I’m 30 weeks pregnant with our 7th child. We always know we want babies. We marvel at people who can decide to end their baby making days. It’s never been a strength of ours…hence #7. People have told me they “just knew they were done…”. Well, I think I might be there. And I think Chris might also be there. It’s little things, like not being able to bend over comfortably, again. Not having tons of energy. Doing the math and realizing we’ll be “the old parents” at some sporting event or choral concert. It’s reconfiguring bedrooms, again. It’s the unsettled feeling of the imminent arrival of another person to be fully and completely and utterly bound to and responsible for for yet another 18 years. It’s having to dismiss the older kids to care for the much needier baby in the family. I like to think of our family as the greatest piece of art that Chris and I have or will ever collectively participate in creating, and THAT helps all these other emotional and physical hiccups pale in comparison to the greater picture. All that being said…

Here we are, week 8 or something of this slower pace of life. Quarantine would be wearing on us much harder if we weren’t enjoying the changing seasons and planting a garden and housing illegal chickens and generally making home our primary focus. Little known fact, I have spent the last 18 months digging myself out of credit card debt. How did it happen? Easy. Real easy. Christmases, small business ideas that didn’t pan out, home projects, NEW BABIES!, retail therapy, and a general mindset that “at some point I won’t be the one bound to the home and I’ll figure out how to make some cash and I’ll change my financial landscape…”. That mindset was fine, for years and years and years, but eventually you just want the mail to stop bringing bad news and you want to know what it might feel like to breath a deep, free breath!
So I’m happy to announce that while the school year brings some minor setbacks in my ability to do “gig work” (“I’ll be back in 20 minutes…I have to deliver a burrito 2 miles away for 8 bucks…”) because my ultra responsible twin teenagers are busy, quarantine has been this alternate dimension of “gig work” busy-ness and overpayment. I was able to cram about 6 months of debt payoff into the last 8 weeks. I’m 1 week from complete financial freedom and I’ve thought long an hard about what I might do with my time and energy after next week. While I still fully intend to continue to pay our van payment every month, I can cut back to about 10% of my current work load to meet that monthly goal.
So I’m pretty excited to take some 3rd trimester walks and read all the books I always read that get me all psyched up to push a human out of my body sans drugs and medical intervention. For me it really is a mindset that takes a few months to build up to.  So, I’ll be eating bonbons and reading Childbirth Without Fear and Spiritual Midwifery and the like and just enjoying the last 2 months of what is really feeling like the last pregnancy I’ll know in this life. A true privilege.
But in the meantime, I also couldn’t help but think about the funnest part of every pregnancy for me (besides the baby I get to have at the end!) and at the risk of sounding go like a shallow person who doesn’t have any “real interests”, I have to admit that I absolutely LOVE to dress the bump. While thrift stores have been LOCKED DOWN, I did go on a wild thrifting rampage sometime back in February, before we took an early March trip to Florida. I stocked up on items to experiment with and skirts that seemed forgiving enough to stretch over a basketball and I’ve supplemented from Poshmark and EBay here and there as my thrifting itch gets too great and I just feel bored with my pregnancy options. I never used to think fashion could be a hobby, and maybe it isn’t…but I know I’m not the only gal perusing Pinterest and instagram strictly because I love to see fabrics arranged “just so” over a human figure. Plus, it has to be the funnest way to forget that the world seems a little impossible to navigate right now.
In other news, I am currently hosting one fabulous Krouse lady! Iris and I have waited 14 years for this. I kind of thought what better way to celebrate the life of our second little lady (among the testosterone of the 5 boys) than to spend the next 10 weeks using this magical space I have on the internet to document the fabulous pregnancy outfits I scrape together with a tiny girl tucked in my kangaroo pocket. Maybe my daughters with be marine biologists and forest rangers (I can almost guarantee Iris has that destiny ahead) and they’ll think I was a silly woman for having so much fun getting dressed while I was pregnant, but ultimately I want to inspire them to invest in what brings them joy, the thing that lights their fire. So whether it be veterinary science or astronomy or fashion design or music theory or delivering burritos, I hope they know that they have been an inspiration to me and I want them to follow their hearts.

