All Posts By

Daphne

Theo

Please, can I have some more?

August 18, 2016

Remember when Theo was born, I really wanted me a fat baby who would enjoy eating everything I prepared for him? So that happened and it was awesome.

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Right up to that point, all my other kids had been moderately picky eaters who were all like “I don’t like this food it’s so gross” or “I’m really full, my stomach hurts when I look at broccoli.” It was nice to have a baby who ate everything from rolled oats to raw carrots. Raw carrots. That’s just hardcore.

Almost all of baby Theo’s happy thoughts are about food and our conversations all day are variations of this:

Theo: Mommy can I have bread? Big big bread.

Me: You just ate an entire sandwich, 5 strawberries, some yoghurt and a glass of milo. We need to take a break.

Theo: How about small small bread?

Me: We can’t have small small bread either. No bread.

Theo: How about cereal? With fresh milk?

Me: Not right now. We can have cereal with milk as a snack later ok?

Theo: Um, 3 grapes? Can I have 3 grapes please?

It’s so hard to refuse a polite baby asking for 3 grapes so I cave. After he’s done, which is like 3 seconds later…

Theo: Can I have 3 more grapes please?

Me: I’m sorry baby, we’re done eating for now. There will be more food later.

Tears start to well up in his eyes and his voice quavers.

Theo: How about pancakes? Can you make pancakes for him??

Me: For me, not for him.  Nobody else wants pancakes. And no, we can’t have pancakes.

Theo: Marshmallows? Only 1 blue marshmallow. Just one and all done.

Me: Hey! How about let’s fix a puzzle. Look, it’s a farm puzzle!!

Theo: *starts to wail like he hasn’t eaten for a week* NO, STOP STOP STOP!! HE DON’T WANT PUZZLES HE JUST WANT TO EAT FOOD!!!

At first, I thought maybe he’s just hungry and I should give him more food until he’s full but he didn’t seem to ever have enough. He could eat more food than Truett, Kirsten and Finn combined for breakfast and still ask for more, which is insane.

And have you ever done the food test? I do this with all my kids. I’ll ask them to share the last piece of cookie/goldfish cracker/gummy that they’re clutching in their tiny fists, not because I actually want to eat it (it’s usually sweaty and soggy and germy by the time it reaches my mouth) but because it is proof of their undying love for me.

Most of the time, they’ll shove it quickly into their mouths to destroy all evidence of ever possessing such deliciousness but on several occasions, I’ve had all 3 of the big kids offer me their last morsels of snacks. True love, am I right?

But not baby Theo. One time, when I asked Theo for the last bite of his double chocolate chip cookie, he looked at me with such indignation it was like I had just asked him for a kidney. Then he promptly shook his head, making it clear that such a request was not to be entertained.

“Please…pretty please? Can mommy have it?”

“NO. CANNOT. Baby Theo eat.”

So I did what any self-respecting mom would do, I pretended to try to eat it from his hand as he was clutching it. I didn’t succeed because of his lightning fast reflexes but he immediately acted like I had taken away both his kidneys and his firstborn child. There much weeping and gnashing of teeth.

He only finally stopped after I double pinky promised that I wouldn’t take away his food and offered another whole cookie as restitution.

Nobody comes between this baby and his food, is what I’m saying.

I love that this boy loves food and he’s such a joy to feed (I’ve never had a baby clap in glee when I made a grilled cheese sandwich) but I think maybe it’s time to introduce a diet program. This will not be fun. :(

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Hayley

2 months

August 12, 2016

Two months! It’s been two months of waking up to this squishy little face every morning. :)

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Two months is nice, it’s definitely a step up from the I-don’t-know-why-you’re-making-that-crying-sound newborn phase.

There are so many great things about getting to two months.

What are they? I’ll tell you.

First of all, munchies. The smell of a newborn is perfection but it takes a while before they’re good for munching on. The best age to start munching on a baby is right around two months, when they fill out nicely with juicy baby fats (which btw, I get to pass on to them via this magnificent process called breastfeeding and yes, I’ll have another slice of that cake please). I’ve been doing the chubby cheek test on baby Hayley every day since she was born and I can confirm that she’s starting to get to that delicious om nom nom level.

Which turns out to be excellent timing because these days when I munch on Theo’s cheeks, he puts his tubby little hand right in my face like “STOP! STOP!! DON’T BITE HIM!!” I’ll have you know that when Theo starts to refer to himself in the third person, it’s time to take him seriously.

It’s a good thing I have a new baby to take over the munch-ee duties. Babies get loved on a lot around here but they get munched on too, that’s how it is.

There’s also the smiling. We’ve discovered that two-month-old baby Hayley is a smiley one. This girl’s got a smile that lights up my entire world, the kind that’s so wide it pushes her eyes shut just so her little face can contain all that joy. And she’s generous with them too, always smiling back at everyone who stops to talk to her. You get a smile, you get a smile, you get a smile…everybody gets a smile!

The only thing two months isn’t great for is sleeping. I’m certain two months is way to young to develop FOMO, but yet here we are – me and my little sleep-fighting baby with FOMO issues. Everyday during nap time, I can tell that she’s tired because I’m watching her eyeballs roll back into her head as I hold her, and yet she will force herself to unroll them right back once she catches sound of her siblings playing in the next room.

She opens one eye at me. “Is that playing I hear?? Is everybody having a good time without me???”

“Shhh, go to sleep, sweetie,” I whisper.

She struggles to open the other eye, but fails. She tries again, her one eyeball rolling around, unable to focus. She’s resilient though. Soon, she has two half opened eyes with more whites than pupils looking up at me.

