I have one adolescent girl and four young boys under the age of 13. I had (only) one girl for ten years and compared to the four boys, that was a cake walk. I think moms of multiple boys should be handed some sort of survival guide. I don’t think anyone can be prepared for what comes with having boys – especially four of them. I now understand why the average couple has two children, one boy and one girl; it’s the perfect balance. Once you have more than two children (especially boys) all bets are off and you are outnumbered. Life becomes complete and utter chaos.
Never again will you have a clean house, never. Boys are these dirty little creatures who roll in the dirt, wipe snot on their sleeves and rip every piece of clothing they own. You can forget about trying to have a clean house because they will constantly leave filthy hand marks on every wall in your house and there will not be one square inch of bathroom tile that isn’t covered in pee.
I should also warn you that they begin to conspire against you at a very young age. It was three in the morning, my husband was away. I was awakened to (a bunch of racket) that seemed to be coming from downstairs. At that time, my boys were only four, three, two, and 3 months, so thinking that such loud noises could be from them was the furthest thing from mind. Certainly, the youngest two were too young to get up on their own and head downstairs in the middle of the night. Surely they would be fast asleep…ha!
As I approached the kitchen, I could see that several lights had been turned on, so of course, I was now beginning to freak out! As I looked around the corner, I could see the door of the refrigerator was wide open. What the hell? Who would break in and ransack the refrigerator? I guess that was a sorry sign that our house was lacking anything of real value. Slowly I began to walk closer to the opened refrigerator door, and found three dozen egg cartons of extra large eggs lying on the floor empty. My suspicion escalated. I couldn’t see the TV room from where I was standing, but I was having a series of intense heart palpitations over what I suspected I would find. I could feel my heart begin to pound and I could feel my face getting flaming red. My anger began to boil. I approached the family room to find that there were eggs everywhere!! Thirty six eggs thrown around the entire room. There were broken egg shells covering the floor and egg yolk hanging from every door knob, window sill and light fixture. The look of horror on my face must have scared the crap out of these three little monsters who were standing there starting at me.
Did they understand what they had done? Had their bodies been taken over by aliens during the witching hours? Or did they really have it in for me? I had no idea what I was going to do to even begin to deal with the catastrophe. I was beside myself. If my husband knew what was good for him, he would wait several days before calling or risk a serious backlash. It took everything I could do at that point not to tie the little demons up in the back of the van and deliver them to my husband’s hotel door, where, of course, he was sleeping peacefully and probably had room service delivered the night before.
I was now looking at days, maybe weeks of cleanup from a very unexpected scenario. Who would have ever thought that three tiny boys would begin undermining me at such a young age. I would now have to keep my wits about me and sharpen my survival skills knowing I was completely and dangerously vulnerable to the reality of having four boys under the age of five.
