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Wonder how the triplets will adapt. No need to worry, tey adapt very well. They are also developing their own personalities now. Their development further accelerates.

The triplets are three months old. Lena watches them from the warehouse floor, the twelve-foot frame propped against the concrete wall, the belly resting on the ground between her thighs like a warm boulder. The yellow nails drum a slow rhythm. The hum is three heartbeats and the heartbeats are changing — not just growing, but becoming. Becoming specific. Becoming people.

The first triplet — the seven-six at birth, now thirty-one pounds — is the explorer. She was the first to crawl, the first to pull upright on Lena's shin, the first to let go and stand wobbly on the concrete. She goes everywhere. Across the warehouse bay. Behind the industrial fridge. Into the office space where Marcus works, the 760-pound body in the chair, the yellow nails on the keyboard, and the explorer pulling herself up on his ankle and staring up at him with the locked-on eyes. She doesn't cry when she falls. She gets up. She goes again. Lena calls her June because she was born in October and the contradiction feels right.

The second — six-fourteen at birth, now twenty-eight pounds — is the quiet one. She doesn't explore. She watches. She sits on Lena's belly, the soft shelf of flesh that holds her like a chair, and she watches the warehouse. She watches Diane walk across the bay, nine-six, the 905 pounds, the beard, the bare feet. She watches Carl carry the food containers, 695 pounds, the beard, the duck through the bay door. She watches Billy Jo on the floor with the laptop, the yellow nails, the typing. She watches everything and she doesn't miss anything and when she speaks it's deliberate. *Mama. More. Da. Big.* The words come when she means them. Lena calls her Iris because she sees everything.

The third — eight-one at birth, now thirty-four pounds — is the loud one. She doesn't walk yet. She doesn't need to. She commands. She sits on the concrete and she yells — not cries, yells — and Marcus comes with food, or Carl comes with a blanket, or Lena's enormous hand descends and lifts her to the belly shelf. She eats the most. She grows the fastest. She was the first to say a full word — *more* — and she says it constantly, the syllable round and deliberate, the tiny hands open and demanding. Lena calls her Mae because the name sounds like what she wants.

The development is accelerating again. At three months the triplets are hitting six-month milestones. June is pulling herself up on the industrial shelving and cruising along the edge, the bare feet — bigger than a normal baby's, wider, the tiny nails already yellowing — stepping sideways with balance that shouldn't exist at this age. Iris said her first two-word phrase last Tuesday. *Big mama.* She said it while sitting on Lena's belly, looking up at the twelve-foot body, the yellow nails, the stretch marks, the unwashed skin. She said it once. She didn't repeat it. She didn't need to. Mae is eating solid food — grabbing fistfuls of chips from the bags on the warehouse floor, the tiny fingers crushing the chips, the mouth working, the swallowing. She shouldn't be on solids at three months. She is. She's thriving.

Billy Jo documents everything. The laptop. The yellow nails. The drawl. The study is sixty-eight pages now. The offspring acceleration section grows every Tuesday. The developmental milestones are charted against standard growth curves and the curves don't apply — the triplets are off the chart, literally, the data points floating above the printed lines like satellites. Billy Jo's typing is faster now. The words come the way the transformation comes — full and unguarded and inevitable.

Lena holds June against her chest. The tiny body against the stretch marks. The small fingers on the body hair. The hum is warm and the hum is patient and the hum is three heartbeats and the heartbeats are becoming people and the people are comfortable and the people are more.