I hear all the time, “How do you do it with five kids?” And the honest answer is this: It is really not THAT hard. I mean, there is certainly a ton… a ton… of energy expended in kid-care, but there is also a synergy to a big family that makes it work. All the kids have playmates, a few years back we got two built-in babysitters, chores are spread out over more hands, there is always someone to laugh at your jokes, the whole family is perfect blog fodder … the list goes on.
But, perhaps, the hardest thing about being in a family with 5 kids spread over a 13 year age span is that we really don’t fit in anywhere.
Here is what I mean. We have friends with school-age kids slash teens and we have friends with preschoolers… but we are the only ones we know that have both. And this amounts to an incredible feeling of not fitting in… of isolation. One might think it would be the oppposite, but it really isn’t.
We face teenage issues about making good choices, fights with friends, and hormones right alongside potty training, learning the ABCs, and well-baby check ups.
We are never in the “Same Place” for long.
Add to that and I am not really a throw-the-baby-in-a-sling-and-climb-a-mountain type of gal. I am a stay at home read-a-book-while -snuggling-on-the-couch-eating-take-out type of gal and it gets pretty lonely.
I try to look at it this way: My adventure IS my family, IS my parenting, IS how to get the laundry done, IS how to stay within our budget and so forth. And I am actually happy with that arrangement. But there are times when I wish we could throw ourselves into just one place and live our life in that place for a while…but we can’t. So, we watch… a lot. And work hard. And sleep when we can.
5:30am – Dave leaves to get to his 7:30am job interview in city located 25 minutes south.
7:00am – Emme wakes up a bit early, so I choose to forgoe my early shower (afterall, grandma is in town so I will have time later!).
7:20am – Stumble downstairs. Jade is all ready for school and Ty and Emme and Grandma are all waking up slowly in the living room. I grab a cup of coffee and settle in for what should be a nice, well-planned day. I say a little prayer for Dave that his interview goes well.
7:59am – Jade leaves for school.
But then…
8:00 am – Ty informs me that he played a joke on daddy and has hidden daddy’s keys. What? Where?
8:01am – Ty reveals Dave’s work keys to the school and classroom, plus his ID badge. I have an “a ha” moment about the remark last night when Dave said, “I can’t find my keys.”
8:03am – Text Dave, “Ty hid yr keys. We have them here if U need them.”
8:05am – Dave calls to inform me that they moved his interview back to 9:15am and that he is on his way home to get his keys. I do mental math (not my strong point, by the way) and realize by the time he gets home, he will have only about 10 minutes before he will need to get back into his car and head back to his interview.
8:07am- Izzy asks me, “Will you flat iron my hair for 6th grade graduation today?” Yes, go get flat iron and plug it in in Jade’s bathroom where there is more counter space.
8:08am – Load Izzy and Lily’s fancy dresses into garbage bags because it has started pouring down rain.
8:10am – Izzy and I head down to bathroom to work on her hair. Ty trails behind us to watch.
8:11am – Ty touches the hot part of the flat iron. Screams, “I touched it on accident!!!!!” I pick him up and run to the other bathroom because Jade’s sink backs up really easily. Run finger under cold water for several minutes. Carry sobbing 5 year old to kitchen and put on bandaid. Hold him. Carry him back to Jade’s bathroom
8:15am – Dave arrives home. Ty runs from bathroom to get a hug from Daddy. I begin flat ironing hair.
8:19am – Flat ironed hair looks pretty darn good.
8:20am – Walk down the hallway and question Dave’s outfit choice for interviewing. I run upstairs to the closet to see if I can do better. I can’t.
8:22am – Return downstairs to Ty and Emme screaming in Dave’s arms. Loudly. I don’t ask.
8:23am – I sit on big chair and go into an alternate universe where they have unicorns.
8:26am – Microwave my coffee and take my first sip.
8:29am – Dave starts to leave, but kids are still screaming. I got it, I say. Just go. Oh, and good luck on your interview.
8:30am – Ty tackles me on the big chair. Cries some more. I use deep breathing techniques to get him to relax. Emme decides to walk around the living room with a dishtowel over her head and discovers that this can cause her to run into things.
8:35am – Izzy and Lily (remember them?) gather stuff to get ready for school.
8:45am – Neighbor girl shows up to pick up Izzy and Lily and they head out the door.
And to wrap it all up…
8:45am to 1:15pm – a short hiatus where I debrief Dave’s interview, finally get my shower, throw in a load of laundry, eat breakfast, fix lunch, put Emme down for a nap, put on nice clothes for aforementioned 6th grade graduation, pack a snack and camera for the afore aforementioned graduation, help grandma pack a picnic for upcoming swim meet, watch Ty’s “battle show” on TV.
