Days 11&12: "Suddenly past the midway point"

The kids came home yesterday. I took them to lunch on the way home. I put it up for a vote. I should have just picked. I kind of wanted to go to Maria Bonita for nachos, I am sure the big plate of nachos plus something else would have taken care of the whole thing. Maybe two plates of nachos. I don't know. The kids voted for Chuck-A-Rama. Or as Adam calls it "Chuck-A-Grandma". I fear for my Mother when he gets big and strong.

I am tired of Chuck-A-Rama. Overdose for the year, I guess. I'm going to start vetoing it, I think. Try to expand the kids horizons.

I wanted the kids to clean the front room, entryway, and their bedroom. They cleaned nothing. Fantastic. Bad cop will be here tomorrow after school, I think.

Tara liked to use scented candles from time to time. Drown out the scent of 7 kids, I think. I just try to ignore the smells. I have long trained myself to actively not smell stinky diapers, for example. Scented candles I am unable to ignore. If they are too strong, I start choking on the air. This dampens Tara's scented candle parade. Once in a while, I try one to see if I still have problems. It never works, I always end up having to stop the thing.

We have a giant Apple Crisp candle that someone gave us for our wedding. We haven't gotten all the way through it yet. I tried to use it this evening. No go.

It's wholly possible that I should have talked to more adults at church today. I was busy changing the baby over and over. She really appreciated the fresh canvas, I guess.

Also, we have a mouse in the house. That's what I get for encouraging the kids to play outside last week. They can't keep a door closed for anything...

The front lawn looks better...

I guess I've given up on the front lawn for the year. I'll work on it some more in the Spring. I hadn't mowed it for more than a month, I was trying to get new grass going, and mowed a couple of days ago. I trimmed it up a bit today.

The lawn looks better, and some new grass came up, but not exactly what I was looking for. I'd like really think, sod like grass. It's not something I will obsess about, at least not obsess any more about for now, but at least it looks nice.

Days 9 & 10: "Silence is Golden"

Wednesday afternoon, I took the kids up to Tara's parents house. This weekend is UEA weekend, meaning no school. It also means that Tara's Mom doesn't have to work. She volunteered to take the kids for a few days. I took her offer.

The house has been fantastically quiet. I have actually really enjoyed it. I slept 10 hours last night. I got two full days of work in. (Plus a little) I cleaned the back room. I mowed the lawn. No one woke me up bright and early in the morning...

I go get the kids tomorrow. It will be fine. I'm thinking about taking care of my "lunch debt" all at once tomorrow...

Days 6-ish - 8ish: "House Arrest"

On Monday morning, we tried going back to work again. Adam wanted to watch "the puppets". What he really meant was "The Muppets". He really liked watching the muppets. I guess some things age really well.

Anyway, for some reason, my laptop would not play the DVD. It worked just fine the time he came to work before. Instead, I turned cartoons one for him. I think it was Curious George and Clifford the Big Red Dog. I have my second monitor under my desk for him, with a blanket laid out. He seems to like it.

Noel did fine, but threw up all over me. Then she leaked through her diaper. Small bursts of time. That's all we can really do at work. I think we could have gone longer if it didn't involve regurgitated baby formula and stinky diapers. I briefly thought about leaving the diaper in Sorrel's office, who was not at work that day, but I resisted the urge. (It wouldn't have been the first time, by the way...)

Anyway, after that, we kind of just stayed home. I have decided to not intrude on nap time, anyway. It makes the wee little tikes a bit crazy by night. Tuesdays and Thursdays involve too many preschools. I could have taken Adam and Noel back to work on Wednesday morning, but we ended up just staying home. It was easier. (I got lazy, I guess.)

It's easier to just stay home. The kids keep busy. If they get bored, I just give them a job. (The kids rarely say they are bored.) I lay them down for naps in the afternoon, and get a couple of free hours before the older kids get home from school.

Maybe we will try to go back to work on Monday morning. Maybe I will take a second shirt just in case Noel targets me again...

Pumpkin time!

Our local grocery store sells what amount to two different sizes of pumpkin this time of year. They sell small ones for 69 cents a pound, and larger ones for 14 cents a pound. If you were looking to spend the least amount on pumpkins for decorations, a party, or whatever, (Say for instance, if you have 7 kids, and they want to decorate pumpkins, for example) you might be tempted to get the smaller pumpkins. You would be wrong.

The small pumpkins are about five pounds each, give or take. The larger ones are 12 to 14 pounds each. The large ones are about the same cost as the smaller ones.


