It's Complicated

This morning, I took a break from never ending chores.  I drank the better part of a pot of coffee and walked around the yard watching my little boys play.  I like to do this on Wednesday mornings because my big ones are off at piano lessons and my attention doesn’t have to be divided.  I haven’t written much lately and it’s definitely not from lack of poo.  I’ve even had a couple of people kindly share their own poo stories with me.  I’m ever so grateful.  It’s so much fun to get to laugh at you.....I mean, with you.

Potty training is going remarkably well.  Tony is dedicated to keeping his undies dry these days.  He’s not quite so dedicated to actually making it to the potty.  I think I’ve finally convinced him that it’s unacceptable to pee on the porch right in front of the door.  Or on the porch stairs.  He recently experimented with peeing down the slide.  At church.  The one that his brother was currently sliding down.  But his undies are dry.

He’s had a little difficulty understanding why he has to put his pants back on as well.  When we went to the park the other day, I went to push Chuy on the swing for a bit.  When I wandered back to check on him, he was having a grand time climbing the playset. Naked from the waist down.  But when I found his undies and shorts, they were dry.  I’m choosing to count my blessings here and remember these stories to regale his future wife with.  

Devin’s vocabulary seems to be growing by the day.  I’m hoping it’s the result of hours of reading.  I’ve memorized the majority of Cat in the Hat, Go Dog Go, Foot Book, Put Me In The Zoo and numerous others.  The other morning, Devin searched for a lost book without success.  Finally, he went to David to explain what he was doing.  “I looked and can’t find my book!” He announced.  “Then it got complicated!” he finished.  Complicated?  Really?  Yes, it’s been a favorite explanation lately.  Like when he took a toy from Chuy.  Or when he pooped his pants in town.  You didn’t think I could write without having some sort of poop incident did you?  Yep.  Everything these days is “complicated”.

Speaking of which, I had a story that was begun a few weeks ago and as yet unpublished.  In the interest of letting you laugh at my expense, I thought I’d still share it.....

I don't go to the bathroom by myself. I'm usually followed by the two or three youngest who really feel the importance of cheering me on, handing me toilet paper and flushing the toilet before I have a chance to stand up. The oldest two are much more content to stand outside the bathroom door, peppering me with critically imperative questions like, "when I get done with my chores and math, what can I do?"  "when Dad gets home, what are we going to do?" and one of my favorites, "do we get ice cream tonight if we eat our supper?

In case you're wondering, the answers to these are usually," laundry", "laundry"  and "if I get interrupted one more time, you can have laundry for dessert!" You'd think I'd get more laundry done than I really do.

Today I found myself blissfully alone in the bathroom. I'd love to have taken time to enjoy the peace and quiet. But any mother knows how it goes. When the cat's away, the mice will burn the house down while trying to get to the candy. I hurried out to find Tony and Chuy had decorated several pictures for me. Some on paper. Mostly on the kitchen floor and refrigerator. In sharpie. I'll be sure to invite them along for my next bathroom trip.  

We're so excited to see Chuy taking an interest in potty training. He may be our easiest yet! He's already got the hang of going pee pee in the potty. He's tried to make it for poops a couple of times. Problem is, he feels like he must sit as far back on the potty as possible.  This results in a deposit down the back of the potty. Baby steps.

We had another fascinating experience today. The above was written yesterday. We can't have all our fun in one day. I was folding laundry in the living room, Tony and Devin squabbling quietly the my feet. Drew emerged from the bathroom to inform me that his toilet was overflowing. "Danae said it was stopped up.  I had to poop.  So I flushed it again and now it's not going down."  

I dashed to the bathroom to indeed find poopy toilet water overflowing onto the floor. I jiggled the handle to get the water to stop and dashed to my bedroom for boots. Yeah. I was NOT stepping in that.  Working with the plunger only resulted in more water sloshing over the side. Ug! I went for the toilet snake.

Just as I got the snake situated,  and by that I mean threaded about a quarter of the way into the toilet to be jiggled and cursed at until it accomplishes unclogging the drain, Tony began to wail in earnest about something Devin was doing. His piercing shriek grew in intensity until I had to abandon the bathroom to..... discipline the offenders. About that time, Chuy disappeared into Drew's room to mess with forbidden toys. One more spanking and I had over half my brood crying. Time to head back to the sewage in the bathroom.  I managed to clear the clog and put the snake in the bathtub to be washed.