October, 2012.

My birth month. My husband and I are bidding our marriage counselor farewell on the steps of the counseling establishment…not necessarily because we are “healed and whole” but more because the non profit organization was out of money and they were closing their doors. Pam the Therapist, who took us most of our 8 years of marriage to find, didn’t have a new job lined up and her life seemed more unsure than even our marriage. But if I’m honest, I felt pretty good. We had dealt with a lot of nitty gritty bits and pieces and the act of keeping a therapy appointment at all can be very therapeutic in itself.

Since I met my husband when I was 14 years old, we both knew there were going to be some differences in nearly every aspect of our lives. You never know how thats going to look 15 years down the road, but you try to bank on this dynamite bond you have going on and forget the rest till it rears it’s head. The bottom line is that I was raised in a broken home with daily substance abuse and domestic violence and the court system making all the families decisions for us. My parents did the best that they knew how to for myself and my four brothers. They had all their own sets of hurt and disfunction that shaped their lives and decisions. I once read that it would be foolish to expect to have received from our parent something that they didn’t actually possess themselves.  They cant possibly give what they do not have.  The best part of my childhood…the silver lining in it all…was simply that comic relief wasn’t an option, it was necessity. I have learned more from laughing at my life than I ever will trying to make sense of it all. Despite their more prominent personality traits, my parents are some of the funniest people Ive ever known. As weird as it sounds, it kept things feeling sane…when they clearly weren’t. And when you couldn’t laugh anymore, you could always cry. We are a strongly emotive family.

My husband however, has a Brethren Pastor for a father and a nurse for a mother. Loving, normal people. 3 brothers. All with gobs of their own inherent human dysfunction, but not nearly as announced or quite as life altering as my own families’. Trust me, if everyone were raised the way Christian Philip Emanuel Krouse was, the world would be a better place. Less hearts all out there on sleeves to be certain. That’s not reality though.

So you’re up to speed on who and when and where. One of the main things I had been working with my therapist on was setting up safe boundaries. A family like mine didn’t have use of a word like “boundaries”. I don’t know if they use that word anywhere but in America. Especially not with family. I don’t picture a hut dwelling family in Uganda confronting each other when someone goes all “boundary buster” on someone else. No room for boundaries when survival is the primary goal. But as an adult lady with four children and a husband, the thought of having more control over who and what I let effect me emotionally sounded nice.

So naturally, I was in the midst of a boundary enforced period with my father as counseling came to an end. I will always be my father’s daughter. I will always crave his approval and his adoration. But I was starting to realize it was at the expense of some of my morals. Over the past several months he had done a few off color things…just things that sent up red flags, mostly involving substance around my children and being a silly girl and imagining I had all the time in the world to decide how and when (or maybe never) to address this…we just weren’t talking. Maybe 2 months went by…he might have called…I didn’t return the call…mostly cause I didn’t want to say the things I needed to say. Everything I had to say seemed so “therapy verbiage” and I couldn’t picture it going well. So I avoided it. He lived 6 hours away at the time so it wasn’t too hard to make that happen.

At the close of October though, my family was in crisis and my father was making the trip down from Connecticut to help undo some things that were done. The young, codependent girl inside of me felt the need to at least offer a positive word or affirming nod while the family went through a hard time. I remember his voice on the message he left me, when he returned my call. With all that was going on, he sounded so happy to hear from me. He always called me his sunshine. Told me I could brighten anyones day. Maybe it was only true for him, but thats all a daughter really needs. When we finally made a connection, nothing went as planned. By the time I spoke to him he had already spoken with my mother, who he has been civil with on and off since their divorce in my teen years. That clearly didn’t go well and I got to hear all about it. Hindsight wished I had remained silent. A statue. But that blubbering, over emotive young girl had turned into a woman and I’ll be damned she was a woman who had received some therapy and if there was one thing that she knew, it was that there was a boundary being busted RIGHT NOW! I tried to calmly say,”Dad, the same way i don’t like to hear mom say terrible things about you, I also don’t like to hear you say awful things about her. She is my mother.” Well, I don’t think he wanted to hear that. Things became heated and I ended up saying everything I have ever needed to say to him. “SO HOW WAS YOUR HABIT OF GOING AWAY TO JAIL EVERY FEW YEARS NOT A MAJOR FACTOR IN THE OUTCOME OF THIS FAMILY! HOW WAS THE ABUSE, VERBAL AND PHYSICAL, NOT A FACTOR! TELL ME AGAIN HOW THE SHIT STORM THAT THIS FAMILY FACES ISNT YOUR FAULT!!” Thats the condensed, edited version. It was two days before my birthday. He told me as far as he was concerned i was no longer his daughter and that I was dead to him. I ended the conversation telling him that I loved him but couldn’t stand to listen to the lies he tells himself any longer. That was all. It was the worst phone conversation of my entire life. To add insult to injury, he died within the week.

