I Just Want You to Know (3 page)

Then I heard from Mady the words that made my day: “Mommy, you’re the best mom ever!”

Really, shaving cream? If only every day were this easy…

Other craft activities we did, especially in the cold winter months, included drawing with crayons, paper plate art, puppets, and Play-Doh—edible and nonedible varieties, which I made in large batches.

The back of our kitchen cabinets faced our dining room, so we displayed our newest art for all to see. Whenever we finished a project, I would write down their names as well as the title of the art, which was always something random: Hannah’s “dat,” Collin’s “line,” Aaden’s “mess,” Leah’s “garden,” etc. Then we would swap out the old pictures with the new.

I tried not to use glue and markers or anything else that could get out of control easily. It wasn’t that I was afraid of messes per se, which wasn’t altogether untrue at that time; it was that each kid still needed help with glue and scissors. With just me helping each one, the other kids could quickly have a meltdown waiting a half hour for their turn. I had learned to try to avoid situations that resulted in meltdowns if at all possible. One of my favorite activities at this time included stickers. Mrs. Grossman’s Stickers, a California-based sticker company, had sent us tons of stickers, which we used frequently. They were cute, the kids loved them, and they were easy to control for messes.

I would say, “Stickers go on…?”

And the kids would respond, “People or paper.”

After lunch, no matter what season, we had blessed naptime. This was my chance to get things done, to clean up from the morning, start laundry, and start dinner.

Since cooking is my way to relieve stress, starting dinner was often my favorite time of day. With the little kids sleeping, I could zone out, thinking only of my dinner creation. I loved using organic and healthy ingredients that I found at Henry’s or on sale and turning them into a meal.

Whenever I found a good deal, I would either nab as much as I could or ask someone else to pick up extra for me. I remember one day when my sister Kendra came to our house with 225 cans of tomatoes—organic tomatoes, that is—to add to the 25 cans I had already picked up myself from Sharp Shopper, a discount store near her house. She also brought 20 pounds of organic butter. I was thanking God with great enthusiasm that day. The tomatoes were only 79 cents each, which was half of what they cost on sale at Giant. Such great buys!

One day we found strawberries at Sam’s Club for $1.50 a pound—
organic, of course. I sent Jon back the next day for three more flats. Even we wouldn’t eat all that, but I knew I could freeze them. I constantly prayed that we would have enough to satisfy our needs, and God kept providing.

Grocery shopping was a big deal. When I was planning ahead and cooking in bulk, I would write out an ingredient list for about fifteen recipes and compile it into a grocery list. The list would practically be a book, and the amount of food it represented was shocking: 13
¹
/
₂
pounds ground beef, 5 pounds chicken, 1 pork roast, and so many other things. I often cooked a plethora of meals and froze them to pull out and use on a day gone awry. This is where planning ahead could literally save the day. I learned early on that there is no way to create a meal for ten on a moment’s notice.

After dinner during the summer months, Jon and I would take everyone outside to play until dark. In the winter, we would head downstairs for family time. Jon and I were beyond exhausted by that time of the day, but we loved being in the same room together with the kids toddling around. This was when we’d clean up the toy explosion in the basement playroom and try to teach the little kids how to match the toys to the pictures on each basket. Then Jon would lie
on one sofa and I would lie on the other, just trying to get a bit of rest before our last big task for the night: bath time.

Soon everyone toddled up the stairs for bath and bedtime. That was Jon’s time with the kids, and he was so thorough and involved—and fast! He quickly earned the title of Bath Man. He would bathe the kids every night and put them to bed every night. During that time, I would start working on whatever I didn’t get to finish that day—cleaning the kitchen, grocery shopping, laundry, etc. It wasn’t unheard of for me to be doing my eighth load of laundry after ten p.m. I tried not to get behind, but if even one kid was sick, it threw off our entire schedule. We could go from eight loads to sixteen in no time flat!

Even on the weekends, we had to follow our strict schedule. After all, everyone still had to eat and sleep and clean and play.

My favorite Saturday breakfast was pancakes (“cancakes,” as Aaden calls them), which I loved to make. After I stopped working, Saturday also meant my least favorite thing: cleaning day! I remember one Saturday when Jon helped me clean the upstairs, the kids’ rooms, and then took all the kids outside in the beautiful sunny 70 degree weather. I finished up the cleaning and then fed everyone lunch outside so we wouldn’t have to clean the dining room again (the chore that we both dread the most). In the afternoon, Jon ran errands and I cleaned the bathrooms downstairs and the floors.

Once a season I would go through all of the kids’ clothes to set aside things we needed to give away (often to another family with multiples) and replace with clothing that was given to us—mostly
from my best friend, Jamie, who had twin girls a year younger than Cara and Mady and a son one year older than the little kids. I would store the clothes in labeled bins in the attic—more than enough for my six to wear. The trick was making sure I had the right sizes available since they wore a few different sizes at any one time. When Cara was between a five and six, Mady was not quite a five yet in length. We didn’t have room in the drawers to keep any sizes not currently needed, so the sorting process had to be accurate.

Sunday mornings we left the house at 8:30 to attend church at 9:30, which meant I needed to be up by 6:30, lay out the kids’ clothing, and start getting ready. When everyone woke up, Jon started dressing them while I was getting ready. When I was done, Jon started getting ready, while I did the girls’ hair, packed the comfort items and food, which included breakfast, juice cups, a bottle of
juice for refills (one bottle was only one cup per child), and snacks for on the way home from church. When we were finished loading everything and everyone into the car and started driving away, I would check the clock, which strangely always read 8:38 a.m. We were scheduled to the minute at times, but we had to be.

Schedules and routines were so important for us to survive, so we didn’t get lost in details. Time of breakfast, bedtime, everything was predictable. We had to remove the guesswork in order to survive. Being late for a meal could set off a chain reaction of starving kids having meltdowns and chaos erupting.