The lady at the ticket counter didn’t seem to think two to ten was high enough adult/child ratio. What she didn’t know was that there are tricks to taking bunches of kids out. Hehe. So here is a brief tutorial of how to take ten kids on an outing, which I’m sure you all do on a regular basis and will no doubt find completely invaluable.

1. Pick really nice kids to take. If you don’t know any nice kids, rent some. They’re worth the extra money. We chose these (in case you’re wondering why there are only nine here, Henry didn’t quite make it into this shot):

2. Own or steal a huge van:

3. Make sure there are two or more adults (or a couple of teenagers). Very important!

4. Fortify yourself. And no matter what they say, do not let them con you into buying them any of this:

5. Get there as close as possible to when your destination opens. Get them out of bed, stuff them with food. Then leave. Every moment you delay is one fewer minute you get to spend doing something fun with them before they get hungry, tired, or both and turn into lunatic. You do not want to be around when that happens to ten children. Think Zombieland: (and yes, this is actually my arm and watch).

6. Make them wear hats (or headscarves for the girls in the summer). Yes, you guys think I’m just hat-obsessed for no logical reason whatsoever, but guess what? It makes the kids infinitely easier to spot in a crowd. When I look around, instead of having to scan every head for hair and faces that look like the ones I want, I can skip most of them and just zero in on the ones with hats. This sounds absurd but it definitely makes them stick out more:

7. Now that you’re all organized, everyone pick a buddy! Guess what? You don’t actually have to have eyes on ten kids at all times. Before you go inside (at which point if this isn’t done they will be too distracted to function), tell each child that they need to pick a buddy, older kids with younger kids. Remind them that each older child is responsible for keeping track of their little one and each little one must mind the older one. Our guys immediately paired themselves off as follows:

Skyler and Faith

Anika and Silas

Georgie and Henry

Trinity and Olivia

Nichol and Kyra

What was funny to me about this was that none of these pairings are the ones I would have anticipated, but each set seemed to have a great time together. The older kids were extremely conscientious about keeping track of their little guys and the smaller ones were excellent about staying with their very own big kid.

We’d explore a particular section of the museum and each set of kids would go check out what looked interesting to them. When it was time to go to the next section, we just looked for pairs of hats. Easy peasy!

8. Have fun!

Do It Yourself Watershed

Safari Puppet Theater

Chem Lab (Trinity and Olivia spent ages in here and did nearly all of the experiments)

Look at the above picture of my son. That’s the goofy face he makes when I try to get pictures of him. And do you know why he does this? Here’s a hint:

But haha! I sneaked this one when he wasn’t looking.

9. Take them out to McDonald’s afterwards, but NO HAPPY MEALS (unless you have tons of money). We spent $27 on all twelve of us: two 10pc chicken nugget meals with two sodas and two fries, two large fries, one six piece chicken nuggets, three cheeseburgers, one hamburger, two large sodas, two waters, one filet of fish sandwich meal, on spicy chicken sandwich. It’s called sharing.

My favorite part of the above picture is the three people in the left corner staring at us like we’re insane. I zoomed on the lady with the black hair and she’s looking directly into my lens. Hahaha! Did I mention that people stare like this everywhere we go?

9. And lastly, take lots of pictures (this is the part I usually forget. Thank you, phone camera!). That’s it! Now you are ready to round up all the children in your neighborhood and take them to a museum.

Thank you, Nichol, Skyler, Olivia, and Silas for coming with us. Spending the day with the ten of you kids was a joy, and you’re all getting so grown up! Love you guys.

Auntie Rachel

It’s not like I’ve been relaxing on the beach and that’s why I’m happy. In fact, I’ve been working my butt off even more than I was before (which I didn’t really think was possible because I’m generally prone to massive overworking myself than underworking); but it’s that satisfying kind of work that you don’t mind doing because you know you’re good at it, you’re doing the job you were born to do, and the people you work for love you.

Two small cases in point:

1. The other day the older three or four kids and I were making cookies to share with the company that was coming over later that evening (lest you think we would make a whole four dozen cookies and eat them all ourselves… hehe.. moving right along..). Trinity and Anika started discussing my hair and wanted to know why it has all those colors in it. Huh? My hair is a really dark brown and fairly homogenously so. What colors? Oh you know Mom, the shiny silver hairs. Why are those there?

When I told them they were there because I was getting old, they all laughed like that was the most ridiculous idea they had ever heard. Then they told me that the silver ones were beautiful and they wished they could have some. Huh. My computer never tells me it thinks my gray hair is beautiful (it does give me gray hair).

