To say that my triplets are competitive is the understate of the year…. no, of the century.
They are constantly comparing themselves to each other or measuring her piece of chocolate to his piece. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if Jake and Quinn were upstairs with a ruler measuring their man parts and then ‘winner’ would wag it in Claire’s face saying, “Look what I have and you don’t and it’s the biggest!”
I kind of always knew they would be competitive.
Even from their days in the womb they ‘fought’ with each other but back in those days the biggest argument was over space.
Their moving around, pushing and fighting was so drastic in the womb that one day I sat down on the toilet, felt a ‘drop’ and expected to see baby leg splashing around in the toilet.
Quinn was the baby in the lowest section of my belly. He was constantly being pushed down and stepped on by Jake and Claire. One day he had had enough so he decided that to find more space, he did this by dropping lower.
Unfortunately, that meant for about two weeks, he pretty much lived half in my pelvis and half in my vagina. He was so low, the only way they could monitor him was by putting a ultrasound probe in my vagina.
During these biweekly monitoring sessions, I always felt like some alien sex slave. Monitors and belts hooked up to my overly swollen belly and one uncomfortable dildo like ultrasound probe hang out of my vagina.
Oh the joys of being pregnant with triplets.
Jake, Quinn and Claire have literally been in competition with each other since day one. You can’t give something to one without a steady chorus of “me too’s” You can’t tell one you they did a good job with out the others demanding praise too. You can’t like how one throws a ball without the other two picking up a ball and throwing it.
Now, I realize that this competitiveness probably happens with all kids in a household but I just think it’s magnified here because they are triplets.
We really have done nothing to foster this competition, well, let me rephrase that, I have done nothing to encourage this. Jeff will play into their competitive nature, sometimes to make them get their jammies on faster or see who can pick up the toys faster and other times just because.
He’s kind of a brilliantly evil that way.
“Mommy, can we have candy?” Quinn asked one night at dinner.
“Be the first one to eat all your food and you can,” Jeff pipped in giving me a little smile.
And those were the words that they needed to hear. All the kids began shoveling food in… even Hayden who unlike his siblings doesn’t have a competitive bone in his body.
“Dwanone!” Claire mumble through a mouth full of food.
I nodded at Claire and she left her chair to raid the candy drawer. Soon she was back at the table with some candy, Smarties to be exact.
“Aw, man!” Jake lamented, “I wanted to be first.”
“Jake, hurry up and eat and maybe you can be next,” Jeff said.
Quinn and Jake began to shovel faster as Hayden took his opportunity to grab a chocolate bar from the drawer.
“Daddy, will you open this for me?” Claire asked handing Jeff her Smarties. This was the first time Jake saw the type of candy that she had chosen.
He sighed and dropped his fork, hanging his head down.
“Jacob, you need to finish your dinner.” I said, “Eat!”
Jake picked up his fork and pushed the food around mumbling to himself, “Why did she have to get the Smarties? Know she will eat Smarties and get all the smarts. I wanted to be the first and the smartest.”
Jeff cracked a smile and tried not to laugh.
I rolled my eyes at my overly competitive son and said, “Jacob, just eat.”
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