This is the Year

Ty turned five on Thursday. He said he needed more time, and will learn the names of his sisters when he's five. 2 days down, 363 to go. I hope he proves to be a faster learner at school.

Great Minds Think Alike

The girls are making GREAT progress with their potty training and are now in "big girl underwear" full time now, with the exception of naptime and nighttime. There are, of course, still accidents but we're definitely at the point of no return with diapers.

Last week one of the girls went #2 during naptime (when they all wear pull-ups) and proceeded to take off her diaper before I got upstairs. If you've read my previous posts then you know what happened next. This time there was evidence that they tried to clean up the mess that they made based on my findings in their trash can. Now, in the past the girls will ALWAYS rat out the offender, "Dayne pooped", "Tara pooped", or "Dru pooped", but this time none of them wanted to take the fall. I walked into the room and asked "Girls, what happened in here?!?!?!" and they all replied, in stereo, "Dolly pooped!"

Not having time to argue about it, I brought them all straight to the bathtub and continued to grill them. I really didn't care who pooped, I just wanted to see who was going to be the first to send her sister up the river. But I couldn't break them! Dolly pooped. That's their story and their stickin' to it! In case their word wasn't going to be enough (I was a bit sceptical that the Dolly had pooped) they had actually taken the clothes off one of their Cabbage Patch dolls and smeared poop on her bum!!! I had to overlook the grossness factor of this and focus on the shear brilliance of my 2 year old daughters. That's impressive, don't you think? They still have a limited vocabulary but were able to communicate well enough with each other to devise this wicked scheme. And they've been unflappable in their follow through. I asked them for a couple days afterward, one on one, "Did Dayne poop?", "No Dolly pooped". "Did Tara poop?", "No, Dolly pooped". "Did you poop?", "No, Dolly pooped". Impressive.

I'm a bit terrified by this, because if this is how crafty they are at 2 years old what are they going to try and pull when they're 16?!

Or maybe the evidence speaks for itself. Maybe Dolly really did poop. I'll never know for sure because these girls are not going to break.

Stay tuned for their antics in 14 years. Yikes!

Cam: Silent, but Deadly and Other News

I walked past our bathroom this afternoon and caught Cameron using his brother's toothbrush to scrub the inside of the girl's 'just used' potty. He put the toothbrush back on the counter and turned around to leave the bathroom when he saw me. I asked what he was doing and I got the expected response. "Nothing".
"No, seriously, Cam, what were you just doing?"
"Boy stuff."
I won't bore you with the rest of the conversation where I'm wearing my Mom hat and discussing good choices vs. bad choices, right from wrong, and health vs. parasites, but a teeny tiny part of me was laughing inside. Not because I want my youngest son to brush his teeth with you-know-what, but because Cam had such a satisfied smirk on his face like he had just pulled off the best practical joke ever and stuck it to his brother all in one.

Tomorrow Ty's turning 5! Hard to believe. We had a bug-themed birthday party for him last week which was great until the end when we realized that one of his friends had killed his hamster. He was pretty upset when I told him about it the next morning because he really loved Fast Eddie, but he seemed to get over it later when we left the pet store with a guinea pig. They're more durable. The boys are both so gentle with animals, but Fast Eddie's passing was just a reminder that not all kids are. There were about 7 or 8 adorable guinea pigs at the pet store to choose from, and then there was the one that the boys picked out. A face only a mother could love (or a small child, in this instance). You're going to LOVE the name Ty chose. Tina. We have a guinea pig named Tina. We've had her for a few days already and I can now call her by her name without laughing. The kids love her and she's very sweet, so we're glad to have her. Welcome, Tina. R.I.P. Fast Eddie.

Chicago, continued

So anyhow, to continue my previous post, we stayed at the Sutton Place Hotel in Chicago which I don't think is used to seeing large families. At one point I left our room for some reason and when I opened the door our "neighbors" were opening their door next to us and the man seemed frozen by the level of noise coming from our room. He looked at me and said "You've got to be kidding me". Sorry. There's a lot of us.

