Monday night as we were all loaded into the van trundling down the Babunya’s (a.k.a. “Hubby’s Mom”)  house for dinner, I could have sworn I heard the word “damn” ushering from my darling eight-year old daughter’s lips. Not only that, but it was being pronounced in the same way you would hear it from a sitcom tartlet proclaiming, “damn, that is one fiiiiine looking piece of man-meat there” or some such stupidity designed to elicit an undeserving laugh.

Since no fiiiiiine looking men were around other than her Dad and brothers, she’s all of eight, and this is not a common vocabulary word at our house for people who are under twenty and have not just smashed their thumb with a hammer, I thought I’d just double check to see if I heard correctly.

Me: Trinity, what did you just say?

Trintity: Oh, was that a bad word? I wasn’t sure.

Me: Yes, please delete that from your vocabulary. Do you hear me or Dad saying that?

Trinity: No. {pause…. pause…. pause….} Mom, is “fish paste” a bad word?

Fish paste? Fish paste??? Well, technically she does have a point. Her Dad and I don’t usually say that either, so if you’re a kid I suppose you could make a case that it does fall under the test for swear words. Fish paste! As usual, we have SpongeBob to thank for that.

Actually, all of my favorite expletives come from SpongeBob, and usually I hear them first from Trinity using them in normal conversation. “Oh Barnacles! I can’t find my other shoe!” or “Faithy ate my sucker. Tartar sauce!” Last week I was in the room when the kids were watching that goofy show. I looked up just in time to hear SpongeBob exclaim “Holy Shrimp!” in regards to something or other. Hmm, come to think of it, I wouldn’t really like to hear that coming out of my kids’ mouths; but I thought it was pretty funny. Barnacles!

In other news, my children have discovered a new obsession. Since it doesn’t involve inane television shows, destroying property, making enormous messes, my having to drive them all over creation, or anything expensive, naturally I’m delighted!

Our friend was selling an air soft gun and some ammo at her garage sale this weekend, and the kids wanted to buy it but didn’t have the $10 they needed to do so. So they decided to hold a little fundraiser of their own.

After hiding out in their rooms all morning with a “Keep Out” sign posted on the door, they emerged with their new creation: a box that they had cut to open up into a display case for all the bead necklaced, bracelets, and rings that they had spent the morning stringing. These, they announced, they were going to sell to passersby from a card table in the driveway.

Remembering my own lemonade stand days which involved lots of sitting in the hot sun making no money, I was skeptical. However, they had clearly spent considerable effort on this endeavor and I try not to discourage them from things that would keep them occupied outside for awhile.

Ten minutes later, they had made three dollars! Some guy had bought three bracelets for his three daughters. By the end of the 45 minutes they were out there, they had made six bucks. I was shocked! Now they’re hooked and have been going out every day to do this. They bought the air soft gun (the pellets had sold), and are now saving up “just because.”

Since this year we are doing school in the afternoon instead of morning (which I like wayyyyy better), they have been doing all their homework and chores in the morning diligently and quickly without being reminded so that they can run back out and sell some more. They’ve already figured out what their best sellers are (bracelets), had to change materials a little bit to make them fit better, and figured out that if they post signs on either end of the street or stand out there with a sign they get more customers.

Guess I’m going to have to get them going on alternate selling venues. What a bunch of goofballs!

Rachel

George’s youngest brother Jon got married on Saturday. Four of the kids plus George were in the wedding, and George’s brother David and his family were up from Arizona. Their kids are around the same ages as ours, so they had a wonderful time playing together. They regularly ask to go visit or when the cousins are coming up here to visit them.

Skyler and Georgie are six weeks apart and Anika and Olivia were born three months apart. Plus, David and Erica adopted a new little guy, Silas, from Ethiopia in February and this is the first time we’ve met him (if you missed this at the beginning of the year, go back and check the January/February archives). He’s three and a half, and wow is he a cutie!

George said the first thing Silas said to him was, “Hey there, Buddy!” with a big smile on his face. He spoke no English when he got here and now it’s perfect. Well, as perfect as three year old English ever is. He’s so completely charming that you just love him right away. Yep, new nephew. Pretty darn cute!

