One of our apples trees is blooming, full and frothy, it’s young twiggy branches positively over-whelmed with blossoms.  It’s mate has buds only just beginning to unfurl.  A bit of wool in every form, a good weekend!  Our neighbor watched 4/5 of the children so that Steve and I could celebrate our anniversary.  I somehow thought that we might be able to capture some of that feeling of deep relaxation that we cultivated while we were away last year…silly, silly girl that I am.  A whole series of events lead to me not even being dressed when our neighbor showed up, much less “prettied up” (that part never happened at all) and at that very moment, the baby spit up all over the outfit I had just managed to contort her wriggly self into.  Right.  I often try to channel that relaxed, earth-mama, go-with-the-flow vibe and maybe even sometimes succeed.  But I’m pretty sure there was a point during this particular day when I was chanting, “just try not to cry, just try not to cry” over and over again in my head.  I knitted a bit in the car to calm my nerves.  Which really only lasted a few minutes, because as it turns out this sweet little violet, who doesn’t care for the car, but will mostly tolerate it when she can see four sibling’s faces chatting with and soothing her, gets outright incensed when trapped in the torture device known as a car seat all by herself. Thus I ended up in the backseat of the van much of the time, in an effort to sooth tiny human rage.  Very romantic.  That’s not a fair or accurate assessment actually.  She was lonely and probably scared, poor darling.  And contrary to how this all sounds, I didn’t mind a bit that she needed me, nor did the papa.  It’s just a stark contrast to relaxed, laid back, carefree!  We really had a very nice time, it just took so much more effort, you know?  Everything, but everything does these days.  I can see how it might be really easy for some folks to get over-whelmed and caught up in the hard parts to the point of letting it all over-shadow the joyous parts.  I think of the people who look at large families with a gasp, a shudder and a shake of the head and figure that it would just tip their scales too much, everyone has their breaking point.  Mostly I think you just have to shake it off, laugh and move on, kind of like getting peed on for the second time that day….these things happen!

Is it totally wrong that I derive so much amusement from complete strangers reactions to our family?  It isn’t even our family that they are reacting to, just the idea of a certain number.  After Mairi was born I used to joke that having four kids is like sneezing in public, people say “God bless you” a lot…but that’s rarely what they actually mean.  It’s not “God bless you” as in may God’s blessings be upon you and your lovely family (except on rare occasion), but “God bless you” as in “heaven help you!  better you than I, you crazy woman!” followed by the speaker turning and high-tailing it out of our presence, lest I try to foist an extra kid off on them.  Also an inordinate number of people would bring up “that Duggar family” and ask if we knew about them.  After the third or fourth person to comment along these lines I finally had to go home and look them up, because no, I didn’t know.  Yup 4 kids, 19 kids, that’s pretty much the same thing…at least if you can’t do simple math.  Have you seen this really funny stand up bit on life with four children?  Hilarious.  I actually thought people’s reactions would be much worse with 5, but it seems to kind of leave them bewildered and speechless.

Some of the funniest interactions are when strangers glimpse me alone with just the babe and deem it prudent to warn me about the future.  “She may be cute now, but just you wait, heh, heh…” with a knowing shake of the head.  They really don’t know how to handle the conversation once they discover that she is our fifth child, from teenager on down, and that I still enjoy the company of each and every one of them.  Why is it that in our society it’s generally accepted that you are supposed to be at constant odds with your children as they age?  That is until they finally become adults and are therefore “reasonable” and (possibly) pleasant to be around again, or at least tolerable, at which point you are supposed to like them again.   So strange.