What followed this event, aside from instant shock and trauma, was months of feeling like a hollow version of my former self. A shell, in place of what had been a breathing, thriving life force…going thru the daily motions of a life that i recognized but somehow felt removed from now. Grief. Some have known it well, I had never known it before this point and I never imagined it could carry this amount of weight. The circumstances seemed like the worst imaginable. I have had so many wonderful, heartfelt moments with my father. Why did his life have to end this way? Why so suddenly and with such a harsh last interaction? My first reaction was disbelief. In the days that followed our last conversation, I felt hopeful. I imagined that we would move past this and have a better understanding of one another and what we each needed and wanted from the relationship. Looking back I realize that sounds like the most perfect therapy session the world of psychology has ever known and it most likely wasn’t a realistic outcome. Maybe he would have lived for years more and we would have remained stubborn and mute to one another. Theres no telling. But I never would have guessed he was suffering from a blood infection that was slowly shutting parts of his body down and that even in months leading up to his death maybe he wasn’t in his right mind as this thing took over and altered every bit of his life.

Fast forward to December…nearly a month after his passing. “It’s the most wonderful time of the year!” Yea, that song…and every other Christmas song playing thru the Farmers Market could just shut the hell up for all I cared. Thankfully I did still have my vintage clothing boutique I operated 3 days a week to keep my mind from turning on itself. My children had become more of a burden than the usual source of joy they had previously been. I was so inside my head and it wasn’t anything they could begin to understand. I tried to hide when I felt the need to cry softly…or not softly. Chris became more of a roommate than a husband. Chris had had trouble respecting my father for most of their relationship…never openly disrespecting him, but as my protector I understood that Chris couldn’t respect the jeopardy that my fathers choices had always seemed to put his entire family in. Chris is a truly responsible, honorable gentleman. My gift from God. My dad was probably more like Chris’ opposite. They had a lot of beautiful moments together, throwing back a few beers, seeing eye to eye about world issues…but they also had there differences that most often remained an unspoken understanding. For whatever reason, Chris was not the person I felt like mourning with. Even his embrace became void of feeling to me. We spent the next several weeks sharing the household duties while we all suffered through the worst cold and flu season our family…or maybe any family in the history of families had ever seen. My hours at market became a much needed break. The high point of each passing week. I enjoyed my interactions with other adults. While I do struggle with some mild social anxiety (mostly when I’m around large groups of people) I can be quite a conversationalist in the one on one department. I enjoy talking to people. People’s stories have always fascinated me…and that Farmer’s Market was full of stories. I am also a strong verbal communicator (strong isn’t necessarily good) and at times, to avoid the awkwardness of the conversational silence, I’ve been known to nervously fill the air with the sound of my own voice. I’m getting better at that…being ok with those silences. But at this time in the history of Autumn…I was a bit of a mess. I probably didn’t belong anywhere near the public, much less trying to run a business. So naturally I end up finding a listening ear in a mutual friend of Chris and I who frequented market…and wait for it…he was MALE! Thus begins the most scandalous two weeks of my life. I sat at a public bar maybe 5 times with this male…all 5 times with my husbands knowledge…I drank wine and cried too much and then he would make sure I made it home safely. Looking back I realize I probably coulda just used a girlfriend who’s husband was as awesome as mine and let her out of the house once in a while to hang out. This fella became the distraction I was looking for. Morals weren’t an issue for me at this point. When people drop dead, good and bad quit making sense. There was part of me that loved that people will judge what they don’t understand. I have been with one man my whole life. I have only known him…and my four brothers with any level of closeness. I know a professional would have called my situation a brief emotional affair…that most likely could have ended in an actual affair. Ouch. Not what I was going for and while I wish for your sake that I had a spicier story to tell…i don’t. A concerned family member who we’ll just call “The Hero” became aware of the situation because I didn’t feel any level of guilt and spoke openly about it and this person used it as an opportunity to point out the error of my way and far from gently point me back in the direction of righteousness. But it felt more like I was a kid in a sand box with a bunch of sand in my eyes and someone was offering me a moist towelette…that was covered in sand. Basically I realized this person has always had a few things to say to me and they chose to use the time after the traumatic death of my father and the rocky emotional storm there afterward to say all those things. Really quite refreshing. Like a fart in an elevator. It wasn’t fair to my husband that instead of turning to him to cry with I felt like going elsewhere. But I cant say I had a copy of the rule book on hand…and if I did, I probably wasn’t going to read it. So there it is. Thats as bad as this story gets. Naturally I ruined any friendship my husband or I had with the male friend…things became so awkwardly blown out of proportion that there was no salvaging it. Those were the consequences of my actions. I regret this fully. Chris seemed to take none of this personally and was as forgiving and understanding as you could ever imagine. He knew I was dealing with things beyond what he or I understood. Though his forgiveness and acceptance was evident, i remained distant. Something about my internal makeup keeps self rejection constantly appealing. Kind of like if he wasn’t willing to punish me, I’d just punish myself. The next week at market wasn’t easy. Just pushing past it all.

