Chris came home from work around 12 today. He had a light day and needed to study before a major exam this evening at his 5 o clock class. While he threw some lunch together for himself, he vented about never being able to focus on just one thing. He took my minivan to work this morning because his suburban needs a new alternator and won’t move until it has one. We discussed how capable he is of replacing his alternator, but that would require time…which he didn’t have. We discussed how little he has been able to study for this exam. We discussed how he overbooked himself this week and when he text messaged one of the guys he’s working for this week and asked “Do you have anyone else that can finish that bathroom? I overbooked myself this week?” The guy responded “I have no one else.” And Chris responded “Ok.” We discussed our 13 year wedding anniversary that was the day before, and how “nice” it was to take all six of our kids to chipotle for some burritos. Romance, step aside! We prefer a house full of burrito farts to help us celebrate 13 years of marital bliss! There was a lull in our lunch time conversation and then Chris said, “I gotta show you this sculpture I made for the boys today…”. I looked at him curiously, wondering when it was that he found the time, materials and wherewithal to make our sons a “sculpture”. I said, “Are you kidding?”He defended himself, “Well, all morning while I was cleaning out my mud pan I kept plopping it in the same spot and it kinda started to set up and harden and got taller and when I threw the last blob on it was just too perfect…the bottom was nice and flat and I just used the fresh stuff to sculpt this little skull…I thought we could take it out to camp and they could shoot their Beebee guns at it…”

He exited the kitchen to go retrieve the sculpture. I returned to whatever chore I was in the middle of, then I heard him give off a slight trumpet sound, as if to draw attention to his presentation. When I turned around he had covered the small creation with the nearest stinky, wet dish cloth.

 “You ready?” He asked. 

“Absolutely.”

He lifted the dish cloth. There it was. “I mean it took me like ten seconds.”

I was astounded. “They’re gonna love it.” I asserted. 

And they did. 

And I love Chris. 

After literal weeks (lets be real…its been YEARS!) of visiting and revisiting this topic and jotting stuff down that I want to note and remember, I’ve come to the conclusion that this needs to be read as a kind of a sloppy research paper.  A study conducted with more emotion than say an actual scientific study.  My lab is our home.  I am one of the variables in the experiment.  I’m not yet sure what it is that I believe my findings will accomplish, but I have no choice but to dissect this thing.

A brief disclaimer…the following are observations concerning my own four boys.  Maybe you have 4 boys and they have a gentle, calm and relaxed demeanor.  If that is the case, then I would ask to perhaps read your own observations because they would be as foreign to me as the moon.

This is my creative way of announcing that never before in the history of our baby making, have we ever chosen to discover the gender of our unborn children before the birth…but this time we felt the need.  Mostly because we felt Iris deserved to know…if she needs to hunker down for more of the same around here or if perhaps, God was sending in a reinforcement.

DING DING DING! ROUND FIVE! It’ a boy.  I love boys.  Boys are fun and imaginative and energetic and I grew up with four brothers of my own.  Boys have a magic to them that is all their own.  I found that with all my boys, the cuddle time is limited…usually around age six they get a little too preoccupied to want to cuddle their mom.  A kiss on the cheek and a daily hug are as much as I can ask without seeming too needy.  They have taught me to savor my unabashed affectionate days with my little boys now.  Maxwell, our soon 2 year old, doesn’t get a break from my incessant cuddles.  Sometimes I catch the other boys watching us like it is a movie with subtitles and they can’t read fast enough to comprehend.  Once I was asked by one of them, “Were you like that with us Mom?”

“Are you kidding?! Yes!  Then everyone got TOO COOL for MOM CUDDLES.”

So we’ve established how fond I am of boys.  This fondness does not change the fact that they just might put me in an early grave.  My boys don’t walk through my home.  They run, like a herd of rhinoceros.  When my boys have just passed through, every area rug has been spun around and pictures have been knocked off the walls and furniture has been displaced to MAKE WAY! and the pillows are no longer on the sofa, rather they are EVERYWHERE.  Once I thought it would be a great idea after purchasing a “new-to-us” leather sofa off of Craigslist to also purchase a huge sheepskin rug that I found for a great deal on eBay, you know…a ten year makeover on the living room.  What I didn’t predict was that my living room would quickly become WRESTLEMANIA during all waking winter hours that the boys weren’t in school.  During the school day, Maxwell sits on that luscious rug and contently reads his board books…until the afternoon when it is overtaken by his animal brothers.  The rug summons forth some deep and ancient call to battle that can only be explained as primal instinct.  One evening while I sat on the floor with a laundry basket and matched the family’s socks, I watched in amazement as Chris took Maxwell’s waistband of his pants into his clenched teeth and drug Max around the rug like a father bear with his cub.  Max laughed in hysterics the entire time and all doubts were removed from my mind as to why it is that every time Chris walks out the door and Max is left with “the laundry lady” he has taken to fussing and crying and calling for his “DADA”.  “Sorry Max, I won’t be dragging you around the home with my teeth while I’m 7 months pregnant, you’ll have to wait until your ape of a father gets home…”

The other weekend, Chris’ brother and our sister in law took our three older boys on a sleepover extravaganza that included bowling and movies and a 20 dollar trip to the Goodwill!  They went away boys and came back MEN!  They deeply enjoyed this small getaway with their uncle and aunt and it is a memory that they will cherish forever. The kids had off school the day after this sleepover for Martin Luther King day and we were going to be hosting some friends that day.  Early in the morning I announced to the kids that our friends were coming over and that we all needed to spend a little time tidying our areas.  After about 20 minutes, I went upstairs to check on the boys’ progress on their room.  To my surprise, when I entered the room there were little signs of obedience and instead the boys were all standing and sitting around, all with a rather sullen disposition.  I could tell that I had walked in on a moment or conversation or something.  I halt.  “What’s up guys?”

After a brief glance at one another Micah answers, “We feel bad for Uncle Ben.”

I am utterly puzzled, “Uncle Ben?  Why?”

Flynn pipes up from the hammock in which he is lazily swinging, “He gave us a game that HE really liked.”

Owen is feeling all the feels, “Yeh, he really loved this one game mom, and he let us have it.”

I’m feeling amused.  I love that the boys got to experience their Uncle’s boyish enthusiasm for a game and I am also appreciating that Ben would love to know how badly these boys feel for him, without his game…just trying to make it through the day.

“Wow, so you guys were touched by Uncle Ben’s sacrifice?  You recognized that he really loved a game and instead of being selfish and keeping it for himself, he chose to give it to you guys?”

In unison they all agree “Yea.”

Micah announces, “I want to give it back to him.”

“YEA.” they all agree again.

I am smiling at their deliberation.  “So what game was it?”

Flynn explains, “It is this wooden game with a ball bearing called Labyrinth and Ben used to have it when he was young…”

“Well, that was really nice of him to give it to you guys.  I hope you appreciate it and take care of it.  Maybe if you think he would enjoy it more than you, it would be a good idea to give it back to him.  It’s up to you guys.”

I left their messy bedroom feeling less concerned about the mess and more intrigued by their tender hearts, considering poor Uncle Ben…with no Labyrinth to call his own.

My dear friend and her four kids came to visit and we had a delightful day filled with nothing at all…the best kind of day.  Nearing the end of our visit, I sensed that Flynn and Micah (my two oldest boys…10 and 8) were beginning to seem a bit bored.  I gave them some great ideas of things they could do to occupy their time until our friends left.

