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

Yesterday I spent a large portion of the day upstairs communing with my laptop and catching up on deskwork. The older children spent at least half the day cleaning their bedrooms (cleaning in this case is a relative term) and the downstairs and then messing both back up again in a successful effort to irritate their father into near insanity (he was on kid duty while I was upstairs).

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

After the chaos that comprised the entirety of last week (George got home from Vegas Wednesday and then worked all day and into the evening on both Thursday and Friday and then from 2:30 to 8:30 on Saturday), this week is looking blessedly slower.

It’s throwing George all out of sorts after working all hours for the last few weeks, but I’m getting to catch up on some atrociously overdue rest. Plus, Henry’s cold is finally getting better after two weeks and counting, and his nighttime sleep habits have started to improve again the last few days. Naturally, this makes a humongous difference in my nighttime sleep habits as well. A few more days and I might feel like some rough approximation of a normal person. I’m looking forward to that!

Since I’ve been in a giant, sleep- and husband-deprived fog for the last two weeks, my children have gotten all behaviorally sloppy again. Georgie has taken to pouting every time we ask him to do something, Trinity has mysteriously gone deaf under the same circumstances, and Faith has turned into a total maniac. She spends half the day crying that she’s not getting her way and the other half fighting with the bigger kids (usually this is at her instigation).

Plus, as soon as I sit down to nurse or mess with Henry, she makes a beeline for the pantry or whatever is on the counter that she’s not supposed to be in (such as Angel Food Cake or cookies) and starts wolfing it down before one of her parents or siblings discovers her malfeasance. Argh! She’s driving me (and every one else) nuts!!!

The only one I’m not contemplating jettisoning from the house is Kyra. Considering that only a year ago she was the biggest troublemaker in the abode, this is quite the surprise. Plus, she keeps her bedroom clean (she’s three! What three year old is obsessive about keeping their room picked up??), amuses me with virtually everything she says or does, and obeys and helps out immediately and cheerfully upon request. She seems to be wearing this age well. At least somebody is charming to be around.

On the other hand, now that Daddy is back and Mommy is shedding her zombiness and returning to human form, it shouldn’t take more than a few days to get all these other kids straightened back out except for Faith, who will probably take about a year of sitting on. I think the only reason that children survive being two without their parents choking their little heads off is because they come with those cute chubby cheeks attached. Cuteness. Pretty good safety feature as those things go. Anyway, this will probably be another long week, but overall a tremendous improvement over the last two. As my favorite saying goes, “The Beatings Will Continue UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES.” Hehe.

Hmmm, I need to take some more pictures of Mr. Henry. He’ll be a month old on Thursday. I’m fairly sure there’s been some sort of rift in the space-time continuum or something, which is obviously the only logical explanation for how fast the last month went. Don’t you just hate those? I’ll see if I can’t get some pics taken and up in the next day or two.

Rachel

Aaargh! This week and last week have been crazy. My sweet Hubby worked late almost every day last week, missing dinner several times and not getting home until either shortly before or an hour after the kids’ bedtime.

Then Sunday he flew out to Las Vegas for the National Association of Broadcasters convention (NAB) and didn’t get home until today. In case you were wondering, I am rather behind on sleep. I don’t usually sleep too well when he’s gone anyway, and having a newborn with a cold doesn’t exactly help very much (Henry’s cold is finally getting better after plaguing him for two weeks. Poor kid’s had a cold for half his life now!).

Thankfully, I’ve had lots of help this week. We had dinner at my parents’ house on Monday (nice since I got four hours of sleep in two two hour sections on Sunday night and was a total zombie), and then dinner at George’s parents’ last night (MIL made the best fried chicken I’ve ever had. Now I have to go track down the recipe). The two little girls spent the night at George’s parents Monday night, which meant that I only had to get four children out the door and dropped off to school on Tuesday instead of six. Then last my Mom spent the night at my house and watched the little girls while I picked up Hubby from the airport. George and I got to go out for breakfast and take a nap, both of which were very nice. I’m hoping Henry sleeps well tonight. I know I’ll sleep better with George home.

On top of all the other goings on this week, my van started overheating on Monday. I put a gallon of water in the radiator right away plus another half a gallon the next morning. Tuesday after dropping the kids off at school, I drove the car down to our mechanic friend for a pressure test which revealed a something or other that needs to be fixed for $500 (he wrote down what it was so I could show Hubby when he gets home, but Henry is sleeping on my arm while I’m typing this and I don’t want to move him to go find the paper). At least it’s not a head gasket! He put some stuff in the radiator that will keep it running for a few days until I can get it in for a proper fix.

