Life with Four Kids - An Unpublished Post I Just Discovered

Picture from the era when this post was originally written

Oh my goodness!  It's been on my To Do List for the last four months to revamp my blog and try to make it more user friendly.  Today I logged on to try to figure out a few things, but got distracted when I stumbled upon this post.  It was drafted but never published, and was written almost three years ago.  I remember this day CLEARLY.  Stuff like this always happens when Curt's traveling and is proof that life is never boring at our house.  Happy reading (and laughing) at our expense.


In the past four hours these things have happened at my house...

another photo from that era - aren't they so cute and little?

1. Alli (our 5 year old), who was straddling our wooden fence, started scooting on it and a chunk of the fence broke off, sliced through her jeans, and lodged into her groin.  She was screaming and when I got her jeans off, I could see a one-inch piece of wood sticking out of her leg with a much larger piece visibly wedged under her skin.  She was flipping out and so was I. Curt usually handles the gory stuff, but he's been out of town for four days and wasn't even reachable by phone. I tried to pull it out, but it was wedged and moving it sent her through the roof in pain. I left her writhing on the floor to get tweezers and then I heard her holler in a shaky voice, "I got it Mom." She took matters into her own hands and pulled that chunk of wood straight out of her leg! She is one tough chick. We measured the piece of wood: an inch and a half from the blood line that was inside her leg and an inch sticking out of her leg. Talk about raising your blood pressure.

2. I had her take a bath to clean the area just in case we needed to revisit the injury site. Katie and Paige hopped in the tub with Alli and they all started playing a "game" that left the bathroom floor, bath mat and their bath towels completely drenched. Needless to say, they cleaned it up.

3. My kitchen floor (all wood) was covered in muddy dog prints, spilled milk, and random other life-with-four-kids pieces of dirt and grime. It needed to be mopped and Alli offered to do it for me because she's trying to earn money to buy an American Girl doll. She wasn't three swipes into the job when she accidentally spilled the ENTIRE bucket of soapy water all over the wood floor. It took Alli, Katie and I thirty minutes to reverse-mop the floor to get the puddles of water off.  Hours later, I can tell my floor is warping.  Great.

4. We did an HOUR of homework times three students. Even Alli (in kindergarten) has nightly homework and it took us straight to bedtime and beyond, by at least 30 minutes.

5. Paige (our three year old) who was pitching a fit because I said no to library books and yes to bed, was given a choice: stop yelling and sleep with Katie and Alli in their room (her new security thing) or keep yelling and lose the opportunity to sleep with them because she was disturbing them. She kept yelling, so I put her in her room. She proceeded to continue to scream and come out of her room for a full hour. By the time she decided to obey, she was so upset she couldn't even talk without sucking in air and her shoulders heaving.

Miraculously, I stayed calm through the whole thing (thank you Lord!), but man am I beat now. Thank goodness Curt comes home tomorrow. I am ready for a break.