After our friends left, I laid Max down for his afternoon nap and wanted to get into a project…maybe some basement maintenance…but I wanted to get a handle on what my four other roommates were up to first.  The house was quiet so I headed out the front door.  There I found Iris (10) and her brother Owen (6) standing in the alley, shooting NERF arrows into the sky, nearly hitting the cars in the business parking lot directly in front of our home.  Add this to the list of reasons I love living in a parking lot.  When the kids have a weekday off school, that doesn’t mean the parking lot isn’t full of people’s vehicles that DONT have off that day.

“Sorry guys, no-one who works at the hospital wants you shooting NERF arrows anywhere near their cars…take it to the back yard or the park…” While our yard has been known to induce instant claustrophobia once more than 3 people occupy it, there is a small church owned park at the end of our block that serves as our “over flow yard”.  They headed in the direction of the park.

Now to find the other two boys.  I quietly scanned the second floor and whispered up the attic steps in an effort to NOT disturb freshly napping Max.  No Flynn.  No Micah.

I retreat back downstairs, imagining that they must have taken to the outdoors, perhaps the treehouse.  As I walk through the kitchen and my eyes peered through the window and into the treehouse, I had to adjust my gaze slightly to go beyond the back of our yard and into the neighbor’s yard behind our property, for that is where all the activity was taking place.

Our kids have never actually met the elderly man that lives behind us.  They have seen him walk around his yard a handful of times in the ten years that we have lived in our current home.  He has a pool that he has never taken the tarp off of and other than causing a mosquito epidemic every summer that forces us indoors, he hasn’t really made an impression on the kids one way or another.  They have spied on him from their treehouse when he mills about his yard and they have given him the code name “Mr. Bunion”.

There, beyond our chainlink fence…in Mr. Bunion’s pool…I spot my two sons.  They are each wielding an ax and are chopping at the ice in the tarped pool like they are being paid to do so (they are all into being paid lately…for everything…you know, even the stuff that I do all day every day…somehow they would like to be paid for these chores…)  I am flabbergasted at what I see.  Only one other time have I ever even heard about the boys hopping the fence to grab a ball or something and I made it clear that retrieving their possessions that accidentally end up in Mr. Bunions’ yard is the only reason to invade his property.

I stepped onto the back porch and from there I used my outside voice to loudly ask, “IS THIS A JOKE?!”

They both stopped mid swing and looked at me and then each other.

“GET OVER HERE!”  I actually didn’t even know how to handle this moment.  They are not bad kids.  They probably thought they were doing the guy a favor or something ridiculous like that, but I was pretty sure they understood that they weren’t supposed to be in his yard, even if all his pool ice desperately needed axed.

When they entered the backdoor I was actually speechless.  These were the same boys that I had just caught that morning feeling deeply saddened at their uncles’ sacrificial gift of The Labyrinth, right?  They are my straight A, never a discipline problem at school, responsible young men, right?

“I don’t even know what to say.  Go to your room.  I have to call your dad.”

Their heads hung in shame as they drug their feet through the house to their final destination.  I immediately got on the phone to Chris, who I hoped was in a favorable environment to talk during his workday.

He answered the phone right away.  “You’re not going to believe this, I was having some trouble locating Flynn and Micah and after checking the park and the entire house I went to the kitchen window to check the yard and treehouse and there I find them…in Mr. Bunions’ pool…with axes…chopping away at the ice like a couple of delinquents…”

Chris begins to laugh the kind of laugh that makes the whole world feel better, no matter what is going on.  I hear screw guns and hammering in the background.  I’m slightly puzzled by his laughter until he entertains me with his thought process…

“They’re just stupid boys! You know what you should have done…you should have knocked on the neighbor’s door and told him what they were doing and asked him to wait until you got back home so you could record their reaction when he came out yelling at them…THAT would have been great!”

He was right.  I saved them from the natural consequences of their actions, the way all mothers do…because our children’s behavior is a direct reflection on our parenting…isn’t it?  Chris helped me to recognize that while these boys navigate the turbulent seas of becoming men and learn how to manage all this raging testosterone, we may see more of this kind of off the wall “It seemed like a good idea at the time” kind of behavior.  Our only real plan is to keep them enrolled in sports and to try to train them to use tools for their intended purposes.

Nothing much came of the pool axing incident.  The boys spent a good amount of time in their room and when Chris got home we gave them a stern talking to.

Not many days later, I was sitting in the parking lot at school waiting for the kids to be dismissed.  Iris hopped in the van first.  She immediately alerted me that she passed the boys bathroom that day and saw Micah crying in there.  I am immediately needing to know why?  I can’t imagine what could have caused him to be upset enough to prompt a bathroom tear fest.  Micah can be quite a handful on the home front, but at school he is an assistant to his teacher and a superior honor roll student and a SELF-MANAGER every single month.  He has never let on that he has ever had trouble with any other students.

Owen enters the van next and then Micah.  By this point we are all aware that Micah was crying in the bathroom that day.

Iris wastes no time, “Hey Micah, why were you crying in the bathroom?  I saw you.”

“I got my clip moved down.”  Micah is dismally gazing out the window while he explains. He was referring to an inter-classroom disciplinary system that his teacher uses to keep order and reward students who consistently perform adequately.  Micah rarely, if ever…has his clip moved down.  He didn’t handle it so well.  When I asked him what caused this he said something about a bunch of kids talking when they shouldn’t have been and he was apparently grouped in with them.

A week later at parent-teacher conferences his teacher had only positive things to say.  However, there is a section of the conference itinerary that focuses on areas that your child could improve.  His teacher mentioned that Micah has trouble transitioning from reading his book (usually a graphic novel that he picks up if he has speedily completed the last assignment) to the next topic or assignment.  He explained that a few days earlier he had to ask Micah to put his book away TWICE, and so his clip was moved down.  He mentioned that Micah was very upset and had to go to the bathroom to calm down.  I told him that I heard about this incident but that Micah must have misunderstood what his infraction was.  His teacher has told me multiple times that he wished “asking kids to stop reading” were a problem for more of his students.  I left that conference understanding Micah a little more and feeling proud of him.  He deeply values what his teacher thinks of him and was having a considerable amount of trouble overcoming what it felt like to disappoint not only his teacher but also himself.  I would have cried in the bathroom too.

It is mid-day and Max and I are eating a sad yet nutritious lunch of applesauce and muesli and yogurt.  I’ve noticed since around 18 months (Max is currently 21 months) he has become much more vocal.  Sometimes I can make out what he is saying and it feels like a giant victory.  Other times he blabbers on and on and I feel awful because I know how intelligent he is and I know he has so much to say, but he just isn’t speaking our language yet.  Recently, before bedtime we were in the kitchen when he wouldn’t stop pointing to the cupboard in the corner of the kitchen, where we keep plates and bowls.  He became so incessant with his chattering and pointing that I finally scooped him up and placed him on the counter and asked him what he was pointing at.  He reached forward and opened the corner cabinet and pointed to the top shelf, a shelf that I rarely access which mostly houses some scarcely used baking dishes.  I held him up so he could see ALL the way to the back of the top shelf of the corner cabinet.  He seemed pleased.  I set him back down on the counter.

“Anything else you’d like to see while you’re up here?” I asked.

He scooted a few steps to the left and opened the tiny cabinet that holds our in-home pharmacy.  I held him up and he glanced deep into each shelf.  Then we moved onto the largest cupboard, one he sees into often enough, but not a real good look, not all the way up to the top shelf.  It probably took 5 minutes of my day, to show him the interiors of our few main kitchen cupboards, and he was pleased to hop down off that counter top and move on with his night.  I felt amazed at myself that finally, after 4 other children, I am realizing by the fifth that they are constantly communicating and they are very smart little people.  I couldn’t help but ponder how long the boy has stared at those cabinet doors opening and closing and has just wondered what could be in there, all the way at the top.  It must feel comparable to the top of a skyscraper for him.  He is constantly teaching me.