So the wedding was Saturday and Sunday we went over to one of George’s other brother’s place for one last family get together before David and Erica had to go back home. We had so much fun that we didn’t get home until 11:30. George signed up several months ago to go be a slave driver counselor at our church’s Future Men’s Camp from Monday morning until Wednesday night, so he got home and packed real quick before collapsing into bed. Then he was up at church by 8:45 the next morning to head out to camp.

I don’t sleep too well while he’s gone, but other than that all machinery seems to be functioning normally. The kids cleaned up with me Monday morning and then spent the rest of the day recuperating (i.e. “vegging in front of the idiot box”) and taking naps. I told the big kids they all had to take naps too and not only did they not complain, but they looked rather relieved and all of them slept.

Since George was gone, I decided to make my favorite foods that he hates so I don’t make when he’s here. This involves breakfast for dinner, also known as HURRAY FOR FRENCH TOAST, which was Monday’s dinner, and pasta alfredo with a bunch of chicken and veggies in it with some Artisan bread on Tuesday. Both of these seemed to go over well with the children. Hehe. Anika thinks that French toast would be a good dinner to have every night.

Masha was over for cards Monday night and then dropped some stuff off and hung around for dinner and the evening on Tuesday. My Mom watched the kids while I ran errands on Tuesday and my Dad came over Tuesday night. I conquered Mount Laundry. Enough has been going on that the time has gone by fast. I’m glad George gets home tomorrow.

Oh! I almost gave my poor Hubby a heart attack last week, I think. We’re switching insurance companies and the new one wanted me to go to the doctor for a pregnancy test and then send them a copy of the results so they know for sure that I’m not pregnant. Hello! I’m five months post-partem and nursing full time. Not exactly high risk here. Now if it were two weeks after I had quit nursing, then yes that could possibly be considered the danger zone.

Anyway, last week we sat down to dinner and started discussing our day. I started with, “Well, I have to go take a pregnancy test next week.” This was perhaps not the best phrasing. George bellows, “WHAT!!! Not again! You can’t be pregnant!” Immediately I start backtracking and telling him that it’s for the insurance. He told me that would be grounds for divorce and glared at me for about ten minutes after that. In case you somehow lost track, we now have six kids. Our house is very loud,
everything we own is stained or broken within ten minutes of arriving
on the premises, and 1998 was the last time we talked to each other without it sounding like
this:

Me: HI HONEY, HOW ARE YOU? {we have to yell to hear each
other over the din}. Georgie stop telling your sister that the bee
is on the inside of the window instead of outside.

George: I’M TIRED. HOW WAS YOUR DAY? Kyra, why are you crying?
You smooshed your toe jumping off the couch? Hey. Anika? ANIKA! STOP
JUMPING OFF THE COUCH! What Kyra? Oh yeah, I forgot to kiss you. Sorry.
There. All better.

Me: BUSY. ARE YOU HUNGRY? What Faithy? You have to go potty? Well, come on let’s go.

George: YES. WHAT’S FOR DINNER?

Me: DO YOU SEE A CLEAN SHIRT IN THE LAUNDRY PILE ON THE COUCH FOR FAITH? IT LOOKS LIKE SHE DUMPED MILK ALL OVER THIS ONE. Hey!! Faithy, that is wayyyy too much toilet paper.

George: I DON’T KNOW WHICH SHIRTS ARE HERS. THEY ALL LOOK THE
SAME. WHAT SIZE IS SHE? No Georgie, you can’t play Guitar Hero. Is your
room clean?

Me: I’LL GET IT. Trinity, is that Henry crying upstairs?
George: Hi, Honey. How are you?

Me: I’m tired. Are you hungry?

The weird thing is the kids are all pretty well-behaved kids. They’re just all under ten and outnumber us three to one.

We called Henry “Oops Shubin” for the first several months he was in utero, and when I told George I was pregnant that time, his response was “Oh NO! Not again!” Actually, that was more or less my response as well. We should probably do something about that soon…. At least Henry is a big sweetie-pie now, and he thinks George is pretty hot stuff, which none of the other kids did until they were a year old. At that point they all decided I was completely passe and George was SuperDad. At least I get to be WonderMommy for awhile.

