Six reasons why six is better than seven

The problem with letting the cobwebs come take residence here, when you notice the days on the calender flicking by, it gets harder to open the next post up...

Where in my washing basket have the last twenty two days gone?! Apologies for the unintended hiatus. 

Twenty two days & not a word, no "Merry Christmas", no "Happy New Year". Just dust & cobwebs. 

**Ten minutes later...

How do you start a post after falling off the face of the cyber world for three weeks? With an explanation for why the desertion? {Christmas, school holidays, procrastination, too many kids to hear myself think} 

Or should I mindlessly type about our Christmas & New Years? {both were good, kids were spoilt & deliriously happy with their gifts, the days were blessedly uneventful & filled with smiles & memories}.

Maybe I should pose the question to you - how was your Christmas & New Years celebrations? 

Perhaps it's best to just close my eyes, pinch my nose & dive straight in.

Why six children is better than seven

- Six is an even number. This is the golden rule, always finish on an even number. Supposedly so no one is left out. I can attest that is a load of soggy weet-bix. Even or odd, someone is left out. Not always, but still often enough to hear "Muuuum, Ben & Jack aren't letting me watch" or "Muuuuum, Rianan & Ben aren't letting me play" every ten minutes for the last four weeks. Even numbers do not bestow miraculous sibling contentment. But I'm meant to be presenting the positives here, not arguing against myself. So, Six is awesome because it's not odd.

- There is still a {teeny tiny} range of normal cars to choose from. By normal I mean not a child care bus & still has eight seats. Hyundai Imax, Kia Grand Carnival, Toyota Tarago, Mitsubish Prado, Toyota Landcruiser, plus a few imported cars like the Elgrand & Delica. After this it is a mini bus for you & your small army.

- Packets of muesli bars, chips, muffins, even picnic dinner sets all come as a set of half a dozen. One for each little person. The picnic sets can even be color assigned for each minion. Perfect. 

- When holding hands to cross a road or walking through a busy event, everyone pairs off nicely. {There's that even number thing again}. Leaving one or both parents with two arms free...To carry all the extra bags full of food, drinks, hats, sunscreen, spare socks, undies, clothes, a random shoe & a token teddy, plus all the other useless paraphernalia that you need to drag along everywhere you go. 

- Dining tables. A variety of choices for eight seater dining tables. Long ones, square ones, round ones. Seats, benches, seat & benches. Same for couches, eight people will fit on a big modular couch, or two long couches. That seventh kid would just have to sit on the arm rest. (Joke. The floor is just as comfortable I'm sure.)

- In a four bedroom house six children with two to a room is a perfect fit. Who could argue with that logic?

Did it work, have I convinced you that six is the new seven? 

No?

Me neither. 

Even though on paper six children fits into our life {& house} nicely, my maternal body clock driving all these crazy baby growing urges apparently can't read or listen to logic. These ovary clenching, love filled sighs for one more little minion have me packing away the outgrown newborn clothes & toys to the back of the cupboard instead of selling them or passing on to someone else who could use them. Because I'm still hoping {against all hope, reason & logic} that we'll use them...just one more time.

*This is not a pregnancy announcement. Before you all start rubbing my Christmas belly & high fiving Doug. 

48 hours out of sync

I've doggone done it again. It's horrible to see you again Murphy, I wish you hadn't came.

Last week, in a quiet peaceful moment of reflection {yes sometimes they do occur here in the home base of House of many minions} I was taking a moment to be grateful for our smooth, drama lacking lives. Oh the kids certainly keep us on our toes, but drama from outside sources, stress causing situations, dread in the pit of your stomach anxiety...we had been flying under the radar.

Up until I went and acknowledged it. It was not said out loud, but still was heard by somebody, something, somewhere. God. Universe. Deity of smugness. 'I am so grateful we haven't had any drama for a couple of years' was my undoing. It was said with gratitude, with empathy for a few friends who haven't had a great time of late with situations largely out of their direct control.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Sunday afternoon we had some news that changes our five year plan. It's not bad, it's not good, it just is. While it's still at least a year away (no, not #7) it unsettled the rest of our evening as we mulled over all the what if's, what to do's, & every potential scenerio that could develop over the next few years. Discussing plans & emergency back up plans.
Right now it doesn't affect us immediately so we're putting it to the back of our minds, I'm sure everything will be just fine, but it was unsettling while the news was digesting.

