Some days with kids are wonderful. They need only 1-2 reminders of as assigned task, less than one plate of food gets dropped on the floor, you manage to get the dishwasher unloaded before 6pm and the number of dirty diapers is able to be counted on one hand. And then there are days that by 10am everyone in your house is either:

Which in turn makes me:

So a few weeks ago, when these exact gifs were my reality, I decided we all needed a do-over. I kept the baby with me but everyone else had to go upstairs, get in bed and wait for me to call them down. Besides not having breakfast for a second time, we pretended that the second wakeup was our first of the day. I only had them go upstairs for two minutes but that was enough time for them to take a breather and for me to gather my thoughts and decide to make the day better.

I said my usual “bom dia” and as they came downstairs and asked them what kind of day we were going to have. I kept asking until I got a loud and excited, “GOOD DAY!!” answer with smiles across all of our faces. From there we went directly outside and stayed out until it was time to get lunch ready. There were, of course, still some issues outside with sharing toys and making sure the littlest ones didn’t eat chalk, but that hour and a half outside was a perfect way to restart our morning.

So, from this epically crazy morning, the thing I’ve learned is: just because they day has already begun, doesn’t mean you can’t begin again.

You feel better, your kids feel better and it’s much easier to make it to nap time knowing you aren’t counting down the seconds until then.

When L was 4 she got head lice **Correction: when L was 4 AND 6 😭**. We still don’t know who she got it from since no one from daycare or school had it but whatever; it happened. And thankfully it happened AFTER we donated 10 inches of her hair 🙌🙌🙌 And after what seemed like weeks of treating the hair and combing out every little section so we couldn’t even see dandruff, it was gone.

Since then we have tried to do a few things that can hopefully help prevent this in the future (although, I ain’t stupid. I know there is a good chance it will happen again).

1. Tea tree oil – upon permission from our doctor (always super important to do that before starting anything new, even if it is a natural product) we began putting one drop of tea tree oil in her shampoo every couple of weeks. This is supposed to act as a repellent should she be in a situation where she is exposed. We started this a bit with R, too, but E, M and G are too little for the oil so we will wait to get the green light from our doctor.

2. Talk to the kids about not sharing hats, brushes, etc. This one is tough though. One day L came home from school talking about sharing a hat with a friend *WARNING WARNING* so I told her that is how lice can spread so we should only wear our own hats. She took at as oh, my friend must have lice and all I could picture was L being that kid telling everyone that this girl had lice even though she didn’t – although I know L would not intentionally be malicious like that. I had to revisit the conversation a couple of times to make sure she knew lice could only spread on a hat if it was there to be spread.

Which leads me to a few things I learned about lice:

1. It is not just on the dirty kids. It can happen to any kid so the stereotype that it’s only kids who don’t bathe regularly is just not true.

2. Make sure you not only wash everything INSIDE your house but also any car seats in your cars. Lice can stick around on those things and you could be back to nit picking way sooner than you’d like.

3. For things that can’t be machine washed, seal in a plastic bag for 2 weeks to suffocate the lice.

4. HEAT! Wash everything on hot and blow dry/straighten/curl hair for another way to kill those nasty things.

After the last week we’ve had, I’ve decided we are all either shaving our heads or wearing shower caps 24/7.

Okay, so you should totally let them eat cake because, seriously, cake is delicious. But what I should call this is let them eat fruit…and veggies. Here’s what I mean.

My kids eat all the freaking time. I get that they’re growing and I need to make meals that will give them the nutrients they need to grow at the appropriate rate but we could have just finished breakfast where I served eggs, toast, sausage and a banana and as they put their plates in the dishwasher one of them asks for a snack. Really? A snack? You literally still have bread crumbs in your teeth from the breakfast you just ate and you want a snack?! While I will usually say no to the snack immediately following breakfast, I know the question will be asked again within the hour so I can’t avoid it forever.

We have a few go to snacks here: applesauce pouches, granola bars, fruit snacks and assorted mini bags of cracker snacks. All of these are found in bins on the counter and are usually reserved for lunches or mid-morning or after nap snacks. After they have taken one, sometimes two, of those snacks and tell me they are still hungry, it is time for fruits and veggies. Our favorites here are apples, bananas and green peppers. We always have them on hand and they are usually easy enough for the kids to get for themselves.

And even though it’s frustrating to hear them going for their fourth or fifth snack, I never say no to fruits or veggies. If we are close to dinner I will let them know how much time is left and that I’d like them to wait, but if they decide they can’t, I will still let them have it. This will, occasionally, mean they do not eat as much dinner as I’d like. But I also know that what they have eaten has a lot of nutrients they also need in their bodies. If they do not eat their dinner I remind them there is no more food until breakfast the next morning and then suggest they try a few more bites. But when they choose to stop eating anyway, and do the same thing for the next few days, they quickly realize it would be in their best interest to cut back on the pre-dinner snacks.