To tell the truth, between my Dad telling me all through my childhood that he couldn’t wait to have gray hair because it is a “crown of splendor, attained by a righteous life” (Pro 16:31) and my daughters telling me how pretty it is and why can’t they have it, having gray hair doesn’t really bother me. When I get older, I’m secretly planning to have long dark hair streaked with gray that eventually turns white like the Italians do instead of lopping it all off into short hair like Americans. It’s so much more Old World beauty. Hmmm, I may have put too much thought into this already.

2. This afternoon I was trying to put together a meal plan for the rest of the term so I don’t have to think about it for another five weeks when Kyra bonked herself again and ended up on my lap. She’s in the middle of a growth spurt and seems constantly surprised to find her arms and legs sticking out further than they used to. She’s sort of a giant bruise at the moment. Anyway, she noticed the mole on my neck and wanted to know what it was. After I explained that, she decided that she wanted one too. After I showed her that she did, in fact, have a mole on the back side of her very own knee, she seemed much happier and bounced off to go play.

This has been very gratifying for me. The kids don’t care that I have gray hairs popping up or a wierd mole on my neck. In fact, they seem to see these as desirable things, which I’m fairly sure is because they are attached to someone that they love. So, lucky me! Yes, there are frustrations. Henry has teeth coming in and cries all day. I now get up at six and don’t stop zooming until I sit down to scarf down some lunch at 1:30.

At that point, the kids all see me sitting down and decide that means that the ears are open for business so they can tell me their weird dreams from last night (Georgie: me & Trinity were chased by a gorilla), long-winded stories about Bionicle wars that I hope to never care about, a recap of an entire SpongeBob episode so I would get the context of the three second part they thought was really funny. Hmmm, actually those were all Georgie. Today I finally explained to him what time I got up, what I had been doing all day (most of it was teaching the kids), and that now I was going to sit down to lunch where I would like to sit in peace and read the newspaper so please go play somewhere else. That seemed to help considerably.

Overall though, I just feel more content and relaxed. My smile is back. I missed it.

Rachel

The last candle represents Christ, and when it goes out the lights are turned off entirely. The Elders exit the sanctuary, the church bell rings seven times, and a loud earthquake noise is made. Then the Elders return with the last candle relit. We sing O Sacred Head, Now Wounded and then everyone leaves in silence, reflecting on the work of our Savior.

Usually we don’t make it to this service, but today I decided to take the older four children while George stayed home and watched the two little ones. Well, Georgie didn’t want to go. He wanted to stay home with Daddy and so gave me a bunch of grief, to which he received the reply, “Too bad; you’re going.”

By the time the service was completed, his reaction was somewhat different. “Wow!” was his remark upon leaving the sanctuary. Hehe. Mommy: 1; Georgie: 0. By the time we pulled in the driveway he had reflected a bit more. “The effect of the bell and earthquake was amazing!” he said. “Before the earthquake I was thinking of everything except for Jesus, and by the time it was done I couldn’t think of anything else.”

And now we know why God created art.

With small children, diapering is a big monotony particularly when the child you diaper doesn’t enjoy that activity and takes every opportunity to cry at you every time you plop him down on the bed for a change. This has been Henry’s reaction for 90% the changes I have given him since he was two weeks old. You can add that up yourself if you’re so inclined. Having someone yell at you several times a day for trying to clean the poop off their own butt gets a mite discouraging.

Even more depressing than the actual work itself is the feeling of being useless. I used to have a very sharp, curious mind. Every class I attended, I did well in. In every company with which I was employed, I did very well and was often promoted quickly. I loved getting report cards and performance reviews because someone always saw my hard work and rewarded it with whatever was appropriate.

Motherhood isn’t that way. Many days I feel like my lovely brain that I was so fond of has been spackled over with peanut butter. The manual labor that I do requires no talent or training, which makes me interchangeable with anyone else around who can throw dirty clothes in a washer with equivalent competency. Because this labor is so menial, why would anyone bother complimenting it or even noticing it? Congratulations Mom, you have just swished your toilet for the 1000th time. We are throwing you a ticker tape parade and sending you to Disney World! Somehow you don’t see that in the newspaper too much. This is probably part of why I like website building so much. It gives my mind something to do which keeps it sharp(er) and other people see the finished product and say “wow.”

The other day when I was driving home Dr. Laura came on the radio, and she read an excerpt from a book called The Invisible Woman. I am not going to retell the entire excerpt because you can go read it yourself here, but the very short version is that Wifing (not to be confused with wi-fi) and Mothering is much like Cathedral building.

The great European cathedrals took decades or more to make and many times the craftsmen worked their whole lives knowing they would never see the finished work. Their names aren’t stamped on the building; no one knows who they were. What they saw was the beauty that their work would become. Their joy was the delight in doing hard work unto the Lord and knowing that He sees it and values it even when no one else does either of those.