Monday, which should have been Doug's day off but he had to go in to work - though only for the morning, was going smoothly. Up until Doug's car wouldn't start. A quiet coffee before leaving in the wee dark hours of the morning...with the ignition off & the car headlights left on.
Not so bad in the scheme of things, we altered our plans for the remainder of the day but this in itself, if it had been the only speed bump, would have been forgotten days ago. Instead, it would come back into play within the next twelve hours.

Why does everything go up shits creek at dinner time? 

Blake & Will are crawling around & playing in the second lounge room, while Ben & Jack sit on the couch in there strategically building their clans on clash of clans. We pulled the homemade pizza's out the oven the same moment Will lets out a blood curdling scream. Dropping the pizza on the stove top I dash into the lounge to see Will leaning against the couch howling dramatically...not bearing any weight on his left leg. Possible bone breaking scenarios flash through my mind as I reach Will & scoop him in my arms. Ben says, without looking up from his tab, Blake did it. Problem is, Ben didn't look up from his tab a minute earlier either to see it happen. So Blake unfairly gets told off for rough play. (Shortly after I apologised to Blake for telling him off for something he didn't do & wasn't his fault. Just another mark against me in the tally of parenting fails)

Looking down to assess the potential damage to Will's leg & there is blood trialing down towards his ankle from his shin. How on earth....Oh god how bad....bugger, this definitely needs stitches. There is a small but decent sized gash near his shin bone, with a fair chunk of skin missing (to reveal the deeper fatty flesh. Vom.) A week or so earlier, a picture frame fell off the cabinet, breaking the glass. Obviously it was cleaned up. All shards of glass were collected & a thorough vacuuming to top it off. Well, I thought all shards were found.

Will, Clay & I go down to the Emergency department (in Doug's car) - where the staff were excellent. With Will's leg all cleaned up & both sides of his skin merging back together, we bundle back in the car ready to go home, excited show Daddy & the other minions his battle wound patch up {& have our dinner}. Brmmm, brmmm, brmmm, brmmm. Try again. Brmmm, brmmm, brmmm, brmmm. The dashboard display flashes check alternator with a picture of the battery. Don't have to be a mechanical goddess to know what that means. 

But wait, it gets better.

I phone Doug, who gathers the remaining four minions at home into my car to come rescue us. Not quite half an hour later, while still waiting for our knight in a Mitsubishi to arrive, I flick the ignition over again, just in case the car would start this time. I really wasn't expecting it to start. 

But it does. Stupid car couldn't have done that half an hour ago though could it. 

At this point Murphy was sniggering his dirty little ass off at us. Because Doug arrives not one minute later. After pulling Blake out of bed. Getting them all in the car instead of into bed.

I laugh. Doug rolls his eyes. We finally all get home.

I vow, for the second time, to never think how smooth, for the most part, our life normally is. Murphy's Law is listening just a little to closely to take any chances, regardless of whether my {slightly complacent} thoughts are whispered through my mind or uttered from my lips. 

Go away Murphy, it was not nice to see you.

fourteen day do over

Our last school holidays kinda sucked. Back then, when we were all stuck inside the house with no fresh air or fresh company, I blogged that the next school holidays would be here soon enough, when the sun would be shining, no one will be sick & we could make the most of getting our feet in the grass & the sun on our faces.

It has been ten weeks since that statement, & you know what that means - the next round of school holidays are upon us. Yay. No, seriously, that is a very enthusiastic "Yay" - complete with happy smiles & invisible pom poms.

I've written lists of everything I want to squeeze in during the next fourteen days. Friends to catch up with (visits that are long overdue), beaches to visit, forests to explore, bike rides to go on, trips to our local oval to kick around the soccer ball - because five onto one is completely fair & ridiculously fun. We have recipes to follow, board games to play, movie days (or afternoons) where we get to stuff our faces with popcorn. Museums to revisit, city gardens to explore, playgrounds to climb, picnics to eat, friends to sleep over & water balloon fights to have.

And you're coming along with us.