Since everyone has to poop at the same time (is that the disadvantage of everyone eating together?), Chuy decided to take that opportunity to take care of business.  “Gucky, Momma!” He began to call.  But the bathtub I normally shower him in was currently housing the plunger and snake.  We made do with wipes and promises of a bath later.  

The upside was that the entire bathroom got bleached.  Curtains got taken down and washed.  Even the hallway got steam cleaned.  I have to say, I’m not sure I really expected this kind of excitement when I thought of having children.  Though, in sharing my stories, I’ve heard from several other moms that their life is covered in its fair share of poo too.  It’s just part of having kids.  And honestly, if we can find the humor in it, life becomes a little less complicated.  

Progress

I'm almost afraid to admit it, but we may have turned a corner with Tony. He's pooped in the potty four times now and I'm happy dancing all over the place. I've been having visions of handing him over to his bride someday with a package of adult diapers and baby wipes. Practicality says it wouldn't get that far, but when you're knee deep in the poop trenches it's hard to find the light at the end of the sewer drain. Is it possible that in another 18 months - 3 years I could see the end of the pampers budget? Seriously, I think I could have made a decent down payment on a house for what we've spent on diapers over the years. But what could I possibly have to write about if I'm not getting pooped on every other day? Maybe the visit I had with my sister where we decided it would be great if we could just tattoo socks on all our kids and save ourselves the eternal sock hunt. Or how, when I went to spank Chuy for playing during nap time today, he leapt into his bed, turned his face to the wall and began to pretend snore. Or maybe how we're finally in the end stages of getting paperwork finalized so that a couple of the boys' brothers can live with us permanently. OK. Maybe my life will not be boring  after all.

Truth be told, I can't hardly imagine life without my crew of pirates/super heroes/glazed doughnut monsters (that glaze on their face might look sweet and sugary, but I wouldn't kiss it if I were you) /puppies/wild animals/astronauts. Drew and Y made themselves jet packs this weekend out of discarded boxes, paper and cupcake liners. Genius. It kept them busy for hours! Anything they want to imagine can be acted out with a full compliment of characters. And their imagination only seems to grow as the family grows. Granted, their imagination often includes a full range of disgusting bodily noises, imaginary barf and snot. It's a boy thing.

This weekend, we will not only have our two soon-to-be Baucoms, but we'll also have another brother of theirs for a day and two of the boys friends for a couple days. A friend told me I'm crazy. I know she's right. At times we will have nine boys. All  ten and under. I'm already preparing food for the black hole that will be the dining room table. But I'm so excited about it! I'm sure there will be a post coming about the experience. Good, bad and insane.

