Thursday, April 28th…I pick the kids up from school and Iris has tears in her eyes.  She claims she has had a stomach ache ALL DAY.  She mentions that at one point she was on the floor, resting her head on the seat of her chair.  I asked why the school nurse didn’t contact me?  She insists that the nurse touched her head with “a thing” and told her there was nothing wrong with her.  This was a bit disheartening simply because Iris loves school and she isn’t a huge faker…and I wondered how the nurse and teacher aren’t also aware of this.  We went home and she missed her piano practice and passed out on the couch.

Friday, April 29th…4AM…I am awakened by Max, screaming through the upstairs.  I go to him, bring him back to bed and nurse him.  Within 10 minutes he is back in his crib.  I lay down on my pillow, that I thought was my friend.  My eyes are closed when I hear Owen ask if he can climb in bed with us.  Chris is extremely talented at NOT LETTING OWEN IN OUR BED.  I, however…am not.  I imagine, like our 3 older children…soon enough he will not be interested in crawling in our warm blankets and finding comfort from the long night.  He is permitted.

Friday, April 29th…6AM…Iris has entered the room and walked to Chris’ side of the bed to audibly cry that her belly hurts.  I am uncomfortably positioned as close to the edge of the bed as I can be while still remaining in the bed.  I attempt to sit up to assist the crying child, but it feels as though my neck just might be broken.  Pain.  Pain in the neck…literally.  I cannot sit up.  This is a familiar pain that has plagued me a few other times in my life.  Most likely my pillow was not supporting my neck properly for those last two hours of slumber…and now I’m experiencing a pinched nerve or something.  With my head still laying on the pillow like a pile of bricks, I turn the rest of my body and pseudo spin off the bed and I am then able to drag my head, while it is fully bent forward (the only position that doesn’t hurt) and I rise to my feet.  I alert Chris that we have a code red and that he needs to get up…immediately.  Iris climbs into our bed and now two people who are not the owners of our bed…are sleeping in our bed.  I barely muscle to my phone to call my chiropractor…out of the office till Monday.  The last time this happened, it was so tense the first day of the injury that he couldn’t help anyway.  A day of belly aches and ADVIL and icy hot were in my future.  Iris slept most of the morning and watched an old 80″s movie (per Chris’ suggestion) the rest of the day.

Saturday, April 30th…Chris is home in the morning but will be leaving shortly to go bid 3 drywall jobs.  He is scouting out the bacon and I must be understanding, for I too like bacon and he happens to be better at finding it than me.  I am not, however, excited to be navigating the unnavigatable ship that holds 5 of the most unruly shipmates one could ask for.  Our friends who own a piece of recreational camp land are hosting a “work day at camp”.  Even with my immobile neck, I am aware that if I simply make it to camp…my kids will find tasks and adventures to keep them busy.  While cleaning up flood debris and “camping out” under a bridge, Iris steps on a rusty nail.

Perfect.  No we don’t have Tetanus shots, because I’m one of those idiots who imagines their babies eyes rolling back in their head while their body seizes and frankly the cocktail of Diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus all swirled together makes me a little nervous. AND Chris had a bad reaction to the shot when he was young so I was basically waiting for something like this to happen that would force me into getting the shot for the kids.   Naturally, because Iris has never received a shot before, she immediately starts softly crying to herself while she eavesdrops on my conversation with her dad on the phone.  In all my reading, I learned that its usually within 3-20 days after the infection that Tetanus sets in.  Since the family doc was closed for the weekend we monitored the wound closely.

Sunday, May 1st…we go to church, then to our favorite Indian food buffet and then home, to putz around and hold my neck very still.  I am looking forward to going to my chiropractor as soon as the sun comes up on Monday morning.

Monday May 2nd…I drop the children off at school and drive around with Max in his carseat until he falls asleep and I head to my chiropractor’s office for a 9:30 appointment.  I lug the gigantic forward facing carseat into the waiting room with me in an attempt to keep Max asleep.  Unfortunately, two extremely enthusiastic grandparents were shout-talking and sharing pictures of their grandchildren.  I felt half tempted to ask if they would like an extra grandchild to care for while I had may neck adjusted, for it was only moments later that Max woke up.  I kept him detained while my neck was placed back where it belonged.  He sat like an angel, a gift that I am exceedingly thankful for, as I have trouble having my neck cracked while someone in the room is screaming.  That tiny 20 minute nap just so happened to mess up the rest of the day for Max and I.  If you have a 14 month old or have ever had one, you know that the nap schedule can be very delicate.  He only went to sleep at 1 that afternoon and when 3:15 rolled around, I found myself standing on the sidewalk, looking in all directions for a warm body to stand guard at my home while I picked up the other 4 kids from school.  No dice.  Neighbors weren’t home and it felt too “bad parenty” to ask the person sitting in their parked car to “watch my house” while I picked up my other kids.  So I woke him up and he wasn’t happy and he was even less happy at Flynn’s baseball game that evening.  I didn’t imagine that my family could get on people’s nerves at a baseball game, where you assume its ok to take kids, but we were successful at receiving more than 2 or 3 nasty glares from people who just didn’t want to listen to our toddler cry or our 7 year old son and his 10 year old sister wrestle on a blanket and they definitely weren’t crazy about the fort our five year old was building on the bleachers…all while the parents tried to be interested in their OTHER son’s baseball game.  Extra circular activities don’t feel meant for large families.  Homeward bound…and exhausted as hell.