Having recently learned this lesson with Max, I took note as we ate our lunch where he wanted me to direct my attention.  He was pointing to the small yellow shelf in the kitchen that holds a large jar of coffee, a few jars of nuts and snacks, a cast iron bird shaped bottle opener, a brass paper weight…also in the shape of a bird, a sugar bowl…  I stood at the counter and moved my hand from one item to the next while he said “No.”  “No.”  “No.”  I was losing my patience when I came to the end of the shelf and my hand rested on a family photo that my best friend/photographer took of us when I was pregnant with Max.  He didn’t say “No.”…instead, the most darling little smile crept across his face.  I pulled the frame down and laid it before him.  He sat looking at that picture and pointing at each family member and talking about them for at least 15 minutes.  Once again, that photo has probably sat on that shelf for the better part of his life, always out of his reach.

So often I am too busy to stop and try to decipher what it is that my toddler is saying, but when I exhaust all my efforts in understanding what the little guy is saying, it is so worth it…so satisfying.

Days later…I am sitting with Iris at the small kitchen table doing a puzzle.  I managed to keep 6 separate appointments the day before, Iris started puking in the night, the kids had a day off school for parent/ teacher conferences, Chris was at his Friday morning nursing class and there wasn’t a lot that could motivate me to leave my home or care about getting dressed for that matter.  The boys were starting their kind of playful, soon to get ugly rough housing on the living room floor.  I called out once that “SOMEONE IS GOING TO GET HURT!” but my warning fell on deaf ears.  Not a minute passed before Max was screaming that scream that is silent at it’s most intense point.  He was clearly hurt in a way that not only felt bad but that had also taken him by surprise.  Flynn stands up and brings Max to me.  I ask for any available explanation from Flynn.

“Well, I was wrestling Micah and I ran into Max and knocked him over…”  Max is inconsolable and at one point Flynn expresses some annoyance that he isn’t calming down.

“Flynn, you just clobbered him.  No-one likes to be clobbered and he can cry if he wants to…”

On the slight defense Flynn asserts, “I don’t even know what clobber means!”

“Well, its when you’re going through your day minding your own business and someone’s entire body just collides with yours, invading your personal space and safety and  Max has just been clobbered.  What you guys don’t understand is that ALL DAY while you’re at school Max selects his favorite books and goes and sits on the rug and enjoys laughing at the pictures and turning the pages and he never has to think about defending himself against complete crazy people!  You are the one who needs to be more careful, or take your energy outside!” On this day I decided that sooner rather than later, our boys will be enrolled in wrestling…whether they like wearing a singlet or not (I would prefer that they despise it!)

A day or so earlier…Max is napping, Iris and Micah and Flynn are all “building something” in the basement and Owen emerges in the kitchen, having remembered that I previously mentioned making chocolate chip cookies.  Chris was at night class and I find the evenings that Chris has class to be particularly good opportunities to spend unique time with my kids.

I had almost reconsidered making the cookies, because there is always other stuff that needs my attention more than our confection supply, but when Owen entered the otherwise quiet kitchen and said “Can I help you make the cookies mom?” I said “Sure.”

I couldn’t remember the last time I was alone in my kitchen with just Owen. When did Owen last have my undivided attention?  I know he has a tendency to feel lost in a sea of children, all talking over each other, all needing attention, some more immediately than others.  I seized this opportunity for all it was.  Owen measured every ingredient and turned on the mixer and was able to tell everyone in the house that he made the cookies when we proudly presented them to the group.  At one point after he put the eggs away in the fridge and was walking back to his work station he stopped and said to me, “Hey mom, do you know what isn’t fair?”

“What?”

“Evens get to be broken in two…but then you know what IS fair?”

I’m looking at Owen now to try to follow where this is going…I’m sure these are the kinds of things he says all the time that get lost in the shuffle because they are said at the same time that a toddler is whining or a table needs set or a paper needs signed while scrambled eggs burn.

“Odds get to have a middle!”  He is smiling quite big while he shares this realization with me.

All this time I always thought, “Geez, those even numbers…always getting to be split right down the center, never a problem to divide, nice and orderly…”  But here its the odds that get to have THE MIDDLE!  Where are we without our middle?!  Whats an OREO without the center? (I’ve actually never had this thought…but thanks to Owen, I will never think of odds and evens the same again.)

“Wow Owen.  You really thought that one through.  Now we don’t have to feel bad for the odds anymore.”  My thoughtful Owen.

A few days later…it is Saturday.  Max has woken up in rare form, feverish and whiney.  Max is usually my happy, cuddley book worm in the morning.  This morning he only wanted held a specific way and if you had to stretch to reach your coffee or God forbid, get up and use the bathroom, he was going to let you know that he did not approve.  The three older boys were in high gear, all psyched up for their final basketball game.  Their two separate games were at noon that day, but here they were, all dressed and ready to go at 8 in the morning.

Anyone living in central Pennsylvania with a house full of children this winter can tell you that this has been a pretty sad winter so far.  No snow to enjoy or prompt school cancellations.  Only the occasional downpour, cause in the words of Chris…”You know, it is monsoon season here in PA.”  Well, this Saturday we woke up to big, fat snowflakes falling (and immediately melting) and we were all excited.  Micah was already red in the face from his several rounds of running in the snow in his basketball shorts.  He is my child who gets the most excited about snow.  I overheard him ask the other kids to go out and play with him, but due to the lack of accumulation, no one was interested.

By this time Chris had come downstairs and taken over in the kitchen as my arms were full of fever baby.  I decided to relocate the tiny rocking chair to the entryway so we could open the front door and watch the big, lazy flakes fall.  Max seemed soothed and I was too.  I felt a presence beside me and heard heavy breathing.  Following a disappointed sigh Micah lamented, “I wish I had a girl to throw snowballs at…”

I uncuddled Max just enough to turn and look at Micah, with that confused, furrowed brow that will one day be permanently stuck on my face and I said nothing.  There was nothing to say.  He is Micah.  And he needs a girl.  To throw snowballs at.

The next day, Sunday.  Our furnace is broken.  It has been broken since Friday and in an effort to save money we were avoiding calling a repairman until Monday.  The wood stove my father built us has always sufficiently heated our home, so other than hand washing the dishes in pots of boiled water, we were gonna be ok.  OK.  Not great, but ok.

Sometimes I feel like my life is a constant cycle of making a meal, cleaning up the meal and then immediately beginning to plan and prepare for the next meal…Oh, right.  That IS what my life is.

Flynn is my biggest fan when it comes to my cooking.  He lives for my cooking.  He is still swallowing his last bite of breakfast when he asks me what I am thinking of making for lunch.  Some days I find it quite endearing and other days I can’t help but let him have it, “I DON’T KNOW, COULD YOU JUST GIVE ME A MINUTE TO THINK ABOUT IT!”

For some reason on this Sunday morning, while I hand washed all the breakfast dishes that everyone had just cleared, I felt very peaceful.  Something about being forced to slow down and hand wash all the dishes that we normally just load in the dishwasher and forget about had me in a particular state of mind.  I also deeply enjoy watching the birds feeding out my kitchen window.  Flynn had just finished helping clear the table and was standing in the corner of the kitchen when he said, “You really do do a lot of work around here…like ALL the work.  Thanks Mom.”

I almost started crying.  I told him that I know that I don’t always have the best attitude about the work that never stops around our house, but that I have been trying to recognize that the dishes and the laundry and the shoes and the coats and the backpacks everywhere are evidence that my life is full of blessings.  I also expressed that because the work is SO much and it NEVER ENDS, it means all that much more when people do even small things, like try to remember to put their belongings in their rightful place or bring their dirty laundry downstairs so I don’t have to go searching for it.  I let him know how much I appreciated him recognizing and thanking me for the mundane labor I perform in the home everyday.