I got the girls pumpkins today, they decorated them tonight after dinner. We used to help them carve pumpkins, but decorating them allows us to let everyone participate, and is tons less messy. The kids don't seem to mind.

A Scarf for Sara

"A Scarf for Sara" Not the latest movie on the Lifetime channel. Not a best selling book somewhere. A scarf. For Sara.


Before Tara left for France, I made her niece Sara a scarf. Tara got there today, and gave it to her. Sounds like it was a hit...

Days 3 & 4: "A measure of normalicy"

Yesterday, we tried to enforce nap time, to keep things normal. This didn't work all that well, since the girls didn't actually take a nap. Adam and Noel took the naps they were supposed to.

Several times during the day, I thought it was Saturday. Then I remembered it was still Friday, and realized there was a bonus day in the week suddenly. It may have also factored into my not going into work, and not doing any from home as well... I also spent several periods of time thinking about painting either the back room or the kitchen. I decided against it.


Friday night there was a ward activity - a potluck dinner. We got there about 20 minutes late, all the tables were full, and much of the food was gone. We set up a new table, and the kids went through and got food. I held the baby until I realized that she was leaking through her pants again. (We discovered this week that the new kind of diapers we bought last week have containment issues. Noel went through three outfits yesterday...) After the dinner, they had a miniature golf course that the young men built. The kids scattered to go play. After a while, Noel was ready for another diaper change, but we didn't have any more diapers in the backpack. Since we already used the backup outfit, I figured it was time to bail.

Several breakdowns happened at this point, I think mainly do to sleepy children. Emma was upset because Mary took off with her friends and ditched her. Lily was very upset because Ruth ended up with a balloon, and Lily didn't. Sad times.

I thought about tired children for a while, and decided that they needed a darker place to sleep, both during the day, and at night. Tara had some thicker fabric that someone gave her years ago, we found it a couple of weeks ago, and was likely going to be given away at some point. I made blackout curtains, and put them up in the girls room today.




This afternoon, all the girls but Kate went in and laid down in their room for about an hour and a half for naptime. I don't think they actually slept, but they stayed in their rooms. Win for me. Tonight when I came home, you couldn't see their lights were on in their room, either. Win again.

At this point, I think things have calmed down just a little around here. Noel has been slobbering like a maniac lately. I just gave her a frog stuffed animal, and she is busy attacking it, trying to somehow get it into her mouth. I think she is either starting to teeth, or she likes the taste of fabric. I fully expect 'bad cop' to have to show at some point, but it looks like that will not happen today.

Tara made it to France, sounds like her flight went pretty well.

Day 2: "Martial Law"

Last night, the kids stayed up way too late. I had a meeting, Noel was at a babysitter. The kids were in bed. I figured they would be asleep, but I got home at almost 11pm, and the main light in their bedroom was on. Not a good sign. When I went in their room, they had the light off, and 4 of the 5 of them were at the very least pretending to be asleep.

This morning, some of the girls were dragging a bit. Big surprise. I allowed no complaining, just getting ready for school. Off they went.

I spent several hours at work today, having Adam and Lily watch the Muppets. (Adam called them "The Puppets". It's amazing how some things hold up to age...) I thought I had diapers in the diaper bag, but it turned out that I only had one. When Noel polished off the fresh canvas, it was time to go home.

After school, there were still clear signs of extreme fatigue. I didn't allow whining or complaining. I enabled "homework martial Kate" as a deputy to get all homework done and reviewed. Then we orgainized work parties for directed chores, and a search party for missing library books. (7 of 8 located and returned.)

Someone brought us dinner and ice cream for dessert. I made Adam eat a single noodle before he got ice cream. Emma made a fairly convincing acting job at pretending to eat one.

After dinner a curfew was announced. The girls tried to play the 'be crazy in the bedroom' game, but it was quickly and efficiently squelched before it got too far out of control. Now they all appear to be asleep.

Noel spent a bit of time looking around trying to find someone. She can't seem to find the person she was looking for. Strange.

Day 1 (of 21): "Perpetual Motion"

Let me start out by saying right off the bat that I understand I will get no pity from any mothers out there reading this. I'm not really looking for any.

Have I got your attention now? Entries here for the next twenty one days will talk about experiences of me taking care of the kids - some subset of all seven of them - without Tara. For some definition of "taking care of the kids", anyway.

Tara left this morning to spend some time tooling around in the South of France. My only requirement for her trip is that she come back fully rested and relaxed. Tara wants me to take a lot of pictures to post here. Today I got one. (Don't skip ahead, wait for it...)