Tuesday May 3rd…the tiny puncture where the nail went into Iris’ foot is looking red.  I waste no time, we are scheduled for 11:30 Mother/Daughter Tetanus Shots!  She was so terrified that I told her I would go first (I haven’t had one since college, so why not?!)  Of course when we arrive the receptionist tells me there is something wrong with some words printed on our insurance cards.  They insist that unless their practice is listed as the Primary Care Physician…they can’t see us.  This was a mistake, we had just received new insurance cards and they chose our PCP for us and I didn’t even notice.  I insisted that we have never gone to any other doctor’s office EVER and I wasn’t sure how this happened.  I proceed to call our insurance and wait while they change the information in their system and then hand my phone to the receptionist so they can be like “BLAH BLAH BLAH”…”OK…BLAH BLAH BLAH.”  We are taken into the exam room, where they begin prepping Iris for her “VACCINATION!!!”

I mention, “Actually, I was going to get mine first, just so she could see that it isn’t a big deal..”  The nurse responds, “Oh, didn’t they tell you…yours was cancelled.  You can’t just ‘get a tetanus shot’…I mean, when was your last one?”  I’m confused…how else do you get a Tetanus shot than to “just get one”.  “My last one was in college, maybe 12 years ago…”   She goes on, “Well I’ll ask, but I don’t think it will be approved.”  WHATEVER.  The nurse returns a few moments later and says the Nurse Practitioner is running behind and they are going to go ahead and give us our shots.  Maybe that’s how you “just get a Tetanus shot”…come when they’re running behind schedule and they’ll just DO IT!  Iris watched while I held Max with one arm and they stabbed me in the other.  I didn’t even feel it.  Her turn.  She turns her head away from the prepared needle and dramatically places her hand over her eyes to hide her tears.  By the time she was done with this swift, expressive motion, so also was the shot.  She couldn’t believe it.  We were outta there and eating some horrible Wendy’s fries in no time.

Wednesday May 4th…Nothing considerable to report on, aside from endlessly dismal weather.  The kind of weather that you don’t even think is bothering you until your five year old says, “I miss the sun.”  So did I.  Where did the sun go?  The largest positive to the horrible weather was that baseball practices and games kept being cancelled, taking otherwise stressful evenings of trying to feed people by 5 O’clock and bundle up for long evenings outdoors and instead placed us all inside, to draw and play games and ALMOST MURDER ONE ANOTHER!  The winter was too long.  We all want to be outside.

Thursday May 5th…Aside from the bum out forecasts, another thing that had been deeply effecting my mood was the consistent smell of heating oil in our home.  Since last fall when our rusty heating oil tank decided to finally fail us and leak fuel all over the basement floor, we have been dealing with a light aroma of the fowl stench here and there as Chris would have to transfer some into the tank, only up to the rusted point, to keep the hot water flowing.  This week he decided to unhook all the fittings in preparation to hook up the new tank.  The smell gave me this depressed feeling about cleaning my house.  Why bother cleaning a house that stinks like heating oil?  It made me want to evacuate with Max everyday.  I mentioned a few times how much the smell bothered me, and that maybe it was even giving me a headache but I’ve found that sometimes the people in my life need me to get out “My Megaphone”…or else I’m just not taken seriously.  Chris set up a vent fan to draw some of the smell out of the basement until he could get around to closing everything back up. That was nice.  I expressed my appreciation.

Friday May 6th…My sister in law is an exceedingly talented massage therapist and she had caught wind of my recent neck injury and she sent me a text wherein she offered to help me out in the stiff neck department.  I responded to her that she was welcome to stop by, but that I really needed to stay home and get some stuff done.  I had been away from the house everyday that week, messing up Max’s delicate nap schedule and I was suffering the repercussions.  Around lunch time, I got a call from the school nurse that Iris had fallen on the roller skating field trip and she thought that her wrist needed to be looked at by a doctor.  (So much for spending a day at home.)  Chris was working locally so he picked her up while I called the family doctor.  A 1:30 appointment.  I couldn’t imagine that her wrist was broken because she was handling it like a champ, and she could move her fingers pretty well.  I asked if there was anyway Chris could stay home while Max napped and then possibly pick the other kids up if this took a long time.  “Sorry hun, I just can’t.”  Join the club.  This is where I will briefly mention that being a mother can feel quite lonely at times.  You have created a person or GROUP of people and at times all their needs run together.  Meeting their needs is a job that I only feel comfortable asking my husband and maybe a relative or two to help with.  Call it a defect of mine, but it is just how I am.  This is going to change soon.  Soon I will be posting a Facebook announcement about how badly I would like to go on a date with my husband for his birthday and I will be asking for any and all qualified babysitters to come out of the woodwork.  This is what normal people do, I think.  So Iris and Max and I head for the doctor’s office.  “WE’RE BACK!” I jovially exclaim as the same nurse practitioner who saw us on Tuesday steps into the room.