Friday morning.  The gang had off school the day before for their first snowday!  It was also the twins official 11th birthday (we celebrated the night before because of schedule conflicts the day of…) and a day off school was a nice way to spend it.  We were all feeling the joy of having a surprise day off in the middle of the school week and then having to go back to school, for one day, before the weekend.

We are dreary looking.  People just lounging around.  Micah has taken his familiar post laying in the middle of the living room floor, hands behind his head in his typical, “I can cause a little trouble from ANY location and ANY physical position” stance.  Max is shuffling by in his footy pajamas, that he will be wearing until after his first AND second breakfast, and he is halted by Micah’s outstretched leg.  Max quickly turns on Micah and lunges toward his hip-bone with teeth bared.  He bites Micah in the hip with his tiny, round, pearly whites, while exerting an aggressive cry.  My little Maxwell Gunther Krouse, his toddler teeth, attempting to pierce man-flesh.  It was so instinctual that I could not help but let Micah know that while I know Max is his own person, it almost seems as though Max’s way of relating to Micah is of a very specific kind.  Micah quickly darted his lower body out of the way of Max’s bite, giggling and amused.  I expressed that it isn’t OK for Micah to irritate Max just to amuse himself.  I used a lot more words than that, and I was also mostly yelling.  Something about watching one of my youngest children defend himself against one of my older children really strikes a chord in me.  I can’t help but get ranty when I witness negative conditioning taking place directly in front of me.  I constantly offer Micah other options, ways he can spend time with Max that will be pleasant and positive.  I feel defeated after now making my older child feel badly for the way he treated the younger.  Does the conditioning ever end?  Sometimes, I just have a little too much and maybe I let a kid really have it.  Then, after I drop the kids off at school, I cry the whole drive home and regret ever thinking for one second that I know what I’m doing with all these personalities and independent spirits and I feel presented with all their flaws and I own them at times, because I’ve helped to shape them.  And I just want to bite someone right in their hip!

Sometimes I think the hardest part of parenting a house full of rowdy, rammy, aggressive guys is what it does to ME.  I lose my calm.  Yoga breaths become a long lost figment of my imagination while I watch from my kitchen as one boy body slams the other in the living room.  Is my fate to just go crazy on this journey?  I have to believe that Chris and I balance each other out enough that these kids have a chance at having some nicely rounded qualities.

I am in the kitchen, post school-day doing my usual dinner prep.  Flynn and Micah are snacking at the kitchen table.  Flynn rounds the corner of the table and presents himself to the side of me so he may observe my reaction while he asks me a deeply pressing question,

“Mom, do you think that you could get expelled from school for threatening your BROTHER?”

Again, that confused, (I’m feeling comfortable enough to add “hideous” to the description at this point) furrowed brow creeps onto my face…

“I’m gonna guess the school would treat you like any other kids that were threatening each other…I don’t think it matters that you’re brothers…”

Flynn’s shoulders slink upward while he turns his grinning gaze to Micah, seated at the table…”LET’S DO IT!”

Micah laughs a ridiculous laugh that fully asserts “IM ALL IN!”

My brow has softened and I now boast to that lazy, dead faced stare that is most likely what someones’ face looks like after a car accident where they were drunk and they lived only because their body was so relaxed that it acted as a dummy and since none of their muscles tensed up on themselves (breaking their own bones) they made it out unscathed…

“Sure guys, let me know how that works out for you…also let me know where you will be living during the time that you are expelled from school…”

One of the perks to being the mother of good boys who try to think that they have the balls to be bad, is the constant bombardment of hypotheticals.  They are smart enough to always want to know what the outcome of some deeply stupid actions might be.  My boys are always asking me about “Joovy” and what happens there and how the kids are treated and what you have to do to go there.  I’m ready to send them in, for research purposes.

The day that we found out the gender of our unborn child, we were pretty nervous.  We were nervous first because my midwife said I was measuring a month ahead of my dates and she was able to read a heartbeat at multiple locations on the belly.  Having a strong history of twins in the family we waited with bated breath to find out if we were having one or two more kids.

Just one baby.  All types of emotions.  Immediately, disappointment.  I know the jubilance of twins.   It’s A LOT of work, but jubilant none the less.  After the disappointment subsided, relief.  WHAT WAS I THINKING!?  LIKE I COULD HANLDE TWINS RIGHT NOW!?

The technician told us right away that she could see we were having a boy.  Again, a lot of emotions.  I have forgotten what it’s like to have the dainty, princessy whirlwind of little girl in the house.  Iris begged us to paint her room pink for years, and by the time we got around to it, it was over.  SHE HATED PINK.  She was most likely just following in her mothers’ footsteps, I’m not the most feminine lady out there in the traditional sense.  Having grown up surrounded by four brothers myself, I had to hold onto every shred of my girlhood with a white knuckled death grip and even still, my Barbies were used for target practice.  Other than feeling extremely uneasy with sisters that are inseparably close and females that seem too friendly, I’ve turned out alright.

When the kids got home from school that afternoon we sat them all down on the sofa and broke the news.  The only reaction I can really remember was Iris’, because it was so dramatic.  She physically flung herself to the floor, and if she had been wearing a gown of sack cloth, she woulda ripped it!  I told her she could get her ears pierced, and she immediately reminded me that she is afraid of getting her ears pierced.  I told her I was sorry, that she was just going to be a tough old broad like her mother.  I told her it would make her stronger.  She wasn’t buying any of it.  Iris has never known her existence without boys.  She was born with her twin brother breathing down her neck and all that followed was more of the same.  She has really learned to roll with the punches and she definitely has thick skin…to the point that she can be a bit unable to relate to the mainstream girl.  But again, I think she’s gonna be alright.

When Chris told his parents that we would be having our fifth boy his father sent him this photograph of Great Great Great Great Great grandmother Martha Krouse with her 7 sons.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that documents like this one should be presented to the bride-to-be several months before the wedding day to be thought over and upon and wrestled with and fully accepted…like, “Hey, this is a genetic possibility…FYI”  My decision to become Mrs. Krouse would have remained the same, but from the look on Martha’s face, I could have at least prepared myself for a future of breathing in mostly boy farts for the duration of my child rearing days.  Tell me she doesn’t look like she has seen some shit!  I can only hope to follow in Martha’s footsteps.  If even one of my sons ends up with a mustache of that caliber, I can die a satisfied mother.  And that waistline!  Damn gurl!

The months have whisked right by and in 4 short weeks we will be welcoming another strong Krouse male.  What a responsibility we have on our shoulders.

When this photo was developed some 5 years ago I can recall thinking “Oh, this will be a fun picture to recreate someday when the boys are big…”  Now I look at it and think “This will be a fun picture to recreate when the park has reinforced that beam with rebar and cemented it in at least 3 foundational points in the earth.”

