summer 2011

summer 2011

Paul and I, all 16 kids and Ashley, Benjamin's wife...Christmas 2012

Paul and I, all 16 kids and Ashley, Benjamin's wife...Christmas 2012
family

Thursday, May 3, 2012

and the bad mom award of the day goes to:

Me. Again. Today, I broke the Number One rule of society: send your children to school. Well, I technically only broke it a little bit, because seven of the eight school kids got on the bus. Charlotte Claire, however, is breaking the law. She is playing dollhouse with Camille. They have already played house, ate their cereal with piles of very important treasures next to their bowls (like plastic necklaces, shells, and a pretty rock). They have played doctor...they have the BEST dr. kits, outfitted with foley caths and real syringes, minus the needles of course, from their nursing school big siblings...(it is HILARIOUS to listen to them..."My baby is very sick so I have to stick this tube in her pee-hole to fill up this bag with pee because she is too sick to get out of bed."). Now they have picked up the dr. supply mess, and are playing dollhouse. When Char found out that the other kids had already left for school and I was letting her stay home to play with Camille, she was exuberant!!! She said that Camille really really wanted her to stay home today! They haven't had one single fight yet ....

So the house is rather upside down with the kitchen getting done, but I don't mind too much. I feel like I am finally getting the place in order, little by little, in these winding-down-from-having-babies years. Just for the record though, for the thousandth time, I would rather have babies and have messy closets and a gosh-forsaken-heckhole of a laundry room, and things gathering dust on top of the 'fridge. It is nice to have things clean and neat, but I would rather have babies. Now, I have heard that there are SOME women who manage to do both. Seriously. They can have clean organized houses, houses with cupboards they wouldn't die if someone opened. They have bathrooms that are always clean, without months worth of empty shampoo bottles in the undersink cabinets! They have matching socks, and clean windows, and they have thrown away their old holey underwear! They save their kids' report cards in special bins instead of stacking them here and there, and they actually print out pictures AND put them in PHOTO ALBUMS, not just in drawers!

To my kids: I do apologize for letting things go so often through your growing-up years. But. I hope you remember the impromptu trips to the park, going to visit Gramma every chance we could, and the endless trips to Walmart with all of you guys. All the times I took you all grocery shopping with me, letting you get pizza in the store eating area, pretending it was a Nice Restaurant. I hope you know that I did suffer sometimes in my choice to let you play all over this house, setting up forts in the foyer, and under the kitchen table. It wasn't always easy letting you keep pretty rocks. Boys, I know you totally ruined your bedroom rug with that awful Goopy-Goo Crawly bug maker, but you had so much fun with that when your cousins came over! I know that as you guys got older, you were a little embarrassed when people dropped in and there were Duplos and cars all over the living room, but I like the little ones to play where they want to play...And our kitchen: I know it could be cleaner, and I do work on it, but isn't it nice that I have shared it with you all? You got to make cookies or fried potatoes, or one of those crazy fancy cakes from the cookbook ANY TIME YOU WANTED. I tried to treat you kids like individuals, not just ONE BIG GROUP. Therefore, you have been allowed to sleep in on weekends and vacations, eat breakfast whenever you wanted, lunch too...and that makes for a kitchen that is never closed, never totally cleaned up. It hasn't always been easy for me, because I do have a bit of a control freak in me. But I love you guys so much, and have tried to do my best.

It's funny how the years roll by and things that I used to think were so important just don't matter anymore, like the kids finishing all the food on their plates and the little girls always having their hair just so, even at home. I still have things that I put my foot down about, like Too Much T.V., and turning the volume down during commercials when the do watch something, and no movies during the day except for occasionally in the afternoon...and I try to restrict video games a bit for certain kids who would play all the livelong day. And, I am pretty strict about eating at the table...

Weight-loss update: I lost a few pounds! Finally-inally!! I shall keep working hard because it is SO exhilerating to see those numbers go down!!! So now, even though I have a million zillion things to do, I shall go get on the Dreadmill....





3 comments:

Mary Kate said...

Thanks for addressing that entire section to your kids. I feel like I should print it out and put it on my fridge for my kids to see! Those gosh-darn teens get so know-it-all-y about how I'm treating the younger kids, etc and they really need to see that I'm just trying to be the same kind of "good Mommy" I was to them at that age. Good for you!!

Cindy @ Marriedtothemilitary {dot} net said...

Congrats on the weight loss. That is awesome. What did you do different?

Mum said...

Congratulations on the weight loss, and please please don't worry about the house. Children do not remember the laundry room. They remember the forts, and the goopy goo. To my shame, my 7 year old drew a picture today of me laughing, because she says she can not remember the last time I laughed so hard as I did this morning, and she doesn't want to forget. I think it is important to smile and laugh, and forget about perfectly paired socks, the plumbing repair bill, ect... and are cupboards not for hiding stuff that should not be seen in? (Don't look at those pretty magazines full of expensive organising stuff... I am sure it is all props!)