I like that. Some days when I’m cleaning up the milk spilled on the floor after cleaning up the juice that was spilled eight minutes ago, I have a hard time remembering that my work is important. This is why I’m writing it down. So if any of you ask me what I did this week, instead of getting a dissatisfied look and a “changed diapers” response, I think I’m going to start answering that this week I was Cathedral building. Then you can have the blank look and hopefully I will more readily remember that building little temples for the Holy Spirit is what I’m doing as opposed to, say, neverending janitorial work.

Rachel

Anyway, she’s far enough along now that she’ll go one and two pretty consistently… as long as we ask her if she has to go every hour or fairly consistently. If we are doing something like say, feeding the baby or making dinner or doing something other than spending every moment watching her, then she goes merrily along her way and doesn’t bother telling us she has to go. This is not good for the furniture or her mother’s psychie.

So last Friday after she didn’t tell me and I found a surprise at naptime, I got pretty fried. One of Henry’s diapers was on the floor there, so I stuck it on her (he’s in 4′s) and deposited her in Henry’s crib with the admonishon that only babies go potty in their underwear and babies have to wear diapers and sleep in baby cribs. Wowee, should did not like that!!

She pretty much freaked out. Noooo, it’s Henry’s bed. I want my bed. This is Henry’s!!! I picked her up and plopped her flat on the matress because she wouldn’t lie down, and then attempted blankets. Well, that was met the same was as the crib itself, so I just left.

When I came to get her after nap, she was standing in the crib and had dumped everything else that was in there on the floor (of course). I’m pretty sure she didn’t sleep at all.

The next day, she was remarkably good and ooooh, came and told us when she had to go potty. That night she got a pullup and a big lecture about how good she’d been doing and was going to sleep in her own bed because big girls go potty in the potty. Twenty minutes later after I was done monkeying with the other kids, I picked her up and met ye olde stinkeroo. Argh!

So, I changed her and told her that she was going to have to sleep in Henry’s bed because that’s where babies who go potty in their undies or pullups have to sleep. She looked right at me and said, “I’m not a baby.” What did you just say? She repeated this to me three more times by the time I had her in bed. Ha! There’s the key. Finally, after three months, I think we may have found the key. Chocolate? Take it or leave it. Pretty big girls panties with butterflies and horses? Not terribly interesting. Wandering around in wet stinkiness? That’s okay. But the shame of having to sleep in your brother’s crib? Intolerable!

Since then she’s been pretty close to perfect. She had an oops at Babunya’s house Monday, but that’s pretty common when kids are learning. I’m not going to give her a bunch of grief about that until she’s really consistent at home. She’s starting to look like she’s making an effort at bed and naptime as well, so I’m expecting that to shape up here pretty soon as well. Yay!! This has been long and trying, and I’m glad that it seems to be nearly finished. Only one more child to go. At least that won’t be for awhile. Maybe he’ll be easy. One can dream, right?

Rachel

By 9:30 on Monday morning, the difference became apparent. You see, Georgie is the oldest and tends to act like the oldest in that I’m-the-boss, do-what-I-say-now type of way. Anika, though not the oldest is in no way receptive to other people bossing her around. Trinity, however, is happy to sort of do whatever Georgie wants to do.

Georgie and Trinity spend most of their time playing together happily. Anika spends most of her time playing with the little girls and enjoying being the oldest of their group. When Georgie and Anika are together, they spend most of their time fighting. With our usual Trinity-buffer gone, Monday morning began with lots of yelling, crying, denials, and accusations.

As I looked at my two whacked-out children, I realized that if this wasn’t fixed immediately, this week would be utterly miserable for the entire house, and I hate being miserable! Misery by screaming children is the worst. I asked them if they remembered what the sermon was about on Sunday, and they both remembered that it was on I Corinthians 13 (often referred to as the “Love Chapter”). Good, and what are you supposed to do when you love someone? Be patient and kind. And what does “kind” mean in this context? The word used also means “useful.” So find something useful that you can do for the other person to show them that you love them.

I told them that I wanted them to each find two things to do for the other person that would be useful to show them that you love them and then tell me at the end of the day what the two things were. Hmmm. Silence. Staring at the ceiling. Thinking, thinking. Guess what? No more fighting all day!

By the end of the day Georgie had made lunch for both the little girls when I had asked them each to make lunch for one, and Anika had cleaned up most of Georgie’s mess in the bedroom when I told them both to go clean their room. Neither of them had quite made it to two things, but since the rest of the day passed with no more fighting, that was ok.