 We are sent for X-Rays across the hall and then given a disc with her images on it.  I have come to realize that when you are “given the disc” it is because something is wrong and you shall take that disc with you on your future medical journeys.  We are taken back into the original exam room where we are told the wrist is broken.  I was incredibly surprised, as I looked at Iris, balancing the wrist on an old tablet from her dad’s work truck.  They were out of slings so we were sent away with the same grubby tablet we came with, holding the hand steady upon it.  I was asked to sit down with the referral department, but unfortunately the other 3 kids needed picked up very shortly and there just wasn’t time.  They told me they would call me.  (Insert down pouring rain while I attempt to get the freshly maimed Iris and her baby brother into the vehicle…the normal things I rely on Iris for, buckling herself, closing her door, she cannot perform.  I finish running all around the vehicle, securing everyone and turn to load the stroller…it has blown to the end of the parking lot in the downpour.  Insert also, me not loving any of this.) Around five that evening I am told to take Iris to an urgent care facility to have the wrist splinted for the weekend until we can have it casted on Monday. That night we ordered pizza and listened to our kids complain that they would have rather had Chinese.

Saturday May 7th…I get up and make waffles and Chris leaves to complete a few hours of local work.  I take the kids to the park where we bask in the partly cloudy skies, teasing us with the occasional ray of sunshine.

When Chris returns I take 2 of the boys to the thrift store to get some bike helmets.  Flynn finds a pair of those God forsaken sneakers with wheels in the heels that are basically another broken wrist waiting to happen.  We spend the afternoon in the parking lot…that we live in…on our bicycles and end the night with Uncle Ben and Aunt Mare roasting hotdogs in the back yard.  The neighbor girl sleeps over and aside from a super messy house, I feel thankful at the end of the day.

Sunday May 8th…Mother’s Day.  I’ve started telling people that I don’t recognize the holiday.  It is fully man made, like most (ALL) holidays and I used to feel entitled to some type of honor or homage and then Chris said to me, “You aren’t my mother…”  True.  And my relationship with my own mother has proven to be quite rocky over the past few Mother’s Days.  So I’ve found that expecting nothing is a much better approach to these types of things.  I much prefer to act as if it isn’t even happening.  My kids definitely pull through in the hand made cards and pictures department EVERYDAY OF THE YEAR, so if nothing is produced on Mother’s Day, its never been a big deal.  Iris did make me a super sloppy drawing of a heart that read “Sorry, I’m right handed”

 That really made my day.  I will say though, that I like to use this made up holiday as an excuse to not change a diaper occasionally.  So I wake up like any other day, cuddle Max, holler at people to get ready for church.  I sat at my little desk in our room to jot something down when Chris presented me with a small envelope.  I am astonished.  I open it.  A gift card for a massage and facial at a local Brazilian Spa.  WHAT?!  It says “From Max”…I knew that fat little baby would be my PAYDAY!

This is quite pleasing, especially because I expected nothing…I’m telling you, its the way to GO!  We go to church, go eat Indian food (I know, we have to skip a week or they are going to ask us to stop coming) and then we went to a Lancaster Barnstormers game with the kids + a friend of Iris’ (what’s one more?)  Chris and I took turns sitting with Flynn near the first base line while he desperately waited to catch a foul ball

and manning the other 5 at the play area that is a blessing to any parent who has ever tried to take little children to a baseball game.  The sun was so sunny and the breeze was so refreshing.  This was a perfect day.  If I did celebrate Mother’s Day, this was a good one.  We were about to leave the ball field when I received word that my 92 1/2 year old grandfather had died…on this, the Mother’s Day that I don’t even celebrate.  It was his time, he had lived a long life…but more than the actual passing of the old man, it stirs up so much emotion about how things change.  They never stop changing.  I spent my life going to visit he and my Grandmother in Connecticut, several times a year.  We would roughhouse in his carpeted basement until someone surely got hurt and I combed his hair for money and he let us eat colorful cereal that we never saw any other time. In November we went to visit for Thanksgiving.  He spoke with my kids about his time serving in the navy and shared pictures with us and it felt really special.

I sensed that we might not ever see him again.  My own father died in my Grampa’s basement, tragically and much too young…three years ago at the age of 60.  My Grandfather has buried almost ever person near to him, his two sons and his wife, survived now by his daughter, my aunt and his grandkids (8) and his great grandkids (14).  His passing will be the end of an integral part of who I am.  Another piece of my life, my childhood, my foundation…gone forever…left with only bits to tell stories of and photos to share.  Nothing can stay as it is.  Nature will not have it, and so we must not be foolish and take for granted what we have right before us…for someday it will be as distant as the sun.

