Mothering Many

This week, I am in the living room, and I tackled the bookcases. Here is the before shot:

Here is the after:

You can’t see in the picture, but there were actually four bookshelves involved in today’s tackle. Here is my favorite part:

These are the books that I read to the littles before quiet time. I moved them out of the school area and into the living room. Speaking of reading books to littles, yesterday I read to the babies a book I had read to my oldest. It’s called The Book of Shadowboxes, and it was one of her particular favorites. I almost cried all through it.

You know, I have almost reached the point where I can see the light at the end of the busybabydays child raising tunnel. I thought I’d be glad to get here, but it’s killing me instead.

Lookie what I found today!

It’s my big cookie press. I found it up on top of my kitchen cabinets when I climbed up there today to vacuum them. See, I knew deep cleaning was a good idea! Apparently I put it up there last year when I was cleaning, so the kids would not find it and use it. I guess it worked, they didn’t use it AND I didn’t get to make cookies with it.

Which brings me to my next point: when you are shorter than your kids, the only person you end up hiding things from is yourself.

And my final point: I will be running the 12 cookies of Christmas again this year! Making a note on my Google Calendar right now.

If you remember, I committed last Friday to deep cleaning 45 minutes each weekday. I’m proud to say that I followed through on that, at least Friday and yesterday. Here is what I accomplished in 45 minutes yesterday, minus calls from strangers about boy scouts and from dh about money, plus the baking sheet cabinet under the counter.

There is no before picture, because it is just too embarrassing. As you can see, it might be time to have tacos around here, since I have a massed FIVE boxes of shells. Of course, that is only 2.5 meals worth around here, LOL!

Today, I plan to move on to the snack cabinet. Click the button to join in the tackling fun!

So, the time has come, the time is now. This house needs cleaning and it needs it NOW! (You have to chant that like Dr. Suess’s Marvin K. Mooney, Would You Please GO Now!

Isn’t it amazing how fast a house can get dirty? I started out in January in the kitchen, scrubbing walls and organizing cabinets, and I have made it through the kitchen, my bathroom, my bedroom, some of the living room and the kids bathroom, and you know what? The kitchen needs to be done again. So I started today, and we’ll be spring cleaning until the whole house is done again.

So, who is willing to commit with me to 45 minutes of deep cleaning every day?

And can someone please explain how my kids grew so much in just 5 days? Seriously. And Dababy is speaking clearly with real words, and even pronouncing the “tt” in the middle of bottle.

Oh, stop. When you have 8 kids, you can decide when it’s time for my baby to be off the bottle.

Yk, I said while I was gone that I wondered if the reason I was so outgoing away from home is to make sure I don’t have a chance to miss the kiddos. I think I might be on to something, because right now, I don’t ever want to leave again.

Feel free to ask me if I still feel that way tomorrow, though

Must hurry, must hurry, must hurry. I’m leaving on Thursday and I still have to do all the laundry, clean the house, pack and go through the bins from under the boys beds. Lots of bins. Like a small mountain of them. But my boys have actual beds now, instead of platforms built out of storage containers!

What is your preferred gift at baby showers? To give or to receive, LOL! I once knew a lady who always purchased something for the mother instead of the baby, and I thought that was neat! For awhile, my standard gift to new moms was a soaker and a dozen prefolds. Now that I don’t knit professionally anymore, I am more prone to just buy unique baby gifts, and be done with it. Well, done with it except for the second guessing that I always do until the new mom opens it.

It’s hard isn’t it, picking the perfect present? So spill your best ever gifts given and received! I’ll go first.

The best present I ever got was for my first baby from my uncle. He bought a car seat for her, and I was really glad, because he has always been a stickler for auto safety, and so I knew if he’d bought a car seat, he’d done his research first, and it was a good one.

I have reached a point in my mothering journey where I feel like i can leave the oldest child in charge for a few minutes while I run to the corner store or take care of some needed task. Now, you would think that the best part of this for me would be the ability to get out of the house with dh now and again, and I admit that is wonderful. But the part I am really enjoying is the ability to have deep and detailed conferences with the shower faucets whenever I want, so I can wash my hair early in the day and I don’t have to go to bed with wet hair. When you have hair like mine, these little things mean a lot.

What’s your worst nightmare as a parent? For me, it’s the idea of one of my children being in a place that I can’t reach them, in a situation I can’t fix, in so much trouble that I can’t kiss them and make it all better. That’s what we do, as mothers, right? We FIX IT. We MAKE IT BETTER.

Sometimes, though, they just go further than we can walk with them. Sometimes, they make choices that we can’t countenance, can’t change and yet still refuse to ignore. Sometimes, our kids need an intervention from professionals. I’ve been really blessed with my kids so far, and only one of them has experimented with any type of illicit substance. That experiment lasted about a week, and the intervention I chose was the largest officer on our little PD, who happened to know the name of the guy she was hanging out with, and knew she wasn’t one of his normal hanging partners. He brought her home, and that was pretty much the end of that.

I know other parents that have not been so lucky. Their kids have needed serious drug detoxification, and that has caused immense pain for them. I can’t imagine such a thing. Not the drug abuse, because anybody can make a bad decision that just keeps snowballing, but the knowledge that I could no longer do anything but standby OUTSIDE and pray it all turned out all right. It truly is that nightmare I mentioned above, and it effects everyone who loves that person needing drug rehab.

The scary thing is that in my area, there aren’t many options for rehab. When you need that kind of help, you have to leave home to get it. You may not have to go as far as Chapman House in California, but away from home is still away from home. Away from what you know. Away from your dealer, but also your support system. I know it’s worth it in the end, especially if you can find a place that is CARF accredited, like Chapman, but still, I can’t imagine feeling so alone. I can’t imagine one of my kids feeling that way. Nightmare, like I said.