Today they didn’t even come down for breakfast until well after 9am (usually they’re down around 8). Apparently they had been reading Georgie’s anatomy book he got from the library. Anika wanted to know where food goes when you eat it (??) so Georgie pulled out this book of the human body and they had been scoping that out together. Georgie told me that they decided they are going to be on the same team now and friends and aren’t going to fight anymore because neither of them likes fighting with the other. Wow! Okay then. True to their plan, I didn’t hear any racket from either of them all day. Phew! They’re so charming with the yelling dispatched.

We’re switching to year round school this year and the way it all lines up, they have June and July off and then start back up in August. August and September will be three days a week and then full schedule begins in October. I’m starting to look forward just the teensiest bit to August. They’ve been exceptionally well behaved so far, but to maintain this behavior I’ve been keeping them quite busy.

We go once a week to the library, the wading pool/park (often 2x here), my Mom’s house (or she comes here), and a local farm store. We get together with each side of the family twice a month for Family Dinner Night, and I’m planning to add softball practice once a week too! Keeping them really busy has the unintended byproduct of keeping me extremely busy on top of my normal household and work duties. I’m old! I’m getting tired! I’m also getting very tired of listening to endless stories of Bionicle histories and plans for new ones, and of the general increase in noise and chatter. My ears are tired.

Every year I tell myself that I’m going to not be quite so fussy about the housework and am going to take the kids to the pool/park/whatever to relax and enjoy summer. Every year this somehow does not quite work out, so I’m feeling pretty good that this summer feels summery and I’m doing the Summer Mom stuff I should be doing. Good job, Me! Sometimes you just need to pat your own back.

Rachel

Somehow this year we finally got to have two dance nights: one for set dancing and one for couples dancing. I think this may have had something to do with the fact that two of the three elders on the elder board are excellent dancers. One of them, my Dad, cuts quite the lovely waltz while the other one does a very energetic swing.

To encourage people to actually come to the dances and teach them how to do it, they taught a dance lesson for those two dances on the morning of the event. Now, I love to dance. Twirling around the floor is just bliss to me. Unfortunately, my handsome spouse thinks that dancing would be an effective military torture method. Naturally, this disparity of thought has led to much mutual frustration. However, I’ve been scheming for some time now how I might find myself a consistent dance partner. It’s easy! I just need to grow my own. Bwahahahahahaha!

And so my hapless nine year old son is the beneficiary of his father’s refusal to dance. I told the children before we even left for camp that we were going to the dance and that they were all going to the lesson and I didn’t want any complaining!! Naturally that prompted a slew of complaining from my son so I explained that he (and my daughters who were doing no complaining whatsoever) was GOING to learn to dance for three reasons.

1. So that his wife wouldn’t be stuck wanting to dance with someone who didn’t dance (I did omit the possibility that he could be the one stuck with a spouse who doesn’t dance).

2. Because at our church, we dance at almost every wedding plus other
events like Family Camp and in a few years he’s going to decide that hmmm, some of those girls are kind of cute and he might want to dance with one or more of them. The girls will be standing near the dance floor tapping their feet and looking around with big eyes, which is of course the universal sign for I sure wish one of these knuckle-headed boys would hurry up and ask me to dance, and if my son knows how to do it he will feel all cool and the girls will be pretty happy about it too.

By this time Georgie was rolling on the floor laughing. I proceeded to number three, which was of course….

3. So that I CAN HAVE A DANCE PARTNER!!!!

For some reason he seemed to think this entire conversation was funny. I told him to go pack some church clothes for the dance and four minutes later he came out to show me the shirt he was all excited about wearing because it would look very handsome. Odd how when you tell children they absolutely, positively must do something they aren’t really enthusiastic about doing and there will be no weaseling out of it, half the time it takes them less than five minutes to decide that whatever it is they were just railing against might actually be fun after all. Hmph!

So after I got them all mentally prepared for this whole dance thing, I noticed that the lesson was scheduled at the same time as the kids’ Nature Walk, which they all wanted to go to. But I conned sweet-talked my Dad into holding a separate lesson for the kids in the garage of the house were staying at. We managed to wrangle a few other stray children into coming as well and ended up with a nice group.

Georgie wasn’t too impressed at the beginning of the lesson and it took him awhile to really get his feet to move in a box step, but by the end of the lesson he was doing it perfectly and had asked Trinity’s friend Ruthie to practice with him (Ruthie just turned nine). They happily waltzed around the garage holding an animated discussion about the spider that was crawling up the wall and remaining completely oblivious to the snickering adults who were watching. I was pretty impressed that after half an hour he could not only waltz properly but stay on the
right foot and on time with the music while talking. Very complicated stuff!

