My good friend, Postal Worker Jane, just doorbell-ditched me.

Minutes ago, Postal Worker Jane’s doorbell-ditching yielded a wholly unexpected package. Curious, I ripped open the yellow package—and then punched the air in triumph. It was a copy of the new YA novel The Limit, by  Kristen Landon. Isn’t the cover fantastic?

I read The Limit back when it was a manuscript—a really great one, with a really enthusiastic agent, Steven Chudney. Kristen kindly credits me in The Limit’s acknowledgments for my guidance as she tweaked and polished, but the truth is that she just did an exceptional job with an unusual idea and she deserves every bit of praise that’s already coming her way for this book. I’m so very excited for Kristen. I’ll tell ya, Postal Worker Jane can doorbell-ditch me anytime!

This is from the jacket copy:

An eighth grade girl was taken today . . .

With this first sentence, readers are immediately thrust into a fast-paced thriller that doesn’t let up for a moment. In a world not too far removed from our own, kids are being taken away to special workhouses if their families exceed the debt limit imposed by the government. Thirteen-year-old Matt briefly wonders if he might be next, but quickly dismisses the thought. After all, his parents are financially responsible, unlike the parents of those other kids. As long as his parents remain within their limit, the government will be satisfied and leave them alone. But all it takes is one fatal visit to the store to push Matt’s family over their limit—and to change his reality forever.

Then there would be Seven after spending some time with triplets…

. . .“This is not efficient.”

Surfing is far more hazardous than I suspected.

Not that we knew it. We thought the worst in store for us that day were the jelly fish we spotted in the water around us and washed up on shore. We didn’t know that a half hour before our lesson, a nearby kayaker  spotted a shark. The great white, which was longer than the 12-foot kayak, swam up to the boat, brushing it with the fin of his tail.  Later that day, some six hours after we’d left, life guards spotted a large dorsal fin coming straight in to shore. Now if that doesn’t send you to the “Jaws” scene where Rob Scheider races up the beach screaming at swimmers to get out of the water, I don’t know what will.

Luckily, a local expert has pointed out that there’s nothing to fear. “The sharks are normally found on the coast of California, sometimes we spot them,” said Nick Wegner, a marine biologist and shark expert. “Most of the time they’re there, we just don’t see them.” (Source: Great White Shark Spotted Off La Jolla Shores | NBC San Diego)

Yeah, that makes me feel better.

I’ve been rockin’ the boys’ school snacks and lunches.

But yesterday I went a bit overboard. Dried seaweed snacks. I know, I know: Dried seaweed snacks?! WHAT possessed me? Even I recognized the craziness of that idea, once I got home from Trader Joes, that is. See, the cashier had recommended the snack, swearing that all the kids were going nuts for it. “Really?” I asked. “Oh, yeah. Weirdest thing,” he said, “but totally awesome. I like it—I feel like a turtle when I eat it.” Then he made a chomping turtle face. I thought I could use that with the boys.

Then I got home and thought again. Dried seaweed snacks. How was I going to sell this to them? Chomping turtle face was a big stretch.

Still, I’d bought the dried seaweed snacks and I wasn’t about to return them. And these boys are pretty game in the culinary experimenting department. And gosh, seaweed is so healthy. If they love it, what a wonderful thing to have in the snack repertoire. So, I gave it a shot. I gathered my three five-year-olds at the counter and told them about the dried seaweed and the chomping turtle thing. I even made the face.

Then I held up the package. It was dark green, the color of seaweed.

“What d’ya say?” I nudged. “Let’s give it a try, and if we like it, I’ll pack it in your lunch. If not, no sweat, at least we tried it. C’mon. I’ll start it.”

The boys looked at the package.

They looked at me.

Then they looked to their Daddy. I did, too. My husband’s face was expressive, his eye-brows raised and his mouth twisted upward in a buoyant expression that said boys-your-mother-is-brilliant-and-so-incredibly-clever-and-this-will-probably-become-one-of-our-favorite-snacks-ever-we’re-so-lucky-to-get-to-try-it. That, or This woman’s teapot has finally tipped. I chose the former.

I opened the package. There was a plastic tray inside, about five by five, maybe two inches deep, filled with a sideways stack of delicately thin, fibrous rectangles. About what you’d expect dried seaweed to look like. They were the kind of dark green that sends children cowering under tables.