Outing

Under most circumstances, I'd rather try to bathe twelve cats in the dark than take my kids on errands. The result is the same. You end up wrestling with a small irrational creature, frustrated, tired, and convinced that one of them has pooped while you weren't watching. Caterwalling and tears ensue. Except that when it's taking kids on errands, all of that is happening on aisle 5 at Walmart.
Today was an exception. We wanted to take the kids to see Frozen (by far the best movie put out by Disney in a long time). If we were going to be in town, we needed groceries. The other thing about having a large family and driving a municipal stadium everywhere is that you really avoid making too many trips to town. I  think my gas bill could feed a small family for a month.  We took a large breath and rolled the whole raucous herd into the bus. I have to stop here and admit that I love the life and excitement these kids bring to every activity. Doing stuff with them just makes me happy. But I digress.......
Sam's was our first stop. Usually, I'm there during the week or on Sunday afternoon. Nothing during those times prepared me for the sheer crush of people milling about the parking lot and store. I include the parking lot because people seemed to mosy through it as if they were window shopping for their next vehicle. No worries about people actually trying to make their way to an empty spot in the outer boondocks. 
David and I decided to divide and conquer in order to be able to get our stuff and get out in slightly less time than it took the Israelites to cross the desert. It worked well! The kids took joy in helping to heap our carts with all the stuff they like to scarf down during the week. They pointed out 500 other "yummy" looking foods (gum, trail mix, crackers, cookies, cheesecake...) that they really needed. With all the sympathy of someone who has to cough up the dough to feed these creatures with black holes for stomachs, I refused. Most of it. Some of it. OK. I bought the fishy crackers. And cheese sticks. And bacon. I'm sure I would have gotten all that anyway.
David took most of the kids to the bus while I checked out. As I watched them gather round him like little electrons around the big daddy nucleus, I couldn't hide my smile. We're a big family when you look at it from the outside. And lots of people were looking.
After Sams, we ate a snack in the picnic area of another local grocery while David ran in for coffee. My kids were everywhere. Crawling through hoops set up as a bike rack. Jumping from rock to rock. Playing follow the leader. Without a 'real'  play set, they had a ball just being with each other. And eating fishy crackers and cheese. See. I knew it would be handy.
The movie theater was surprisingly packed for a movie that has been out this long. We found good seats. The three big kids in  front of us and the rest scattered on and around us. Watching them laugh and engage in the story was as much fun as the movie itself.
Next stop. Food. Yes. More food. We dropped a small fortune at McDonald's for the sole  purpose of letting the hoodlums run and play after nearly two hours of sitting still. I was so proud of my kids. We filled two tables. They played and responded well to orders and discipline. We gathered them to go and I began to mentally pat myself on the back for the order we were managing to keep. Then Devin went and lit off the emergency alarm on our way out the door. Yeah. That's my  kid. So sorry. We were just leaving. Enjoy the ear piercing siren.
By this time it was 7:30. We're usually starting to work kids toward bed. And we still had to do Walmart. Divide and conquer once again saved us both time and frustration. I couldn't help but marvel at the fun we would have missed out on if we hadn't attempted what might have seemed crazy. The kids reveled in the experience of just being out with us. They were distracting and funny and helpful and worth having along.
We got home with tired kids and tired adults. But we were all happy.

Gilligan and the Internet

I wonder what would happen if life ever got boring around here. If there were an equal and opposite reaction to boring at my house, it might have to be a rainforest complete with howler monkeys and singing bears (you know... Like Jungle Book) being found in Antarctica.
Somehow everything happens here at once. We came home from Christmas vacation sick. Very sick. Our kids, on the other hand, felt great. When we began to feel better, David twisted his knee badly. Two different doctors later and we will soon get to pay a small fortune to have it fixed. As a final treat, our internet went down.
When we have no Internet, we also have no cell signal. And no phone. Entirely disconnected from the outside world, I found myself wandering around the house holding my cell phone up, seeking signal like the crew of Gilligan's Island sought radio waves. Please God, let someone be out there.
Fast forward to tonight. With David out of commission in the crawling department, I volunteered to be his hands under the house to fix our phone line. Two days with little to no outside connections had made me desperate. After all, it's only dark, creepy and 20 degrees outside. What could go wrong?
For starters, someone left the water hose on and part of under the house was soggy. I crawled in and found the wire. Slowly, I followed it down the house to where it ended, trying to avoid the worst of the mud. Spider webs dangled in my face and the cat, who had staked claim on a warm spot down there, began to howl his warning at my intrusion. The wire was not plugged in to anything. I  picked up the frayed end and wondered if we'd been getting internet by magic.  Apparently, it had been daisy chained into another wire and had come loose. No magic.  Just a great cat fight under the house had dislodged it. Great.
I should mention here that my electronic experience amounts to nil. This wire needed to be spliced into another one. David talked me through it. Red to red, green to green. Tape them together. Due to my new found electrical genius the phone line ever was, of course, still broken.
During this stage, there were times I had to just sit and wait for David to go check something or get a tool. I'm not proud to admit it, but generous amounts of extra fiber to my diet had resulted in equal amounts of intolerable flatulence. In the confines of the under house space, I had no one to blame my misery on but myself. As my eyes began to water and I considered escaping to the less polluted outdoors. But I needed my internet.
Plan B. We ran another line. Which involved trying to get it up through the floorboard and then running it down the length of the house. By this time, I'd crawled the length of the house about three times. My toes had begun to hurt. I considered the lengths to which I would go in order to have internet back. In the end, I decided that I had double benefits. Not only did I renew my connection with the outside world, but I also had an embarrassing and disgusting story to share with my readers.
As I finished my part in the ordeal and headed out, my calves decided they'd had enough too and cramped up. If anyone ever tells you that crawling isn't exercise, slap them for me. I hobbled my way up the stairs and into a hot shower. My amazing husband made coffee and we celebrated by staying up too late watching Netflix. This is definitely the good life.