2:00 to 5:30pm – All 8 of us (including Grandma Bloo) attend a 90 minute 6th grade graduation where Emme tries to steal the show multiple times by shouting “YA YA” at the top of her lungs and performing 1 year old dance moves to all the music from the slideshow. Then Grandma, Dave, and I put hands in a circle and yell “BREAK” and run in three different directions. Me to dentist with Jade and Ty, Grandma to swim meet with Izzy and Lily, Dave to home with Emme. We exchange seven texts and four phone calls between us — none while driving — and I finally arrive home before the rain starts up again only to read an email that reveals that Lily is on the wrong soccer team for the Fall. Seriously?
5:31 to 7:38pm – Eat some form of food, have talk with Dave about why he doesn’t take me on fancy dates any more, discover there is no toilet paper in our bathroom, and realize the underwire in my bra is trying to empale me.
7:39pm – -Open beer.
7:40pm – Make a mental note to not forget anything on tomorrow’s agenda.
Emme has started walking. At 15 months old and the youngest of five, I am convinced that up until now she just has not seen the purpose in walking. After all, there are like a million other people at her beck and call and she has used that fact to her full advantage. So, when she started taking those first frankenstein-esque steps she received rounds and rounds of applause from her family fan club — aka eveyone in the house. Now she walks from the couch to the coffee table and claps for herself. Which, of course, elicits more applause from the surrounding masses. Her favorite is to grunt and reach until someone will offer their pointer finger (usually Jade is selected for this duty) and then she graps that offered finger as she toddles all over our house. Pulling along the person attached to that finger as if they are baggage. The last time Jade was on finger duty, her finger actually turned purple and lost all feeling. Here she is making a break for the FLIP camera on Saturday.
Other than the whining, which clearly means “Give me the damn camera!” she will only speak four words. The rest of the time she babbles CONSTANTLY and LOUDLY in what can only be described as the perfect hybrid of Chinese and Yiddish… Or Jawa (for those Star Wars fans out there). Her favorite American words are “Uh Oh” which she uses liberally. “Uh Oh” is followed by “Cookie” which sounds more German than American… as if she is clearing her throat, “KKCKCKKKCK…” Then comes “Night Night” and finally “YA YA” which she uses in reference to any and all family members. I have to admit, creating one name for every member of this family is pretty darn effecient, and I gotta admire that. Brilliant.
Not long after I met Dave I learned something that was (and still is) more than a little disturbing. He LOVES spiders. If he spots a spider crawling along the floor or wall he says, “Hello friend,” then goes and gets a glass to rescue the spider by scooping it ever so gently up and releasing it back “into the wild” as he likes to say. I guess what he failed to understand was that part of the allure of having a boyfriend- then fiancee -then husband is that they are here to smash bugs and, yes, spiders, into oblivion so I do not have to reside with them….ever.
The only time he ever deviated from his rescue plan was when we found the largest, crunchiest, gnarliest looking spider crawling along our kitchen floor. I mean, this thing was TROPICAL it was so nasty. At the time we had this wonderful cat, Bree, who likened herself a huntress (and proved it on more than one occaision). As I stood atop the kitchen table, Dave — as usual — ever so gently put our largest drinking glass over the top of the spider, but then he said, “Here Kitty Kitty.” As Bree approached the caged spider, Dave lifted the glass and Bree had herself a nice tasty spider morsel for dinner that night. I can still hear the crunching. When I asked him why this type of death for his friend the spider was okay (as opposed to being squished by a shoe or waded up paper towel) he came back to his old standard. “Well, the spider died in the wild, eaten by its natural predator.” I guess he failed to consider that large jelly jar styled drinking glasses to not randomly descend on spiders in the wild.
Last Friday, however, the world was made right — tilted back into balance, if you will.
The temperature had reached 65 degrees here in the Seattle area and so we decided to dine al fresco for dinner. As we were wrapping up our meal Jade – age 14 – noticed the smallest little spider on the table, crawling right along the edge. She pushed back her chair and started to do that high pitch talking that only dogs can hear, “OOOH, a spider… ooh….ooh…” Well, I said, why don’t you smash it? “Nooooo….!!!” she screeches. Okay, I say, you have two choices. You can smash it or you can pull “a Dave” and rescue it and release it into the wild. “EEEEWWWW,” she says. “EWWWW!!!” She then curled herself into a ball and started to shiver.
“Oh” says Ty — age FIVE — ” I know the choice!!!! DESTROY IT!” He then leans over with his napkin, smashes it into bits and smiles at me.