So that night was dinner, chapel, and then the dance. When I went to go sit down for chapel, he cornered me in the doorway.

Georgie: I did it!

Me: Ummm, okay. What did you do?

Georgie: I went and asked Mr. Dahlin if I could take Ruthie to the dance.

Me (stuttering): You… errr… uhhhh…. you did what???

Georgie: He said I could dance two dances with her and that he would be watching me {here he mimics Mr. Dahlin by pointing two fingers at his eyes and then at me in commando hand gesture style}. He said if I did something he didn’t like, he would give me a big squeeze. I told him my Dad gives me perfectly good big squeezes, thank you very much. He also said that now I have to do something nice for him.

Me: Wow! Way to go, Georgie. That’s exactly what you should have done. How did you know to ask Mr. Dahlin if you could take his daughter to the dance?

Georgie: Well, that’s what you’re supposed to do! That’s what you and Dad said.

Me: Oh… ummm… right… Good for us….

I don’t remember saying that, but hey! I’m not going to argue with a child who says I told him to be polite and then actually went and did it without further reminder. What a good kid! He danced very well with Ruthie and they both looked like they thoroughly enjoyed themselves. I danced quite a bit with my Dad, which was a delight. He’s learned some new fancy waltz move that involves a half turn every step. This results in basically swinging and twirling around the entire floor and is wonderful fun (and good exercise!). My husband even danced with me. He
was at the waltz lesson and in the process of helping the kids seems to have become proficient in the box step himself. Hehe!

So phase one of my mission seems to be going along swimmingly, although now that I think about it, I don’t think my son actually danced with me. He danced with his sisters and my mother. Now I feel robbed. Oh well, I have more evil plotting percolating in my brain to advance this whole dancing thing so I’m sure I will get a suitable dance partner out of this yet. Bwahahahahaha!

Actually, I was quite surprised at Georgie’s attention to Ruthie. Trinity is such a pretty little duck that I always assumed that when they got older Georgie’s friends would be eying her. It never occurred to me that Georgie would be eying Trinity’s friends. Duh! Since they’re all under ten, no one is doing a terribly large amount of eying anyone mostly because Trinity’s friends don’t play with Bionicles and Georgie couldn’t care less about Polly Pockets, but I will file this away for
future reference.

Oh, and in case you were wondering about my philosophical rationale for teaching my children to dance (and really, who isn’t dying to know this?), my thinking is that I would rather give my children an organized outlet for contact with the opposite sex that is acceptable and in plain view than wait around until they discover that the opposite sex is oh-so-fascinating and let them come up with their own disorganized, sneaking way of expressing that since they have no appropriate way available to them. Yikes! That’s my big theory anyway. Guess we’ll see how that works out. The problem with child-rearing is that it involves so much thinking (well, that and poopy diapers)!

Rachel

Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream

1 1/2 cups chocolate chip cookie dough
2 large eggs
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups heavy cream, or whipping cream
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Chop cookie dough into bite-sized pieces. Place in a bowl, cover and freeze. Whisk the eggs in a mixing bowl until light and fluffy, 1 to 2 minutes. Whisk in the sugar, a little at a time, then continue whisking until completely blended, about 1 minute more. Pour in the cream and milk, and whisk to blend. Add the vanilla and whisk to blend again.

Transfer the mixture to an ice cream maker and freeze following the manufacturer’s directions. When the ice cream is quite stiff (about 1 minute before it is done), add the chopped cookie dough. Be sure to wait until the last possible minute or the dough will get sticky and unmanageable. Continue freezing until done.

Makes 1 quart.

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A few weeks ago I posted that Henry was a super crabby baby. Well, I think we’ve finally figured out the magic trick to get him to cool his jets. It’s a two part trick, which makes me feel better about it taking me eight weeks to figure out what it was.

First, I cut dairy (except yogurt), chocolate, and coffee out of my diet. That helped a little bit. Then I started making sure I burped the living daylights out of him after every meal. This entails serious whomping on his back for ten minutes to such a degree that when we’re in public people start looking at me like “what is that lady doing to that poor baby??” When I sit him on my lap and he has bubbles in his tummy, he stiffens up so much that I can barely get him to bend at the waist. When he’s all done burping, he’ll sit on my lap all relaxed and happy. That’s the test.

This pretty much clears up whole charming evenings of crying (like evenings at the theater but with more drama) and we’ve discovered that he actually smiles and is quite adorable when he does so. The big downside to all this is that I have to cut half of my favorite food out of my diet, and some days one must eat ice cream, especially if one has just foolishly made it themselves. George helpfully spent all day Monday reminding me that my five minutes of bliss produced twenty-four hours of misery. Thanks, Honey!