Enter Donald, the elderly veteran who comes into market everyday and minus the film of dirt over his entire person and the spittle that is constantly collected at the corners of his mouth, he’s actually quite charming. He is never without cap with a feather, a tie with tie clip and a dapper vest. A complete look. He approaches my stand once per market day, fully hunched over and recites his daily speech. “Good morning Autumn. You’re looking very nice today. I wish I had my paint and easel, I would paint you. We need to take you to Enola, to modeling school. Yes, we do.”(cause I hear all the big time models are straight outta Enola?) I always banter with him, tell him I’m too old to get mixed up in that racket and he says “Never too old!” and we chuckle and he moves on. It really is the same thing…every time i see him. He has only broken character three times. Once he approached me and looked at the veins on my arm and said “You have thick blood. You need to drink more red wine.” I had no problem adhering to his advice. The second time was right after my father passed. He simply approached me and said “Autumn, when I heard that your father passed I was very sorry.” I thanked him. The third and final time that he broke free of his rehearsed and somewhat autistic performance was the week after this whole mess. I was feeling low. I didn’t want to be around humans. I certainly didn’t want to participate in the rehearsed comradery that was expected of me. Donald approaches. I force a smile. “Hi Donald.” Without any of the normal chatter he simply looks at me and states, “Your husband loves you with a great passion. Yes he does. He loves you very deeply.” It must have seemed as though I was looking straight through him when the tears began to course my cheeks. He was telling me the truth. How had I gotten so out of touch with the man that loved me enough to bear thru the torrent that was a lifetime of pain and hurt and fear and confusion and compulsive behavior and aggressive self depreciation and over emotive, over communicating all wrapped up into one female. In that moment I realized that my husband is the only man who has ever truly seen me. He has seen things that even I don’t know are there. At some of my lowest points I have envisioned Chris married to some nice church raised girl who just loves to knit and scrapbook and never raises her voice and in this vision all of his dreams have come true because she doesn’t speak up or hinder him. Then I remember that he didn’t fall in love with that kind of girl because that isn’t the kind of girl he wants. He wants ME. Wether I’m a mess or not, he loves me. And I realized that a man’s passion isn’t going to look erotic or impulsive. My husband loving me passionately and deeply looks a lot more like him doing a job he doesn’t necessarily love to provide for his family. It looks like him reading books to our children on the couch when I’m too tired to keep my eyes open any longer. His passion looks like a foot rub. It looks like his silhouette in the kitchen window while he does the dishes after supper. His passion looks like holding my hand while we drive a van full of children to go get ice cream. His passion looks like folding laundry together while we watch a show after the kids are in bed. How has it taken me 10 years to realize, to accept, that I am his passion.

