I Just Want You to Know (2 page)

When the nurse called back, I repeated all of the information and answered her questions too. But then the conversation got weird.

“The doctor would never do something like that!” she said suddenly.

“Like what?” I asked.

“Call in a prescription for a patient she hasn’t seen.”

To get my kids the medical care they needed, I had to work hard to convince the office staff that when one of my kids got sick, the others did too. Finding a last-minute babysitter for seven so I could
take one sick child to the pediatrician was part of my job as a mom of eight little kids. And repeatedly calling the doctor for appointments, prescriptions, and refills had to be done no matter how much I annoyed the office staff.

I was quickly learning that we weren’t normal by the world’s standards, but I also found out that with enough persistence, we could make things work. In the end, Aaden was seen by the pediatrician and was also treated for pneumonia. I’ve learned to always trust my mommy instincts.

If I learned anything during our time in Elizabethtown, it was that our dreams of “normal” as defined by an average-sized family weren’t possible. Our logistics and our way of doing things was never normal and never would be, but we learned to stop comparing ourselves to other families, and we redefined what normal meant to us.

Normal for us meant, in part, having mounds of trash and weeks of illness; but it also meant having large group fun we could never have had with a smaller family, like team sports and playing school.

Another difference in our family was that we put extra effort into giving the kids special, individual opportunities. We knew they didn’t get much time alone, so being intentional about allowing them space and attention was more important for us than for other families.

Redefining normal helped us to accept that things for us would be different, and whether it was good or bad depended on what we made of each situation.

I think every family needs to understand what makes their household work—even if it doesn’t function quite like other families. During our time in that house, we learned to make a new kind of ordinary, a Gosselin normal that worked for Jon and me and for our kids. We learned we could feel like a regular family when we went out and made it home safely without any major logistical issues. (When that
happened Jon and I would high-five each other because we felt so, well, normal.)

We stopped comparing ourselves to other families and set about making our own path in the world. People still stared at us and counted us when we went out. Our safety and health issues were still magnified times eight. We still ate more boxes of cereal and more eggs at breakfast than other families did. But we began to see all of that as our normal.

Learning to redefine our expectations was a huge blessing because it was during those years that our show really took off. By the time we left Elizabethtown, we would once again have to redefine a new normal, one that included even more stares and pointing, as well as lights, cameras, and a whole lot of action.

As far as space goes, the move to our Elizabethtown house was long overdue. For quite some time we had been bursting at the seams in our Dauphin Avenue house, so this move was not only logistically and financially smart (Jon’s commute would decrease from ninety minutes to twenty minutes), it was going to give us the space we needed in order to breathe easier.

Once in our new house, however, we took note of the many pitfalls and dangers the house contained. One example was the huge flight of stairs that led to the kids’ rooms. After I visualized trying to catch six toddlers tumbling down the stairs at once, we realized that our first task in this new house was to teach the little kids how to safely go up and down the stairs. So we began what we called stair lessons. “First, sit on your heinies,” I said, demonstrating, “with your feet out in front like this. Then keep your hands next to you and slowly slide down one step at a time.”

Even though this seemed like the safest method, I was still afraid of a domino effect. If one kid tripped or slipped on the stairs, he could literally take out everybody else. So during the lessons, I would stand halfway in the middle of the stairs, filled with fear that this could be really bad, and do my best to guide all six of them, twenty-two-month-olds sitting on their cushy diapers and bumping down the steps.

Navigating steps was at the top of the list of things to do, but organizing the basement playroom was important too. Cleanup, as every parent knows, is extremely frustrating. Everybody makes the mess, nobody owns the mess, and nobody wants to clean up the mess. Every single day. Two or three times a day. And with my myriad of children, I wanted to make cleanup as easy as possible. Even though the little kids were only two, I knew they could help with this task.

We put up huge open shelving along an entire wall in the basement. I took pictures of what belonged in each basket and hung photos on the front of the containers, so everyone knew what belonged where and could help…or so I hoped.

With eight young kids, we generated more laundry than you can imagine, so we needed to install our own Laundromat of sorts. The
original laundry room had a closet with accordion doors. We removed them, put up shelving and racks for drying clothes, and installed a utility sink. Most important, we had two sets of washers and dryers. When the front loading washers were first installed, they provided hours of entertainment. The kids watched in amazement as their clothes spun around and around.

Because the room led to the back deck, we also used it as a mudroom. When the kids got dirty playing outside, we could bring them into the laundry room to remove their muddy clothes, clean them up in the sink, and send them upstairs to take a bath. I could easily sweep the sticks, mud, leaves, garbage, and whatever else they tracked in, right back outside. (Yes, I did allow them to play in the mud.)

Stair lessons. Basement organization. Our own Laundromat. Moving in, we made this house work for us. And though it was a simple time, it was very fulfilling for us. We were busy, but because we stuck to our schedules, Jon and I worked well together as a team. With eight kids, we had to learn what worked best for us, but we were handling everything together.