In closing, I would like to include what I’ll call the best family picture I’ve gotten in the last two years…which is actually 2 crumby little polaroids that I’m holding together while trying to keep my dirty thumb nail (raw sourdough caked under it…) out of the pic…

These were taken the evening we celebrated the twins 11th birthday.  The things I love about this photo(s) include the drywall mud crusted to my hard working husbands’ tee shirt, who had a horrendous morning of flat tires and calling junk yards for parts and the stress of school work due by midnight.  I love Owen’s smile while he fakes being happy even though he was super jealous that Flynn got an iPod shuffle and he is now the only (older) brother without some personal jams. I love that Iris is wearing a shirt that she just changed into because Micah and Owen misunderstood my instructions to “silly string the twins after we sing happy birthday to them…” and instead did it ALL DURING THE HAPPY BIRTHDAY SONG and for some reason the boys also thought it would be a good idea to hide the 2 cans of silly string in the refrigerator prior to the “surprise”, which apparently changed the chemical composition of the stuff and that basically looked like Owen and Micah spraying Flynn and Iris with Isopropyl alcohol directly beside open flame while Iris quietly complained “It’s burning my skin…”  YEA! Happy Birthday!  I love the height difference between my two oldest children.  I love Micah and Owen’s ears.  I love that my husband is positioned in front of me so you can’t actually tell how hugely pregnant I am.  I love tired, red cheeked party planning helper Max, perched on his favorite guy’s side.  And I love that in a month, we get to add another baby boy to this wild ride.

This post would only be complete if I end with an announcement that yesterday I found two of the wiriest grey hairs known to human hair.  I’ve waited 33 years for my crown of glory, here goes!

I have three basic rules in our home. These three rules were created with the consideration of everyone’s wellbeing in mind. 1. Don’t eat in the living room
2. Don’t jump on the furniture 

3. Don’t make Max do THAT SCREAM! (It’s his “someone is doing something to me just to make me scream” scream…and it is grating!) 

There are other rules…basic “obey your parents, be nice to each other” kinda rules…but those are more unspoken. The above three are ones that need to be constantly re-recognized and re-enforced. 

Tonight after I got home from a long day at the Farmers Market peddling my wares, I caught a glimpse of a “situation” in the corner behind the hanging basket chair. Surely it couldn’t be what it looked to be? I stepped closer…it was, in fact exactly what it looked to be. It was a small pile of shredded cheddar cheese…with a pair of discarded dirty socks also peppered into the pile. It was like a little tossed salad of cheese shreds and dirty socks. It was evident that someone went to the trouble to scoot the pile into the corner, almost making it unnoticeable, until you do a double take and you’re like “wait a minute, is that dirty socks and shredded cheese over there?” I was like, “For real guys? Who was eating shredded cheese out here and then dropped a bunch and then also got the urge to take off their sweaty socks and throw those into the cheese pile?” I even imagined that maybe the person was using their foot to scoot all the cheese together and then realized they were too rough with the cheese and their feet were too warm and they now had crushed and melted cheese to their socks.   Everyone told on Micah in unison. Micah sullenly retrieved his socks and then got the vacuum out and cleaned up the cheese pile. He also did a few other chores, just for showing such open disregard for the house rules. 

Within the half hour Chris was sitting beside me on the couch with his guitar in hand and we were singing a song about a pile of cheese and dirty socks in the corner of our living room. There was even a lyric about Micah spinning around in the hanging basket chair and imagining that the mess must surely be gone, since it was no longer in his immediate view. Lemonade, from lemons. Or in this case, we’ll say we made New York Cheese Cake out of a dirty, cheesy sock pile.  

You wanna know what’s more fun than approaching puberty with your hastily maturing 10 year old?…Approaching it with your open and talkative boy/girl 10 year old twins…that’s what.  I can handle it. I’m proudly admitting that.  Chris gets a little skeeved out occasionally, but we’re both keeping it together.  I’m trying to maintain the mindset that…

1. There are no stupid questions.  (Sometimes I’ve second guessed this statement, but then I’ve had a few questions of my own of which I believed could have been classified as “stupid” and I had to rethink my judgment on my initial disbelief of the statement.)  In my own life, some questions have taken a level of bravery for me to ask and I want to respect that in my own children.  I would rather them WANT to ask me and feel safe with what they believe my response will be than to be afraid to ask for fear that I would cause them to feel embarrassed or ashamed.  Sometimes I think with this specific topic, my biggest fear is watching my kids discover something that could potentially strip away an innocence that is all I’ve ever known from them.  I think sometimes I’m actually the one who’s afraid…of letting go.

2.  I like to keep things as medical as possible but also throw in some light humor occasionally to keep things airy and comfortable while still conveying a heaviness, aware of my responsibility to properly communicate something deeply important.  I was surprised that the puberty talk ended up bringing up unexpected topics like “If a man and a woman have sex to have babies then how come this kid in my class says he doesn’t have a dad?”  Suddenly there is A LOT to cover.

My kids had a lot of knowledge on the topic prior to the talk that took place yesterday at school.  Iris had a few months earlier expressed to me that she felt like she might have a bruise on her chest cause whenever she got hit in the chest it hurt.  She has four brothers, having also grown up with four brothers I remember it well…wrestling around and getting hit in the chest.  I was like, “Oh, wow.  You’re growing breasts.”  And we discussed more in depth a topic we’ve discussed at length one other time, cause now there was actually living proof of what was said to come.  She was only slightly creeped out…just gave a mild, “Ugggggh, I don’t wanna grow boobs.”  And once when Flynn seemed interested in a discussion after some hearsay that some other kids he knew were starting to “stumble upon” images that were less than savory on the internet we chose then to engage Flynn about the topic of sex and maturity.  I think you would rather them know from you than from the internet.

Sadly the age of sexual awareness is occurring much sooner than it used to as the tech becomes more accessible to children…This is the #1 reason our kids don’t freely operate any screens in our house.  I’m the screen nazi with the kids.  Thankfully “screens” are expensive so we don’t have the option to have many around, but the few in the home are on tight lockdown.  Coming from someone who has witnessed “screen wrath” from my children, (like when you disconnect them and it takes them a while to snap out of it and then they’re all miserable and can’t seem to figure out anything to do besides the thing that you just took away from them…so you start kindly suggesting the options of things that they may do that don’t include staring straight into an eventful abyss and none of your options are good enough and they have to go off by themselves and figure out that life goes on without this thing and the withdrawal isn’t fun…to witness or be the victim of.)  We literally keep our TV in the basement and bring it up for the occasional movie night.  There just isn’t room for it in our life.  (Physically…I’m not devoting one whole corner/wall/room of our much overused living area into an altar to the television while they’re young.  I need that space to hang their handicrafts!  And figuratively…by the time four kids have completed their homework and helped with dinner and cleaned up from dinner and practiced piano and played with Max and gathered their dirty laundry and maybe even put away a load of their clean laundry and unloaded the dish washer and spent some time reading and taken a shower and had 2 papers signed by a parent and had a bedtime story and said goodnight…there is scarcely room for a minute of television.

!SMALL RABBIT TRAIL! Do you have a HUGE AMOUNT OF TIME YOU WOULD LIKE TO SEE CONSUMED?  Have a big family!  The maintenance alone of 6 (lets be real, sometimes meeting the basic needs of even one other person can be taxing in todays’ society) or 5 or 4 people inside the same four walls can be overwhelming.  We are getting closer and closer to having a system so that one is not doing the work of many (getting pregnant again helps with that…I’m becoming physically unable to bend down to pick up other peoples’ underwear off the bathroom floor, so I go the extra mile and rather than just bending over and grabbing them I opt instead to alert the owner to their underwear on the bathroom floor so they may remedy the situation.  Pregnancy helps me to put selfcare higher on my priority list.  I’ll be ‘better to me for my baby” kinda thing.  There are certain things a pregnant woman bends over for…someone else’s dirty underwear it turns out, isn’t one of them.  So what I’m saying is that I become a much better delegator while I’m pregnant and Chris really helps with this also by sensing my needs and prompting people who would otherwise be sprawled out on the floor reading Calvin and Hobbes, to go help their mom.