Hindsight being 20/20, I can honestly say that my last week felt a lot like a shitty diaper.  Some diapers that you change are surprisingly pleasant, a nice solid bowel movement with very little clean up.  And some are what I like to call “Up the back, down the legs” kinda diapers.  This week was an  “Up the back, down the legs”.  You know there are things to be thankful for, like “At least I’m not wearing white pants.” Or “I’m so glad my baby’s systems are all functioning.” And you know that you will get things cleaned up, even if it takes rubber gloves and a power washer and a box of OxyClean.  Things are going to be OK.  They have to be.  But sometimes it’s nice to write a lengthy blog post about how shitty life can feel.

And thankfully, broken bones heal.

Owen is breathing softly beside my bed, in the darkness at 4 AM.  Little does he know, I was just awake with the baby…so I was laying there waiting for it…”Mom…can I sleep in your bed?”  Lately I can’t ever find a reason to say no…not initially…not since Max is sleeping thru the night more often.  The swiftness of Max’s maturity has reminded me of how quickly these years go.  It makes me think that maybe Owen got the shaft.

He was the last of a line of four kids.  By the time he came along I had twin 4 year olds and a 2 year old sapping all that I had to give.  My stress-o-meter was reading somewhere around “MAX CAPACITY”.  Looking back…I can’t believe I got thru it.  It was no award winning performance…but I’ve lived to tell of it.  I remember crying on the edge of the bed a lot.  Those days are a little more distant feeling now.  Things are still hard, but its a different kind of hard.  I can handle this hard.  This hard is the consistent position of reasoning with the unreasonable and walking beside them while they try out all their own terrible ideas…and maybe keeping a first aid kit on my person at all times.  This hard doesn’t feel as one sided.  Hard with babies is a helpless kind of hard.  If you can’t make them stop crying then you CANT MAKE THEM STOP CRYING…what can you really do?  I’ve learned to lay that baby down and walk away…feeling helpless but OK.  Low and behold, they went to sleep…they just wanted you to leave them alone.  This knowledge only comes with experience, which is why Max has felt like my favorite baby.  Not because of Max, but because of me.  I know me better.  I know what I can and can’t handle.  Forcing myself to hold the screaming baby while 3 other kids need my help didn’t do any of us any good.  I can read a baby better now than I could 5 years ago.  I’ve gotten a chance to get far enough away from something to have some perspective and then I’ve gotten a chance to try it again.  It’s really a treat.

Naturally there is some remorse for being impatient and snappy with my other children when they were younger, and they know that I’m always looking for new ways to manage the stress that 5 kids can help manifest (yoga, mindfulness exercises, mommy timeouts, taking 10 slow deep breaths, sitting with a blanket over my head, eat.)  It’s important for me to have honest communication with my kids.  I try not to make it that they feel responsible for the way that i’m feeling.  Sometimes I say things like, “All four of you guys are telling me things at the same time and I can’t hear even one of you clearly and it is making my head feel explodey.”  What they do with that information is up to them, but at least i’ve said my part.  So sometimes I feel that Owen got me during the height of my “STRESSD OUT YEARS”.  Poor guy.

SO there is Owen, in the darkness.  I tell him he can hop in.  He moves 1000 times more than is necessary in order to get himself situated.  My eyes are closed.  Silence.  30 seconds of silence.  I am dozing off, after my half hour intermission with Max and the bathroom.

“Mom, can we make gluten free pancakes in the morning and can I help you make them?” His soft whisper shows me that he’s trying to be considerate of his sleeping parents…but not considerate enough to just go to sleep.

Imagining that a speedy answer could bring my slumber back, “Sure.  But only if we get up early enough.”

I’m reminded of how big he is getting when I feel his toes all the way down at my shin.  I turn toward him and put an arm around him.

“Mom, I still gotta do my homework.” He comes home with roughly 2 minutes of homework per evening and we usually get it done right away…yesterday we took Iris to piano lessons and then went to the Farmers market and then back to pick Iris up and then to the grocery store and then to the park and then we had supper and then the neighbor boys came over for treehouse/campfire action and those 2  homework minutes slipped through the cracks.

“It’s ok.  We’ll have time in the morning.” I whisper back.

Silence.  My eyes are heavy.

“Mom, do you know I know how to spell NAIL?”

I turn away from him.  May it discourage any further communication.  “Yes.”

“No mom, ask me how to spell NAIL…” still whispering.  So considerate.

“Hey buddy, if you want me to get up to make pancakes and help you with homework then we need to go to sleep…or you can go back to your bed.”

“Oh. Okay.” It’s official.  We go to sleep.

Lately he has been walking around the house singing “I LIKE BIG BUTTS AND I CANNO LIE!”  He only knows that one line of the song, THANK GOD.  I believe he told me he heard it on some cartoon movie.  It’s not a big deal, except that I would rather hear him sing something else.  It’s a catchy tune to I tried to help a modified phrase naturally make its way into that little brain.  On my first try, coming up with something that rhymed with “BUTTS” I went with “PEANUTS”.

“Hey Owen, how about ‘I LIKE PEA-NUTS AND I CANNOT LIE!”  He seemed cool with it…until it fully backfired on me.  It didn’t feel natural to leave out the word “BIG” so now it just sounds like he’s singing “I LIKE BIG PENIS AND I CANNOT LIE!”

Well, that worked out.  Im realizing that a lot of times, my over involvement tends to make things worse.