Oh my, I thought. “Oh, boy!” I said.

Then I took the first bite. “Oom…oo…uh…oh.” It wasn’t so good. It wasn’t so bad, either. Mostly, it was something I could swallow and not gag on. So I swallowed it.

The boys studied me, waiting for a verdict.

“Well… it’s not bad. It’s, well, hmmm . . . you know, I’m not so sure about this,” I said diplomatically. I still wanted them to at least try it. I certainly didn’t want to gag and acted like I’d just swallowed death. I strive for honesty when it comes to food experimentation. I want them to always trust me when I tell them that something will taste good or I at least think they’ll like it. Trust is very important when it comes to kids and new foods. That’s my philosophy, anyway, and so far we’ve been lucky in having adventurous eaters so I’ll stick with that line of thinking. Which means I couldn’t say I liked the seaweed. Or that they would if they tried it.

I could make turtle faces, though. So I did.

My firstborn, the most adventurous of the three, smiled gamely and took a piece. He made the same noises I had, swallowed, and delivered the same verdict. Along with this addition: No, he didn’t want that in his lunch. Ever.

My secondborn, the most hesitant of the adventurous, took a rectangle and licked it. “Ick! Bleck! That’s awful!” I took that as a no.

My thirdborn, the youngest by a minute and a half, took a rectangle. “It’s crinkly,” he observed. Then he took a tiny nip. His face screwed up. It had none of the hopefulness I’d read into his father’s expression. No. Definitely a no.

Daddy’s facial expression by now had shifted to one that might most accurately be described as fearful. But he couldn’t NOT taste it, with the boys looking on and him being a positive role model and all. Plus, he’s pretty much game for new culinary adventure himself, excluding the time he refused to eat the bacon-and-cheese flavored crickets we bought at the Nature Preserve. But this wasn’t a flavored insect. It was a plant, it was good, healthy seaweed.

He didn’t like it.

But then a strange thing happened. Just as I was praising everyone for trying a new food and turned to throw away the rest of the seaweed, my thirdborn started chomping the remainder of his rectangle. He chomped it with increasing gusto, then reached for another rectangle. And another. “It’s good,” he chirped. “I like it. It’s good for my body.”

This prompted Brother #1 to give his rectangle another try. Soon he was snarfing down the rectangles, too. And making turtle faces. And laughing.

Daddy, too. When I blinked my eyes at him in confusion, he shrugged and said, “It’s good for my body.” Snarf. Gobble. Turtle face. Gone. The whole package of dried seaweed, within minutes. As I and my middle born looked on in amazement, the two boys and their dad dusted off their hands, tossed the package and empty plastic tray in the trash, and hunkered down for some handwriting practice.

“Down and slide and cut it in half, down and slide and cut it in half, down and slide and cut it in half,” they sang to the tune of Jimmy Crack Corn, “to make the number 4.”

Life with kindergarteners. You just never know.

When my triplets were three months old, I cracked.

Oh sure, I had worked out some clever things, and I could pull myself up by the bootstraps and focus on the adventure of it all for a few hours each day. But the rest of those 24 hours? Ugh. It was taking every ounce of energy I had, and I didn’t have much. One day I couldn’t take it anymore. I wiped away my tears and dug out the phone number of the lady in my neighborhood who had older triplets, the one who’d met my mother-in-law at church, and I called her. I didn’t know what to say when she answered, so I just blurted, “Hi, I’m Debbie. I have triplets.” She took over from there. Cheryl proved to be my salvation that morning. She came over to my house, hugged my babies and nodded knowingly at the double and single Bob strollers in my living room, and then proceeded to tell me how she’d managed to feed three babies at once and still eat and sleep. It was amazing. She told me how she’d coped with the fact that when three babies cried you could only soothe one. She told me how she’d color-coded binders and re-organized her house and got through those first couple of years and now did have a fair handle on life with triplets even though she sometimes messed up and didn’t eat or shower. “It will happen to you, too,” she said. “I promise.” I nearly collapsed, then and there. She understood. She told me she’d take me out to dinner to introduce me to more moms who’d figured out how to do three (and even four!) babies at once. And she gave me the phone number of Jenna, a lady three blocks away who had triplets just four months older than mine.

