Coming to terms with the chaos

Endless energy! Why can't I get some of that?

Sword fighting at the highland games a couple of weeks ago. Others were alarmed, I took pictures. But I did not buy the weapons :-)

Life is pretty wild right now with three little kids, but I think I am growing into it. Mostly with patience and a sense of humor, which I have learned are the two main things you need in parenting. Sometimes they even seem like the same thing.

Yesterday we had Hippie Handicrafts at our house. I love having my friends and their little ones over! Between the five of us in attendance yesterday, we had quite a few children. 11 of them, who ranged in age from 3-month-old Robert up to 10-year-old Corbin who helps watch the little ones and uses words like pandemonium. There is bound to be some interesting stuff going down in a house with all those kids in it. Once everyone goes home and it's just me and my kids again, it's suddenly so quiet that I almost expect an extra toddler to jump out of the closet beating a drum or something. It's a little lonely.

I'm not at all sure who used my camera to take this picture or the next one, but whoever it was isn't very tall.

Near the end of last week's HH meeting, the kids settled down to watch a movie. Phibby seems to enjoy these days, too.

Everything went pretty smoothly yesterday until the afternoon, when it was just me and Megan and our five kids. Usually I keep our Sharpie markers put away, but yesterday one got taken out and left on the dining room table. While Megan and I weren't looking, Ivey and Aiden got a hold of it and drew on themselves. We laughed. Ivey did a pretty thorough job of inking up her arms and legs in permanent fuchsia. We took her to the chiropractor like that and everyone loved it.

We were planning to give the girls a bath, but by the time we got home everyone was tired and we decided we'd deal with it later. So the girls went to bed with Ivey still Sharpied. Jordan and I had been watching TV together for about half an hour when we heard Suzi whine down the stairs, "I'm wet! I'm cooooold!"

She had tried to help us by washing the Sharpie off of Ivey. The only problem was she had done this in the bed with water from one of their sippy cups. The bed was soaked, the girls were soaked, and the sheets were tinged with pink. Jordan was pretty irritated, but I laughed, and eventually we both laughed, told them never to do that again and then laughed some more after tucking them back into a dried-off bed and telling them to GO TO SLEEP.

It was kind of funny.

I think we are learning and slowly growing in patience, which is probably my #1 parenting goal right now. I doubt that in this stage of our life we are meant to somehow catch up and put an end to the chaos. It wouldn't last long if we did. I'm trying to just live in it, grow in it, and enjoy it. While it takes all my time and energy, it's also full to overflowing with love and life.

Try to relax and they jump on you, but to tell the truth we kind of like it.