The thing I’ve learned: always offer fruits and veggies. For one, they learn to like more varieties of these food groups (how we discovered our kids love raw green pepper) and then when you kid decides that week that they no longer like chicken, you know they’ve at least got something healthy in their tummies.

As I’ve mentioned before, my advice to new moms is always, don’t feel the need to take everyone’s advice. With that said, the piece of advice I hear most often is sleep when the baby sleeps. I totally get why people say it but it was not at all helpful to me.

To be fair, I bet I did sleep more when I only had one kid but even then and especially now with five kids, that is something I rarely did/do. Perhaps if all of my kids had been terrible sleepers my opinion on this would change. My kids weren’t sleeping through the night as soon as we got home from the hospital, but I was fortunate to have kids that usually didn’t confuse morning and night and therefore they would wake up to eat and then go to sleep shortly after.

But even on those days where I was up 3-4 times in one night, I would always want to get something done. “Something” does NOT mean “ALL the things” but I would find the one thing I wanted to get done and when the baby slept, I tried my best to do it. That ranged from cleaning up my bedroom, getting a load of laundry in, showering or even finishing the last episode of Project Runway I started 2 weeks ago. And sometimes, it did actually mean sleep! When I was able to accomplish one thing, the rest of my day felt so much better – especially when my one thing was laundry and the baby blew out of their diaper so I actually had clean clothes to put on them.

The thing I’ve learned: Do whatever you gotta do when the baby sleeps.

So while I can totally get behind the idea of sleeping whenever you can to make yourself feel more human, don’t feel like you NOT sleeping is somehow wrong.

I’ve written a post already about how each birth story is different and G’s is no exception! I think it is worth restating the thing I’ve learned: EVERY birth story is different! Just because I’ve done this five times doesn’t mean I know it all! But here is our most recent birth story when welcoming our beautiful baby girl.

My due date was Sunday, September 16 but I REALLY thought I would deliver the weekend before. I mowed the lawn, pulled some weeds and was pretty active all day. Ha. Yeah, no. I was still pregnant a week later. So the 15th came and went and the 16th came and…almost went. We went to church in the morning, I made special pancakes after church just in case it ended up being a “special day”, we watched the Chiefs game and that was that. Nothing was happening. I wasn’t contracting really at all and it seemed my due date would come and go with no baby. I should admit that we did do some morning, afternoon and evening activities that have been known to induce labor but as of 10:45 that night, I was in bed with no baby in sight.

At 11:10pm I woke up abruptly feeling some cramping. I managed to get to the bathroom but I was feeling really weird. I left the bathroom, went back to my bedroom and wasn’t even able to lay down for fear that I was in labor based on the intensity of the cramping. With M’s labor, my water broke at 11:58pm and I drove myself to the hospital to make sure it was the real deal. When I got the confirmation that I was in labor, Andre called his mom, she came over to be with the kids and he joined me at the hospital. That is NOT what happened this time.

We figured we would keep our same idea of him joining me after we knew I was in labor so I drove myself to labor and delivery. During the 5 minute drive I was contracting pretty much the entire time and thankfully only encountered 1 red light! I pulled into the parking lot, got to the front door, told the front desk I thought I was in labor and they got me in a triage room within a minute. It was there (at 11:23pm) that I sent Andre a text telling him I made it safely to the birth center. I kept contracting and was checked for dilation which showed I was 5 cm.

They kept me on the bed and rolled me into my delivery room while asking for Andre’s phone number so they could call him and tell him it was go time. I mentioned I was hoping for an epidural and they said it was still an option so I worked through the contractions as best as I could. By 11:40pm I had reached 7 cm and contractions were getting increasingly worse. Contractions were only about 45 seconds apart and since Andre wasn’t there, I had no one’s hand to hold (they gave me a towel to hold and that did pretty much squat) and no one, besides the very friendly nurses, to listen to my cries of anxiety and pain.

The nurses always tell you to let them know if you get the urge to push and around 11:50pm I got the urge. However, after telling them I had to push, they told me to not push. They checked me again and I was just about 10 cm but my water still had not broken and there was still cervix in the way. After a few minutes of trying really hard to not push, I couldn’t hold out any longer – remember, Andre was still not there to help and the towel they gave me to squeeze was not doing the trick. The nurse asked if I wanted Andre there and while I so did, I said (okay, yelled), “I do but I can’t do this any longer!” And with that, the next contraction brought out baby’s head which the nurse held while we waited for the doctor to get to the room. A few seconds later I remember hearing another nurse tell her to go ahead and the nurse holding baby G’s head started to grab the rest of her, too. And there she was. Our beautiful fourth baby girl was born at 11:59pm and 56 seconds on her due date.