Over the next few days, weeks, months, and now years, I’ve turned to those moms Cheryl introduced me to—San Diego’s More the Merrier, a support group for moms of higher order multiples—for suggestions, solutions, support, and laughs. And much to my pleasure, I found my footing and was soon able to start giving suggestions, solutions, support, and laughs to other new moms of multiples. And Jenna, with her Amazing Trips, and Cheryl, with her own amazing trio, are among my dearest friends. They get it. They understand the joyous insanity of those first years with triplets. When they see me, they understand how you really can have it together even though sometimes you mess up and don’t eat and, good grief, skip a shower or two.

Yesterday my boys and I spent several fantastic hours in Coronado with twenty other families from More the Merrier (Big Daddy was out of town and had to miss it). 60+ kids of all ages, right down to months-old babies, were at that picnic. When one mom went flying by me dragging a choo-choo wagon behind her and chasing fleeing toddlers, I had to laugh. “Pardon me, please. Totally stressed out mom here!” she shouted. I understood. I’d been there. And I was so happy to be able to tell her where she was headed. That very morning I’d slept in and finally awoke to find that my sons had fed themselves breakfast, put their dishes in the sink, dressed themselves, and were quietly playing with their cars. Her eyes widened. “It will happen to you, too,” I said. “I promise.”

Five years ago

My time at this weekend’s SCBWI-National Conference at that same hotel wasn’t about sleep and surviving the bumpy transition into the Triplet Experience, but it was still about moving from one phase into another. This time, my boys had started kindergarten the week before the conference—full day, six-hours-each-day, kindergarten . . . which would mean six hours of uninterrupted writing time for me. I was feeling downright giddy about this change. And then, adding to my giddiness, the day before the conference I received final word that I’d be using that new schedule to write a new book, Writing Young Adult Fiction for Dummies. I’m telling you, I walked into that conference feeling like I was walking into a grand opening of a new phase of my life: Writing is now my day job.

Fellow writers know how special it is to get to say that.

I’ve never liked the phrase “in the blink of an eye.” Too cliche for me. But I understand it. I’ve been privileged to be home with my sons their first years, taking them on small adventures each day when they were babies and toddlers and then exposing them to the great wide world with my husband when he landed a year-long teacher exchange position in England when they were three-and-a-half years old. Our wee three have grown into confident five-year-olds who love to have adventures and try new things and new foods and meet new people. I believe they’ve got a great foundation for their new life of school and adventures away from Mom and Dad. I feel confident and proud when I walk away from their kindergarten classroom each day. I also feel excited for myself, without a twinge of guilt. I did the best I could for those five years with the boys, and now they’re in good hands for those six hours while I get to dive back into my career to a degree I haven’t experienced in more than five years.

So today, my first day after the SCBWI adventure, after my personal grand opening, I’m back at my desk for my first full day of work. I’ve got a lovely new blogging schedule worked out—both on this blog and Dear-Editor.com—and I’ve got my Dummies book schedule charted. It’s an amazing feeling. In our house, the last few weeks have been about transitions. . . .

today is about beginnings.

I’m proud to announce

I’m so excited! And with my triplets just having started full-day kindergarten, the timing certainly couldn’t be better. An amazing new chapter in our lives kicks off with a bang.

The tears came on Day Two, with Triplet Number Two, who thought it a very terrible deal that his parents—most notably his father—could not stay with him all day, every day, from now until Forever. While I did not join the watershed, his sadness broke my heart.

It broke his Daddy’s heart, too.

And it moved his brothers—emotionally and physically. In unison, the two of them stepped forward, took their crying brother’s hands, then walked him into the room.

And THAT’s how triplets do kindergarten.

Heartbreak!

But have no fear, Super Mom is near: I calmed them both with ice cream cones and a triple pinkie swear that absolutely, positively, for sure and without a doubt THE TOOTH FAIRY WILL STILL COME.

No joking about that, either. Trust me. Super Mom knows these things.

Disclaimer: No, you’re not seeing things. This photo is after the loss of the FIRST tooth. My camera’s batteries were kaput tonight.

On Tuesday we took the boys to their first in-theater movie—Toy Story 3.

At least I wasn’t alone in my tears. When I looked at my three almost-kindergartners, I had to laugh: The woman sitting in between us—my mother—was bawling, too. Like mother, like grandmother, I guess.