Well not really, I don't have enough room in my car to take you all. But you can come along through my camera.  I have my photographer hat at the ready, my bucket is filled with motivation & inspiration, my shutter button happy fingers ready for capturing snapshots & memories. I'll be sharing them here, a visual narration of our ventures. 

Hold onto your hats, we're going to be busy.  

Monsters

I have monsters in my house. In the form of two little boys, specifically Blake & Will.

I have no idea what happened last night, for once I was actually asleep for most of it, what I do know is that the four year old & three year old who went to bed last night are not the same two that have woken up this morning. One minute they are thick as thieves together, then literally the next minute their alliance has turned & it's a no holds barred contest to see who can annoy the other the most. Then when they aren't terrorizing each other, they are terrorizing me.

Getting ready this morning & they became two little tornadoes. Just remembering now makes me want to pull my hair out all over again. It all started innocently enough chasing each other around the large dining area with their blankets, seeing who can step on the others blanket while keeping their own safe from the fast feet of each other. Next thing Will bursts into tears, screams out a blood curdling war cry & tries to snatch up all of Blake's blanket in his pudgy little arms & run off with it. Of course he forgot to hold on to his own blanket during all this, unintentionally leaving it abandoned on the floor as he took his ill thought out revenge. Blake seeing his own blanket high tailing it down the hall way, scoops up Will's & proceeds to tease Will even further by flapping around all two meters of fleecy warmth as best as his skinny arms can. Similar to a matador taunting a bull with a red flag. Torn between wanting to deposit Blake's blanket somewhere obscure at the other end of the house, likely behind the door of Clay's unoccupied bedroom where everything gets hidden by Will, & wanting to rescue his own blankie sent Will into a fast declining tail spin. Seeing Blake with his still banana-fied hands all over Will's blanket was just too much for his newly graduated three year old self.  At this point I had to abandon the sandwich making & recess packing I was in the middle of to intervene before minion war five thousand & nine broke out.

A temporary truce was called, blankets were restored to their rightful owner & attentions were thoroughly absorbed in a perfectly timed episode of Peppa Pig. For all of five minutes. I heard the closing tunes of the sanity saving cartoon & prayed that they had calmed down enough to remain absorbed in whatever was coming up next on ABC Kids so I could finish getting the older three organised for school & Clay changed out of his Bonds body suit & soggy nappy. No dice. Within ten seconds of Peppa Pig disappearing from our TV screen the monsters were at it again, this time as a team. Their target: Clay's overflowing wooden basket of toys. The aim: to stimulate an environment akin to a hail storm of squeaky, chiming, rattling, crinkly infant toys. Status: mission accomplished. Though I did have my own success in ensuring that they tidied up their mess, if with my ever present supervision. (I know from many previous events that the moment I was to turn my back was the moment they would turn their actions from putting toys back into the basket to throwing them at each other.) At least this time the house was filled with giggles instead of cries.

We got through the rest of the morning with more hi-jinks on a lower scale. I knew then it is going to be one of those days. One where I go from one room to the other trying to keep on top of their interpretation of fun, or trying to keep them from each other. These days don't happen all the time, but they do happen. At least now I've experienced enough of these days & now know not to swim against the tide, rather freestyle along side it as best I can until the rip has passed & I can get us all back to shore & into bed.

All was well until the drive home from a morning visit to a McDonald's playground, which was a success - they got to run, Clay got to watch their antics & I gratefully had my caffeine hot & in peace. Again it never lasts long on days like this, in fact it lasted until the drive home. Blake & Will sit next to each other in the third row in the car, just to help set the mental image. Cue torment. Will kept looking at Blake. Yep, this was enough to turn Blake into a devastated bucket of salty tears. Blake retaliated with his own form of torment by informing Will that they would not be watching 'Wreck it Ralph' (the current movie on continuous loop) once we got home. The world was ending as Will knew it. At this point I informed the both of them that there would be no movies or TV when we got home, instead they could ride their bikes outside while I organize their lunch. The result was double devastation, entirely expected. Like I mentioned above, nothing ever lasts long on a topsy-turvy day & their dual devastation was no exception. Tears were forgotten the moment 'the buggie song' as Blake calls it, or officially known as 'Blackout' (by some female singer) came on the radio. Thank god for small & often easily distracted attention spans.