You know, if the car is going to break when my Main Squeeze is gone, at least it didn’t leave me stranded on the freeway with six small children and it was something that I knew where to look and what to do to temporarily keep it running until I could have it looked at. Thank you, Lord, for that!

Okay, I’m off to go finish off my inbox, which I am wayyyyyy behind on, and then I need to go forage in the fridge again. I forgot how hungry nursing makes me. What a week! Hope yours involves more face time with your spouse, more sleep, and less running around like one of those marathon runner guys from Kenya.

Rachel

Henry turned two weeks old on Monday, and life is going well. You know, he’s generally a pretty happy little guy. He sleeps at the right time of day (night actually) and for decent lengths of time, is pretty content during the day, and doesn’t spend long swaths of time doing weird things like crying for no reason. Plus you know, he’s rather aesthetically pleasing. What a nice little boy!

Now that I’m not pregnant anymore, my energy level has been steadily rising again. Yay! Mrs. Slug is gone. After I planned this week’s meals last week and George did the shopping (this is our usual arrangement), I got ambitious last Saturday and prepped all the dinners we are having this week: turkey quesadillas, mango salsa shrimp, baked ziti, buffalo burgers, and fajitas. It’s all in my back freezer and ready to go.

For some reason babies seem to wake up and want to be fiddled with just around dinner time. Makes it difficult to fiddle with anything else, and some other people in the household seem to think that they deserve food too. Go figure! George has on site work the entire week (he didn’t get home until after 10:30 last night) so it seemed like making everything ahead would make my week much smoother, which it has.

My Grandma and parents came over for dinner (and so Grandma could see her new great grandson) last night, and I already had the quesadilla filling made, so it was a snap to fry it up. Phew! I always struggle during the post-partem period with feeling good and wanting to just go do everything. Then I zoom around and it all catches up to me at once. Suddenly I’m too tired to stand! The last two days have more or less been zoomy days, so today I just rested (plus my laundry is done and the downstairs is tolerably cleanish). Amazing how that helps!

I think that’s it for around here. Sure is nice to be feeling more like myself again. I like the regular me much better that the cranky pregnant version.

Rachel

Call Marvel; we have new superheroes. Well, since Hellboy is already on the roster and Toothless Girl’s superpower skillset sounds rather dubious, I guess we’ll just have to keep these two for ourselves.

Henry is doing great. He does do one funny thing though. When he starts crying, he turns this color:

Happily he’s lacking the sawed-off horns and whatever that is on Hellboy’s arm. You see, I’ve never actually seen Hellboy, despite the fact that my father, husband, and son (the old one, not the new one) all claim that it’s a great movie. All the snippets that I’ve accidentally seen have seemed worthy of a good eyerolling to me, so maybe the Y chromosome is coloring their perception. Plus, my son thinks that Ghost Rider is a good movie, which automatically disqualifies his opinion. I suppose one day I’ll have to see it and then who knows? It may actually turn out to be watchable, but I’m planning to delay this for as long as possible.

Last Henry has his first shower with me and he wasn’t too impressed with the whole idea (he has since had two more, which he seemed to like very much). He wailed away the entire time and turned an unbelievably bright color of red. I’d never seen a baby turn that color, and it’s not exactly like I haven’t had kids before! The midwife says it’s fine and it’s starting to wear off. In keeping with our general theory of why wait to screw your kids up until they’re older, I immediately started calling him Mr. Tomato Head while George opted for Hellboy.

In other news, Anika (a.k.a. “Toothless Girl”) lost her very first tooth last week. She’s six and since all the other kids lost their first ones at five, she’s been impatiently waiting for quite awhile. She’d been showing me all week how it has been getting progressive looser, and then at dinner the other day I looked at her and it was gone. When I asked her where her tooth went, she started sticking her fingers in her mouth looking for it and decided it must have fallen out in her orange juice. Orange juice?? Who loses a tooth in OJ? This seemed unlikely to me, but she spent the rest of dinner swishing around her cup and she was right. It was in her juice! And here is a picture of our lovely Toothless Girl:

Georgie had been sick for a couple days when Henry was born, so he couldn’t hold him until the following day. What a couple of handsome boys.

That’s all the news for now, I think! I now feel satisfied that our life for the last week has been adequately documented.

Rachel