I’m amazed, and I’m sure I’ve said it before, but having 4 children doesn’t seem like that many kids. Maybe that’s always the case. Maybe when you have them one at a time it just seems like a family. Normal. Like anybody else’s family. But people in public keep reminding me of just how abnormal we are. Still getting “Boy, you’ve got your hands full, don’t ya?” All.The.Time. I’m kinda used to that one now, seeing as how I’ve been hearing it since my second son was born 19 months after my first one. The sad thing now is that my children are old enough to hear and ask, “Hands full of what, Mama?” Most of the time, my hands don’t feel that full. That feeling has come and gone over the years, usually with the arrival of the next one. My hands definitely feel fuller when I’m nine months pregnant and my potty-training toddler needs to “go” again in the grocery store. Or right after the arrival of the newest baby, while nursing, and the toddler finds something like, the baby powder, or the unlocked door. Hands, very full. But those times don’t stay and we find ourselves in a new normal that just.. is.

However, lately, I’ve found that we may be rounding a corner that we haven’t rounded before. (Megs – my dopple-ganger from 4 years back, you may not want to read this just yet! Save it, and come back to it, when you have your next child toddling around and the one after that growing in your belly!) Food. Oh my. I knew that groceries would be an issue when they are all teenagers. That’s a given. You hear the stories. But now? Already?

When we had our first child I went overboard and bought baby food and toddler snacks galore. Really, people, waste of money, but I know in our culture I won’t change your mind. And that’s okay, continue to buy that single-serving organic apple juice that’s just shy of the price of gold, I’m not judging you, I’ve been there. Twice. My second child came along and I still bought all that stuff. By then, my oldest was eating regular table food and I found that I was wasting a lot of food. Open a can of veggies and we couldn’t go through it in a week. Buy those little serving cups of fruit, and we’d keep 3 unopened and one that had leftovers in it for too long. Then when TheMiddlest began eating table food, I was actually relieved. We were wasting much less food. They would share one little cup and eat most of it. Even as I type these words, it’s beyond me that we lived that way at one time. I eventually learned to open a can of fruit, give them a serving and immediately freeze little baggies of fruit and veggies so that they didn’t get tired of one kind. With the arrival of our third child, ThePrincess, a few things changed. I had stocked up ahead of time on baby and toddler foods. But when the time came, found that she absolutely wouldn’t eat them. I was perplexed. Until I realized that I had been mashing up the food we were all eating and setting a little on her tray. I had relaxed. Realized that the food we were eating (with common sense of course, I wasn’t feeding her steak at 7 months) was not going to somehow kill her. After eating our food she wouldn’t touch the bland stuff. And who could blame her – have you tried the jar food? Now, don’t get me wrong, I love those little puffed up things for babies that they can pick up, mush with their little toothless mouths, and keep them happy for so long. When the girlie began eating all table food and toddling around we would use a whole can of fruit at a time. I would get those peaches (that somehow smell like puke to me even without being pregnant, what is up with that?) and dice them up into little cubes for the youngest and a little bigger bites for the boys. Who by then, were ages: TheOldest – 4, TheMiddlest – 3, and ThePrincess – 1. Then came the next baby who ate some baby food, but not so much. Again, who could blame him when Daddy was indulging him like this. But with BigMan reaching the age of 2 and deciding he would REALLY eat, ThePrincess (age 4) eating like she always has (wow), TheMiddlest (age 6) getting a little less picky, and TheOldest (age 7 ½ – the half is of utmost importance, he tells me) oh.my.goodness.

I mean, I could see some of it coming. I’ve been buying the bulk chocolate milk mix for way too long. I’ve been doubling recipes for a while. But the other day I fixed a meal that I haven’t fixed in too long. My mother-in-law’s famous sour cream chicken enchiladas – recipe to follow – they are too good! With this recipe I’ve always made the whole thing, but usually for when company comes over. It makes 2 full 9×13 pans. When I made it the other day, I took comfort in the fact that, although, all that cheese shredding and mixing and rolling is time consuming that we’d have a yummy meal to eat on for days. Or so I thought. We sat down to the meal and my family had demolished both pans, short of 2 lonely little enchiladas, in less than 7 minutes. The pans were still hot. Hot but empty. I was stunned.

Two cans of those peaches that I used to not know what to do with and they’re still begging for more. One gallon of milk a day – and that’s holding them to one cup in the morning and one in the evening, not indulging their every cocoa whim. One pack of hot dogs will feed just the children around here for one meal. Two boxes of macaroni and not much is left over. Just this morning we sat down to cereal for breakfast. A new box of Crispix that I had picked up last night. Gone. The whole box. Gone. The Hot’N'Ready pizzas? One for the kids alone. And sometimes, that’s not enough. One pack of Koolaid gets us through one dinner, barely. One meal of french toast or (or, not and, people) one meal of pb&j’s takes us through one loaf of bread. One bunch of bananas – gone in one snack time. I could keep going, but I think you get the idea.

We’re scheming with next year’s tax return to install one of those cafeteria industrial griddles. I’m not kidding. We use the griddle for everything. Lunch meat, sandwiches, pancakes, burgers, french toast, steak, eggs, bacon, grilled cheese, everything. Which keeps me washing that little thing constantly. And now, one round of food on it isn’t enough, I stand in front of it for way too long. My husband found out that you can get one of the real ones for cheaper than we thought.. and now I dream.

Again, I have to step away on most of these things and see it through my former eyes, because it has just become the norm. Some of it stands out – such as the cereal this morning – all I could think was “I JUST got these”. And I know there’s more to come, if they all cross the eating threshold at 7 like my oldest did, and the pickiest gets even the little bit less picky, and the newest baby-in-the-belly gets to be 2 – well, I can only imagine. But I remember when I only had 2 or 3 kiddos and I dreamed of having a big family, I liked reading about others’ huge families and just marveled at it. Now I’m living it. And sometimes I still marvel.