1. Cleaning House
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| My expectation for the kitchen: it needs to look un-lived in AND cute. |
Nothing is ever good enough at my house. The bathroom needs
cleaned 2-3x per week, the kids and dogs require me to sweep the living room
floor at least 10x a week (the kitchen floor alone actually gets swept 14-20 times a week) I never feel like I can relax (however I am technically relaxing right
now wasting time plucking away at my blog). Notice I said that bathroom "needs" cleaned 2-3 times a week..it doesn't always necessarily get done that often! I feel like my life is in pieces most
of the time, always in need of being put back together again by me. A couple of kids are two days past baths. The
laundry needs folded. The living room is dusty. Everett won’t stop dumping water on the floor. The back porch looks terrible. The
storage clothing closet needs sorted. The yard is a mess. There is chicken,
goose or goat poop (or all three!) on the porch. I'm pretty sure anyone that comes over to my house expects it to be... oh
I dunno, lived in by 10 people. Someone should have told me if I wanted my home
to look like a vintage version of Pottery Barn I shouldn't have had 8 kids, but I bet wouldn’t have
listened anyway.
I've actually gotten much better over the years, but the never-ending list of what
I need and want to get done, on top of children who make messes 24/7, make
it hard for me to just let go and enjoy my home. I'm working on this
constantly. I have gotten better than I used to be. It's okay to go to bed with
a messy bathroom, craft supplies on the kitchen table, ‘base10 blocks’ on the
dining room floor, laundry in the washer, and dust bunnies under the couch...
and just be in peace about it all for the night.
I told myself in December not to
fret about our bedroom and as a result it's been a mess since December. It's an
exercise I'm trying ...be content with the mess because it is temporary and
I'll get caught up when other stuff gets caught up...enjoy the baby, enjoy the
kids, work when you can.
While this post sat in my drafts folder my friend wrote this piece titled
The Housework Can Wait? And I couldn't agree more! It's
terrible parenting advice to tell others not to clean house. We have to find balance, yes, but there are things that have to be done. Letting the house fall apart at the seams is good for no one.
2. Going Camping (and fishing)
We are totally outdoor people, me
even more than my hubby because mosquitoes think he is delicious but leave me
alone. The sheer logistics of taking 10 people camping boggles the mind and
gives my husband nightmares. I want our kids to remember going camping (and
fishing!) growing up, but so far we just have fires and weenie roasts in the
backyard all summer long. (We used to camp a little but haven't in over 6 years or so) It’s still a lot of fun having at-home outdoor fun nearly every weekend but I wish we could do more.
I'm super adventurous and impulsive, so we really should just get up and go camping; sounds
so simple until we start planning. The kids have recetly taken to camping out on our trampoline.
3. My Ambition is not compatible
with my lifestyle
This goes a little bit with number
one. I want to do a million things, so I attempt to do a half-million
of them to be conservative in my wish list. I finish five and tell myself:
"one day at a time" and "what doesn't get done will be
okay." My kitchen needs
finished painting (just one tiny corner!), the basement needs finished painting -hell according to me any
wall without paint needs to be painted. I want to start keeping bees.We also decided we should raise rabbits. Turkey are coming to join our small homestead...so ambitious.
My husband is such an enabler too! Last weekend we went to Home Depot for a simple gas can and while there I declared I wanted paint for the upstairs hall. So what do you think he did? He bought it for me. God love him. He should tell me no sometimes.
I have lots of ideas on the back burner: some business related, some personal, some birth work related... none of them very compatible with a full time homeschooling mom of eight.
4. Enjoying the kids
We enjoy them plenty but with so
many kids there is always room for improvement. It's not just about making the
time (although we have to do that too especially for the teens), but we have to also tell
ourselves to slow down and just enjoy them, or we'll miss the good stuff as we
juggle the crazy stuff. Let’s face it sometimes these little kids run amok,
and it’s hard on us. One time some kid wiped their butt on the shower curtain.