Unfortunately, now Henry is trying to come down with another cold so that’s making him slightly crabby. No one here has a cold and I don’t know of anyone at church or anywhere that has one either so I don’t even know where he got this (the last one was from his older sister coughing on his face). Argh! Hopefully it will be gone by the time Family Camp comes around in two weeks.

In potty training news (because I know you all like hearing about poopies and peepees), Faith is doing great with numero uno and disastrous with numero dos. It’s been what, three weeks now? She has yet to get ye old pooper in the appropriate receptacle. This is not a good way to please your mother, father, or older siblings whose bedroom floor you poop on (this was yesterday). Last night George woke me up around 5 am to tell me that Faith had exploded and he needed some help with cleanup crew. Thirty minutes, a bath, and a fresh change of sheets later, we made it back to bed. This qualifies in the mother and father not pleased category.

I hope this gets sorted out soon. This is the fifth child I’ve potty trained and none of the other ones had this problem. We’ve had other problems, such as Georgie not wanting to get off the potty if his poopies wouldn’t come out and one of the older girls (I think it was Trinity) being too scared to flush the toilet afterward. Both of those were sorted out by hitting on a story that helped analogize the problem to something that they were already familiar with. I started one last night with Faith that will hopefully make sense to her. If it does, I’ll publish it in the next post (again, I’m sure you’re dying to know…).

In the meantime, if any of you other Moms out there have encountered this problem and come upon some brilliant solution (or pedestrian solution or any solution), please post it. I’d like to have this sorted out before camp as well if at all possible. I hate potty training!

Oh, for you RCCers who are going to Family Camp and are looking for cheap croc knock offs for your children to destroy (those are the foam plastic clogs that you see everywhere you look), I priced them out all over and have the results posted on my new shopping/sales blog here (there’s always some good reason to start a new web project, right?). If anyone else is interested in coupons/codes, feel free to take a look. Only a couple of posts are there right now because I just put it up last week, but if you stick your email address in the form on the right hand sidebar, you’ll get email updates for new sales.

Rachel

In an effort to help them remember to keep it clean, I am now charging them for everything that is out of place when I go into to check it every day. Hehe. I feel all evil but since we’ve had to tell them every day for the last two weeks to tidy up their room and it only stays mildly less disgusting for about thirty minutes and is disastrous again by the following day, I’m not overly sympathetic.

Now I just need to do their downstairs bookshelf and clean off the tops of all the flat surfaces (like the piano, kitchen counter, bookshelf, sewing table….) that have accrued paper-y stuff over the last few months as well. Oh, then the kids’ season clothing changeover…. Argh! It’s the neverending project week around here.

Henry sleeps quite a bit in the morning so I try to make sure I get dinner as prepped as is humanly possible, the laundry at least mosly done, and the day’s projects finished before he wakes up and wants me to hold him for half the day. Very sweet, but not conducive to productivity.

So I learned a valuable lesson over the last two weeks about good and bad places to go with six children. The week George was out of town, I ran out of groceries and my usual shopper (the aforementioned Hubby) was working working late on site for a client and had been since he got home from Las Vegas. Milk, eggs, fruit, peanut butter, bread ~ we were out of all this plus most of the other things that comprise our usual diet, and I had used up my babysitting help while Hubby was actually out of town (I was three weeks postpartem and various family members had come over to help out with getting kids to and from school, letting me nap, and things like that. The day I was planning to go shopping with only a couple of kids, my van broke). I had to get groceries, and the only way that was going to happen was with six kids in tow.

Anticipating all the million things that lead to ulcers under such circumstances, the children and I had a pow-wow prior to departure. I held up the list.

ME: This is what we are buying. If it’s not on the list, we aren’t buying it. If it’s on the list we are. I don’t want to hear ‘I want this; I want that’ or ‘Ewww, why are we getting that? I hate that.’”

I read through the entire list.

ME: “You older kids need to help with the little ones and hold their hands so they don’t run around the store. And you all need to be extra well behaved because otherwise everyone will be miserable.”

GEORGIE: Why will we be miserable?

ME: Because if you’re naughty, I’ll spend the whole time yelling at you, and I hate yelling at you guys. Do you like being yelled at?

GEORGIE: No.

ME: No one else does either. It’s miserable.

They all grin. And off we went to Starbucks where I bought the biggest coffee they had and then on to store number one, which is actually a restaurant supply store. For large families, this place works great. You don’t get a cart there, you get a pallet with wheels. I stuck Henry’s infant seat on the pallet, told Faith (age 2) to hold Georgie’s hand (age 9) and Anika (age 6) to hold Kyra’s (age 3.5), and off we went. They actually did remarkably well at the first place. We bought 30 pounds of fruit (which looks like it will last about two weeks) and a few other things before the middle two girls started racing up and down the aisles. By this point, I was nearly done and we made it out of the store before total chaos set in.