Rachel

This morning as we were barreling down the freeway my children began to sing the Twelve Days of Christmas because really, Christmas is a mere four months away!! This delightfully repetitive and obnoxious song that is pretty much the holiday equivalent of 99 bottles of beer on the wall began to evolve after about the third time around, and all of the gifts changed from leaping lords and dancing milkmaids or whatever they are to the following:

12 giant flytraps
11 hobo spiders
10 boxes of lice
9 pterodactyls
8 rising mummies
7 T Rexes
6 hungry zombies
5-headed dragons
4 spraying skunks
3 thorny devils
2 stinging scorpions
1 velociraptor

So that’s festive, right? I particularly like the use of appropriate adjectives like “rising” mummies (for when the regular mummies just won’t do). Now, I realize this looks suspiciously like something that Georgie would come up with alone, but I’m fairly sure that the girls were back there envisioning this monstrosity right along with him. I mean really. Is this what you want for Christmas??

Venus Fly Trap, although I think they may have been envisioning something more like Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors.

Hobo Spider, which is our very large, local, nasty, poisonous one.

Lice, which I’m sure we all know enough about to detest.

Pterodactyl, which I always thought of as rather charming dinosaurs until I saw Jurassic Park III.

Rising Mummy = never good. This is me (or my body double) being threatened by a rising mummy:

Happily, this guy should be coming along any moment to rescue me.

I wonder how good Brendan Fraser does against these:

Zombies ~ ugly yes, but they move soooo slow. Oh no, what could be fast enough to escape them?? Stilts? Pogo sticks? Tricycles??

Five-headed dragon, which will be represented today by a drawing of a Hydra. Georgie will like that.

Skunk buns. Just what I always wanted for Christmas!

Thorny Devil. Call me crazy, but I think these guys are kind of cute. They certainly beat out skunk butt and zombie woman.

Stinging scorpions. Nope, not cute!

Velociraptor: cute until they slice you open with their giant middle claw and eat your guts while you’re still alive. And thank you, Steven Spielberg, for delivering that very important information to little rabid dinosaur-loving boys everywhere.

I better not get any of these things for Christmas. Of course, when I was a teenager my brother gave me a piece of moldy bread he had been growing in a jar in his closet for three months specifically for the occasion (he partitioned the box and put the actual gift in the other side). I don’t know that spraying skunk could smell much worse than that.

Rachel

WooHoo! Looks like we may finally be making potty training progress with Miss Faithyroo. She’s pretty close to Georgie territory on how long she’s been taking to train. Georgie was four months but Trinity was only a week, Anika one month, and Kyra two weeks start to finish. Faith here is somewhere around three months, I think. Actually looking up when we started would be way too depressing.

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

We are going to Wildlife Safari on Friday. I’m so excited! It’s this huge drive through animal park where the animals are in their own habitats and wonder around while you drive right through the middle in your car. Ostriches come up to your windows and all kinds of stuff. I’m so excited!

We’ve been telling the kids for a few weeks now that we are taking them somewhere three hours away and that we’re not telling them when we’re going (this turned out to be smart since we’ve had to reschedule it twice now). Listening to their terrible guesses has been quite amusing (for me) the last three weeks. One of the little ones wanted to know if we were going to McDonald’s. Sure! We’re driving three hours for McD’s. The older ones immediately corrected that.

So this week we started giving them more hints. It’s three hours south on I-5 if you drive 60mph. It has ostriches there. This would have been more helpful if they had been able to figure out how to spell “ostrich,” but since we wouldn’t tell them and they kept typing in “ostrege,” it didn’t get them too far.

This morning George finally told them the name of the town it’s in, so they Googled that and figured it out. I don’t know if they’re more excited or I am. We went when Georgie was a baby (he was too small to remember) and loved it. They haven’t been so they don’t know what to expect.

We have it all budgeted out, got Zoo Memberships, planned car breakfast and picnic lunch, and tomorrow I’m organizing everything. If you have an Oregon Zoo annual membership, you get 1/2 off your Wildlife Safari admission. It was going to be $82 admission for our gigantic family without the Zoo pass and the Zoo passes are $69 per family, so Zoo + 1/2 off WLS = $110. Basically for $30 more than it would cost us to go to Wildlife Safari once, now we can go to the zoo up here as many times as we want through the end of next August. Hehe.