Another time we found baby carrots in the bathroom drain. The kids hurt our
ears they talk so loud, and they climb on top of each other like playgrounds.
Sometimes there are days that a kid is always crying or yelling.
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| This is what a busy mom looks like knee deep in kids and pumpkins! Some one is even crying... |
Just walking in the door with them this afternoon after a day out was hard. While I was trying to gather everyone's coats and shoes I was simultaneously changing the baby's diaper on my bed. This is also what was going on: Sebastian trying to tell me something he did at preschool, Penelope asking me to help pull her boots off, Everett asking where a plate was as he shows me he suddenly has a handful of graham crackers, and I'm still trying to take my coat off and change the baby's diaper. We were literally home for less than 60 seconds and that much was happening all at once!
We can focus
on all of that craziness and let it overwhelm us, or we can focus on enjoying our little hobgoblins instead.
5. Saving money
There is always something
you need regardless of having a big family or not. It’s called life. There are always wants vs.
needs -and the wants can be hard to ignore. The needs are amplified when you
have a gazillion animals and kids though. Just when it seems like saving money
seems doable (or just when we actually have money saved up) something happens to drain it all. When you have more kids there are more things that can pile up. Dentist and medical bills can be...yikes. Home repairs are killing us this year.
6. Making time for other people
My family squeezes every last ounce from me. It's not a bad
thing to me, but since I give near 100% to my husband and kids there is not much left
to give and that is sometimes hard. It’s not that I feel like I don't have time
for myself, but I instead feel like I don't have time for anyone else. I want to reach
out, send cards, donate my time, be there for a friend, go to a moms night out,
attend a woman's retreat my friends have, but I just don't have the time or energy. I mean well. I pray for others and
think about others very often. I often have people in my heart and mind and no
one even knows it. In turn, Ricky feels the same way. He works a lot, and then he has
family time. After that there isn't a lot of time for extra things.
When we try to get involved with
service projects or some other thing it's often hard because of our various
ages. There are things we just can't do with little kids in tow, and it's a
sacrifice for all of us to have to miss out on some things. That's just our life and everyone's life is different.
Ricky and I are admittedly pretty selfish about our free time. We want to spend it
all with each other. It's really quite sweet, and it's our marriage and our life and we are happy with it. I know we'll never regret the
time spent with each other and the kids now. So we do what we can and don’t
stress about it, but it is hard sometimes when it feels like we don’t have time
for anything else. Someday the kids won’t take up so much of our time and we
know that. We embrace them and each other now.
7. Eating
This is super obvious. Feeding a
large family is a large task. Eating out is expensive and a special treat.
Eating in is very time consuming and it costs a large chunk of money, too. On
average I spend at least 3-4 hours in the kitchen each day and it's not doing the fun, pretty stuff I wish I was doing...like rolling out cinnamon rolls or canning apples.
It's fetching milk for little mouths, putting snack platters out, cooking up three
different types of eggs for breakfast and throwing a home cooked meal together
for dinner –all while literally tripping over an insane kid named Everett (or telling him to get off the kitchen table for third time in 10 minutes). Even if I
was doing the fun stuff I'd be doing it while tripping over at least three
kids which makes it more stressful and not as much fun. It's all fun and
games until someone picks their nose and then dips their finger into the cake
batter. Question the food you eat from my house if made in the presence
of toddlers or preschoolers. Ha!
The thing I look forward to the most when my kids are grown is baking,
gardening, and canning. I have an entire storybook scene in my head of me
happily frolicking in my garden, picking, canning, cooking, baking and then
having all the children and grandchildren over for dinner once or twice a
week...I'll wipe the grand-children's little noses and faces with my apron and
say things to my grown children like 'Oh, let them make a mess, I have no one
but your dad to pick up after these days...’
8. Noise
Someone is always talking to me! ALWAYS! Sometimes it's three or four kids at once. There's a kid
talking in my ear right now. She's been talking for 45 minutes. I'm not
kidding. I'm giggling typing this because it's so funny and perfect timing for this post. When they aren't talking to me they are talking to someone else.
