Day in My Life-a Busy Day including Mudpies, a Dental Visit, and a Martinmas Lantern Walk

Joining Kathryn's link-up at Team Whitaker!

Today I actually took some photos to document yet another crazy day-in-the-life of this wild family we have here! This day was atypical because of a dentist visit, errands, and a homeschool family event in the evening. Most of our days are spent at home. I really try not to leave the house until the late afternoon. Taking everyone on outings (as you saw yesterday) is just exhausting! But such is life with five kiddos!  Here we go...

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Midnight: I was still awake and posted yesterday's blog entry. I was finally headed to bed when the boys both came in whining and crying. Steven Joseph actually began sobbing about more growing pains. He gets these maybe twice a month, where his legs just ache and I end up rubbing them and giving him Advil, and he finally falls back asleep.

I think I woke before 7. Steven was searching for jeans and I felt bad that I hadn't moved them to the dryer (but actually, I had). Baby started moving around and Thomas was probably inching into my space. Having their room down the hall hasn't really helped this issue like I'd hoped.  Here I'm just trying to will myself out of bed.

Introducing the newest member of our family...Samsung top-loader of 5 cubic feet! After a week with no working washing machine, I am finally catching up after doing about 7 loads the past two days! I could even fit all of our king sized bedding in one load! And she (the washer) sings a pretty song when she's finished.  Thank you Sammy the Samsung.  I hope you will last longer than our other washers (this is the third one with the same dryer! I think it's almost 15yrs old!). Putting a load in here was one of my first chores of the day.

I walked through the living room to find this little guy had moved to the couch to sleep.

But these two were still asleep in our bed.

I was hoping to make it out for my jog before the baby woke up, but all the kids started stirring around 7:30.  I finally made it out around 8am, with Steven Joseph at my feet! He likes to follow me up and down the street.  It was drizzling when I started, but it didn't last long.

After my jog, I came home to find kids snacking and ready for some mommy snuggles. I don't think I ever made any breakfast. But I read about four books. We've had these library books over a month and had only read a couple of them. I had checked out some great books on famous artists (including one in the "Katie" series). There were multiple fights over who got to sit next to me.  I pretty much had 3-4 kids on top of me for about 30 minutes. Tiring. Katie was sucking on Thomas' yogurt tube he'd just eaten. He actually ate about five of those today! She was dripping strawberry yogurt all over me. I was still in jogging clothes and kids were all still wearing their clothes from yesterday. Keepin' it real!

As the morning went on, I think I spent some time cleaning the kitchen, including dinner dishes from last night. The kids, meanwhile, got started on some very important work of the day: making mud pies in the backyard. Mary Clare had probably completed some schoolwork, but I'm quite sure Ellie and Steven hadn't done any work yet.

I let the baby smash up a banana in her high chair while I ate some toast, so then she needed a bath. Here's how she takes a bath most days, while I'm taking a shower in there. Other days she bathes in a laundry basket in the kids' tub (no tub in the master, which makes me very sad). Please ignore the scary, moldy shower, and just notice the happy baby. This was before she started trying to climb out of the baby tub. She spent almost my entire shower trying to climb out, so I don't think this arrangement is going to work anymore. My hair is all greasy because I guess I didn't rinse very well while trying to keep the baby from falling on her head or drowning! 

As a side note relating to house repair plans, I did call a water damage company today, who can come tomorrow to try to help figure out if/where we have plumbing and water leaks. The foundation guy didn't think it was foundation issues, so the issue may be water-related, which makes sense because the sloping floors are mostly near the shower, the fridge, and the washer. I'm not sure if this is good or bad news, compared with foundation repair!

So now it was 10am, and I was ready to put the baby for a nap just as the kids finished playing outside and needed to get in the shower (I should have made them go to their own bathroom). So as usual, it took me quite awhile to get her to sleep with the loud kids in the bathroom (no door between master bathroom and bedroom). The kids showered and got dressed and I assumed they were starting their schoolwork. But no, I found Ellie wearing hunting earmuffs and old glasses, and singing to herself in the mirror! Caught!