The months that followed weren’t among our finest, but we learned lots.  Death forces a teaching of appreciation.  It prompts an unstoppable recognition of what can be lost…and when.  Which is right now.  It, that, her, him…could be gone.  Forever.  I think my father passing and my brief emotional affair got me thinking.  If what everyone said was true and i had let that thing run its course, I would have lost Chris.  It woudln’t have been a question of him or his forgiveness.  It would have been my own bitter spirit that rears its head and turns on me and anyone around.  My inability to forgive myself would have been our end.  My father once told me that the true tradgedy in a premature death is the cutting short of the entire process of learning from mistakes and getting to try again and experiencing getting it right.  Growing old offers a grace to us. The grace of perspective and the grace of time and even the grace of being able to make things right.  Dad, I know we would have made it right.

I believe that our adult notions concerning birthdays are largely shaped by our childhood birthday experiences. I come from a family of 5 siblings. My mother had a tendency to bend over backward to make our birthdays nice, oftentimes to the point of adding undue stress to everyone’s lives. My father was her equal opposite. While he was always a solid with a $50 dollar bill on your B-day, I also distinctly remember him informing me that birthdays are like assholes. Everybody has one. I fall somewhere in the middle, which isn’t necessarily a good thing.
Micah’s birthday, May 27th, always falls on one of the busiest weekends of the year. Memorial Day Weekend. Baseball games, parades, picnics, camping. It’s been 10 years, you would think that we would have this figured out by now, but Chris and I pride ourselves on our ability to learn at our own pace…which is apparently rather slowly.
In preparation for Micah’s birthday, I had been probing Chris about gift ideas. Topping last year would be difficult considering we got him the exact 4 items that he asked for despite the fact that we couldn’t afford it. With Chris finishing up nursing school and cutting back on work we are trying to stick to a budget. Knowing that I have a tendency to jump on Amazon and make people’s birthday dreams come true to the demise of our one income budget, Chris was spearheading the gifts this year.
The week before the birthday we pull up to one of Flynn’s (12) baseball games. I remain seated while I decide what to do with multiple sleeping people in the suburban. Chris looks at his phone a moment and then proceeds to get out of the vehicle and approach a car that I don’t recognize. I watch from a distance while Chris performs a shady (not actually that shady, but creative license…) Facebook yardsale Rollerblade transaction. I was slightly impressed. Until I saw them. I know I don’t have to explain to any other moms out there the “constant awareness of the size of your boy’s goon feet” phenomenon. You are the first one to be alerted when shoes are too small and you are constantly on the hunt for future shoes at a decent price because they will most likely be disintegrated under the consistent pressurized force of BOYHOOD! So, really nice rollerblades, definitely too small. Chris argued me on the topic right up until Micah discovered them prematurely in Chris’ vehicle and tried them on. I was right. Insert Micah’s light disappointment [HERE].
I again pressured Chris to just let me have my way with the gifting. He insisted that he had another surprise up his sleeve. And that he did.
Saturday the 26th, the day before Micah’s actual birthday, Chris had all 6 kids while I worked my 5 hours a week at The Square Antiques in Schaefferstown. (This can affectionately be referred to as my weekly vacation.) Being the fabulous dad that he is, he took everyone to the Annville Memorial Day Parade. Afterward, they went and intercepted a gas powered scooter that was once again acquired in some type of backwoods trade. Some old scaffolding for a running motor scooter from a friend. I am falling more in love with my husband with every word I write. He called me at work to let me know it was done. The BIRTHDAY HAPPINESS had arrived! Chris told me the boys were all taking turns and Micah was thrilled. They were presently at our friends’ recreational camp land where we keep a camper parked year round. Multitudes of kids enjoying Micah’s birthday gift with him. My only regret was having not been there to see that initial joy.
