Christy Kilpatrick is performing an amazing feat.Her triplets are lined up on the couch. It’s midway through feeding time.

Emma has finished her bottle and is whining – she needs to be burped. Abigail’s bottle is still pretty much full, because it just conked on the floor again. Calvin’s formula is making a second appearance, in the form of white spit bubbles.

Christy is darting among babies, attending to each before any can belt an all-out scream.

“This,” she says, “is what I call the circus.”

That’s sort of the way life has been since Sept. 7, the day the triplets arrived.

It’s not like the Kilpatricks’ lives were serene before. Christy’s husband, James, commutes 2 1/2 hours – each way, four days a week – to his job teaching Spanish at Missouri Southern State University in Joplin.

That long commute, combined with taking care of the triplets, has made the Lawrence couple busier than they ever dreamed.

“This is my life,” James says matter-of-factly. “It’s insane.”

One by one, the babies are carried downstairs and placed in their car seats.

Christy has been working to get them ready for a doctor visit for more than an hour. Dressing them for a trip – just like pretty much everything – is a major event.

Today, she has help from her father and stepmother, who are in town from California. One person only has so many hands to hold babies.

Christy and James imagined what life might be like with one baby. They never thought of three.

The couple had tried for kids long before they moved to Lawrence seven years ago. It didn’t work out, and then they got involved in their careers.

They tried again starting last fall. It was 10 weeks into the pregnancy, the day after Christy’s 35th birthday, when they found out they were having triplets – without any major reproductive therapy.

It’s early afternoon, and Christy has been up since 3 a.m. That’s when her shift begins with the triplets; it ends at 9 p.m., after James gets home and can take over while she sleeps. It’s a system they figured out after several weeks of getting 30 minutes of sleep here, 40 minutes there – and neither ever feeling rested.

“My body’s gone into mother-mode,” she says. She doesn’t feel tired.

And James, she says, has never needed too much sleep.

“He’s an energetic guy,” she says. “He can survive on five hours sleep instead of eight or nine.”

There’s only so much you can control when you have triplets, even for a self-proclaimed “organizational freak.”

Christy does have a spreadsheet of the clothes and baby toys given as gifts, with corresponding bins in the garage to store them for when the babies get older. But her days are dictated by the moods of her triplets.

“It’s overwhelming in that when you think about having a baby, you want to give it all of your attention,” she says. “And with three of them, you can’t. You have to keep dividing your time and yet hope that you’re being fair.”

With 13-week-olds, somebody pretty much always needs changing, feeding, burping or comforting.

“When they take a nap,” she says, “I run around like a crazy person. I can do laundry, or cook myself something to eat. Well, it’s usually not cooking – I might microwave some oatmeal.”

Christy’s mother, Diana Bjorklund, lives in Joplin but has spent several weeks in Lawrence helping with the babies.

“I had an idea of what to do with a baby, so I thought we’d be fine with three,” Bjorklund says. “I figured it would be the same thing – if we had six arms, it would be.”

The workload isn’t the only thing overwhelming. It’s expensive, too. One baby was in ICU and racked up what would have been an $80,000 hospital bill without insurance. And the babies go through about 25 diapers a day, and a $25 can of formula every two days.

Christy has thought about going back to school and work down the road, but that’s still a ways off. For now, she’s happy to stay home with her kids.

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Even at 13 weeks, the Kilpatricks say they can see personalities in their three children.

Calvin is pretty independent, not needy. Emma is studious – she examines every new face she sees. Abigail is the outgoing one, and the loudest.

All are healthy.

Christy loves spending days with her children. But she says the highlight of most days is when her husband of 16 years comes through the door and they can eat dinner together, before going their separate ways again.

“I feel like we’ve adjusted well,” James says. “We had no idea going into this what it would take. There definitely is no rule book for parenting, and there is no rule book for triplets.”

They’ve thought about moving to Joplin. But James still does a lot of freelance language work in Kansas City, and they both have schoolwork to finish in Lawrence.

Even if it seems like a crazy life, they like it.

“Like James told me,” Christy says, “we’ll never know anything different.”