Unfortunately, we still had one more store to go to. The second store is a normal grocery store, so we picked out two carts and installed Henry and Faith each in one. I pushed Henry’s and Georgie pushed Faith’s while Trinity and Anika theoretically kept after Kyra. This store was much more crowded and the list of things to buy here was much longer. Everywhere we pushed the carts, people snickered. Of course, who wouldn’t snicker at a six year old hollering things like, “Mom, can we get broccoli”? This did break the no asking for things not on the list rule, but what six year old likes broccoli? How can you not laugh at that?

For about two thirds of the excursion, the kids did great. Then Georgie starting complaining that pushing Faith around was getting to heavy (hmph! And the groceries were all piled up in my cart!); and even worse, Kyra decided that she had to go potty. Aack! She said she could wait, but pinning my hopes on a three year old’s bladder control seemed risky at best. At this point, our shopping trip sped up considerably as I raced around grabbing things off shelves with no regard to price, brand, size or anything else. Is it diced tomatoes? Good, throw it in the cart.

We blazed through the rest of the store and breathlessly arrived at the checkout line where I tried to bag groceries (yes, it’s a bag your own grocery place) while my children immediately scattered since my eyes were looking at yogurt and cheese instead of blazing holes in the backs of their naughty heads. I turned around and Faithy’s cart was sitting right by the exit with Faith still sitting serenely in it and no other children to be seen. Argh!! Anika came back to tell me that they were trying to get candy and toys out of the machines (by sticking their hands up the slots, of course) between the interior and exterior sliding doors. Oh terrific!

Eventually we made it home, and Kyra had accurately gauged her bathroom requirements so that mess was avoided. Phew!

Last week after George’s work slowed back down, we decided to take all the children to the zoo. It was great! You know, an extra set of eyes to keep track of escapees and someone to watch Batch A of children while you take Batch B to the rest room really improves an excursion considerably. George kept complaining that the kids were being wacky; but after my solo grocery shopping trip, I thought they were great (and they really were well-behaved at the zoo). So groceries alone with six kids = bad; zoo with a buddy (or spouse, parent, hobo in need of $5….) and six kids = good. Just a little child-rearing math for you there. Have a great week!

Rachel

The first two days of this week were just sort of a write-off, you know? The kids were all wacky and I was too tired or too busy catching up on all the things that slid while George was gone to really de-wackify the kids. Makes for lots of teeth gritting all around.

Today was much better. Although Henry slept lousy last night (my fault; I was busy working and didn’t pay close enough attention to the fact that he basically slept all day) and I didn’t really start moving around until 9:30, I decided we just weren’t going to do crazy house today.

I set the timer for the kids to clean their room back up and presto! Twenty minutes later, clean room. Ditto the downstairs. After such diligent work, I let them play the wii and goof all while I cleaned the fridge, which is one of my least favorite jobs but needed to be done because it was belching toxic fumes at us whenever we opened its door. So rude! As far as attitudes went, the kids were still a bit on the grumbly side.

My Mother has been coming over on Wednesday to help out for a few weeks while Henry is a bitty blip, and it has been sooooo nice to be able to rest a bit or get a good nap or whatever. She was here today, which was good timing because I was taking my friend Amy out to lunch for her birthday (yay! Out of the house with an adult and not six children…). When I got home, I finished up the fridge and made dinner.

Dinner has been a rather frustrating endeavor at our house for the last couple of weeks mainly because my older son has been loudly proclaiming every night that he doesn’t like the food, doesn’t want to eat it, it looks weird, etc. This makes Mommy want to shout at him, and in a terribly unsuccessful effort to model good behavior to my children, that is exactly what I did tonight. After barking at Georgie to shut UP and I don’t want to hear ANY MORE about how much you don’t want the food, I went to go actually feed my younger son who was also complaining loudly but this time because he wanted his dinner. Urgh.

Typically I don’t yell at my children to shut up, so I spent the time that I was feeding Henry in the other room (the quiet, unpopulated other room, I might add) thinking about this lovely new home dynamic we have here and how to best return it to the happy, not-quite-so-deranged one that I prefer.

After dinner was finished (which Georgie ate an acceptable amount of with no further complaining of any sort), Georgie and I were the only two left in the kitchen. He was unloading the dishwasher and I was clearing up the dinner mess, and I decided it was a good time for a little instruction.

