tips for moms with 3+ kids

Having 6 children we have a lot of routine things that we do in our daily life. One of them is distributing the children’s vitamins. As most families, all of our children are very different: one is more outgoing, the other one shy; one gets angry more easily and yells, whereas another one just cries; and when they’re happy, one will jump around and dance, another will start talking full of excitement without stopping….

Anyway one day neither my husband nor I had given out the daily vitamin and it was shortly before everyone was going to bed. Everyone was upstairs running around like crazy, putting the toys away, at the same time putting their pyjamas on, and getting ready to brush their teeth. I was downstairs in the kitchen cleaning up the dishes from dinner….all of a sudden my little girl Ginger appears, silent like a mouse, standing next to me…. and in an extremely soft and quiet voice says very confidently but carefully: “Mama, you forgot the vitamins…you can give them to me …I can give them to everyone…” She opened her tiny hand as big as she could, cupping it, as I dropped the vitamins one by one in her hand. Her whole face lit up like a firefly, you could almost hear her giggling for confidence inside, that she finally had conquered her “thing to be in charge of” in a family of eight!

Sure enough..next night…same time and place… there she stood looking up to me and now in a more demanding but in the same quiet reserved tone of voice said, “Mama..you know …the vitamins please…”, and then as soon as her little hand was filled, “..thanks mama”, and off she was…like a little deer, running back upstairs to the rest of the gang. I feel really proud of her for, eventhough she is the least outspoken and most easy-going of all the children, seeing and snatching an (open) opportunity (they are sometimes hard to come by in a family of eight) and then declaring it hers.

Naturally, the third night I had 4 of the 6 children (those who are able to stand and speak at the same time) standing in the kitchen asking if they could be the “vitamin person”…I said no it’s Ginger’s job… the boys heard the word “job” and left the room immediately, but my older daughter, the more outspoken one, persistently asked “well what can I do?” and almost simultaneously, hardly giving me the time to answer her, offers her expertise in “making the baby bed”. After thinking it over for like a milli-second, I replied “oh great idea!” and she ran off elated to the baby’s room.

I just thought to myself “I can’t believe that just worked and it wasn’t even my idea”.