I went home after work to prepare Micah’s favorite dessert. Dirt Pudding with gummy worms and flowers galore. When I arrived at camp I was surprised to find that there were no smiles. No birthday happiness. The scooter broke after only an hour. Insert Micah’s immense disappointment [HERE].
“Welp, this Dirt Pudding better be pretty fantastic, cause that’s it!” My words to Chris as I became almost as disappointed as Micah at the sudden turn of events. I softly cried in our camper while Chris and I did a crappy job of spooning dirt pudding into 30 plastic cups. Micah put on a brave face for the next 18 hours (no he didn’t, if he wasn’t sleeping he was frowning) until we left camp with the intention to go home, clean ourselves up and SALVAGE MICAH’S BIRTHDAY!
I think we are finally to the point in our child rearing that we recognize that for every “birthday budget”, there needs to also be an “emergency birthday disaster budget” for when every single thing we planned has tanked hard.
We headed to the Batdorf where Micah spilled and broke not ONE but TWO glasses of root beer. #1 reason our kids only drink water when we eat at restaurants, but it was the birthday salvage! SODA ALL AROUND! Poor Micah. You know when you look at your kid cause you’re like “Are you even kidding?!” but then you can see on their face that they are not, in fact, kidding and they did have two horrific accidental spills in a row. After the second root beer incident Flynn looked at me and said, “I feel like I’m on a roller coaster that I’m really scared to be on right now…like…in my stomach.” Welcome to my life Flynn. After our nerves settled, Micah was presented with a substantial dessert and the combined melodies of the Batdorf staff and his family singing Happy Birthday before we were off to Harrisburg to the trampoline park where we finished the evening with high spirits.
The next day we attended the Lebanon Memorial Day Parade. Micah is a parade enthusiast, so I do feel quite strongly that his birth on this particular holiday weekend was no coincidence. We watched Owen (7) and Flynn walk with their baseball teams in the parade and afterward headed in the direction of my in-laws home in Maryland. We needed to retrieve our daughter Iris (12) who had attended a wedding and was absent from all birthday festivities. My in-laws always make our children feel very special on their birthdays. A cookout, a cake, a gift. They are consistently a source of birthday joy for our kids and it’s nice to know that if we really blow it, hopefully, the grandparents can pick up the slack.
After blowing out his candles Micah was presented with a very large box. He was so excited to tear through the paper. There they were. Some REALLY NICE ROLLERBLADES! Having heard about the rollerblade debacle, my father-in-law went the extra mile and got him a pair from a real store! Once again though, while I watched him pull them from the box, I laid my eyes on them and knew they were too small. Not a big deal, because at least they could be exchanged with the receipt. I, however, couldn’t watch Micah go through one more light disappointment. I went to the bathroom for a moment. When I reemerged I heard Chris say, “OOOO, a women’s size 7.” Micah still left with a smile on his face, knowing we would be taking him to the sporting goods store to exchange his really nice women’s roller blades for a pair of really nice men’s roller blades. And we did, the next evening.
I guess Micah’s birthday has helped to re-shape my idea of “birthdays”. Going forward I believe that Krouse children need to fully expect their birthday to be the single most character building day of their year. While we, your parents will never intentionally fill the day with disappointment, awkward moments and broken gifts, we also admit that we just can’t make any promises. We had you and we’ve kept you around this long so surely you must know our great love for you, but we don’t do well under pressure so please forgive us for all of your past, present and future birthdays.

Max is 3. He is such an awesome kid. Almost always cheerful. A really upbeat little guy, crazy about baseball and bunnies and his older brothers. It is also my secret pleasure to watch him enjoy and play with his 1 year old baby brother. I watch him live a life torn in two directions. One direction pulling him towards his wild older brothers and their dangerous antics. Laying on skateboards and bombing the neighboring parking lot. The other direction, Thomas trains and board books with little Noah.