And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for (come on, you know you have)…. This is why Kyra is lucky to be alive. This is the scene that greeted me when I went to wake her up from her nap (which she took in Trinity’s bed due to malfeasance on Faith’s part necessitating Faith taking her nap in her and Kyra’s room by herself):

Yes, that’s Kyra’s hair on the left.

And the fabric on the right is from….

the big hole cut out of Trinity’s pillowcase. See the orange fluff on the bed there? That’s actually not Kyra’s. You’ll meet the hapless owner of that hair in a minute.

More Kyra hair all over the bed (nice big blob on the left by the pillow).

Even Garfield is sad. I thought the orange hair was from him, but he appears to have survived the nap intact.

Meet Sally. Sally is about two feet long and has been Trinity’s friend for years. Now she is Trinity’s friend with….

a really bad haircut.

And the Demon Barber of Long Street herself.

If you’re going to lop off your hair, at least try to get it even!

So Kyra gets a trip to the hairdresser tomorrow, and will undoubtedly return home with a much shorter haircut. I usually cut the kids’ hair, but this is slightly beyond what I want to mess with. She took a least three inches off in chunks on one side and then did the same on the other but it looks like she just took off wisps there so she has long and short mixed all over on that side. Ugh. Every time I try to look at it, more comes out in my hand. Not a good way to make your Mommy happy. Did I mention she’s in a wedding at the end of August?

So instead of going out to dinner with her Auntie Masha tonight, spending the night at Babunya’s house (a.k.a. “Tanya”), and playing with Babunya all day tomorrow, Kyra instead received gigantic disciplinary action from her Father (because Mommy was worried she might actually damage said child) followed by cleaning up her big snippy mess and not going on her overnight trip.

You see, this morning I emerged from my shower to hear children #1 and #3 fighting with each other loudly enough that I could hear every word they said downstairs from my bathroom upstairs. Since this is the third day in a row that such behavior had been exhibited from dawn until bed, they both met the morning with the business end of Mom’s wrath. After that, the morning went along quite cheerfully.

After lunch I let the little girls watch Sleeping Beauty for a bit so I could clean my pantry. Apparently Faith opted to remain on the couch watching Prince Philip fight Maleficent when duty called instead of doing her doodie in the specified recepticle where it belongs. This earned her Father’s wrath and she also had to sleep in her bedroom by herself because only big girls get to nap in the same room with their big sisters.

Which left big sister Kyra sleeping in her big sister Trinity’s room, and now I think we’re all caught up. At least Henry’s been nice lately (and Trinity has been a good girl too). He’s four months old now, and is doing fabulously. About a week after he hit three months, we moved him into a crib in the little girls’ room.

Yes, danger danger, I know; however, he falls asleep in my bed and then by the time I move him to his crib in the other room, the girls are alseep. Then he wakes up and comes back in for breakfast with me before they wake up so they don’t have much opportunity to do things like cut his hair….

Around the same time we moved him out, he finally quit doing that snorting thing that was keeping him awake all the time. The doctor said that was from tiny nasal passages and he should outgrow it around three months. Guess they were right! I was able to add coffee and chocolate back into my diet without it bothering him.

Cheesecake and more than a bite or two of ice cream is still verboten (my eating cheesecake makes him absolutely miserable for two or three days afterward). I haven’t been drinking milk either, and I’m kind of looking forward to adding that back in. I’ve been slowly adding in cheese, a little milk in my frappe, and increasing amounts of ice cream to my diet with minimal effects on Henry’s part, so I’m hoping his digestive system is beginning to adjust.

We’ve discovered that when he’s sleeping well, not snorting, and his tummy isn’t bothering him, he’s quite a happy little boy. He doesn’t generally cry without a reason, smiles easily, is happy to be held or not, and is generally quite adorable. Plus, he’s lengthening his sleeping schedule out again.

He’s slept longer than eight hours in a row with no feeding in the middle anywhere for the last three nights. Last night I put him down around 9:30, fed him at 11:00 and moved him to the girls room, and then woke him up to feed him at 8:30 this morning (one of us needed to nurse anyway). That was the best night’s sleep I’ve had in over a year! Hurray!

Here’s a picture I took about a week and a half ago. I cleaned the kitchen. Henry took a nap.

Kids are so cute when they’re asleep. Then they wake up…. I think that’s
about it for today. I think I’ve earned liquor (yay pineapple mojito!).