I was filled with so many emotions at that point. Incredibly happy that my baby girl was here (and gorgeous!), sad that Andre had missed it and overwhelmed that, from start to finish, labor was 50 minutes. About two minutes later though, as I had G on my chest for some skin to skin time, Andre came in and got to meet her and hear all about it. And although he missed all of the action, there was a bit of extra umbilical cord to cut off and they let Andre do it which I really appreciated.

It was a crazy intense hour (officially documented in my medical notes as a "precipitous delivery") but in the end, we got the last member of our family safely into this world and that’s all I ever wanted.

I will NEVER let my kids eat in the living room.
I will NEVER reprimand my kids in public.
I will NEVER use TV to babysit my kids.
I will NEVER let my kids have screen time on a sunny day.
I will NEVER serve my kids Kraft Mac & Cheese three times in one week.
I will NEVER buy generic diapers.
I will NEVER yell at my kids.

These are all of the things you say BEFORE you actually have kids.

Here is the reality:

I will NEVER let my kids eat in the living room. Our carpet is definitely not the same color as when we bought the house due to much leniency on this rule but we have a lot of good memories of family pizza and a movie night so it’s all good in my book.

I will NEVER reprimand my kids in public. The first time your kid runs away from you in the parking lot this will change.

I will NEVER use TV to babysit my kids. It shouldn’t necessarily be the first choice but when you are trying to make lunch and one kid is hanging from your leg while two are insisting they are starving and the fourth is being too quiet, Wall-e is a much welcome distraction so you can get s*** done.

I will NEVER let my kids have screen time on a sunny day. Sometimes the struggle to get them, and yourself, outside is just not worth the fight. I, personally, am a fan of learning to read apps or ones with a Godly message so I feel like less of a bad mom for not making them play outside.

I will NEVER serve my kids Kraft Mac & Cheese three times in one week. Mac & Cheese takes 10 minutes to make and my kids will always eat it. You always need the pack of 5 boxes on hand - Also Kraft makes a kind with cauliflower in the noodles and my kids love it!

I will NEVER buy generic diapers. Huggies are soft but MAN are they expensive. Then try buying them for two or three kids. Uh, pass. Luvs for the win.

I will NEVER yell at my kids. I JUST NEED YOU TO SIT STILL LONG ENOUGH SO I CAN GET THE POOP OFF OF YOUR FOOT! or I AM LITERALLY MAKING LUNCH RIGHT NOW, WHICH I’VE TOLD YOU 6 TIMES, SO NO YOU CANNOT HAVE AN ICE CREAM CONE!!!

The thing I’ve learned: Never say never.

I was the kid in high school that wore sweats every day and not a stitch of makeup. Besides the fact that I didn’t even know where to start when applying makeup, I would sleep through multiple alarms (that my dad could hear from upstairs but I would not acknowledge 6 inches from my head) so there was never any time to try. Then in college I did a complete 180. I woke up an hour and a half before class JUST to do my hair and makeup – even after getting only 4 hours of sleep sometimes. I am happy to report that now I have a routine that takes me usually 25 minutes for my hair and makeup and even though the routine of wearing the exact same makeup looks everyday might be boring to some, I am a creature of habit and it works for me.

But then add kids. Add lots of kids.

I know my kids couldn’t care less what I look like – and, to be clear, when I am putting on makeup and one of my daughters walk in, I make sure to mention that I don’t need it, I just like it – and the school pickup line doesn’t require me to get out of my car at all (can I get a hallelujah?!) so I really could get away with no makeup on non-work days.

But I like the way I look with makeup on. And on days when I am exhausted because the baby has been up most of the night, and I’ve changed 4 poop diapers before 10am, and I see there is enough food under the table for an entire meal, it is so nice to pass by the mirror and glance at someone that at least looks confident rather than someone who could really use some wine already.

I don’t always have time for my 25 minute routine – my hair has been air drying in an almost acceptable way so I’ve been exclusively wearing a messy bun for the past month now – but today I took about 8 minutes, tamed my hair and threw on some eyeliner, shadow, foundation, concealer and mascara and honestly felt like I could take on the world. Or at least get through the next few hours of the day.

Maybe makeup isn’t your thing. Maybe your hair has to be done, the bed has to be made, your nails need polish or you need some quiet time in the morning for a devotional or cup of coffee.

The thing I’ve learned: do something each day that makes you feel human so when, yes WHEN, things go awry, you can feel better about handling the solution because you feel good.