So yesterday I picked the 4 older kids up from school while my neighbor friend sat at home with napping Max.  The moment that Iris’ butt hit the seat she informed me “We had the puberty talk today…they gave us a packet with pictures.”  Owen (6) was already in the vehicle and Micah (8) was hopping in next.  We looped back down to the street to avoid backing up traffic in front of the school while we waited for Flynn to emerge from the school doors.  Iris was sitting forward in her seat, saying things like “When they said that your boobs would grow and they would feel sore and I was like “UUHHH…” and she made this face, where she turns the corners of her mouth as far down as humanly possible, think “extreme clown frown” on the cutest, hippest, prettiest, most creative little girl (I’m naturally biased)…her sense of humor is like no other.  I nonchalantly said,

“Well, they told you how you have to put huge bandaids and ice packs on them, right?”

She flung herself back into the seat while her body took over with laughter.  She was officially, “puberty-talk-giddy”.  When Flynn hopped in the vehicle in was quiet for a moment, but the spirit was already in the air…barrier breached.

“Mom, they talked to us about puberty today.”

“I know, Iris told me…how’d it go?”

“It was weird, they told us our penises are going to grow…”

At this, the entire vehicle erupts with laughter.  I knew it was pointless to have any kind of a serious conversation with Tweedle Dee (Micah) and Tweedle Dum (Owen) in the car with us.

Flynn spoke when the laughter stopped,

“They told us about how babies are made…why would they tell us about that during the puberty talk?”

He had a genuine look of confusion on his face.  We’ve talked about how babies are made at our house.  When you make them as often as we do, you have some explaining to do.  Flynn wasn’t making the connection between going thru puberty and making babies.

“Well, making babies is the only reason we go thru puberty.  Your body changes and the way you feel about a person changes because we are supposed to make babies with each other.”  I was trying to keep everything G rated with the younger boys in tow. This is when Micah chimed in that there is a kid in his class who doesn’t have a dad, so how did he get made?

I took this as an opportunity to get a little deeper …even promote a little friendly abstinence…

“What that means is that someone wanted to have sex, because it feels good, but they didn’t want to do the really important job that often comes with having sex…which is being a parent.”

People were quiet while they thought about it…I continued…

“Basically, if you aren’t ready to be a mom or a dad, you shouldn’t be having sex.  It’s a very important decision to make.”

I did not go on to tell them that Chris and I were in fact virgins on our wedding day.  It was mostly by default.  Turns out that being exceedingly afraid of your father can have positive effects on your abstinence success rate.  Call it whatever you want…being terrified of maybe having to tell my dad that I was pregnant was 100% the reason that I “saved it” for my wedding day.  I also knew that an occurrence that should be welcomed joyfully could, at the wrong time, be an actual life destroyer.  I watched my parents struggle to no end to provide for myself and my four brothers, while dealing with legal troubles and substance and addiction.  My childhood neighbors have told me they can recall me with a twin brother on each hip, contributing more than my share to help lighten the load on my mother who was left to find work at night at a gas station after my father was incarcerated for dealing marijuana.  I don’t have this memory.  I only remember life feeling heavy, worry forcing maturity before my time.  Being the second oldest and the only female of my siblings, a lot of maternal responsibility was placed on my small frame.  Looking back with the information that the past 12 years has afforded me, and recognizing not only my fertility but also my record for hatching multiples…Chris and I have discussed many times what premarital sex could have ended like for us.  Twins at age 16.  Thank you God, for my fear.  Happily married with twins at age 22 was a wild enough ride…I don’t want to think about that amount of responsibility in any other scenario.

While continuing to steer us in the direction of the grocery store to pick up spaghetti and meatball ingredients, Iris kind of whispered in my direction…

“They gave us stuff to put in our underwear…”

Having given Iris panty liners (Ewe…I know…I despise the word “panty”) sometime last year, I know she is familiar with them and simply wanted to address the weirdness of discussing this among her peers, I responded the only way I knew how…

“Oh, you mean like crumbled up newspaper and leaves and stuff…?”

Again, she has lost control of her body while flailing with laughter.  I am also deeply enjoying a laugh.

Puberty giddiness simmered down and I ran into the grocery store for a few things.  (I don’t even want to know what conversation took place between them all while I was absent from the vehicle) Next, I dropped Iris and Micah off at piano practice and returned home to proceed with dinner preparations.

Owen and Max were pleasantly occupied with the wooden train set when Flynn entered the kitchen and asked,

“Can I help you with dinner?”

I was only slightly surprised, because frankly he is an extremely helpful and responsible boy.

“Sure, you wanna chop green pepper for the meat balls?”

He is pleased with this suggestion (he loves any excuse to use a knife) and gets right to work.

Naturally the previously abandoned conversation picks back up as I realize that Flynn hasn’t had all of his questions answered.  I can’t recall exactly how it came back up but he round aboutly reopened the “SEX TALK” door and I made it a little more personal for him, which wasn’t hard as I stood there with my apron ill fitting over a 5 month pregnant belly.

“Obviously, your dad and I have sex…because we keep making babies.  I love your dad very much and and I love the kids that we make and he loves me and that’s one of the most important parts of having sex.  I hope that someday you meet someone that you love and enjoy and laugh with as much as I do with your dad…and maybe you will want to spend your life with that person and make a family with them.”

He digs deeper, looking up from the cutting board out the side of his eyes while he awkwardly asks,

“But mom, when do you and dad DO it?”

At this point I would like to point out a very endearing quality of Flynn’s…he’s just a practical guy.  He’s literally thinking…”my parents are so busy, they rarely even sit down…they have five kids…they are constantly meeting our needs…when are they engaging in SEX?”(which he most likely believes to be some type of long, drawn out wrestling match)

I can’t help but laugh because I know he’s having trouble believing we have the time to fit this into our busy life.

“Are you looking for dates and times?!”

He is now laughing at his own question as well, and adds “Well, when you were pregnant with Max I just thought that you guys did it when you took us to AWANA…”

Now I’m laughing uncontrollably, this day just keeps getting better.

“Yeah Flynn, for two hours every Wednesday…we’re just having sex!”

Once I settled down I made some things clear to Flynn,

“You do know that we go to the same room and sleep in the same bed every night, right?”

“Yeh, but I just never knew…”

“It also doesn’t take THAT long…we fit it in.”

My only real victory in that parenting moment was keeping the door open for all future awkward topics to be welcomed and embraced.  We continued our meatball mission and the conversation lightened up.  I was impressed that Flynn stuck with me thru adding the eggs and the parsley and the parmesan cheese and the chopped garlic and  all the seasonings to the burger.  I often deal with kitchen helpers that lose interest and abandon their post leaving me to not only complete whatever I am in the middle of but then also to finish the job that they were doing.  We put the first baking sheet of meatballs in the oven when Flynn came out with it…

“Can I have 3 bucks mom?”

“Ha! I might have known!  What do you want with 3 bucks?”

“I want to send myself some candy-grams…”  (A fun holiday extra that is offered at school… you can spend a little money to have candy canes or chocolate dipped marshmallows sent to friends.)

“Sure.  You just earned your 3 dollars worth of candy-grams, but could you at least think about sending one to a friend instead of only sending them to yourself…?”

“Yea.  I will.”

Flynn runs off to start his reading homework.  Iris and Micah come through the front door with Chris who has retrieved them from piano lessons.