This is the time of the day that seems to disappear very quickly, from about 11-3pm we do school and eat lunch and deal with crises and crying and chaos.  I'm not sure how much schoolwork really got done this day since we had to be at the dentist at 2pm. I'm pretty sure they did their main subjects. I don't even have pictures except this one of Katie eating some tiny bits of rotisserie chicken at lunch. We scrounged some leftovers (she LOVES mashed potatoes!) and baked a frozen pizza for the boys. Meanwhile it was time to start getting ready for the dentist!

Steven had a dental appointment about 40 minutes away, so I'd planned to leave an hour early. Instead I left 30 minutes early and was late. Oh well. It only took a few minutes of checking his old x-rays and his teeth and giving me a treatment plan that looked a WHOLE lot better than the $$$$ one from last week's dentist! I had forgotten that we really must see a dentist that is in-network if we don't want to pay thousands of dollars for work on baby teeth. The girls stayed in the car with the sleeping baby, and then after we were done and I fed her, we all went back into the dental office for a bathroom break and to tell them we'd take a slot for tomorrow morning at 8am! Praying and hoping that he does well without the sedation meds.

This little guy brought his toy pliers and was doing some work on the doorknobs as we were taking our bathroom break. There may or may not have been a small accident that required additional time for changing clothes.

So we loaded back up and headed back to our area. We were going to attend a St. Martin Lantern Walk with our homeschool group, so we needed a few flashlights and little battery-operated candles. I stopped at Walmart and went in with three of the kids. I'd also planned to pop popcorn, which didn't happen, so we made a stop at Trader Joe's for that. We had some more shoe drama. Apparently one of the children left his NICE tennis shoes and ONLY coat at the park last week. I've made three phone calls and can't find them. Lots of the boys' things are hand-me-downs, but these were actually NEW items I'd bought him. So frustrating. We did find him another pair of handed-down tennis shoes in the garage, and he tied them together at some point in the car ride and was upset that no one would help untie them. Here is MC showing the shoelaces.

One child had a dire bathroom necessity and whined the entire five minutes from Walmart to Trader Joe's. I sent the girls in to the bathroom and then sent SJ in with cash to help them buy "five bags of popcorn." Instead they bought three (the girls didn't believe him), so I ran inside and bought some more!

  

CUE: Screaming baby. The next hour we were in the car the baby was crying. But I had found this IKEA shelf for FIVE DOLLARS on our online classified website and had to go pick it up at someone's house that was just a few minutes out of the way. Then we had to run home for coats/sweatshirts for a few kids. So we were 30 minutes late to the event. I was very flustered by the time we arrived, and I still had to sit and feed the crying baby while letting the others out into the dark park!

Here's my only picture of the St. Martin walk! We had flashlights and lanterns and sang some songs about St. Martin. It was a nice walk. Except the part where the kids kept whining about how cold it was. Then we had hot cocoa, popcorn, and donuts, and visited for a bit.

Here's Tommy's lantern that MC made with a toilet paper roll and a flashlight.

We finally got back home and Steven had started some spaghetti for dinner. Katie was asleep and Steven had forgotten to get Return of the Jedi from the library like he told the kids, so I offered to go...Can't you tell I went to the library?

Actually the library was closed for Veteran's Day, so I made a quick stop at Ross for a little prize for our dental patient and a little fall outfit and socks for the baby who seems to be in-between sizes for cold weather clothing of the girls'. I got home and fed the baby and then fed myself some spaghetti. Moved another laundry load. Cleaned up a little, and then started encouraging the kids to get to bed. Gave some encouragement to the scared dental patient. 

I'm not sure why they were in our bathroom here, but I came in to change the baby and this was the conversation going on:

Ellie: "I hope I win the lottery the night before I get engaged so I can have a really big wedding!"

MC: "I think I want Chick-fil-A to cater my wedding."

Tommy: "I want a big motorcycle cake at my wedding!"

Daddy fell asleep first. The girls were sent off to bed after a little cat fight that may or may not have involved biting. Ugh. The boys fell asleep in our bed, Steven very quickly as usual, and Tommy very slowly as usual (10pm). Now it is time for my ice cream and blogging! Just another crazy day in my life. I'm really tired after re-living it again!