Everyone should have the chance to watch a baby struggle to gain control of her eyeballs, it’s a most delightful sight. But it also usually leads to a very grumpy baby so I’m not entirely sure about my feelings towards this at the moment.

Maybe next month she’ll figure out that sleep is good and we’ll both get more of it. Or not. But that’s ok, we’ll get there eventually.

Two months = this face = love

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kids!

Life with five

August 2, 2016

One of the questions I get asked the most is what life looks like with 5 kids. How do we manage 5 tiny humans? What kind of madness goes on around here?

I don’t even know where to start with this.

Maybe I should begin with a photo like so, where the kids that aren’t screaming or bickering or whining.

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But a picture like this might give you the wrong idea because there is plenty of screaming and bickering and whining, along with unwashed laundry, spilled food, toy messes, poop on the bed, poop on the floor, poop on my clothes, poop in all kinds of places it really shouldn’t be in.

Perhaps I could talk about how a day around here looks like:

5.30am – baby Hayley’s pre-dawn feed

6.15am – Tru and Kirsten get ready for school

6.45am – the husband drops the 2 big kids off at school

7.30 to 8am – Finn and Theo get up and have breakfast

8.30am – drop Finn off at preschool, grab a quick breakfast with the husband + 1 baby (either Theo or Hayley, depending on when the baby last fed), drop the husband off at work

11am – run some errands, maybe a quick grocery run with 1 baby

12.30pm – swap the baby for the other baby, pick Finn from school, circle back to pick Truett & Kirsten, then head home for lunch

<<I imagine this is what the life of an uber driver looks like. I also briefly considered being an actual uber driver, and why not? I could pick up a passenger on my way back from town after dropping the husband off in the morning, another on the way back to town when I’d return to pick him up, plus several more in between. The only thing that stopped me was the thought of having to put on real pants, a top that wasn’t comfortably oversized or stained with baby vomit, and some make up. That or I’d have to pick up perfectly-coiffed young executive types looking like I’d just come off a shift at the market, which would give me zero stars on my uber profile.>>

2pm – I’ll try to get Theo to nap while he fake poops and sings on the bed until I come to my senses about how futile this attempt really is. Abort mission.

2.30pm – I’ll spend what’s left of the afternoon feeding the baby, breaking up squabbles, cleaning poop, kissing imaginary boo boos that have healed 2 weeks ago, looking into homework/spelling/听写/show and tell, fixing puzzles, fixing snacks, fixing blocks, fixing more snacks, fixing a  dinner that my eldest son describes as prison food (usually rice and soup and fish and chicken and vegetables), making everyone eat enough of said dinner while watching them make vomit faces, before cleaning everything up and sending them all off to bed.

8pm – bedtime for Truett, Kirsten, Finn and Theo

8.30pm – once the 4 big kids are asleep, I’ll bring Hayley along with me to pick the husband up from work.

11pm – Hayley goes to bed for the night, and so do I. And then we’ll have fun with the 2-3 hour feed/burp/walk/bounce routine for the rest of the night.

I have a domestic helper who helps me out in managing the madness throughout the day, which is a lifesaver but some days, I can tell that she wonders why she ever agreed to come work at a family with 5 kids.

Multitask. At any given moment, I’m probably holding a baby, helping one kid practice spelling, having another kid tell me to “PUT BABY HAYLEY DOWN AND CARRY ME TO THE KITCHEN TO GET STRAWBERRIES!!”, checking homework, while listening to someone else tell me he’s “very tired and needs milk” but will not actually sleep after he’s done with the milk.

Get the kids involved because big kids are very useful. With the exception of baby Hayley, all of them (even Theo) help to pack up toys, pick up trash from the floor, watch out for each other, sing to the baby. This gives me time to take a shower or eat a cookie without being harassed.

It’s probably not very different from the days of most stay home moms, except maybe with a few more snacks to fix and more messes to clean.

***

But I think the real question most people want to ask is WHY. Why do we do this?

It sounds crazy but I really do like having all the kids at home with me even though they’re so demanding and they leave a trail of destruction in their wake.

Like last week, they decided to set up a shop selling all my possessions to each other for actual money. My money. Which they acquired from my wallet while I was distracted with the baby. After they were done, EVERYTHING WAS EVERYWHERE. Coins under the sofa, stray puzzle pieces in the toilet, a $10 note flapping in the balcony, scrap paper on the table, random toy parts covering just about every inch of floor area in the house.

I was already exhausted – the baby and I had a rough night – and looking at the mess made me want to cry but looking at the mess also made me smile because it was the result of 4 hours of crazy fun where Truett and Kirsten gave the two smaller boys a wallet stuffed full of coins each and taught them how to buy stuff from a shop.

I can’t tell you how much feels I had just watching them play that afternoon.

It makes me feel thankful that I’ve got messes to clean and tears to wipe away because it means that I’ve got all my 5 babies here to make them. I know that someday soon, I’ll wake up to an immaculate living room with no towels thrown on the floor or a trail of cookie crumbs (and ants!!) leading to the kitchen, but for me, that will be a sad, sad day.

Motherhood takes a lot from you, it’s true. Sometimes it takes everything that you’ve got and then some more even when you feel like you’ve got nothing left to give. Sometimes it makes you feel like you’re not doing enough or doing it right. Sometimes it makes you feel like someone else is living the dream while you’re stuck here knee deep in baby poop.

But I can’t shake the feeling that right here in the midst of all the madness is my highlight reel. This is where it’s at.

All the chocolate stained faces I get to clean and little hands that I get to hold and the sleepy faces I get to kiss, this is the part that really matters and I’m glad I still get to do it everyday.

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