It can also be hard to manage the noise level of so many people, especially the
ones that are ‘volume level’ challenged. The positive side is that everyone
learns really good group communication and turn taking (eventually). We do raise our hands on particularly high volume days. We respond quicker to hand raisers and the little kids learn waiting a wee bit easier when their hand is raised, we nod or put a finger up indicating in 1 minute you are next.
9. Running out for something
It's hard to just run out of the house to get milk or
whatever. Even though I have older kids at home, I don't like leaving the kids
home alone. If I do run out for a ‘quick trip' it takes me at least two hours
to just leave the house because it’s hard for me to just pick up and leave. First of all I
have to ask myself a million questions: Should we do school work first? Is everyone fed? Does the kitchen need cleaned up? Is anyone fighting? Is
anyone going to fight? Who should keep an eye on who? Who should I bring with
me? Will Everett fall asleep in the car? Do I want Everett to fall asleep in the
car? How much money is left in my grocery account? Where is my cell phone? Does
the baby need nursed first? Where are my shoes? Do I even have clothes on…?
(Then on my way out out to the car I get the chickens some feed and water and inevitably get poop on my shoes or hands, or both. Farm life.)
If if need something specific like glue, crayons or printer ink I'm WAY more likely to just order it from Amazon Prime than to ever step a foot out my door.
10. I'm the Domestic Goddess/
Household Manager/ Boss
If it were
just me and Ricky I'd seriously be happy as a clam just doting on him and keeping house.
I'm convinced I'd clean house in my pearls. I love being a
homemaker! I love: baking, cooking, canning, gardening, sewing, scrapbooking, etc. In my fantasy life without kids I'd volunteer two days a week at the food pantry or local woman's shelter. I'd host little teas and brunches
for me and my friends and invite Ricky's coworkers over for dessert and drinks
on Friday nights.
Ricky has told me several times that I can keep homemaking forever if I want to,
and never work outside of the home. I jokingly exclaimed, "Dang, I wish you
would have told me I could have been a housewife without all these kids! Sign.
Me. Up."
In reality we have a gaggle of kids who
are going to mess up the house and no one is going to care unless I care. No
one is going to organize a housework routine/schedule unless I do it. No one is
going to have home-cooked meals unless I make them. No one is going to have clean
or folded laundry unless I do it (or tell them to do it). In fact: next to no
one is going to brush their teeth either. Sometimes I am plum sick of telling
everyone what to do! And it's A LOT of people to get organized. But, it's just the way it is.
Charlotte is amazing and really pitches in when she sees an area lacking, she’s
a lifesaver in the kitchen and I am so thankful. Ricky is very helpful too but he's not expected
to help with most of the housework. I'm expected to ask him if I need something
really specific from him regarding housework. (Example: can you clean the bathroom.) When he's home Ricky is always playing with a kid or doing something
with a kid -or four of them at a time, so he's plenty busy when he's home. Since he works 50+ hours a week outside the home I don't expect him
to ever touch the laundry or dishes. (Although there are lots of times he does on the weekend,
especially if we have a newborn, and I sure do appreciate it.) He maintains the outside, fixes stuff, and helps
as needed in the home, but other than that he's supposed to just keep doting on
me and the kids. He works hard outside the home, I want him to enjoy the kids and not have to help me too much. The teenage boys are awesome usually. They are kind and willing to
help, but like most teens they need to be told extremely specific things that
need to be done. We do use a chore chart, but it changes a lot and it requires me to change it and organize it. I usually just resort to making simple lists on the whiteboard that I change everyday and we all dig in to what needs to get done.
Bottom line: I have lots of helpers, but I still have to be the organizer. And it gets really, really tiring being that person. Sometimes I wish someone
would organize and plan everything out for me, and then let me go sit in a
hammock and read when I am done with my chores! But monotony comes with any job or responsibility, be it at home or not! So I keep at it...
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Layla made this drawing at Thanksgiving - I am expecting baby #8
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