I explained to him that it takes a lot of thought and planning to make meals for everyone. It takes time for me to sit down and plan what we’re going to eat all week and figure out something healthy so you kids can grow strong. It takes time to make the shopping list and for Daddy or sometimes me to go shopping and buy all the food. At this point he interjected that it was probably expensive too. Yes, it is! He was thoroughly shocked when I told him how much we spend on groceries every week. Of course, anything that costs more than an underwater Bionicle is overly expensive to him.

I continued on and told him that after all that, then it still takes time to actually make the food and I really do not like making it for little boys who are ungrateful and I wasn’t going to do it anymore so next time he complains, he’s going straight upstairs with no dinner, dessert, or anything and will remain there until bedtime at which point he will be going to bed (duh!). This applies whether it’s Family Dinner Night (which means no Doctor Who with Grandpa and Uncle Jonathan and everyone else) or not. He seemed a bit concerned about that.

Then he asked me what ungrateful was. I told him that as soon as he was done with the dishes he could go get a piece of paper, look the word up in the dictionary, write down the definition, and bring it to me. He started to complain about that so I told him that now he could also do the same for the word “obedience.” That took care of the griping. Hehe.

He followed through on his sentence with a remarkably cheerful attitude. I told him that if I had to send him upstairs for complaining, I would be sending him with a dictionary and a Bible and he would be spending the evening writing out things I tell him to numerous times. He seemed quite happy by the time he went to bed.

With Georgie’s success, I started thinking about Trinity who has taken to scowling like a Doberman when we ask her to do something she’s not keen on doing and, I learned today, has apparently been doing this at school lately as well in addition some other overly grumpy behavior (helps having the teacher be your best friend; makes it much easier to gang up on the kids when they misbehave).

After Trinity finished her evening chore of loading up the dishwasher, I had a little chat with her. Lately chats with her have ended in a shower of tears on her part, but tonight she was all smiles. Come to think of it, she was cheerful and obedient most of the evening. This seems to have started about the time I yelled at Georgie….

Anyway, we had a discussion about attitude and we talked about a few Bible passages relating to a cheerful heart. I told her she would be looking up and copying down dictionary and Bible passages as well if her crummy attitude continues. She looked downright thrilled to get to sit up her bedroom and read the Bible and the dictionary. Knowing the tender heart that Trinity has, this will probably have the same end result as it will have with Georgie but for a completely different reason.

Anika got a brief talking to after picking a fight with Georgie, and this new strategy with the older kids won’t work with her yet so I’m going to have to keep a close eye on her tomorrow. Kyra and Faith were both in trouble several times today (Kyra for lying to me and then for pushing Faith out of a closet; Faith for too many things to remember and keep track of) and duly reprimanded. I’m hoping that if I keep at them for the rest of the week, they’ll be back down to just maintenance level discipline by the weekend. We’ll see.

When the older three kids came to kiss me goodnight this evening, I told them that tomorrow there would be no TV, no wii, and no computer and that they would have to use their imaginations and find something to do. This was directly on the heels of all of their other chats and they were apparently all trying to show what wonderful attitudes they were capable of displaying because all three of them enthusiastically responded that they had excellent imaginations and could do that (that was Anika announcing her excellent imagination).

In a fit of chivalry, Georgie asked if we could do that for the rest of the week (!!?????!!). Naturally I did what any self-respecting Mother would do and said yes! He only looked mildly confused as to how the conversation had ended up where it had. A minute later when he realized what he had done, he sheepishly mentioned that he had actually been sort of planning to watch Mythbusters tomorrow. This is his usual Wednesday evening ritual; but since was looking up dictionary definitions for me tonight, he didn’t get to watch his show. I told him that if he was really well behaved all day, I would let him watch it tomorrow.

Yep, the post-dinner portion of this evening went pretty well. And, I’m expecting tomorrow to go much better in terms of attitude. They’ve all been zombified into TV goons for the last few days, so they’ll probably be a bit rowdy tomorrow while they reboot their brains. Who knows though. Maybe they’ll go upstairs and have a birthday party for Draco or someone instead (Draco is Georgie’s six foot long stuffed dragon; they throw birthday parties for their stuffed animals and/or dollies with some regularity). Hmmm, I’ll have to keep that in my back pocket and remind them of it if they get to weird and don’t come up with it themselves. That will just leave the younger ones to straighten out plus of course, Henry to look after. No problem! (And would be the sleep deprivation talking there….).

Henry is napping next to me so I am going to go soak in the tub and give myself a facial for the next twenty-five-ish minutes and then I will either go fold laundry and watch the rest of my Hubby’s lame movie with him if it’s still on or head for bed and blow off the laundry until tomorrow (stupid laundry is eating my couch alive as usual).

Good night!

Rachel