Thoughts, Tips and Stories from a mom of 5 to two sets of twin girls and a boy in the middle
Well they broke me down. For years the kiddos wanted a dog. We’re surrounded by robot dogs and doggie stuffed animals. This little guy melted my heart and I couldn’t say no. Meet Chip, the Maltipoo. The newest member of our family!
About Us – We have five children including 2 sets of twins. Currently ages 10,10,9,5,5. That’s 2 fraternal twin girls, a single boy, followed by 2 identical twin girls.
Feeling annoyed about washing the water bottles again, but my weird brain justified it by calculating how many water bottles I did NOT buy my kids and take to school everyday.
Since 2013 we’ve sent the kids with stainless steel bottles, adding up to 3200 plastic water bottles we did not have to throw away! This school year between the 5 of them it’s 900 plastic water bottles we did not contribute to the landfill (I’m so anti-plastic these days).
Here’s my “back of the napkin” math I did using the Evernote App handwriting note.
Oh my goodness. The younger twins are turning 3 this month. I’m so happy and proud of them.
A part of me is sad each time they get better at saying a word, or speaking in a full sentence with no words missing in between.
The older kids are sad too. They want them to stay babies forever. I think only hubby is happy to get past this stage. The boy has said he wished we could have more babies because “these ones are getting big”. Ha ha.
Me and the kids have an agreement to NOT correct the baby talk. They say thanken instead of thank you, but slowly they correct themselves and slowly but surely the little bit of babyness left is gone.
I still go to their beds at night. All grown up now in the bottom bunk beds of their sister’s room. Sleeping all night, on their own, instead of next to me. Sigh. I take a whiff of their hair, kiss their little hands, sniff their little growing baby feet. And thank God they are healthy. All of them. My five little miracles.
Oh shoot. I need to plan their birthday party! Here we go again.
About Us
We have five children including 2 sets of twins. Currently ages 7,7,6,2,2. That’s 2 fraternal twin girls, a single boy, followed by 2 identical twin girls. Life After 5 – kids that is, has definitely changed.
It’s July. Already. We’ve taken the kids on a road trip and they’ve settled into their new summer routine of sleeping late, and waking up late.
I never did get to book them into any summer camps or classes that I had on my to-do list since January.
I’m halfway through our summer project of switching bedrooms with them so they have more space.
And back to school shopping is already on my mind because we started too late last year that there were no supplies left.
I should beat myself up for not getting more of what I planned to get done but I’m actually enjoying not having the morning school rush, the I’m so tired but we have to do homework nights, and just “hanging” out with the kids. Speaking of which – I think I’ll see what TV show they’re binge watching and grab a beer while I’m at it. Until next time!
About Us
We have five children including 2 sets of twins. Currently ages 7,7,6,2,2. That’s 2 fraternal twin girls, a single boy, followed by 2 identical twin girls. Life After 5 – kids that is, has definitely changed.
With a large family, you can imagine we have lots of birthdays to celebrate. There’s 7 of us but two sets of twins so really there are only 5 birthday parties I should plan each year.
NOT so.
Somehow we end up planning birthday parties randomly for family coming into town or our nanny or a close friend.
By now I’ve done this so many times and have the formula down that even the toddlers can rattle out my checklist: decorations, balloons, cake, bounce house, prizes!
We celebrate a lot of birthdays at our house and here’s the “usual” list of things to buy and do. As always, this is all done in one note created in Evernote.
We have five children including 2 sets of twins. Currently ages 7,7,6,2,2. That’s 2 fraternal twin girls, a single boy, followed by 2 identical twin girls. Life After 5 – kids that is, has definitely changed.
Last year I wrote about my quest to find a calendar system big enough for my large family. You can read about that post here.
The original calendar system worked pretty good. We had a desk calendar on the freezer door held up by magnets and I used color coded sharpies to write in each kids’ calendar item.
The problem was all these flyers, etc were pinned on top of the calendar with other magnets. Also — the sharpie pens were on the other side of the kitchen, and – I had no place to put down the papers I was holding with dates I needed to add to the calendar while I was in front of the refrigerator/freezer that displayed the calendar.
So…I perused Pinterest, then office supply stores and finally by accident, found our new calendar at Hobby Lobby.
It’s one of those white board calendars you have to write in the dates and it had a white wooden frame. I ended up spray painting the frame to a dark bronze color to make it stand out against the light colored wall I ended up putting it on. We happened to have wall space above the counter in the kitchen where I kept the pens and scissors and notepads. It seemed to be waiting for the new calendar to fill its space, so there it went.