As most parents can relate, I too have lamented the expediency with which these kids transform into opinionated, strong, smart roommates. They have big ideas and even bigger mouths. While I would love to cuddle these dependents for eternity, I comfort myself with the remembrance of what a tragedy it would be if you actually had to live through that. Your child never maturing, never growing, never learning. It would be the worst thing that could probably happen to a child, short of their life ending prematurely. So after I get sad that my kids are all growing up, and then get even sadder at the thought of getting my wish and them staying little forever, I snap out of it and remember to embrace the RIGHT NOW.

Writing is the most efficient way I know to slow down enough to breath in the moment. It gives me time to think about it, cry about it, laugh about it and move forward…having squeezed every drop out of the fruit of the moment.

Max is one of my first recruits of the day. Every morning I recognize his one-foot-at-a-time steps down the stairs. Some mornings he has obviously come down too early and he has a fog of grump about him. Other days he meets the day with so much enthusiasm it’s hard to contain my own enthusiasm at being able to experience life with him. One thing remains consistent. His bathroom habits, of which I am fully involved.

It matters not what I am doing when he feels the urge. I drop what I’m doing and make his bathroom success my mission, because what mom is ever excited about cleaning up bathroom messes when you get your priorities wrong and neglect to get that toddler where they need to be, when they need to be there?? No mom. Moms whole days are wrecked by urine and feces all over the planet, all the time.

As a way of keeping myself sane during the madness that can be the combination of egg on my hands while a baby cries while a 12 year old asks me a question while a husband wants to know where the hot sauce is while a 10 year old wants an IPhone unlocked WHILE a toddler asserts “I GOTTA GO PEE!” I’ve taken to providing a short little monologue that goes something like “Well you’re in luck! Cause we have a toilet here! Let me help you.” Max let’s an amused little smile creep across his face. I accompany him to our 2 year old “closet bathroom”, the one we put in when we realized it was necessary for our survival as a group. I proceed to tell Max the tales of all the potty trainers before him who had to go THE WHOLE WAY UPSTAIRS to use the bathroom. I express, “You’re so lucky, this is a special bathroom.” I also recognize how luck I am, being the mom who had to run up the stairs all those years to assist bathroom participants. Max listens intently while he finishes up and I help him hop down from the potty.

Naturally the suggestion of a stool in the bathroom has been explored, but I’ve always found that bathroom stools lend a warm welcome to the sink meddling toddler. It’s gone quite badly more than one time.

This morning Max came down in his usual pleasant mood. He milled around a bit. I let him know I needed some help making pancakes. “YESSS!” He was happy to oblige. He softly mentions, “I gotta go pee.”

“Well you’re in luck…” I begin.

“No. I can do it mom.”

“What!?” I follow him and watch while he drops his gym shorts and scoots his bottom up and back on the toilet seat.

“You’re a big boy!?” He is all smiles while I marvel at his mastery.

This is a happy story of my beautiful son growing and learning and maturing. Here’s the sad part.

This morning before I left for my 5 hour a week job Max approached me with his little lace up Chuck Taylor sneakers. He owns other shoes but he prefers these ones. I had already put them on his feet an hour earlier. I was trying to finish making pancakes for the other kids and I was frustrated that Chris had to work today and we are basically doing shifts with the kids today rather than going to the beach or the pool or Hershey Park. We’re just working to try to dig ourselves out of credit card debt and get him through nursing school and afford some homeschool curriculum and pay the mortgage. These are the stresses that kids don’t know about. They can’t know until they are living it. I became irritated with Max and his “shoes-on-shoes-off-shoes-back-on” habit. I told him to go find someone else to help him this time. I asked 12 year old Flynn to assist him since I was making him breakfast. I watched while Flynn fed off of my irritation and treated Max like a nuisance. “If you take these off again you’re gonna have to find other shoes to wear. Ones that you can put on..”. What did I expect. It broke my heart. I taught Flynn that Max needing our constant help with his shoes is cause for annoyance. I vowed this morning, as I rushed out the door, to redeem the shoe experience with Max.