During the first year of the little kids’ lives, before we moved to Elizabethtown, many volunteers helped us. But now Jon and I were settling into doing most everything ourselves. Nana Janet continued to show up faithfully every week to play with the kids and to do our ironing. Miss Beverly also came weekly to fold our laundry. Other family members and friends stopped by, and I took any assistance I could get. While I appreciated getting a few things done without interruption, the kids always enjoyed seeing someone different. But for the most part, we were independent.

Routine is what made our independence possible. Every day was pretty much the same. We did everything over and over again. The only variations in the schedule were what I was making for dinner and what phone calls I had to make—unless somebody got sick and threw a monkey wrench into the day. This routine, logistically speaking, meant I never sat down unless I was folding laundry or sleeping.

That first year in the Elizabethtown house with our young family holds some of my best memories. At that time, life seemed challenging, stressful, and exhausting; but looking back, it was manageable and satisfying to know we could do it all by ourselves.

Our daily routine would start around seven or seven-thirty in the morning. I would head upstairs to get the little kids who were waiting in their rooms for me to change their diapers and dress them.
I’d hang a grocery bag on the knob of the dresser and fill it to the top with their diapers.

One day as I was changing Alexis, I looked into her beautiful brown eyes.

“I kinky [stinky].”

“Yes, Sassy, you sure are.”

I finished changing her and moved on to Joel. After everyone had a clean diaper, which took about half an hour, I threw the bag down the stairs. Hannah bumped down and then took the bag to the kitchen, declaring, “My diapies.”

I followed her, opening the kitchen door. “Hurry.”

“Fies [flies],” she said as she hurled the bag into the garage, kicking the bag as was often necessary. We slapped five. “Thanks, Hanni.”

I used to tell her to hurry when throwing the trash out since there were flies that would come in, and so this interaction just became part of our schedule every day.

Leah tried to get in on this ritual, but she gave up trying to compete with Hannah and came up with her own job. She would ask to turn off the “lie” [light]. Since she couldn’t actually do it, she just pretended by sticking her hand near the switch while I turned it off. They each liked to find their own rituals and tasks around the house, and I enjoyed watching them discover their independence.

After diaper changes and clothes, the next task for the day was the first round of meals: make breakfast, feed breakfast, clean up breakfast, which was always right before make lunch, feed lunch, clean up lunch, and then followed by make dinner, feed dinner, clean up dinner. The endless cycle.

For breakfast, I often made a big bowl of oatmeal with organic
quick oats, which was easy, fast, healthy, and inexpensive—plus the kids loved it. I would add blueberries or strawberries or brown sugar and cinnamon, or whatever we had on hand to make it different.

In the summer, after breakfast we would be outside until lunch, many times having a picnic lunch. We loved warm weather! The kids would run around outside, and after eating lunch, with a flip of the blanket, cleanup was done. In the summer, we also loved going to Henry and Linda’s, an Amish couple with five young boys. They grew organic produce—unofficially organic, they just didn’t spray. They grew everything under the sun! We would get strawberries and vegetables and all kinds of produce, which would then determine what we were having for dinner that night.

The kids loved going for a drive to Henry’s, even if they didn’t get out of the van. And if we didn’t make it there in the mornings, and if someone was babysitting the kids at home, I’d run over there while doing my errands; or I’d go when Jon got home from work. Sometimes I’d go to Henry’s twice a day as he would call me to take his leftover produce very inexpensively. Whatever I didn’t use, I’d give away to family, friends, or neighbors.

I loved cooking with the fresh produce, and my challenge, especially if I had extra from the end of the day, was to figure out what to come up with from the ingredients. I would sometimes chop peppers and freeze them for stir-fry. I froze sixty quarts of strawberries one year. I learned to shred zucchini and freeze it to make zucchini bread in the winter. I also learned from Linda that I could freeze
corn on the cob unshucked and make it in the winter as a treat. I felt really good about serving my family picked-from-the-garden-that-morning produce, and the kids loved to say, “Jesus made it, Henry grew it, Mommy cooked it, and we ate it!”

Having picnics and fresh produce was great in the summer, but such activities were much harder to do in the winter—and eight young kids always had plenty of energy to burn. We tried to do crafts often, but one winter morning we were all bored, so I started brainstorming possible things we could do. I had started to change my thinking from being a mom to being a preschool/daycare organizer when it came to projects and activities we could do during the day. I would often research online to find something that would work within our constraints: things that were inexpensive, done with one or two adults supervising, and had manageable cleanup. Not an easy task, but doable with a shift in thinking.

I had heard of using shaving cream as an activity and had actually stocked up with a few cans the week before. I used this monotonous winter morning as an excuse to test out the project. I sat all the kids at the table and gave them each a pile of shaving cream. “Swirl it around, mold it in your hands, draw shapes with your fingers, just don’t put it in your mouth.” These were my only instructions.

The kids loved it! They played happily for a long time, moving the white foam around on the table with their hands, and the cleanup was easy. In fact, my kitchen table looked great, like I had just conditioned it with special cleaner.