also the money positions in a horse race

Hat trick

Times that something is attempted

Hat worn by soldiers in the American Revolution, and also by Chelsea Pensioners in formal dress

A crowd

The Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes

Of a kind

Peas in a pod
Names in Neil deGrasse Tyson's name
Time a lady
Musketeers
Amigos
Faces of Eve
Questions (Monty Python and the Holy Grail)
Shells (Demolition Man)
Cherries on a pawn shop sign
Light bulbs (three-way)
Company
Short blasts or signals from a ship meaning "I am operating astern propulsion"

What are your three things?

Monday, Aug 3

A quiet weekend. Grace is home with Nicole. Jacob is still in NICU but is holding his own. All Gabrielle's digestion issues appear to be resolved, but both her's and Jacob's internal temps are being monitored. However, everything is looking good. Nicole is spending a lot of time at the nursery, and Nick is also spending as much time as he can at the nursery, too. He adores his babies.

I saw Jacob and Grace this weekend. They look lovely :)

First Bottles Outside the Nursery

Nurse & Gabby

Nick & Grace

Gramma Erin & Grace.

Both girls drank up over a full ounce, a good showing. I got a little spit up on my shoulder. I'll never wash that shirt again.

Some of the details

Grace, 3o minutes old.


Dying for details, are you?

The babes were born shortly after midnight on the 28th, and they were all a little over 5 lbs. Amazing for triplets. Nicole was about 34 weeks, I think. I was joking in a staff meeting yesterday that unless she spontaneously went into labor that she had scheduled a c-section for August 3rd. Damned if she spontaneously went into labor, though she didn't realize she was in labor until the contractions were very close together. We all theorize that she must have a high tolerance for pain. She barely had enough time to call Nick. Nick called me, and we arrived about 45 minutes before the trips were delivered. Nicole's mother is on staff at the hospital, and her aunt is a maternity nurse, so there was a lot of traffic when they were born, and Aunt Dawn managed to get the babies lined up in front of the nursery window for all the post-delivery business they do. I didn't get to see all that when I had the boys so this was fun.

We went home around 3am, and Nick crashed on our couch so he could go to work early. Nicole's sister stayed with Nicole last night at the hospital. Kent hustled me out of the house early to visit Nicole and the babies. Jacob is in what they call Level 2 nursery picking up extra oxygen because his saturation levels are little low. The girls are in good shape, and Kent and I were there for the first out-of-nursery feeding, that was so fun!

They'll be in the hospital for the rest of the week, go home Friday. I want to do more but I don't know what, and she hasn't asked for anything. Her family is very large and she has a lot of support. I guess we'll see how things pan out.

One day at a time!

Say Hello to Gabrielle, Jacob, and Grace

Gabrielle, Jacob, and Grace, about 30 minutes old. July 28th, 2009.
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/november19/sets/72157621749945185/

Triplet Watch 7/7/09

Nicole is carrying as if she is 42 weeks. In reality she's 31 weeks. Doctor says "any day now" and gave her her first steroid shots to help develop the babies' lungs. That's all I know for now. Here's her at 28 weeks, posing for the camera at her June 14th baby shower. Nothing there to scale, but she's only 5'1".

Tre Bambini

This is what Tasha does when she wants something. Will you look at that sad little face? "Erin, I'm a starving little dog! When will you ever feed me?"

Well, Mom's been wondering when I was going to "put pen to paper" on this topic. Kent and I are expectant grandparents of triplets!!!!!!!! Oh, you want proof you say? well, check this out:

Count 'em: Baby A (Boy), Baby B (Girl), and Baby C (Girl). I think that's how it worked out.

Nicole is five months preggers and is as big as a house (must have picture, that front porch is really something) and carrying like she's going to deliver any day. Nick says it's all baby weight, except for that front porch I mentioned.

I'm the Knittin' Grammy (much better than Gramma and I need to distinguish myself - Nicole's mother can be Gramma). For my part, I've bought baby clothes for a boy and two girls, knit three preemie beanies, and am working on a little sweater for when someone gets to about 6 months. Everything was always way too big for either of the boys when they were little, and they were kinda little when they were little. The sweater looks ginormous compared to what I THINK should be the right size, but I'm just going with it. Blankies? No, I'm not knitting any blankies. Not yet anyway. Heck, I'd have to knit three. That's a lot of blankies. No, I'm interested in sticking with quick projects.

Yeah, yeah, I know the arguments. "Well, knitting a blankie is fast, it can just be garter stitch with a border. You can crank it right out." How boring is that? It just isn't for those of us with a short attention span. I can be fairly tenacious with more complex items. They are interesting. They hold my attention. If you go out to Ravelry and look me up (erinkristi, but I guess you have to have an account to do that...Flickr has a Knits folder that has all the photos I post to Ravelry), and look at my projects, you'll see this lovely black sweater in stockinette. Gorgeous, yummy Jaeger Extra Fine Merino...it's a UFO.

For the uninitiated, non-knitting readers: UFO is, in knitting parlance "UnFinished Object." It's surprisingly apt.

Anyway, the purple and white striped sweater could work for any of them, but it's going to scream "girlie" after I add the pink and yellow doo-dads. After the sweater are some booties, then another sweater, then more little sockies, then another sweater. The bambini will probably birth sometime during the latter part of the second sweater (at least I didn't call it a "sweatie") or the beginning of the second set of socks.

This weekend I'm buying diapers at Costco.

I don't know when Nicole's baby shower is. Lester (one of Nick's friends) told Nick that Nick will have to be "Nicole's bitch" during the baby shower. I told Nick I thought Lester was pulling his leg. Lester is a sweet guy, and at the top of our list of Nick's Friends We Really Like. Lester has a bit of a sense of humor, and it's quite possible that he's pulling Nick's leg right out of it's socket. But then, it's been a very long time since I've been involved in any baby showers, so maybe that's the way it is these days. The Funky Stork has a cute article about having a celebration for the expectant dad. Actually, it's a cool site and all about the Dad part of having a baby. Their logo is especially slick, and the whole place is very Manly Man. They don't mention a thing about the dad being the mom's bitch during the shower ;)

I tagged this as photography, too, because I hate how my photos of yarn and projects turned out! ugh! Did I forget all my skills? Does my lighting suck? Well, the lighting clearly does suck, and I tried to fix it using a low-end image editing tool (stoooopid). It's not the fault of the image editing tool. IrfanView, which is my absolute favorite quick image editing tool for tasks that don't require Photoshop, doesn't do the kind of heavy lifting that these photos required. I use IrfanView for cropping, sizing, lite editing, and viewing all manner of weird image formats because it's very fast. Small application footprint. BUT: don't give it images whose white balance so screwed up that new images are required. I think that's where we are with these. Shame, too, because I spent quality time on that activity. There are few things on which I'm willing to perform this level of rework. My photography of my yarn. No, I just can't let it go. This is a problem of Erin versus The Flash. I will win.