When I bought her tickets, I got tickets out of our city airport here. They started commercial passenger flights out of here in June or July of this year through Frontier Airlines. For now, they've got one flight out in the early AM, and one flight in every evening. The flight only goes to Denver. It was well worth the money, from my perspective. (I assume Tara's flight went well.) We got up, drove to the other side of town, a little under 15 minutes, and we were at the airport. Easy. It shaved 90 minutes off the round trip drive to the airport. I am definitely going to try to get my next business trip to go out from this airport. If anyone flies into town, and wants me to pick them up from this airport - not a problem at all.

We got home just in time to pick up all the car pool people for choir. We got to the school about 4 minutes late. (for choir - 1 hour before school actually starts...)

I spent the next 5 hours dealing with the little kids. Noel was ticked off because she was very hungry and very tired, and was having a hard time picking a priority. Lily had preschool. Adam was bored, I guess.

I was cooking eggs for egg salad sandwiches for Lily and Adam, Noel was awake again, and wanted to eat, and Ruth called from the school. She told me that today was 'eat lunch at school with a parent day', it was the only day that it would happen, and she wanted me to come down to the school right away for lunch. For a second I had the idea that maybe I could possible find a babysitter or something, Ruth told me to find someone to watch the other kids, and call her back in the school office, she would be waiting. About 45 seconds after I got off the phone, after looking at the eggs, looking at Ruth, and opening the front door, I decided to call Ruth back. I told her what was going on, and suggested that maybe we could go out to lunch on a different day. I think I committed right there to taking each of the kids individually out to eat while Tara is gone. Ruth came home from school and asked if I was ready to go out to lunch. Not today, Ruth.

After all the little kids were down for a nap, I got about an hour of work in. I'm not sure it was super productive work, but it was something.

Tara's Mom stopped by after school, so I took the opportunity to take all the library books back, and get some milk. I bought 5 gallons of milk on Saturday night, but it was time for 6 more gallons. I'm thinking about getting a cow.

Tara and the girls read a lot of books.

I should have made a couple of trips or something. I think I set my back back a day or so carrying them into the library. Also, there are 8 more books somewhere in this house that need to be returned. 5 have been located. I don't need to work out. I can just take the library books back. Then as a cool down, I buy milk.

I tried to make dinner be leftovers, but it sort of morphed into leftovers and cereal. I'm not sure how that happened. Tomorrow one of Tara's friends is dropping dinner off. On Friday, the ward is having a ward activity - international night, where you bring your favorite international dish. I am strongly thinking about making potato salad. Not German potato salad. Good old fashioned American potato salad. The United States is most definitely a member of the international community. And we have 3 dozen eggs and a bunch of potatoes in the house.

I had a Stake meeting tonight that was supposed to start at 8pm. I had gotten a babysitter for Noel, and took her over there. The meeting started 45 minutes late. And went over an hour long. Noel seemed to be having a good time when I got there. When we got home, the girls had the lights on in their room still. 4 of them were at least pretending to be asleep when I went into their room.

I seem to have been on the go all day long. Which isn't all that different than normal, except I had this possibly deluded idea that I could fit work in while Tara was gone. I think we will try tomorrow. I'm going to make little beds for Lily and Adam under my desk, maybe they will sleep. We'll see.

I also did 4 loads of laundry, and two loads of dishes. All in all, I was busy all day long, and I think we did pretty ok. There was a brief breakdown that involved a one paragraph essay, and proper spelling of words. I think that got resolved, but I'm not sure, and that child was either asleep or acting asleep an hour ago.

At about 10pm, I got an email with the choir director at the school. She was sending it to let us know about a "small issue that they've had and she talked with the choir about today." What was the problem you ask? The kids have been getting there late. Several minutes late, in fact. They only had 1/3 of the choir there on time today. Then she said something that I just have to quote directly:

"...choir begins at 7:30 sharp. After that, the red pencils are put out on the roll and the child is considered tardy."

I think something actually exploded in my head. A tiny little explosion, but I think it was real. My doctor wants to have me do an MRI of my head. It was the 'red pencils' part of it. Tara hasn't yet been gone 24 hours, and I'm already considering making a scene at the school. I almost replied to the email right away, but the filter engaged just in time. I didn't reply to the email. Maybe that means it was an implosion in my head, since nothing violently came out. I'm thinking about going into the school on Monday, getting the kids there on time, and keeping them out in the hall for a few minutes, just so I could watch her whip her little red pencil out...