I’ve replaced the sharpie pens with colored dry erase markers. At the start of each month my “homework” is to get the calendar updated for the current month from the various papers that come home. We now have one magnet labeled “today” that we move daily to indicate the current day for the kids to keep up. The mess of flyers and invitations, etc are scanned into Evernote if I may want to reference later, then loosely filed in a decorative box below the calendar so we can grab the info when the date arrives and toss it afterwards.
This system so far has worked well. All I need to update the calendar is in one place. It’s in a prominent spot so hubby, babysitter, kids and I know of anything important for the day. And I don’t need to keep a paper calendar around or buy a new one at the end of the school year. We’ll see if we need a “take 3” for this topic/post in a few months.
About Us
We have five children including 2 sets of twins. Currently ages 7,7,5,2,2. That’s 2 fraternal twin girls, a single boy, followed by 2 identical twin girls. Life After 5 – kids that is, has definitely changed.
My one and only boy turned 6.
His dad and I decided to reward him with a “boy only” birthday party at a trampoline place. He is going nuts. I’m still wondering how I missed so much of his first 5 years and why he can’t stay 5 forever.
Well there’s party planning to do so I must end this post early. Maybe I’ll share my last minute birthday party checklist for my next post.
About Us
We have five children including 2 sets of twins. Currently ages 7,7,6,2,2. That’s 2 fraternal twin girls, a single boy, followed by 2 identical twin girls. Life After 5 – kids that is, has definitely changed.
Some random thoughts as I look back at the day.
The kids are all young enough that they still follow me around. If I’m in the family room, they all gather there. If I start to work on my laptop in the dining room, they eventually make their way over with a question or two, then linger at the table. When I move to the couch, they want to show me something and stay nearby. I make it upstairs and they slowly make their way up, for one reason or another. Always close, always a hug away. I hope to keep it this way for as long as they’ll allow it. One day I know they’ll want to be in the opposite side of the house. This smaller house helps me keep them close.
And then there’s their stuff. EVERYWHERE. It’s sort of contained. But I can’t imagine having more rooms, and bigger rooms to pick up. The smaller rooms force us to pick up, and stay semi-organized.
Finally there’s the cleaning. I’m lucky if I can get the whole house cleaned in a 2 week rotation. And we only have 1750 square feet. At the age the kids are now, they still can’t help clean up as good as I’d like. Plus my mom OCD means no one can clean like me..so the less space to clean the better.
So yeah I’m lovin’ the small house and feeling blessed we have a home at all. God will let us know soon enough when it’s time to move on..
About Us
We have five children including 2 sets of twins. Currently ages 7,7,5,2,2. That’s 2 fraternal twin girls, a single boy, followed by 2 identical twin girls. Life After 5 – kids that is, has definitely changed.
Finally! The watch – a mom essential – and my smartphone – combined/synched up in the Samsung Gear S2.
Why did I want a smartwatch?
How useful has it been? VERY. Here’s how I’ve used my Samsung Gear S2 and Gear S2 Classic after 2 months:
So I guess you can tell I use it A LOT. I use it so much I bought a second one so one is charging while I’m using the other. My Christmas present was the “sporty” one with the silicone band. I prefer that one on the weekends, and after work. I got the “dressy” one – the Gear S2 Classic because I wanted to be able to change watch bands, and it looked a little more professional when I’m at work. Let’s see if I still love them in a few months.
About Us
We have five children including 2 sets of twins. Currently ages 7,7,5,2,2. That’s 2 fraternal twin girls, a single boy, followed by 2 identical twin girls. Life After 5 – kids that is, has definitely changed.
I see all these awesome picks of family command centers on Pinterest and am inspired to do the same.
The only problem is their calendars are tiny, at least for my family.
Between the calendars for 2 schools, the library, family birthdays and events, plus whatever classes we’ve managed to enroll the kids into – there is JUST NOT ENOUGH SPACE to enter them all into the calendar.
So I searched, and searched during my lunch hour at work to find something that could work, and stumbled onto… DESK CALENDARS! The size was big. The boxes per day was big. And some even had lines, 5 lines – to separate out my kids activities. Bonus – my refrigerator is the top/bottom one so the top or freezer door fit the calendar perfectly.
The first month – I used regular pens and filled out on the kitchen table.
The second month – I used a sharpie so I could write on the calendar while it was on the freezer door and not have my pen quit working on me.
The third month – I found my system. I used different color fine point sharpie pens so we could color code by kid.
Here’s hoping we get through the rest of the school year.
About Us
We have five children including 2 sets of twins. Currently ages 7,7,5,2,2. That’s 2 fraternal twin girls, a single boy, followed by 2 identical twin girls. Life After 5 – kids that is, has definitely changed.