Christmas Vacation

We're home and recovering from Christmas.  No trip is really complete until a few people have gotten sick and have to spend days laying around watching TV. The trip as a whole was so full of blogable material that it's hard to know where to begin.....

We loaded enough electronic devices to power a Dallas suburb into our van.  I'm not sure exactly how I managed to make it through family trips as a kid without a tablet, a gaming system and a phone, but the concept is terrifying to my children. Or maybe it's just that my parents had more tolerance for hearing,  "are we there yet?" "I'm hungry", "I need to go potty", "I pooped", "tell him to stop touching me!".  My mother scoffed when we first bought a car with a built in dvd player.  She regaled us with stories of how they read and sang across country.  I noticed that her van now sports three TV screens and a movie for the trip across town.  No matter.  The kids loved it and all wanted to pile in with Nana.

My amazing husband bought me a new phone before we left.  It's fancy and I love it.  Which means I'm super panicked about dropping or losing it. Which also means I do both more often.

Our first night in Arkansas, we gathered at my sister's house. 14 children, 7 adults.  We were horribly outnumbered. The kids spent time marking out territory and testing boundaries. Yes.  That toy is hers.  No you may not pee outside.  We're in town.  Oh, yeah.  It's dark.  Go ahead.  Yes.  You need to eat your nachos. At least half of it.  Fine.  One bite. Just go play with your cousins. You can fill up on cookies later.  And play they did.  14 children have an astounding scope of imagination. Later, they put on a nativity vignette with Christmas caroling. It included one of our adoptive hopefuls who owned his part by baaaing out his lines and crawling around on all fours for a good part of the rest of the night. 

David's sister, Rachel came with us. She slept on the couch in the living room of the house that was graciously loaned to us. As it turns out, my children far preferred to wake her for their travel insomnia than knock on my door.  Score! Everyone should take a teenager on family vacations. She got to deal with nose bleeds, sleep walking, thirsty kids, sniffles, and that one child who  believes travel is an excellent excuse to start getting up at 4am. I got to catch a cold and spend my time trying to keep my entire brain from leaking out my nose.

We took the kids to a nature museum on Friday.  They ran and played, enjoying the snakes and displays and a fishing game. We took a picnic lunch outside. The boys ducked around the trees and fed bits of their lunch to the geese in the pond. Then Devin waddled out from behind a tree. Yep. It was poop. The upside of it was that it put us in just the right place, once I'd cleaned him up, to watch volunteers feed a mouse to the rattlesnake. Later, I heard that Y and Drew had been hoping the mouse might escape. It was cuter than the snake, and therefore the snake was evil.

Later, in a move I blame entirely on cold meds, I found myself  leaning against a red Firebird that was parked next to my bus in the McDonald's parking lot. Yes. We took the kids to Mc D's. In freezing temperatures, my little cavemen needed to wreck havoc in somewhere built for it. I needed ice cream mixed with m&ms. Everyone wins. I leaned on the driver's side door while chatting with my parents for about 10 minutes only to find out the teenager in the driver's seat was apparently texting about the whole experience. I apologized profusely to the girl who simply rolled her eyes and turned back to her phone.   Defeated, I crawled into the bus for a quick getaway. After spending ten minutes polishing her window with my backside, she could at least have tossed me a quarter. As we pulled out of the parking lot, I looked back to find her pantomimng the story to a load of her friends who'd pulled up beside her.  They laughed riotously at my expense.  Smiling, I waved heartily as we passed by.   Yes.  It was me!  I sat on your car.   The crazy lady with a bus full of kids and her brain stuffed into a dozen kleenexes in her pocket.

By the way, they lady who took this picture really had an eye for.....placement. First picture in a long time of 'us girls' and I have a deer hat. I love family photos.

