Things you thought you would never say

I would like your help. I would like comments here with things you found yourself saying as a parent that you thought you never would! I changed my settings so anyone should be able to post.

Comments left may be added to the side bar listing of "Things I never thought I would say!" Can't wait to hear them!

Siblings, Monsters or Friends?

I have discovered what I believe to be the biggest drawback to homeschooling. No, it's not socialization. My kids get to meet, talk to and interact with a lot of people of all ages. No, the problem is too much together time. You know how your kids start to bicker and gripe at each other after a few days of being couped up in the house. After about four days inside with your brothers and sisters, even the kindest children turn into monster children.

They grow three heads, five horns and their eyes turn red. Fire spits out of their mouths. Their heads spin around backwards. Smoke comes out of their ears. Their voices become like fingernails grating down the proverbial chalkboard. They become little monsters just waiting to pounce on the first poor, unsuspecting sibling to breath in their general direction.

Take that image, multiply it by 365 days, 24 hours a day. Increase it by 5 children. Now you have the image of a large homeschool family in the dead of winter. It's not pretty. It's downright ugly.

Yet, despite that, they seem to be inseparable. They are fiercely devoted to one another. When apart for only an hour they run to each other and hug each other. A few years ago the two oldest were going to an overnight at church. The two youngest were going to grandma's house (number five was but an infant and staying with Mom). They were spending less than 24 hours apart, yet you would have thought they were going to be apart for weeks by the way they were hugging each other and saying their good-byes. When the next year came around, the two oldest were again off to church, only to discover that this year instead of sleeping in the separate rooms in the same building, they would be in different buildings! They were visibly upset. "We've never slept in a different building before!" True. At 7 and 8 years old they had not been apart overnight since the second was born. They weren't consoled that Mommy would be staying with the girls and Daddy would be staying with the boys!

The most touching time came when our five year old (then four) ended up in the hospital with pneumonia. The kids were made several visits during the day, going back and forth to grandmas between visits. When bedtime came, they all were upset. Noah, at the hospital, wanted to call and talk to each sibling and during prayer that night prayed for each one. The kids with Daddy at Grandma's house where crying because they missed their brother. It was a time that really showed me how deeply they care for one another. They take for granted that their brothers and sisters will always be near them. I pray that this continues into their adult lives and that they continue to develop a bond that allows them to forever be the closest of friends.

Shop Til You Drop!

Oh how I love Christmas shopping! Well, okay, not really. I wouldn't mind Christmas shopping if it weren't for the having to choose part. I have five children. We don't overly spoil them with things and stuff and yet somehow they have stuff. I mean a lot of stuff. I know single children who have more stuff than my collective five, yet still we have too much stuff.

When you have children ranging from 9 to 2 the real problem is that if you don't already own it, or something much like it, you don't want to own it. The little ones are the hardest to buy for, not because they care at all, simply because we already have it all.

The older children get, the more expensive their requests. You begin to feel the struggle between balancing getting the great, if slightly more expensive, gifts for the older kids and getting the little ones things they want but cost much less. My husband and I don't feel pressured to spend the same dollar amount exactly on each child. We don't even keep very close track. We try to have the same number of items to open and one cool "big" gift. Of course our definition of cool isn't nearly that of others.

I have tried different approaches to getting gifts for the children. I have tried giving each a gift certificate to do something they've been begging to do ( buy Build-A-Bear clothes for their animals). One year I had the great idea to find that thing in our child we want to encourage and buy gifts accordingly. That helped tremendously with gift choosing.

This year, however, I am stuck. Gift buyers block I guess. Part of the problem is that we chose a cool gift for the oldest. Now to match that for the other four. Actually, the two and three year-olds will be excited with anything (if we can find anything we don't already own!), so we just need great, exciting gift ideas for an eight year-old girl and a five year-old boy! Feel free to post suggestions if you have them!

Merry Christmas!