A (somewhat) normal morning with 4 kids–Leap Year Edition

Here’s the 411– on what it’s like to have 4 kids- the Leap Edition.

I was up at 4 am to pack my husband breakfast and lunch. I lazily sat and browsed through my email and drank coffee until everyone woke up. It was a busy weekend. Well, I mean I switched laundry out, washed new laundry and carried the clean clothes into the living room to fold later. I also unloaded the dishwasher, so I guess not COMPLETELY LAZY. Then I got the toddler up from bed, dressed, and downstairs, got her a banana and milk, left the milk and 2 glasses out for the 7 year old to pour when they came down just a second later, got the baby changed and fed her. The toddler didn’t want to eat the banana right away, so I had the 7 year old give the 4 year old a lesson in turning on the TV. I need the older ones to be able to do this in case of emergency. 🙂 Life lessons, right? then I taught the 7 year old how to NOT rip the top of a cereal box and to open the inner plastic bag. I had them pour their own cereal (more lessons) and get the remainder into an air tight container. Maybe if they learn these things I won’t have to do it all myself.

I went ahead and made my husband’s birthday cake in the morning. Mornings are MORE predictable and I’m not necessarily trying to keep everyone asleep per se as keep the activity level at DEFCON 2. I gathered the ingredients and had to desperately measure out the cocoa powder to see if there was enough for both the cake and frosting. We scraped by. The only really ODD ingredient is buttermilk and I keep the canned kind in the fridge since we rarely use it and I would forget to buy fresh no matter what. My powdered buttermilk was lumpy despite running it through the food processor–it clumped back up, and I ended up without enough powdered sugar, and then my food processor was dirty (and wet from being put in the dishwasher) so I couldn’t ‘spin’ regular sugar into powdered. That means that both the frosting the cake are kind of… off.

I was trying to take care of the baby and keep the toddler rounded up and teach the bigger kids… all at once. The oven didn’t heat evenly and the frosting (which you have to pour over the cake HOT) didn’t go over it smoothly then. So I propped it up on the higher side so it would ‘slide’ the frosting down. This is SO much less professional than my cakes normally are. Not that they’re professional per se, but you know, it just really sucks. My husband only has a birthday once every 4 years. You’d think I’d have all the stuff and/or it would turn out nice, but no….

Somewhere in the middle my 7 year old had tied her hair into such a knot that I literally could not untangle it. So I had to snip a piece of it off.

The 4 year old conveniently forgot everything we talked about leap year (not like we have mentioned it for the last 3 months about every day AND had a full lesson on it Thursday– can you tell my husband enjoys his birthday?) She also forgot how to count by 5’s, 10’s, and what rhyming meant. The 7 year old complained about everything I gave her. So instead of being able to multi-task the rest of the laundry and so on, I was hands on the entire school lesson. By the time that was over it was time to get the baby back down for a nap again. The toddler swore she didn’t have to use the bathroom right up until the time I had the baby good and latched on for a feeding. Then she had to sit on the potty and wait so I could finish the poor baby’s feeding and get her down for a nap– and she sat and alternately blew raspberries at the 4 year old, who egged her on until she screamed– and kept on screaming–until I went through the kitchen and shushed her and asked her to be quiet so the baby could sleep.

I think the banana went missing. But I’m too tired to look.

Normal day.