Rachel

Trinity is off at Babunya’s (Hubby’s Mother) house this week, as per her birthday request, so we are down one child. It’s quite strange how the entire character of the house changes when one of the kids is missing. Hmmm, this is probably a preview of how it will differ when someone heads off to college or gets married.

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

This was the girls’ ballet recital from Sunday. You can tell who the big ham is in our family! In case you have seen us for awhile, in the beginning when they all line up Anika (our six year old) is the
teeny tiny one in the center and Trinity (our seven year old) is the
one on the far right who sort of looks like she’s not terribly sure
what she’s doing.

Rachel

You know how some babies are easy going all the time and barelycomplain about anything? Well, Henry isn’t one of them. He’sdisturbingly like his older brother was when Georgie was a baby ~ fussy all the time and cries if you put him down for three minutes together. Kind of makes me worried, not for his general health or anything but that he’s going to be another high maintenance kid. Argh! That would make how many now? One, two, three, four…. Argh!

I was under the impression that when God blesses you with another baby that you weren’t planning to have, some unwritten code exists whereby He gives you a really sweet, mellow child so you can spend lots of time bragging to all your friends about how now you couldn’t imagine life without the charming new wee one and God really did know what He was doing. Silly me! I’m sure God really does know what He’s doing; however, I think the memo detailing the plan to me got lost in transit somehow. The Angel Delivery Service (ADS, sort of like the
heavenly UPS) is apparently slacking off on the job. Hmph! Maybe Henry will cure cancer or something. Yes, in lieu of further communication, I’m just going to assume that’s what the plan is.

The midwife was over yesterday, and I mentioned this to her (of course, he was charming and perfect while she was here as he normally is with company). Now I get to delete milk, chocolate (*sob*, my truffles, *sob*), and coffee from my diet for a few days and see if that helps. You know, all the things that make taste buds worth having. Blurg! I’m hoping this helps. Anika cried all the time when she was a new baby. She wouldn’t go down well for naps during the day and then was miserable when she was awake because she was over-tired.

When Anika was six weeks old, I came down with a terrible case of mastitis the night before we were supposed to leave for the beach with George’s family. The next morning we zipped up to the doctor, got some anti-biotics, and headed for the coast. At least there I would be able
to lie around and there would be more people to help with the kids. Unfortunately, the antibiotics made me throw up everything I ate so I was thoroughly miserable for the next 24 hours until I gave up the drugs. By that time they had worked well enough that my body was able to kill off the rest of the mastitis by itself.

During the afternoon that first day, my MIL went to put Anika down for a nap. She walked in, ten seconds later she walked back out, no crying came from the bedroom, and Anika was sound asleep. George and I both looked at her. Ani had been flipping out completely when we put her down and wouldn’t stay asleep for anything. Apparently Mom had swaddled Anika (yes, we too had done this), turned on the fan and off the light (yes, good), laid her on the bed and then left. Being the thoughtful parents that we were way back then, we had been trying
to….. comfort her and walk her around and cuddle her.mWhat dumb ideas! That was the problem alright. We immediately adopted this new streamlined bedtime routine and were promptly rewarded with a happy baby.

I keep getting the feeling that there’s some simple little key like this that we’re missing with Henry. He does almost exactly the same thing ~ crummy nap habits and super cranky which I think is related to being over-tired, all of which I think may be related to being gassy (hence the dietary modifications for Mommy). I hope it gets sorted out soon because I’m really getting tired of listening to him cry (and so is everyone else). Plus, when he’s happy, he is sooooo cute! I prefer the cute. I know most people like wailing babies better, but oh no, not me. I like the cuteness. Okay, well he just woke up from the little snooze he was doing next to me and is now fussing, of course, so I’m off to go do baby stuff. Ciao!

Rachel

Ahhh, busy week around here. I can always tell when I’m feeling better because the house all of a sudden looks really messy and drives me bananas. Saturday morning I spent three or four hours cleaning out the big kids’ trash trap of a bedroom. Four garbage bags full of broken toys and miscellaneous paper shreds plus a trip to IKEA for shelves to turn their toy box units into bookshelves later, the room is lovely. Yesterday I cleaned out the toy units downstairs that were overflowing with similar detritus. Ahhh, so nice to have all that de-junked.

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