Last Saturday we were entertaining four good friends, and the boys had a friend sleeping over while Iris was away for the weekend.  I could tell that Owen was fading as 10 o clock approached.  I intercepted his sleepy gaze and asked if he’d like to go read a book and get in bed (when older kids are hanging out I find I have to treat it like a cool, fun thing to go to bed when NOONE else is going yet…a book and a brief cuddle help ease the transition.)  We went to the bathroom so that he could brush his teeth.  Fully adorned in his Spider-Man underwear, he marches over to sink and steps up on the stool…leans as close as he can to the mirror.  Adjusting head in the light, looking closely from different angles.

“Whatcha doin?

“I’m just checkin to see if I have any hair on my face.  There is a boy in my class who has a mustache…I wanted to see if I have one.”

I couldn’t contain the smile on my face.  I took the mental picture of all mental pictures.  My five year old, straining to locate a hope, a shred, a glimmer of peach fuzz on his upper lip.  He nodded off before we were half way thru the first book, because…thankfully…he isn’t as big as he thinks he is.

A few years ago I wrote “a children’s book” using Owen as the star.  I wanted Chris to illustrate it, because while I’m great at folk arty-vintagey-70’s inspired furniture art, Chris is an amazing fine artist.  I pictured it being done in water color.  He loved the idea and that morning before he left for work he said “Sure, you write it and I’ll illustrate.”  I called him at 11 o’ clock and told him I had written it.  He didn’t like that.  He attempted to begin illustrations that evening and quickly lost patience.  I would have also.  Especially when you are used to being paid for your time and when you aren’t, you’re surrounded by little kids who mostly want to get physical with you.  But I would love to share this little tribute i wrote to The O Man.

Quit Growin’ Owen!

I know a little boy named Owen.  He is just small, but everyday he is growin.

He used to stand wide eyed and watch his brothers ride bike, but you could sense there was something about this that he just didn’t like.

As soon as he learned about training wheels, all you could hear were his tires squeal.

His hair was once short but soon it grew and it curled. As he sped through the streets his mane whipped and it whirled.

Every day theres a tune he would carry.  While it always sounded the same, the lyrics would vary.

Somedays he would sing about grandmas and flowers, other days about brothers with super powers.

At dinner each night, between his “Nom-Nom”, he would turn and politely say “Thanks for making this yummy food, Mom.”

When he began to grow tired and the world seemed less grand, he had a favorite treat…the middle two fingers on his left hand.

No matter the day or the house or the town…one thing was for certain…this boy wasn’t slowing down.

So at night before bed, his mama would beg..

As she squished him and squashed him to slow down the pace, of his wild growth that felt like a race.

What more could she do to get this thing slowin?! Nothing but beg, “QUIT GROWIN OWEN!”

He is like no one I’ve ever met.  I feel so blessed to have been a partial vehicle in his creation.  You are loved and adored Owen.  Thanks for being mine.

It’s 8:43PM.  The kids are catching onto the well lit world around them that lasts well into the 7th and even the 8th hour of the evening.  Its getting harder to get an 8 o clock bedtime to happen as the summer months quickly approach.  Once we finally get all 5 locked and loaded, Chris sets up a study station at the kitchen table.  I come down for my nightly (NOT EVERY NIGHT!!) bowl of ice cream and I see him there.  WOMP WOMP WOMP.  No House Of Cards for us.  It’s nearing the end of the semester and he is busting his hump to keep his 4.0 to place favorably for clinicals as his nursing school endeavor continues.  Sometimes I just wonder at him.  He forces me to ask myself if I could ever do it.  Could I go back to school to make a better life for us…could I do years and years of hard work to change our life forever?  If you are lucky enough to be with a partner who prompts you to ask yourself hard questions…just because of who they are…then you know what a bitch it can be.  Lets say you just want to curl up in bed and be your usual lazy slob self with your bowl of ice cream, but they say to you…”Hey, I gotta do at least two hours here…you wanna sit here with me?  Maybe you could write while I do this?”  Awe F@#$.  I guess I’ll pound his bowl of ice cream and harness the energy from the sugar while The Strokes blast in my ear buds and I’ll write about absolutely nothing…nothing that is our life…nothing that is our sacred essence…nothing that is the complete perfect beauty of what we have been creating together since we were 15 years old.  I won’t mention that we listed our house for sale last week and then this week after realizing how stressful it would be to be parenting 5 kids and doing college and running a drywall business and potentially selling a house…we immediately unlisted it.  I won’t mention that we are both as fickle as the weather and the only thing that we have ever been truly sure of is our love for one another.  I won’t mention that at least once a week for the past 3 weeks he has called me in the middle of his work day and asked me to tell him that everything will be “OK”.  I won’t let on that it was hard for me to tell him that everything WILL be “OK”.  We both know it will be fine, good, great, OK.  It doesn’t always feel that way.  It doesn’t feel like we’ll ever get out of this city, where our kids are growing up in a parking lot and occasionally scratching cars with their bike handles.  It doesn’t feel like we’ll ever get the break we are wishing would come.  It feels like we’ll be in our starter home forever…but I’m here to tell ME something.  And that something is SHUT UP.  SHUT UP YOU SELFISH, SMALL MINDED DUMBY.  You have more than most people and your tiny home is regularly filled with not only the 6 people you love most, but lots of others too!  Aside from an obvious gluten allergy and maybe a lazy eye, we are all healthy and prospering.  WE ARE THE AMERICAN DREAM!  We have a future and a hope and lots to look forward to, and we are doing the hard work to ensure that eventually it will happen.  Here I sit, keeping the company of the man who has more energy and drive and ambition and heart than I do…and it is a privilege.  Aside from filling a crock pot and doing the laundry and lactating when its needed, I don’t feel I bring a lot to the table, but thankfully Chris doesn’t seem to be keeping track.  But if he needs me to, I’ll eat another bowl of ice cream and use that energy to write another long winded paragraph, documenting the mishmash of our everyday.  Mr. Krouse, you are my king.