Our friends Aisling and Brian did Walk America with us the next morning with their 3 kids. Aisling's a much better woman than I am because she's in her first trimester of pregnancy which is exhausting and her babies always kick her butt with morning, day and night sickness, but she didn't complain once. Those Irish women are tough old broads. Aisling is my friend who I consider responsible for my large family. Three years ago when I was telling her about how I was on the fence about having another baby she told me "You'll never regret having another one, but you might regret it if you don't". And there it was. The one sentence that made my decision crystal clear. The one sentence that has echoed in my head hundreds of times since, while I was so ill in my first trimester that I thought these three little parasites were literally sucking the life out of me. And while I laid in a hospital bed for 3 months, an hour away from my family. While I layed there in pain with torn abdominal muscles and a burned esophagus from constant heartburn. While I was trying to sleep with a head under each of my rib cages and another that felt like she was always trying to come out. While I laid there for three months waiting to see if Carly and Sonny would stay together when it was revealed that he fathered a daughter with Alexis and also got Sam pregnant between his mob dealings. Then I still heard her words of wisdom months later during many of my 25,000 diaper changes, while trying to feed three babies with only two hands, while praying that they all sleep at the same time for just an hour so I could get a quick nap in. And don't get me started about her words screaming at me during the crying fits, temper tantrums, endless laundry, dishes, dirty floors, and poop smeared walls. But I can honestly say that I hear her words the loudest when I see my girls belly laughing over some joke that only they know, or watching them play Ring Around the Rosy, or when they fight over which of them gets to sit on my lap for a story. Through all the chaos I'm always reminded that we are SO blessed to have our family. We were reminded of this on the March of Dimes walk, seeing several t-shirts with pictures of babies who were born way too early to survive and knowing how those parents would give their lives to live our chaos. We didn't get too far into the walk before we walked by Millenium Park and the kids splashed around in the water fountain for the rest of the time. I kept thinking that we got off track from the walk because our healthy kids just wanted to play and be kids, and there were a lot of parents there who just kept walking for their kids who couldn't be there. We know how lucky we are, and Aisling - you're right. We'll never regret it.

To Catch You Up...

I just posted a few new pictures of our kids that we took a few weeks ago at the park. That morning we rode our bikes into a neighboring city and had breakfast at a mom & pop restaraunt before we went to the park. It was the first time we'd taken all five of the kids to a restaurant, as Scott and I are still haunted by the memories of how the boys behaved in restaurants as toddlers. We were so surprised at how easy it was! I don't know if it's because we sat in a corner booth so the kids were trapped on either end, or just that girls seem to be SO MUCH easier at this age than boys, but they stayed in their seats, didn't scream or have tantrums, and only spilled 2 glasses of milk. Relatively speaking, it was actually enjoyable! So much so, that we've gone out to eat with them all a couple times since. Some of you may be calling us weanies for living as recluses for the past 2 1/2 years, but those of you who have endured a family meal with us understand. You're probably amazed that we take them out in public at all.

We had a blast in Chicago, and Walk America was a great experience. We had PERFECT weather which allowed us to do a lot of walking around the city and down by the lake. We really stood out from the young and trendy crowd pushing our quad stroller, and I'm pretty sure served as a birth control reminder for some of the horrified onlookers. As soon as we got to the city we met our friends Tommy and Ginger for lunch. From what Scott tells me, they're doing well. I wouldn't know, as this was an "unsuccessful" dining experience with the kids so I didn't get to sit down much. Actually, the kids were great. We were at a bar so the kids were having fun just running around and practicing their "Heely's" (modern day skates), and we were in the middle of potty training so there was always someone who had to "go". I'll never understand the novelty of public restrooms for kids. Yuck. From there we checked into our hotel then walked around for a couple hours. My favorite memory from that afternoon was when Shayla, Ty and I were walking a few yard behind Scott, Cam and the girls. We were admiring some of the great homes in the Gold Coast area and Shayla and I commented on one big, gorgeous house that stood out. Ty, holding my hand, looked up to me and said in his sweetest voice "Mommy, when I marry you we're going to live in that house, and we won't have to go on vacation because we'll already be here." Aaaww. I can't believe I ever get mad at that little angel. He's given me a much prettier picture of what it could be like if he were to live with us as an adult. My previous image included him with long hair, living in our basement watching MTV all day.

More to come in a little while. It's time to get the kids up for school.