We arrived home with no further outbursts or brotherly torment. I'll take that as another win for the day. It's all about the small mercies.

Lunch has been eaten, with many giggles & supervision, milk has been drunk & two little bodies have been tucked into bed for a nap.

I have low expectations for the remaining daylight hours. My to do list has been drastically edited. No longer will I be washing windows, sweeping outside & folding washing (I am both over joyed & distressed over this, because I know the folding pile isn't going any where but up). Instead my tasks for the day include this blog, my lunch, then hopefully an hour of reading before Will comes back from the land of nod (I had typed 'comes back to consciousness' there, but it sounded bad, really bad. Like he had been put intentionally into a state of unconsciousness, which I assure you was not the case. Hence the edit) Then all that will remain of my desired achievements to announce today a success is to collect the three older minions from school, keep everyone alive & safe from Blake & Will, cook dinner, organize baths & showers, then bedtimes.

I can do this.

Life with six

For a while I've been playing around with a post detailing what it's like having a large family, beyond having at least double the little bodies to tuck into bed at night. Really, whether you have two children or six children we all have the same daily tortures - tantrums & food battles. Mother guilt & toilet training. Identity crisis & nap time warfare. Rescuing octonaut figurines from the toilet & saving books from turning into shreds. Maintaining a facade of alertness & lucidity in the face of three hours broken sleep. Juggling one on one time between each child, date nights with our other halves & finding conversation that doesn't solely revolve around the little people.

So what is different now compared to when we just had Ben & Rianan? What does (our) life entail with six children?

The obvious one is our food budget. Over the years as we've doubled the size of our family so has our grocery bill. The only thing that's remained constant is the packets of nappies in every over full & precariously stacked trolley I take through the check out. If I knew then what I know now I would have bought shares in Huggies back in 2004. Or used MCN's - aka cloth nappies. I have a dozen excuses why we have used a disposable nappy for every three hourly nappy change over the last 85,440 hours...or nine & a half years. MCN's really only became more user friendly around the time Jack was born, & back then we had figured he would be our last baby (because 'everyone' stops at two or three children we thought there must be a universal reason why & that it would also apply to us. Approaching Jack's first birthday we knew that we definitely wanted another child & realised there was no reason not to add to our minion count.) Back to the topic at hand though. Figuring Jack would be our last there wasn't much point in selling my left kidney to fund an MCN stash for just one child. Then Blake came along. At this point I seriously considered abandoning the nappy aisle at Coles & going the environmentally friendly way. But with four children aged four years & under time was a little scant & our little washing machine was already spinning at a 1000rpm 16 hours a day. So for my sanity & our poor washing machines last legs (that managed to hold on for a further 18 months. We've never had a more faithful washer, 8 years & 5 children later she finally gave up. Bless her 5kg white cotton socks) So lack of time & a surplus of washing dictated we continue our regular walks down aisle eleven. 

Clearly my attempts at appearing alert & lucid are falling a little short today, I've gone from talking about food budgets to justifying (to myself more than anyone, even after all these years) why we have used a hoard of disposable nappies instead of doing our bit to neutralize our carbon footprint & go the alternative way. 

Back to food. Our quota of bread & milk has reached ten loaves of bread & often eighteen litres of milk a week. Forget the 275gm boxes of cereal, which barely stretches between five bowls on a good morning. I reach for the 800gm suckers - half a dozen of them at a minimum. We've dedicated an entire pantry shelf just to house our weekly breakfast cereal requirements & even then I have to employ my tetris skills to get them all on the same shelf. You will never find a single box of cracker & cheddar dip LeSnacks in our house - you'll find several. Even then they rarely see the school week out. Our weekly fruit quota is equal to the combined weight of our six minions. By now you've probably gathered that we buy double or triple of everything. Extend that line of thinking a little further & we come to cooking. Dinnertime is not unlike a catering event. A 30cm fry pan & two 4lt saucepans are barely adequate when cooking a basic meal in our house. At this stage we can manage, but give it a few more years & I will be sourcing catering sized cooking equipment to try & keep up with the nutritional needs of several growing pre-teen bodies. I don't know what we're going to do yet when they are teenagers, devouring & digesting more food than a herd of elephants.

