Grouchy Mom; or, How Do You Keep The Cheetohs Out of Your Ears?

(I'm moving my blog from another website, so these July posts were originally actually from earlier in the spring.)

Six kids are beginning to feel like about three too many. I’m not keeping up with it all. If the upstairs is clean, the downstairs is a mess and the bills aren’t paid. If I get the bills paid and the thank-you notes written, the house is a wreck and the laundry piles up (“Of course you can wear that to school, the spots are hardly noticeable”).

I missed a doctor’s checkup appointment for Francie this week, so I have a guilt thing going on about that. When the doctor’s office called to inform me of the error of my ways, they said, “Uh, we have to tell you that if you miss too many appointments, we’ll have to ask you to find another physician.”

I have six kids. I almost never ever miss an appointment--I don’t even remember missing any other ones. I ask you, should I get the same speech that those wimps with only two kids get when they miss an appointment? Cut me some slack, can’t you? I’m barely hanging on here.

I’ve got two four-year-olds right now (one turns five in a few months) and our oldest graduates from high school next week. Evenings this week, we have: Monday, final high school choir performance. Tuesday, band performance. Wednesday, International Baccalaureate banquet. Thursday, Honors Night. My husband and I have to either find child care for all those nights, or take turns missing the events to stay with the little kids (or take them with us and try to keep them quiet, which is like An Evening in Hell). Our society is not set up for people who have high schoolers and preschoolers at the same time.

Friday Lillie has to go to a birthday party, and Friday night is Fun Night at the elementary school. At least we don't have to find child care for those. We think that maybe some of my husband’s relatives might be coming into town for next week’s graduation, too, and weekends are always bad because my husband’s a minister and works all weekend at things which vary from weekend to weekend (if you are getting married soon, please take a moment to have some sympathy for the spouse of the minister, who has to deal with the kids by him/herself while you are tying up Friday evening with your rehearsal and Saturday afternoon with your wedding).

The guilt thing also kicks in when someone is late to school. Okay, so sometimes we get the kids late to school, but never ALL of them. If I’m late to preschool with somebody, I feel guilty, but I also feel like explaining to anyone who will listen that hey, on the two days a week that both little girls go to preschool, we have six kids attending four different schools, and only one kid is eligible for the bus (which he will miss if he’s not watched). Plus, the two in high school are in different activities, which frequently take place before school, so we’re likely to have one that has to be there at 7:00 and one at 8:00. One kid is now old enough to drive herself and her brother, but that ties up a car, so we have to do extra juggling with the rest to manage with one car.

What’s a bit late to preschool matter if we got the other four kids off to three schools on time? By the time they all get where they’re going, I’ve been up and getting people ready to go or driving them for three hours, and that's before I can even start getting anything "done" (laundry, errands). I’m ready to go back to bed.

Yeah, I’m going through a phase where the negatives of having six kids are outweighing the positives. I have to work more at not letting that happen.

I’ve been at this for a long time, mind you. My first child was born almost exactly eighteen years ago, and with the exception of two years, I’ve had either one or two preschoolers at home every year since. (And of those two preschool-free years, nine months of it I was pregnant and sick as a dog.)

I used to hear people say that they “just knew we were done” having kids, after their second was born, or third. I never understood that until now. I feel done. I see adorable babies and toddlers out in parks, and I no longer crave one of my own.

I love babies. And with school-age kids, you get some time to catch up on stuff at home without little kids around. It’s the stage from about age three to kindergarten that I have a hard time with. I saw a darling just-beginning-to-walk baby the other day and asked my husband, “How come they’re only that age for about three weeks and then they’re three years old for six years?"

I cook food I don’t eat, do laundry I don’t wear (I myself am down to only one pair of jeans that don’t have spots or holes), and clean rooms I didn’t mess up.

My nine-year-old asked me last week, “Mom, are your ears pierced?” I told her they were. It was a surprise to her, because she’s never seen me in earrings. I tried to explain this to her—”I don’t have time to wear earrings. There’s only so much time a person wants to spend getting people cleaned up and looking nice, and all mine is used up on other people. By the time I get the little girls dressed and do their hair, I don’t want to mess with earrings.” She didn’t quite get it.

Some old friends stopped by last Sunday afternoon. As they were leaving, one of my kids told me that I had something on my face. It turned out to be a sticker. I told my husband that from now on he is supposed to tell me if there are stickers on my face when we have people over.

Reminds me of the time years ago when my second child was five and liked to play with my hair. I answered the door and had a detailed conversation with a neighbor, completely forgetting that I had Disney barrettes randomly scattered all over my head.

I took the two youngest to a local deli today because I was dying for a Caesar salad, even though I knew that dining out with both of them meant my salad would come with a price—snarfing down bites while trying to keep them civilized. I was about to get up to get a refill on my tea when Francie said, “Mommy, you have something in your ear.”

Sure enough, I did. She’d put a small Cheetoh in my ear at some point during the meal (she was having hot dog and Cheetohs). At least she told me before I walked up to the counter with a Cheetoh sticking out of my ear. Earrings are beside the point at this time in my life. Just keeping the food products out of my ears is hard enough.