Handy

So I'm going to be a Mom of five sometime this winter.  Five.  I know, I know - folks have had six, seven, eight, nine, ten...but still, for me, wow.  Five.

Today was a day that spun me on my heel from dawn to dusk.  We went to the swimming pool today after the kids all did their little bit of learning torture that I have them do daily.  That meant finding swim suits and towels and snacks and telling kids to get into their swim suits and finding shoes and then getting socks and then figuring out where Baby Girl absconded all the shoes to after they had been so nicely found.  Then I had to get everyone to the car and buckled and set to go.  We made a stop at Walmart because the Little Linebacker's green turtle swim suit went AWOL and we were plum clean out of swim diapers.  So I hurried my half-swim-suited family through the mother of all monstrosity's of box stores only to find that the swim diapers were in the opposite far corner from the far corner I had suspected they would be in.  Along the way the three oldest saw a display of umbrellas and set up a spontaneous beg-fest.  All this was happening with a very chubby Baby Girl weighing down my left hip and burning up my left arm.  We got through Walmart and back into the car and buckled after a quick change into Little Linebacker's new, awesome Spiderman swim suit that he couldn't stand not to be in for another second and continued on our way to the pool.  We got to the pool and did a quick change-a-roo of the Baby Girl in the car and then trooped up to the front to pay.  At which time Captain Kindergarten realized that we had forgotten the life jackets in the car.  The forty feet to the car looked like a million with Baby Girl, two bags full of swimming accessories, and a hobbled Sidekick Sister.  Fortunately Captain Kindergarten was up to the task of retrieving the life jackets.  I said, "Run quick," like the boy has ever run quick in his life.  Sometimes I think I need to change my life to his speed.  The CK doesn't run.  It's silly, unnecessary and altogether ridiculous.  I'd probably look less like the circus I daily do if I felt the same way.  But on with the story.  So we came into the pool just as the lifeguards blew their whistles for adult swim.  We undressed and waited and chased Baby Girl and waited and chased Baby Girl.  Then, about an hour into our attempt to go to the pool, we got in the pool.  And it was fer-eeeeeeeee-zzzzzz-ing.  Freezing!  Everybody shivered and shook except for Baby Girl who giggled around the pool altogether too independently for an 11 month old.  We started in the baby pool so we thought we'd give the big pool a chance to be not-so-freezing.  That meant we all came out and went back to our belongings to be zipped into life jackets.  Once we were all nice and safely poofy around our chests we waddled over to the big pool and slid on in.  Sidekick Sister was immediately dying of cold.  The boys got moving and ignored the blue circles around their lips until we'd been in the big pool for ten minutes.  Then the panic hit them.  We hustled out of the pool and moaned and begged for towels as Mom tried to unzip and fling clothes around as quickly as she could while trying to make sure that Baby Girl did not dive back into the swimming pool all on her very independent own.  Not 20 minutes had passed since we first touched pool water.  Before the next 20 minutes were up all the kids were in the car and three of the four were asleep.  All before 1:30pm.

I always envisioned myself as a Mom of four.  That seemed like full and plenty.  It actually is, as I'm experiencing it, plenty full and fully plenty.  But I'm not actually a woman of reason.  Well, it's not that I don't reason.  I've gone over every reason why I should or shouldn't keep having children every 18 months quite thoroughly.  In the end though, I made this big decision the same way I've made all of my big decisions, on how I feel about it.  I'm a woman of intuition, a woman of the spirit.  That sounds so much better than saying I'm not big into being reasonable.

But I've learned to trust my feelings.  So even on a day like today, when I'm running around tired and fetus-growing-sick trying to keep my 11 month old from killing herself and the others learned and exercised and happy and trying to make dinner for Spouse-Who-Gets-Dinner-Once-a-Week lately and keep the laundry from going over the roof and trying to find someway to feel like my intelligence is developing because I've got this fear of being a Mom of five with an atrophied brain, I still feel pretty good about my choice - a little intimidated - but good.  Sometimes being a person that feels more than reasons, it really comes in handy.