I found this draft buried a few pages deep under other drafts and I loved it enough to share it…Enjoy.

December 2014

Sunday morning.  Chris at the kitchen sink, washing the pots and pans, loading the dishwasher.  I’m preparing frozen hash browns to go  in the preheated oven.  The stone pan I need is beneath the stove, a kitchen accessory location I’ve had to reconsider since the third trimester and the return of that old familiar “I’m an orbiting planet” feeling.  There isn’t much space between the stove and the kitchen table…especially with four kids having their way around the place. Now add me hovering in a struggling (that stoneware is some heavy sh*#) bent forward position.  I’m asking for it every time I invert the upper portion of my top heavy body at this point.  And once I end up on the floor, I might stay down a while…scrub a cupboard stain or collect some stray cheerios.  Needless to say, once I’m bent over, I’m going to stay that way until I’ve accomplished whatever it is I’ve set out to do, down there, below my waist.  So basically it can be a real set back…the stoneware location. While bent forward, wrestling pans and maneuvering around my drastically pronounced front bump, I hardly budge as I feel Chris urgently trying to squeeze between 3 and half feet of pregnant, contorted road block and the big old harvest table.  I’m naturally knocked forward a bit as he makes a way for himself to get to the trashcan directly on the other side of me.  It was gentle enough.  If I had to choose a way to be knocked headfirst into my kitchen oven, it would be that way.  Urgently and abrupt while still seeming like it could have been a lot worse.  I get the baking pan loose and he reaches the garbage can and the world is upright again and the thick, bacon scented air of the kitchen fills with the sound of Chris’ voice, apologizing for nearly knocking his bent over, pregnant wife down in her own kitchen.  “Sorry about that.  I had a handful of crap from the sink drain in my hand and it was dripping and I was trying to get to the garbage can.”  He didn’t need to explain.  Anyone like us, who is primitive enough to NOT have a garbage disposal in their kitchen sink knows well what that handful of wet noodles and oats and meat bits and ricecrispies and diced tomatoes and bag twisties feels like.  Perhaps you understand the feeling of a soggy cheerio attempting escape through your thumb and index finger.  There is a sense of urgency to complete this specific kitchen chore with finesse and efficiancy and accuracy.  I tell him not to worry about it.  I know what that’s about. You don’t want that handful longer than you have to have it.  You won’t answer the door holding that stuff, or even take one more breath while holding it.  Its an urgent matter.  He receives my complete understanding.  I get back to the hashbrown task.  Precise placement…one hash brown after another.  And then comes one of those moments of contemplative silence that has come to be one of the defining qualities of our marriage.  It is the moment right before someone is about to be honest.  They have thought about what the outcome of their candid confession may be, they have calculated any cost and have made their decision.  He is facing out the window, still diligently scouring pots.  “It actually dripped all over your back.”  A moment…  “Oh.” I say.  “Good.”  Another moment…  And then the refreshing wind of laughter that has surprised us more times than we can count.  After ten years, I’m proud to say that this too is another defining characteristic of our marriage.  Through my two shirts and my cardigan I never felt the grotesque moisture and I never asked if it looked like I needed to change my sweater.  We fed the masses and hurried off to church and there we sat, his arm around me…resting in the runoff from the bottom of our kitchen drain.  And I’d never loved him more.  Together we have created a life that results in a drain full of food slime and hair and garbage…and sometimes, one of us is going to wear some of it on our back.  True love.  Sigh.

I decided at some point today that there were quite a few things that I would like to remember about this Easter.  The first being the look on our children’s faces when they found their Easter baskets…just kidding…we didn’t do Easter baskets this year.  It just didn’t happen.  This was one of those holidays that ended up being time slotted right down to the last seconds of each day.  We enjoyed two egg hunts and the kids are rarely experiencing a candy shortage and aside from being exhausted and spread really thin, the kids are hip to the jive and they all know that there’s no Santa or Easter Bunny or tooth fairy or any of that.  And for the record, kids don’t like liars.  No one does. So at the end of this whole parenting adventure, if someone decides to tell me that I did a bad job fibbing to my kids about make believe crap…I’ll still be able to sleep at night.

