Another reason why we were a good choice for quintuplets

I have thought of another thing that helped Rachelle and me to be more prepared for quintuplets. It is our mothers. Both Rachelle and I have great mothers. Rachelle is a really great mother she owes much of that to her mom whom she wrote a tribute to in her blog. Following Rachelle's example, I decided that I would use this post to talk about some of the things my mom did to help me out.

First, my mom, Sylvia Wilkinson, sought to find humor in just about everything. This is something I definitely inherited and it has come in handy many times. Of course, it has also got me into trouble at times because I have been known to laugh at things that probably aren't supposed to be funny. However, for the most part, it has really helped.

Something else she taught me was thriftiness. Growing up, I took great pride in the fact that almost everything we owned came from a garage sale. She taught me from a very early age that you can save a ton of money if you either make it yourself or buy it from a garage sale and fix it up. Most of our furniture came from my mom's (and her siblings) weekly trips to the various garage sales around Denver. Before we were married, Rachelle actually was a little nervous that we wouldn't have anything new because I once made a comment that implied that I thought it would be ridiculous to ever buy a new couch. OK, it wasn't implied so much as directly stated. However, I have since decided that it is some times worth it to buy new things.

Over time, I have learned that the reason my mom got stuff at garage sales was often because the quality (at least the garage sale stuff we found in the 80's) was actually better than what you could typically buy at the store. For example, the furniture we found at garage sales was often made of real wood. Of course, it would some times take hours to scrape away the paint to find the real wood but it was usually down there. From this, I learned that just because something is expensive and looks good on the outside, doesn't mean it is worth anything on the inside. Being good on the inside it 100 times better than looking good on the outside.

On a side note, before Kaiya was born, we wanted to buy Riley a bed that had drawers underneath it. We looked around at a few stores and I kept looking on the inside of everything and found that they were all made of particle board or MDF (not real wood). Stuff made out of particle board is really heavy and breaks easily. I decided that I would be better off just making it myself and we ended up with a solid oak bed that cost the same as the particle board beds (unless you include the cost of the tools I had to buy to make the bed which I don't count).

Another thing that my mom taught me was an appreciation of classic movies (as well as "girl" movies). When I was about 21, she made me sit through the six episode A&E version of Pride and Prejudice. To be completely honest, I found that movie to be one of the funniest movies I have ever seen. Now, you may be wondering how that would prepare me for quintuplets. Well, most of the people that come and volunteer at our house are female. If I only knew about typical guy stuff, it would be rough. However, because I am conversant on things like the Twilight books as well as the Jane Austen movies, it helps me to not be so uncomfortable around so many women.

One final thing that my mom taught me is an appreciation of the absurd. Throughout my life, my mom has involved us with things that are basically absurd. When I was a sophomore in high school, she convinced my sister Alicia and I to dress in chicken costumes to go and perform a rap at a rival high school to help my cousin ask a girl to go to prom with him. This was fairly uncomfortable but I realize now that if you can do something like that, then there is a whole lot of other things you can do such as take intermediate clogging at BYU, do a break dance routine wearing a Star Trek uniform, or enjoy raising quintuplets. By the way, the background design for my mom's crazy Granny blog says a lot about her appreciation for the absurd.

Anyway, these are just some of the things that continue to help me as I deal with the situation we are in and I am grateful for them.

Thanks mom.

Jayson

Local NBC station visits Rachelle for a little Mother's Day Story

Yesterday, the local NBC station, KXAN here in Austin, visited Rachelle and the babies to do a little story about them.
Here is a link to the text of the story:
http://www.kxan.com/global/story.asp?s=8286638

Here is a link to the video from the story:

Answers to some questions

First, if you haven't seen Rachelle's blog, you should check it out because it gives a great update of everyone. Here is the list of questions that Buggles asked in a previous post. Some of these are answered in Rachelle’s previous posts but I don’t mind answering them again (because it lets me take up some time without having to think of some other post).

Question 1. Are the babies all sleeping through the night now?
This is a very frequently asked question. The answer is: sometimes. They were doing really well until they got sick a few months ago but have slowly been getting better. In the beginning, we would put them down without pacifiers. Now, we use pacifiers on a few of them and that means that they have a harder time getting back to sleep when they wake up. Now that they are not as sick, we usually put them in “solitary”. “Solitary” is a set of isolated “pack and play” cribs where we can stick them so that they don’t bother the other kids. We have one in our closet, one in the future Ryder and Rustin room (now a storage room) and one in the future Kassidy, Kaydence, and Kyndall room (except when Rachelle’s mom is here using it to sleep for sleeping).

This works pretty well and normally, we only have to use two of the solitary rooms. Lately, we don’t even hear much from them until about 5:30 so that is pretty good. Even when we do have to put one in solitary, he or she usually only cries for a few minutes and gets back to sleep.

Question 2. On the video of Riley & Kaiya announcing the names (which has to be the cutest video I've ever seen), Riley mentions he thinks Ryder will be his "favorite". Is this the case?

No, I think he pretty much likes them all the same. He initially liked Ryder best but now he seems to like all of them pretty equally. He might actually like the girls a little bit more because they are smaller and easier for him to hold.


Question 3. How often do the babies wear the same/matching clothes?

They have a few outfits that match and some that are exactly the same. I would say we probably do it at least once or twice a week if not more. Keeping them clean has become a little easier now that Kyndall isn’t throwing up as much. She used to throw up at least once a day and that would spoil the matching clothes. Leaky diaper is also something that causes the matching thing to not work out very long.

Question 4. Do you still have a lot of help during the day?
We have a decent amount. There are some real die hard ladies that just keep coming back and we really appreciate them for that. One in particular was hear nearly every day (sometimes all day) before she had to go and help one of her relatives for a few weeks. We are also occasionally experimenting with doing it with just Rachelle or just me. That doesn’t happen very often but the times when Rachelle has done it, it has worked out well. I usually only do that when they are either asleep or while she is in the shower (so it hasn’t been too bad).

Question 5. What do the babies weigh now?
Rachelle has all the accurate measurements on her blog so I will refer you to that.


Question 6. Which two babies look the most alike?
Not sure on this one. They all look so different with Kyndall probably looking the most different (because she looks just like my dad). I would say that Ryder and Kassidy probably look the most alike. Rustin looks almost exactly like Riley did at his age (but with red hair) and Kaydence looks a lot like Kaiya did at the same age.

Question 7. Are any of them crawling yet?
As you will see in an upcoming video, Rustin and Kyndall are crawling. Kaydence and Kassidy do a sort of army crawl and Ryder is on his hands and knees rocking back and forth a bit.


Question 8. How many teeth do they all have?

Kaydence has two and she is the only one that has any so far.

Question 9. Do Riley & Kaiya help out a lot?
They do help out a bit. And it is nice. They are getting pretty good at entertaining the babies. They also are good at helping clean things up and getting stuff ready for the babies. However, entertainment is their specialty.

Question 10. Do you have any pets?
No, and we probably never will. We aren’t really “pet people” but even if we were, we probably wouldn’t have time to take care of an animal. We have friends that lives near us who breed Labradoodles so we hope the kids get their pet fix by visiting them.

Well, that is about it for this post. Let us know if you have more questions and we can answer them either in the video or in the blogs.