At the end of the day, helping Max to the bathroom is slightly annoying…when I’m in the middle of 10 other things, but I made a point of turning it into a fun experience. And now it’s over. I can never go back and Re help him to the potty, because he can do it all by himself. At the rate time is flying, I’ll wake up tomorrow and he’ll be able to tie his own shoes. He’ll never need my help again and he’ll have a memory of his annoyed mom fumbling with his laces while he watched her furrowed brow with sadness on his face.

Being the mom to 6 kids is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I’m not a fan of beating myself up but I recognize that without some clear self reflection we can end up somewhere someday and not realize how we got there. I don’t want my kids to remember this stressed out lady that was “in charge”. Today when I get done with work I’m gonna slow down and enjoy my kids. Cause life’s too short to act like there’s not enough time for what’s important.

I’m in the kitchen, cooking for an impending camping trip. Owen (7) is helping tidy up the kitchen. Max (3) is growling and chewing a giant chunk of an everything bagel. I look up from my work to see Flynn (12) rubbing his twin sisters’ feet in the living room. A few moments later I see they have switched and Iris is now massaging his feet. A civilized foot massage exchange. Micah (10) has mentioned to me twice in the last 24 hours that he believes that he has poison ivy. He showed me a red area on his ankle. I made the connection, “He has poison ivy…again…” But then something more pressing than the beginning of our summer-long battle to keep this old familiar rash at bay came up, and I was immediately distracted.

I only remembered his freshly brewing poison ivy later that day when I heard him shout from upstairs,

“So Flynn, do I wash it all off now?”

I then listened as Flynn directed Micah in how to use one of the many poison ivy washes that we offer here at The Krouse Family Poison Ivy Survivors Clinic. No joke. We get it in all the places you “hear about someone getting it..” The eyes, inside the nose, in the ears… and other places. I have some pretty gnarly photos of Flynn and Micah from 2 years ago…and I purposely lost Chris’ “Quasimodo picture,” from the episode when one entire side of his face swelled up to 3 times its size resulting in an oozing slit for an eye. Special times. You wanna know what a batch of poison like that does to a marriage? Abstinence. That’s all. Firm, unspoken, automatically assumed abstinence.

As Flynn bestowed his well-earned poison ivy first aid expertise on his younger brother, it was one of those “failed as a mother while succeeding as a parent” kinda moments. I knew that a less distracted, more caring mother probably would have taken the time to assess, diagnose and treat the child’s condition more adequately. But the parent in me has somehow helped to shape people that are smart enough to care for themselves and still other people who are willing to assist those in need.

Still later that evening, Noah (1) on my hip…my time in the kitchen has not yet ended. Micah hollers from upstairs,

“MOM! Max is bleeding!!” I march to the bottom of the steps, all senses heightened.

“What? Why isn’t he crying?”, I’m more worried than my tone implies.

“I don’t know!” Micah also sounds worried.

“Can I see him…can he come here?”

Micah disappears from the top of the steps,

“Max, come here…mom wants you to go to her…”

I am waiting to look up and behold the bloody toddler.

“Oh wait.” Micah reappears at the top of the staircase, a goofy look of complete relief has washed over his face.

“Sorry, mom. It’s just sauce or something.”

Of course, it’s just sauce. That changes everything. You know what it doesn’t change though? The very real stress that I still had to live through in the 60 seconds it took to discover that it was “just sauce.”

I felt some level of satisfaction that Micah got to live through it with me. He just experienced what most every parenting moment feels like all the time. Most days for me feel like a series of events that possibly include blood but end up only being a smear of some kind of sauce. Moments of screwing up so bad as a parent that I’m sure that no one involved is going to be ok… and then I get to see a glimpse of their sweet hearts, and I’m just glad to be a part of it.

Lately, I’ve realized that I will never be afforded the luxury of feeling like I have it all together or that I’m doing a great job all the time. Most of the children are usually lightly dirty because I couldn’t find 1 of my 10 packages of wet wipes when I left the house, and if you want to know if that’s me and my kids eating a Mexican casserole on a blanket at a little league baseball game with a bunny and a guinea pig, Yes. And it probably isn’t going to end well. But we can all sleep easy knowing it’s just sauce and not blood.