What will be memorable is the feeling of waking up and not really wanting to go to church.  I don’t know what’s wrong with me at this stage of my “Christian Game”, but my social anxiety tends to really flare up at church and I’m pretty sure that we’re going thru the motions for the kids…because while we are both feeling a little stale in our “relationships with God”…church is a nice place to meet people with decent values and its a good place for kids to make friends and hopefully stay out of trouble.  I had no such upbringing…so these are all just assumptions.  Chris and I are big on doing what we think is right to do…wether we feel warm and fuzzy or not.  Unfortunately, the kids are all pissed about going to church, mostly because they are supposed to sing in front of everyone and if I’m honest, I can’t blame them.  Iris usually has a great attitude, but the boys are another story.  The more they revolted about going to church the more Chris asserted that they were helping to solidify his decision that we were going.  At one point he referred to the boys as “Bullies”…trying to bend Chris’ will to match their own.

One thing no one really mentions when you are pregnant is what it will potentially be like when 1 or 2 or 5 of the humans you make start having ideas and preferences and voices of their own.  Like when you realize that your five year olds favorite pants don’t become any less “favorite” just because there is a hole in each knee.  Or when your 7 year old likes to circle and label the scars on his legs…leaving him looking like someone’s abandoned science project…and a grodey kid.  Maybe 3 kids want eggs and grits and 2 want pancakes and you ultimately have to come to terms with the fact that you can never please 100% of the people 100% of the time.  And most likely, if 100% of the people are pleased, than mom is probably holding back some of her own grievances.

Of late I have been challenging myself to stop micro-managing the masses.  I decided to take on this challenge after I started noticing my oldest, the twins, beginning to do it to their younger siblings.  I found myself saying “Geez guys! Let people live!”  Upon completing a little self reflection, LOW AND BEHOLD, I too had been over managing the group.  It mostly looked like a flustered woman trying to wipe faces and scrub pen off body parts and keep play dough colors from mixing.  Its a battle that is being lost all over the planet by every mother thats ever had breath in her lungs.  And so, while I would not be allowing the children to stay home from church, I wasn’t going to micro manage their Easter attire.

Chris and I stood on the balcony at church holding Max and watching below while Owen refused to participate in the kindergartener’s little song.  Whatever.  No big deal.  He stayed in the back, stood quietly.  Then we got to enjoy watching Iris sing her little heart out next to Flynn, who half heartedly participated (with his baseball cap in place) next to Micah who was basically there to ruin other peoples video footage of their lovely singing child on Easter Sunday.  No joke.  Micah not only DID NOT sing, but he sat on the edge of the stage with his back to the congregation like they did not even exist.  Occasionally he would glance up at us and we tried with every facial expression possible to convey how perturbed we were that he couldn’t show some respect at least to the kids who actually were singing…just stand there Micah!  He was pretty non responsive.  Thankfully we had a whole hour before we would see Micah, to breath it out and basically re accept the strong willed, obnoxious, disinterested young man that is our son.  He is sneaky.  He is selfish.  He is rammy. He is loud and inconsiderate.  And he is all ours.  Most days it seems like Micahs strengths barely outweigh his weaknesses, but I have to believe it is only because he is still growing and maturing and developing.  An hour later, I could really care less how he acted on that stage.  He didn’t want to perform in front of a bunch of people he didn’t know and for that I can not blame him.  Micah just doesn’t have that thing that the rest of us develop along the way that makes us pretend we like doing stuff that we actually hate so that we will be viewed a certain way.  “No nonsense Mike”.  That’s my new nickname for him.  Even though his name is Micah we always shorten it to Mike for nicknames.  We’ve called him “White Hot Mike”, “Iron Mike”, “Rebel Mike”, “100% Mike” (when he brings home a 100% on a spelling test)…just to name a few.  I wish I could say “what you see is what you get”, but that is not the case…he has proven to be one of our most intuitive and thoughtful (as in always thinking, but not necessarily in the caring for others kind of way) children.  There was some part of me that watched that child, refusing to perform for church ladies and gentlemen that reminded me of the verse in Galatians that says that it is for freedom that Christ has set us free.  Micah was acting out his freedom and doing a fine job at that.  May we all remember that our freedom of choice is precisely the gift God wished to give us in sending His Son.

As we loaded into the van after church I simply mentioned how much I enjoyed hearing all their little voices singing.  No-one seemed to care either way.  We headed off to our favorite Indian food restaurant in Lancaster…we get a hankering about once a month.  We had some late afternoon plans with friends but were pleased to have enough time to set off for some chicken tikka masala!  We kept it a secret till we arrived and the kids erupted with gladness upon turning into the parking lot.  After a 20 minute wait we were seated in the middle of the dining room.  Chris remained at the table with sleeping Max in his carseat while I accompanied the other children to the buffet.  Owen, fully jumping the gun, proceeds to dump one spoonful of rice right onto the floor.  I was right there, and so I took over for him immediately.  While finishing serving him I over heard a woman telling her husband that she watched Owen let the handle from a set of tongs fall into a pan of food.  I pretended not to hear…just be aware people, sometimes you could very well be eating the germs from every persons hands in the entire restaurant.  Frankly, I think its comical that any of us think that we aren’t.  Hand sanitize all you want…it counts for nothing when a group of reckless kids finds their way to an open buffet of food.  Lets all build our immunities together!!