Chris, just like every evening, is stormed by the children.  Max runs to greet him, his unignorable cuteness immediately producing  an octave heightened change in Chris’ voice while he emits pure pleasure in the direction of our youngest blessing.  Owen has cornered Chris, who is now holding Max, to insist he listen to him read aloud from a wildlife coloring book that he’s been obsessed with for about 3 days.  (Owen is our strongest 1st grade reader yet, and we tell him all the time, so he is constantly keeping us aware of his progress.)  Flynn and Micah have taken to “light wrestling” in the living room.  I’m feeling the relief that comes every night when Chris walks through the door.  I’ve said it before, I know, but I’ll say it again.  Motherhood is an agreement, to enter into constant communication with your children.  It is the most communication I have ever known, and it is usually coming from 5 directions.  Often times I don’t even have time to respond to one question before the next one is asked.  When Chris walks in the door, there becomes two receivers of the constantly transmitted sound waves of our children.  It makes such a huge difference, mentally…to have one more person to field some of the wants, the needs, the stories, the complaints, the praise and the knock knock jokes that fly around a busy, full house.  I am pouring spaghetti sauce in the pot to start warming it for dinner.

I feel her presence enter my otherwise empty kitchen.  She has just had a little more than a 1 hour break from the “puberty talks”…I however have not.  I have been in this kitchen continuing all puberty deliberations for the past hour with Flynn.  It is silent only long enough for me to expect what is coming next…MORE.  She wastes no time.  No report from piano lessons, no snack request…she is plagued with the weight…

“They gave us a packet that had pictures, Mom…”

She mentioned this earlier but we never got to dissect it.

“Oh yea?”  Lets just get on with it already!!

“There was this page that had a bunch of pictures of vaginas…” Her face is offering a look of complete disgust as she continues…

“First there was a little one…” she holds up her thumb and index finger to show me how small the picture was.

“Then next to that was one that was a little bit bigger and then one that was a little bit bigger and had a little hair on it and then there was this BIG ONE and it was all covered with HAIR!” Somehow her face has become even more disgusted looking.

I can’t help myself…

“Ewe! Like some kind of a little MONSTER or something!”  She is losing her mind in hysterics again.  If we can’t laugh our way thru this stage, then we actually might not make it thru at all.

I believe the reason that most of this seemed so comical to me is simply because most all of it has already been addressed with Flynn and Iris individually.  They were actually only struggling with the level of openness with which it was spoken about among their peers.  At one point on our earlier ride home, Iris was begging me…

“But WHY do they have to talk about it with us at SCHOOL!?”

I told her that every adult knows that this is going to happen to a healthy, developing young person.  It is as natural as breathing.  Imagine if a kid didn’t have a parent at home who wanted to talk about it with their child, or if they forgot to talk about it (I almost did, because your kids are always your “kids” and then one day signs and symptoms of their unavoidable maturity start presenting themselves and you just know what you have to do.) or God forbid, what if they don’t have someone close to them in their life to talk with them about it.  I asked Iris,

“Wouldn’t it be a little scary if your body was changing and you didn’t know what was going on?  What if you thought there was something wrong with you, or that you were sick.”

It seems a little funny at first, and then before you know it you’re a woman or a man and you are at home in your skin and BAM you have 5 kids! (The exception, not the rule…but my point is made.)

Who is ever ready for their baby (or babies!) to leave behind the childish innocence that is so evident in our underdeveloped pre-pubescent sweethearts?  This past week has slapped me in the face with how brief our time with our babies actually is.  They deserve to be informed and respected while they go thru the sacred and sometimes icky real life of maturity.  We have so many awkward years ahead, but even those will speed past.  I look forward to holidays surrounded by my adult children, and their children and I want to remember how much fun it actually was to help guide them to adulthood.  I will always long for the days when their heads were bobbly melons on top of their stubby, inefficient little bodies.  For now I get to watch them bound across basketball courts and glide down the alley on skateboards and strategically slide fingers over piano keys.  I am thankful to be given the opportunity to handle with care and love, their passage to adulthood.

A BRIEF DISCLAIMER…if in the future we are to meet and I mention that the twins aren’t speaking to me, it will most likely be because they found and read this blog post and just haven’t forgiven me yet.  I love you Flynn and Iris…our firsts…our dual practice round.  MWAH!

Today while I was sweeping up Max’s partially wet eggs from the kitchen floor, I decided there is a topic of which there is not enough information and research and study concerning…  THIS.  The day in and day out of being a houseworking, care taking, mother of many.  While maintaining the kitchen I thought about the top twenty things I would rather be doing than grabbing globs of jelly with a paper towel from the table top…one being to simply go clean a different room of the house.  I’ve been trying to go thru the kids clothes to weed out the stuff that’s too small or too beat or just not a favorite.  No-one is answering the question, “Hey, hows it going?”, with “Oh fine, I recently ate a soggy cheerio off of my toddler because I was too far from a garbage can and I didn’t want to put it down somewhere I had just cleaned…”  Some days I really try to boycott this monotonous bull crap of just maintaining a life that is lived hard and heavy by just NOT doing any of it…no load of laundry, no dishwasher run, no effort to “keep up”.  I’ll just leave! Run errands! Go to a park! Pack a lunch!  And you know what happens?!  It gets worse.  And its so boring.  Catching back up on all of it.  BORED TO DEATH.  Clearly, I would rather write about the monotony of the housework than actually perform it.  I imagine that someday we will make enough money to hire someone to do all the stuff I hate doing.(HAHAHAHAHA!!!)  So here feels like a nice place to draw others into the stimulating, captivation and secret happenings of the everyday housewife.  Because lets be real, no-one wants to read your Facebook post about how you’ve spent half the day trying to find your third washbasket so you can get on with your day…did you fill it with junk and put it in the basement to hide it from humans outside the family?  Is it buried in the boys room?  Did I leave it at the storage unit the last time I used it to transport my “small business” inventory?  We all have that one friend who will listen to us vent about cracking our head on the underside of our six year olds bed while trying to fish his teddy bear collection from underneath the bed…in an effort to someday find the floor of this room and therefore vacuum it this quarter.  That friend is just being nice, because she knows she’s about to do the exact same thing to you, except her story is going to involve feces and a sudden and intersecting realization that the wipes AND the paper towels stores have recently been fully depleted.  Let’s not forget about when the kids all rush in the door after school, daily discarding shoes and backpacks at various locations ALL OVER THE WHOLE HOUSE!!!

Tonight while Chris and I were in the kitchen, he was throwing some spaghetti together while I was finally rounding a corner on getting all the laundry done and everyone’s clothes weeded through…I mentioned that I don’t know what to do with the boys underwear when I do the laundry.  (Three underwear utilizers, different ages…similar sizes…same colors) “I’m just going to make a pile of underwear and tell them all they have to find their underwear…”

Chris replied, “I know! Why don’t you put them in a brown paper bag and then put it on a shelf in the pantry closet.  That sounds like a good place…”

I did this recently to their entire collection of socks.  I was in the middle of THE GREAT SOCK MATCHING!…when something more urgent presented itself and most likely included the use of one of the only work surfaces in the entire home and therefore I took ALL the socks, the ones that had been matched and the ones left solo and threw them all into a brown grocery bag and promptly put it out of my sight.  How else was I going to get on with my life?  And there it stayed for more than a week.  Occasionally someone would whine about not being able to find any socks and I’d chime in “Brown paper bag on the shelf in the pantry closet…”  One day Chris overheard me give this answer to a troubled, sockless youth and he was like “What?”

If that right there doesn’t sum up what my life feels like at most times, I don’t know what does.  Once you keep your socks in a brown bag in the pantry long enough, it starts to feel normal.  The bag did start ripping and the first time that I had to bend over and pick an array of socks up from the pantry closet floor I got on with the long neglected chore of sorting and matching and discarding household socks.  And thankfully, the kids are always on their toes.  I can’t even say anyone would question a bag of their underwear in the pantry.  They are at least becoming slightly aware that I am the only human filter they have right now and the moment they start complaining about my filing system is the moment I announce that I don’t see a need to touch their socks at all any more.  They’ve become quite tolerant of the total upheaval that can be the rearranging of their rooms or their furniture or their roommates all with the intention to fit better and more harmoniously.  One big giant science experiment! Oh, and the boredom thing…moving everything around seems to satisfy my constant need to be experiencing something different and new without ever leaving my house.

