I guess some people might think my every-day life is rather humdrum. It's full of routine (lots and lots of routine! In fact, I do the exact same things nearly every day around here!). It's also chock-full of tasks that are truly no fun: mountains of laundry, bathrooms to clean, carpets to vacuum, and piles of dirty dishes to scrape and rinse three times a day (let's not forget the endless diaper-changing!). But come a little closer, and hang out with five tiny little people who think there's fun and excitement in everything, and who have unlimited imaginations and surprisingly witty and often side-splitting baby insights into the "hum-drum!"
Today, for example, was not much different from our typical hot-weather days. Same old stuff, and yet somehow never boring!
Breakfast at 9:00 (no matter what time I get up, somehow we never have breakfast until 9:00!).
Clean up the kitchen and get everybody into their swimsuits! I grabbed clothes for the girls for later along with the appropriate number of clean diapers and left them in the kitchen. Then everybody got their hair fixed. We have a box full of tiny rubber bands in all different colors and one of my favorite parts of the morning is getting the girls hair done up in braids, ponytails, pigtails, or whatever strikes my fancy for that day (the girls know, Mommy gets to choose their hairstyles until they're old enough to fix their own, ditto on picking out their clothes!).
Then it's outside where everybody gets sprayed down with sunscreen and turned loose for playtime! We fill their little wading pool with fresh cold water and they splash and play with plastic tea-cups and buckets. Kate rides her little tricyle around, she's so proud of how fast she can pedal! They drag the giant, appliance sized boxes out of the garage...thanks to some quick work with box-cutters and packing tape these are their little playhouses and they never seem to get tired of popping in and out of them, "visiting" each other and going "shopping" or hiding from the "Big Bad Wolf" (that would be me, or their Aunt Kim, or whichever adult is getting a kick out of that game!). 
Today I sat reading a book for a while but the heat was just too much for me. I needed very little coaxing ("Mommy, come down and play with us!") to plop right into the kiddie pool with the girls. Hopefully the neighbors weren't paying attention, although they are probably already quite convinced that we're a little crazy over here! Although I didn't realize it at first, I was actually seated in a gourmet restaurant. Two little chefs were serving up the most delicious soups you've ever tasted. Sour Meat Soup with "lots of sugar" was the house specialty and I was allowed to taste it over and over and recommend alterations in the ingredients!
Debbo was busy cooking something, too. She stirred it vigorously in a faded pink bucket with a broken handle and kept bustling over to give me bites of it from a little blue plastic shovel. I would "taste" whatever it was (she couldn't tell me) and make lots of sound effects: "Mmmm! Delicious!" Then she'd giggle with delight, and race back to her bucket babbling happily, no doubt about what a superb chef she was! Kate on the other hand was not cooking, she was pouring buckets of water on top of me to cool me off. I was startled the first time, and I told her I wasn't used to such treatment while I was visiting Marianne's restaurant! She assured me "This is what we do for everyone who comes here! It keeps them cool so they'll stay and eat the food!" Oh, of course. Why didn't I think of that?
After a while they began to tire of serving up delicious entree's, and then we had a bit of excitement. Kate informed me in a whisper that an invisible witch was on her way over to us with a basket of apples. Marianne chimed in immediately that these were, of course, poisoned apples and we should under no circumstances allow ourselves to be tricked into eating them! Good thing she had the low-down on those apples, we might have been deceived! We quickly concocted a plan in hushed whispers. I'm happy to say that when the "witch" arrived we very sneakily lured her into conversation and then threw buckets of water onto her (which, as everyone knows, causes witches to melt). Then we tossed her deadly apples as far as we could throw them (which was over the garage, where Kate informed me they had burnt holes in the sidewalk, being such very dangerous apples!)
Once that situation was under control, I realized the girls were all a bit pink-cheeked and tired looking and that it was close to lunchtime. We gathered on the deck where they waited dripping and shivering until I brought everybody a towel and then they could scurry into the kitchen (I long ago gave up trying to change them all out of wet swimsuits in the bathroom, there's just not enough room!). Dry clothes and diapers all around and then I whipped up some lunch.
Today we had peanut butter on whole wheat bread with lots of banana slices on top and grapes all around on the plate. I'm not usually creative but the idea struck me and I thought they would like it. They did. Kate and Marianne gobbled theirs down and Ashlynne (of course!) tilted hers straight up and carefully licked all the peanut butter from around the bananas and then tipped them into her mouth one at a time with her tongue. After that she shredded the bread to bits and ate each tiny piece one at a time. Meanwhile, Marianne had propped half a grape onto a straw top. This was Sleeping Beauty who was immediately proposed to by Prince Charming (a similar creation of Kate's). However their happy romance was sadly put in jeopardy by a terrible monster (a scary creature made of bread and peanut butter with bitten out eyeholes) who threatened to lock them up in a tower (you see what I mean? It's just never boring around here!). Debbo was decidedly uninterested in those proceedings. She had stacked her bananas neatly in a pile and decided quite adamently that she would NOT eat them (I thought she liked bananas! Oh well). I thought the bribe of colored marshmallows I was giving the girls for finishing their food would win her over, but she was unmoved. Little lip protruding, big blue eyes full of aligator tears, she gazed longingly at the marshmallows but she was not about to eat those bananas. In the end I decided that having no marshmallows was punishment enough for the moment, and trotted her off for a nap without insisting on her eating the bananas!
It seemed like the next thing I knew they were all in bed for their naps, nicely worn out. Even (for once) Rebekah! Standing in the quiet living room I studied the laundry basket piled sky-high and overflowing with clean, unfolded laundry. Then my eyes were drawn to the couch, so inviting! A nap is a rare, rare thing for me. Back and forth I glanced from laundry to couch but there was really no contest. When all five kids are asleep at once I just have to take advantage of it! About an hour later when I groggily opened my eyes, I found the four oldest there in the living room with me! They were lying sleepily but awake on the floor and love seat with their blankies, pillows, favorite stuffed toys and dolls! 
I guess they all migrated in at some point! We decided it was time for popcorn and a movie (I needed a distraction so I could work on bills and budgeting) and they were quite happy and entertained and afterwards headed upstairs to play while I made a small dent in the laundry pile and then got supper on. Down they came to eat, all dressed up in various combinations of each other's clothes, Sunday slips (which they think are pretty, lacy dresses!) and their somewhat tattered princess dress-up dresses. Wow. Hope nobody comes to the door at this point! 
After dinner was cleaned up it was time to whisk everyone through their baths. As I soaped up little blond heads and scrubbed dirty feet they skittered around in their bathwater and chatted about how they were mermaids. I'm quite skeptical about those, as I do have my limits when it comes to magical characters and I hardly want the girls to imitate mermaid standards in modesty (or lack thereof)! However they put my mind at ease by assuring me that they were "Good mermaids who wear sleeves, and obey their mommies and daddies." Well. That was reassuring! After baths and PJ's it was time for Bible stories and catechism (I love hearing the girls recite their answers and hearing Debbie try to imitate them with great gusto!). Then prayers and bedtime.
Or rather, time to put the girls into bed and begin the nightly routine of putting them back in those same beds repeatedly for the next hour or two, in between putting the bathroom back in order, taking out the trash, vacuuming, etc.
In the middle of all that their Daddy came home and I was treated to some adult conversation and quality time with my favorite person (as well as a back-up on the bedtime thing...it does wonders when Daddy hollers up the stairs "Everybody in bed! quiet!") Of course I also had to fill him in on the not-so-boring adventures of this very routine day!
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Tell me about Ashlynne.