Once seated and eating, everyone is happy and quiet and considerably well behaved…aside from rice EVERYWHERE…but short of bringing along my own travel vacuum and tipping really well, there isn’t much I can do about that.  Max is now awake and is enjoying nibbling Naan.  At one point Flynn mentions to me that he keeps slipping his Crocs off his feet.  I don’t think anything of this.  It’s not that uncommon for a kid (or a grown person) to slip their shoes off under the table.  “Huh.” I believe was my unenthusiastic response.  I stand up in the crowded dining room to go get a plate of food for Max.  Out of the corner of my eye I see on the floor a set of bare, hobbit-esque feet…standing on the plastic runner beside me.  I am astonished.  My head jolts directly to my left.  It is Flynn.  My oldest, (10 years old) most mature and responsible child is standing barefoot beside me in an extremely crowded restaurant dining room.  In partial disbelief I yell whisper to him, “Is this a joke Flynn!?”  He looks confused.  “You CANNOT walk around barefoot in a restaurant dude!”  He immediately scurries back to the table and slips his Crocs on.  In Flynn’s defense, Crocs are basically a more acceptable version of bare footedness…and considering that we had already contaminated this buffet…whats the difference…but like I said, the micromanager in me dies hard!  Apparently Flynn was not present the day we went over all the things that are absolutely forbidden in American eating establishments.  Come to think of it, he definitely missed it…because it never happened…because for some reason I assumed that we are all born with a common understanding that in restaurants, especially buffet style restaurants where perhaps several trips around the dining room are necessary…you shall remain SHOED! Its hard not to imagine the things people say about a family like ours once we finally get up and leave.  You leave hoping that everyone seated around you at least only got one angle.  No-one could have seen the hurricane of rice around Micah’s chair AND the tong handle submersion AND the bare feet…most people were only catching one or two…but hopefully not all three angles.  Meanwhile Iris has chosen this as a good time to ask,

“Mom, how does a woman know that she is going to have a baby?”

Knowing that I could clearly hear conversations taking place at tables all around us, I believed that they too could hear ours…I lean towards her…

“I could tell you another time Iris…it isn’t really a lunch conversation.”

“Well, is it because she goes to the doctor?”

“Yea.  The doctor tells her.” (Just trying to end the probing.)

“So, does she go to the doctor every year?” her head is tilted, puzzled look on her face.

“Yep.  Yearly visits.”  (Its over…right!?)

Her food steals back her attention.

Naturally, when the meal is over Chris is the first to get up and leave…acting as if the baby NEEDS him to exit the restaurant immediately.  I’m left with a few stragglers, slowly chewing and a destroyed table and surrounding area.  In an effort to seem like an OK human being, I begin scooting rice around with a napkin…as if cleaning up this rice were even a possibility.  Its all about appearances…right?  Once we are all in agreement that no more damage could be done, we stand up and head for the door.  I mouth an apology to the host as we leave the place…to whisper whatever it is that people whisper when a side show like ours pulls out.

With a little bit of time to kill before meeting our friends, we attempt to go play some ski-ball at the mall.  Apparently malls are closed on Easter.  Thats no fun.  What is fun though, is sending your four older kids up to “check the door” and then speeding away.  Chris would have left them there for a much longer amount of time, but I reminded him of the damage that our children (mostly the boys) can do when left to their own devices too long.  Someone would have quickly assumed the winterized fountain as base camp and we would not have been able to coax them back into the van for any amount of anything…it becomes a principal thing with these guys.  Just the fact that we playfully pretended to abandon them would have ignited a rebellious fire that wouldn’t be easily quenched.  We load up and head north to our friend’s piece of camp land for an egg hunt.

Our friends have this funny habit of inviting us out to camp for a “campfire” and when we arrive there are 10 other cars there and 50 other people.  We assumed this would be more of the same.  However, when we arrived we saw only their van and their five children running about frantically, hiding eggs.  Our friend Kevin approached our vehicle.  The window goes down.  I have to ask.

“Are your kids hiding eggs for our kids?”

“Yeh.  They already found like 250 at my moms…they didn’t need to hunt for anymore.”

What a special, exclusive event.  The best part is that when our kids got out and started hunting for eggs, their kids helped them find every single one…cause they knew exactly where they were!  It was really a fun time.  We ended the night back at our friends house for dinner and a movie.  On our drive home that evening, Chris and I agreed that the holidays can be quite exhausting with all these kids.  From Thursday afternoon when the kids got home from school right up to Sunday night it felt like we didn’t stop going and doing.  Someday these days will be far behind us and Chris and I will finally live in a little camper that we park wherever we feel like seeing the sun rise the next day and hopefully our children will be begging us to come to Easter at their house.  Until then, may they know how very difficult it is for their father and I to respect their free wills (but we’re desperately trying here!) and may they go easy on us…so we live to see the previously mentioned camper.