Bath & shower time is reminiscent to running a gauntlet on a Japanese game show. Dodge the sweaty, putrid socks discarded haphazardly around the bathroom, narrowly avoiding the dirty & stinky undies as they are thrown in the air with gleeful abandon, while launching forward to catch the two year old as they attempt to bomb dive into the bathtub. Only to be foiled by the tube of toothpaste on the floor & end arse up in soggy towels. This is only round one, there's still more bodies to reach a state of cleanliness yet. Then the real fun begins, cleaning up the bathroom & revealing the floor tiles once again beneath all the water logged clothes, soaked towels & soap bubbles.

The amount of washing our crazy tribe creates these days is more than enough to keep me struggling to maintain a hold on the cotton-poly blends that procreate by the hour. Not unlike us - so we've been told. Our washing machine works harder than I do, often churning through four loads on a good day, or ten loads on a bad day. The amount of dishes we go through isn't much better either. I thank my lucky stars for our dishwasher everyday - because it wasn't all that long ago I was still doing them all by hand. The dishwasher job I had in my early teenage years at our local popular restaurant gave me a valuable skill set that I never dreamed I would be needing again once my dish-lackey days were over. Back then I also never imagined I would be a Mother to six.

Between our minions they have enough shoes to rival a Betts & Betts shoe store. A couple of those shoes may be a little lonesome, with their other half swallowed up somewhere. Probably where all our socks & teaspoons have ventured off to. There's often little point of packing away clothes that have been outgrown, instead they simply get shipped from one wardrobe to the next. If I can't find a specific shirt of Blake's in his drawers inevitably it will be found in Will's - sometimes even I can't keep up with what item belongs to who. I think it's only a matter of time before we're entertaining thoughts of a communal wardrobe for the boys. Maybe not, that's a little to extreme larger family style for my liking.

Always a hot topic when it comes to families greater than five, cars. Clearly the average family sedan is too small. Heck, even the people mover we drive at the moment is still too small. My automobile dreams are not filled with Dodge's & Jeep's, but mini buses that don't look like a childcare or community bus. Given that's the next step up for us after the people mover category to have any spare seats available.

Twelve seats, ten child restraint anchor points, tri zone air conditioning & enough boot space to rival any wagon, plus all the bells & whistles included in any luxury vehicle, on top of tinted windows & any paint job that isn't white. Oh, & doesn't come with a Mercedes Benz price tag. Surely I'm not asking for much.

Family movie nights with bodies strewn haphazardly around the lounge room, with piles of pillows, blankets, teddies & little people taking every available space. Weekend family soccer or cricket games with enough people to make teams bigger than two on two. Knock knock jokes at tea time coming from all sides of the dinner table - some making sense & others just adorable as they make no sense at all, but have us all giggling regardless. Every Mothers Day & Fathers Day see's our bedside tables covered in drawings of round bodied, stick legged families, love hearts & smiley faces & homemade card upon homemade card filled with misspelt words, back to front letters & being their favorite Mummy & Daddy in the whole entire universe.

My heart feels like it has grown bigger than a full term pregnant uterus. Each time both my heart & my belly expanded beyond belief with every tiny body we have bought into this world & each time I never imagined I could love any more than I already did, or fall deeper in love with Doug as I watched him hold his new son or daughter. I figured after three children it would all feel the same, but that couldn't be further from the truth.

We may be busy, whether we're busier than others I honestly couldn't say. Regardless, in no way does it compare to the happiness, pride, love & memories our family is filled with. Every now & again Doug & I will say to each other "Can you imagine if we stopped after Ben & Rianan, or after Jack. Not having Blake, Will & Clay in our family." 

I can't imagine it, I honestly just can't. Impossible. Unfathomable. Unthinkable. Inconceivable to think they may not have been conceived. Life truly would be so different if they weren't here. Which has me thinking, who else are we missing in our family? What will the future look like if we call our family complete now, or what would it look like with another not yet conceived little soul. Can we imagine our lives without them, even though we don't know 'who' they could be? 

Seeing five toothbrushes lined up on the kids bathroom sink this morning made me a little mushy & indescribably grateful for each & every one of our little minions. Imagining seven toothbrushes all lined up made me a little clucky & has Doug genuinely questioning my sanity. 

Not that this would surprise anyone. The cluckiness that is, not the sanity.