Transportation

No matter how often we do it, I'm always amazed at how much work it takes to  transport children anywhere. And before you ask,  I'll explain. To travel is the act to going from one place to another. It's what we did before we had kids. Throw a couple things in the car and go.   Transporting, on the other hand, is a system or means of conveying people and/or goods from place to place by means of a vehicle, aircraft, or ship.  Yes. I got the definitions from a dictionary.
By the time we have packed 36 pairs of socks, 16 sets of pajamas, 27 pairs of shoes, 25 pairs of pants, 45 shirts, an orchards worth of apples, a flat of water bottles, extra bedding, books, toys, our own coffee maker (yes, we're that dedicated to our morning caffeine fix), gifts and the assortment of miscellany that must go with us these days, we definitely fall within the category of transportation. No way about it, we're hauling goods.
I'm not sure what it is about preparing to travel that drives children and animals crazy. Days before suitcases even come out of hiding they begin climbing the walls in anticipation of the hours soon to be spent buckled down into their seats. The animals are just starting their empty house party early.  The children are determined to leave their mark before we go. Just in case the animals forget who's job it usually is to wreck havoc. Legos get spread hither and yon, creating a charming minefield for chores I'm trying to accomplish. Chuy has twice actually made it into the playdoh before getting caught and eaten several bites.  I'm sure we'll be dealing with multi-colored poop soon. Tony decided to help me pack by spreading the stacks of clothing I had on the couch around the living room floor.
I have lists to help me stay organized when I pack. I write down the things I need to remember. It would be more helpful if I actually remembered to reference the list as I pack.  We made it Arkansas with no socks or underwear for David, no copies of family pictures, and a couple of gifts left behind. It could be worse. We didn't leave any children behind. Yet. No one had a massive poop on the road. No one threw up.  Gosh! What an uneventful trip!
The blue bus transported our crew well. We took out a bench to make room for everything and the kitchen sink that we had packed. I consequently found myself wedged between Chuy and Devin 's carseats. Not a place created for large bums.  I let Rachel sit in front so that I could nap and manage the heathen. Yeah, right.  The trip actually went amazingly well. Bathroom stops were the most fun. There's nothing like watching someone's jaw drop as they count 7 kids coming out of a car.  Classic. 

We wish you a flu free Christmas!

In this season of family gatherings and gift giving, there's nothing that gives more than the flu. We travel hundreds of miles to share new germs with all our loved ones. Just to make sure they don't miss out on the fun.

I'm not sure if it's the flu or not, but I've got a second child down with fever. Drew started it and seems to be on the mend today, so maybe it will go quickly through and be done. Though that's not normally how we like to do things in a big family. Big families are all about experiencing life to the fullest. We're not content with getting an illness just once. We like to work through just one or two people at a time so that we can give it back to the first ones a few weeks later.  Flu. The gift that keeps on giving.

My general reaction to  anyone getting sick is to make chicken soup.  There’s nothing more soothing than a nice, warm chicken soup when you’re sick.  It doesn’t matter what ails you.  Chicken soup makes it better.  I’ll even eat it out of a can.  Or the little dry packets with noodles.  Or on a train, or in the rain.  With a fox and in my socks!.....Sorry.  Mommy moment there.  There’s only one problem with chicken soup.  I am the only one in my family who likes it.   Nevertheless, I made chicken soup today.  I cut up butternut squash, celery and onions and sauteed them with cubed chicken.  Chuy climbed up on a chair by the counter to, “help you” as he says.  Which means he ate three slices of butternut squash and one and a half sticks of chopped celery as I processed it.  I let him help me make breakfast the other day and he ate half a bell pepper before I could get it in the pan to cook.  He sure does love to help.   Maybe I do chop extra little pieces for him so that he can keep busy with eating instead of going all shogun with my knives.  It’s a good tradeoff.  

I still had the problem of my family not wanting what I cooked.  I can’t stand people not liking my food.  It’s not that I get offended.  I just want to make food that people want to eat.  So if there’s something they don’t like, I take is as a personal challenge to find a way to fix it so they will.  This time, I added curry seasoning and coconut milk.  Chicken curry soup.  Big hit!  Danae ate two bowls, and David mmmed and ahhhed and said it’s been too long since we’ve had curry.  Not only did it satisfy my deep seated need for chicken soup, but it cleared our sinuses as well!  Win, win! I’ll definitely be eating the leftovers for lunch.

I hope we make it through the end of the year without serious illness and that this is just a quick passing thing.  We’ve got family that we want to see and friends we want to party with. By the way, party means something entirely different once you’re married with children.  I may have to write a post on that someday.