This afternoon while I sat on my bedroom floor…finishing the sorting of the socks, Iris came in from school…the rest of her brothers decided to accompany Chris to the storage unit for some work related something or other.  She sat on the floor next to me and chatted and chatted.  She told me that she doesn’t like to have a favorite teacher because she thinks it would be mean to the other teachers.  “There are these girls who are like ‘Oh, Mrs.Reigert is our favorite teacher!” and I’m just like ‘poor Mrs.Hoffman…maybe her feelings are hurt…’  I told her that was nice of her. If I only get one girl out of all this labor of love, I’m so glad its her.

At supper tonight Flynn made it very clear how he feels about the “Lunchable” option at the cafeteria.  “I wish that the guy that invented lunchables would have invented them when he was a kid, cause then he would have eaten them and he would have known that it is not enough food for a kid.”  This is where I will confess that at Flynn’s last “Well Child” check up I asked his doctor how I would know if the boy had a tape worm…?  He looked at me a little bewildered and assured me that 10 year old boys do start to develop quite an appetite. Little does Flynn know, if this were a different era, we’d be sending him off to live with a wealthy relative who could more adequately afford his hollowed leg eating habits.

(Next day) At one point last night, it was up for debate…whether Micah had already consumed a chocolate cupcake with chocolate icing.  There was a tupperware of them on the counter for the last two days (when I actually DO bake something, we savor it…one a day…cause we won’t see this again for a while.)  Chris and I are each on the sofa in the living room, he’s completing his online spanish course and I’m reading a book about raising a confident child…Micah, our MOST confident child is asserting to Chris “I SWEAR I DIDNT HAVE ONE!”  It was one of these evenings when we gave the kids a choice, “You can have a cupcake, a juice pop or a pack of gummies…”  Its hard to keep track of who has decided on what dessert and they seem to all want to claim their dessert at different times.  Some kids want to go ride their bike while other kids want to be in the tree house while still other kids are swinging from that same tree, all choosing to enjoy their dessert at a convenient time.  Chris looks at me for some assurance…”Did he have one?”

“I honestly don’t know…”

Micah has now started to approach me from across the room…”You can smell my breath mom!” he begs.  I close my mouth tightly and begin shaking my head adamantly with my hand in the air (in an effort to halt him in his steps)  When he reaches me with his mouth open, ready to blow his non-chocolatey breath in my face he clearly hasn’t received my message and instead of stopping in his tracks, proceeds to slap my outstretched hand a confused high five.  I was taken by surprise and Chris and I both started laughing.  Micah has such an innocent nature underneath his layers and layers of mischievous, trouble making characteristics.  He is our most misunderstood child…even by his own parents.

While all the kids were at school the next day I was really trying to tackle the changing of the seasonal clothing while purging and filling the back of the van with donations.  Once when I went to the back of the van I got the brilliant idea to bring Max’s umbrella stroller into the house for him to climb in/push around/fill with stuff.  I’ve always found my toddlers to love an empty stroller.  I parked it inside the front door and went back to my chores.  He immediately took the bait.  However, it was not long until I began to hear an old familiar sound…the sound of A SUPREMELY PISSED OFF TODDLER!  Not pain, not hunger, not whining…he was just pissed.  After his third bout of severe anger at the stroller I went to try to help remedy the situation.  He had a belt buckle end in each hand and I watched him fumble the two plastic pieces together while twisting and writhing in anger.  I tried to buckle the stroller belt to appease him.  WRONG!  That just pissed him off more.  “WHO DOES SHE THINK SHE IS?! ROLLIN UP HERE AND JUST USING HER BIG STUPID HANDS TO DO THE THING I CANT DO!” I tried to take the stroller away, to fully release him from this hell, but he insisted on coming after it and holding onto it.  I gave it my best shot.  I withdrew to the kitchen to attend to last nights’ pots and pans and it was from there that I offered these few phrases of comfort to my struggling offspring…”Oh wow, I can tell that you’re so mad.” and “Uh oh.  Sounds like someone isn’t having any fun.”  and “I’m sorry that you’re feeling so frustrated.”  I was eventually able to distract him with a snack and I got that stroller out of our day as quickly as my genius brain thought to bring it into our day.

That afternoon when I approached the school doors to pick up Owen, he came walking toward me with the biggest grin on his face…”MOM, you embarrassed me at lunch today!”

“ME? How?!”

“You put that note in my lunch that said you loved me!  My friend Atrayu (coolest name ever) had one too!”

I felt privileged to be lumped into a group with Atrayu’s mom…mom’s of first graders who embarrass them with their lunch note professions of love!

The kids usually pack their own lunches simply because the lunch packing population varies on a day to day basis and also, there are five of them…and that alone can be quite overwhelming (no, I’m not just figuring this out now…)  Some of my kids are crazy about chicken fingers and some of my kids detest them.  So 15 minutes before morning departure when someone has caught wind of the school lunch option and announced that they wish to pack lunch while I am reading a board book to a morning fusser or brushing someones hair or tying a shoe or GOD FORBID just sitting somewhere drinking a cup of coffee, I point them in the direction of the kitchen…alerting them to how little time they have to accomplish the task ahead of them and assure them that it would be in their best interest to clean up after themselves.  Owen however, had asked the evening before if I would please help him pack his lunch the next morning.  With adequate notice and the polite interaction (in other words, all my unreasonable demands were being met!) I said “SURE!”  Plus, he is my first grader and while I can be a rather hardened old broad, he does fall in the scope of my children who still require more of me than some of the others.  He hand selected his items and helped every step of the way, but at the last moment, when he wasn’t looking I was able to sneak an “I LOVE YOU OWEN! I HOPE YOU HAVE A GREAT DAY! note in without his knowledge.  Every kid had gotten at least one of these from me…I’ve met my quota.

Twoish weeks later Owen and I are back at it, co-packing a lunch.  He stares off for a moment while sitting at the kitchen table, then looks at me, “Mom, did you and Atrayu’s mom text each other or something?”  Laughing at the idea that he is still so baffled at the presence of a note in both he and his friends lunches from their mothers on the same day, I explained that we did not text each other…that we are both just moms who love our little boys.

Sitting around a campfire with some friends while the ladies discuss home life affairs and probably complain about most of it, Chris interjects…”Autumn is so good at doing my laundry…when I come home from work and there is a pile of perfectly folded laundry sitting of my dresser…It feels like I have a maid service or something…I feel like a king.”  I looked at him and I just wanted to cry.  Chris is not one to fill the air with fluffy words.  If he says it, he means it and while he thanks me regularly for my hard work for our family, its usually within our four walls.  He isn’t the guy who gets on social media and offers a tribute to his lovely, beautiful, hardworking wife.  Frankly, his kingly laundry announcement around a campfire with some close friends means more than the big show any day.  Because thats our life.  Its a lot of in between.  Its a lot of cleaning up after meals.  Its a lot of mundane duty toward one another.

Not enough research, not enough charts, no funding to study the specimen that is the person keeping the home fires burning for the ones who have to go out and get stuff done in this big, wide world.  I think if the research were undertaken by some brave institution they would find, after a lifetime of serving and investing in her loved ones…she is HAPPY.  She is completely insane…mind LOST in the shuffle, but she is undeniably happy.