The "Stages" of Parenting

I have had quite a few people ask how I can handle four kids by myself and not be ultra stressed all the time. Honestly in some ways it's a lot less stressful than just having one. The things you worry about changes as the number of children increase. See for yourself...

One Child

Buying the name brand diapers and wipes

“Your Baby Can Read” and teaching sign language 

Stevie had this down son.

Stroller color coordinating with the car seat and diaper bag

Portable diaper changing mat 

Hahahaha. I was so naive. 

Now I know that's what God invented "the ground" for

Worrying about people holding the baby

Wireless Video/Audio Baby Monitor with dual receivers

The age suggestions on toys 

The box says ages "6 months and up".

She's only 5 months old and I'm scared she will get her eyeball sucked out

by the gently powered baby toy fan

Bath water being the perfect temperature on the brand new baby bathtub

Monthly Milestones

Well planned wake/eat/play scheduling

Buying “baby” laundry detergent

Educational television shows

Child perfectly dressed and clean

Washing a dropped pacifier 

The nipple touched the ground. 

I guess we should just throw it away.

Choosing a theme for the nursery that included matching crib sheets, crib bumper, wall art, and area rug

Hand sanitizer

Height/Weight Percentages

Cloth Diapers

“Well Visits” at the doctor’s office

Making sure the crib has a “diaper changing station” attached

Baby proofing every. single. object. in the house 

As an adult, I couldn't even figure out how to bypass the cabinet locks we installed.

Two Children

Clean clothes

A packed diaper bag 

"Don't worry, I brought the aloe and the flushable baby wipes... 

Just in case."

Snacks in said diaper bag.

Well rounded diet 

Structured play time

Picking the perfect preschool

Season themed photo shoots 

We need to build this by the 4th for our Patriotic Portrait Session 

Daily reading time

Choosing the safest outside riding toys

Socializing with other children

"Wait... did that boy just take our son's block?!! I'm about to go talk to his parents."

Target brand diapers are now acceptable

Close monitoring of snack foods

Assuring ourselves that both children are treated equal and making sure we finish up that second child’s baby scrapbook



Three Children

Making sure clothes don’t have large stains

Limiting screen time

Avoiding other families that have sick children 

Casually making our way to the car at our friends' house after discovering their child has pink eye

Bathing regularly

Getting a good spot in the car drop off line to beat the tardy bell at school

Matching socks

Family bike/stroller rides

"I don't care if you don't like peeing outside. 

You can pee in the woods or hold it while we pedal down this bumpy gravel road."

One annual family portrait session resulting in one perfect picture

Finishing up all of the suggested school take home activities

Matching Easter outfits

Arriving to events on time

Visiting relatives

Wal-mart brand diapers are now an option 

Parent's Choice parents represent! :D

Four Children
Clothes that don’t smell like hot dogs

Does the dollar store sell diapers?

Making sure the coffee maker is programmed for in the morning 

On second thought, just give me the whole pot and a straw

Avoiding potty accidents

Wasps on the back porch

Convincing one of your older children to push the baby in the stroller 

"I bet you can't push your sister all the way back to the house.

Wow!! Look how strong you are!!

 I bet you can't unload all of these groceries..."

Inflated tires on bikes

Having milk in the fridge

Snakes from the ditch

“What’s a well visit at the doctor?”

Simply arriving at events regardless of the time 

"Sorry we are late.

Oh, is it over?

Well, can we just sit on your floor and eat the leftover cake?"

Running shampoo out to the kids while in they are in backyard plastic pool to avoid a bath

Figuring out which children’s tv show has the least annoying songs and characters and convincing your children to watch it

Pooping in private 

Four Children (as a single parent)

Clothes that fit (any condition will do)

Will it rain soon, I need my car washed. 

Cleanse us of our pollen

Keeping Phenergan in mass supply within the medicine cabinet

Hoping the parent sitting next to you has diapers because your child just pooped and all you brought was a bag of pretzels and sidewalk chalk

Having to piece together a dinner meal while simultaneously going over homework and sweeping the floor

Finding a good hiding spot for my Oreos

Poisonous snakes from the ditch

Having A LOT of milk in the fridge

Teaching your child to vomit on a hardwood surface rather than carpet when sick

Accidentally leaving your van door open so the neighborhood animals will clean up the crumbs on the floorboard

"Hello Human. Do you have anymore of those crushed up Frosted Flakes"

Hoping to take a quick snapshot of children to frame and give to your grandmother as a Christmas present. (Smiles optional, we are mostly focused on simply looking at the camera.

Be Blessed, 

Seth

Neela's Hobby Lobby Moment and Dad's Meltdown

Here’s a quick catch-up of what’s been going on at the Megow house…

*Disclaimer- there’s some adult humor. So again, if you might be offended please skip over this post or at least until you see pictures of the kids painting J *

The kids have been itching to go to Hobby Lobby and do some kind of craft. Side note: The Megow kids LOVE Hobby Lobby. It’s their favorite place. I didn’t really have any idea of what we were going to do so we were just walking around. Now one thing I’ve learned how to do (reasonably well) is to kind of carry on multiple conversations with individual or groups of my kids. Each of the kids were looking and talking about different things we should buy or make. Neela however was hung up on talking about some movie she wanted to see. It’s a new Pixar movie called “The Good Dinosaur”. Her and I happened to see a trailer for it on the computer one day and she’s dying to watch it.

Neela for some reason is convinced the little boy is naked and thinks it’s just the funniest thing. (My kids are pretty innocent when it comes to things like that. I like keeping their innocence as long as possible). Anyways, we were all walking around Hobby Lobby for some time and finally found the project we wanted to do. The kids wanted to get little treasure boxes and paint them. They are called “private boxes” (we had them growing up too). 

They had quite a few styles to choose from. It was really fun letting them pick.

Pretty much, you can’t open up anyone’s else private box. It’s just a little way for the kids to be able to keep little things away from their siblings. The isle was kind of crowded, but eventually we got to where all of the little wooden boxes were. They had quite a few to pick from and each design was about $2-3, so I let the kids pick out the box they wanted. Stevie picked out hers. Titus found the one he liked. Olive chose one as well .However, Neela wasn’t too interested in a box and instead said (quite loudly) “Dad, I want to watch that movie with the naked boy. The one you showed me on the computer.” The two older ladies beside me, literally stopped in the middle of their conversation and gave me “you’re going to burn in hell” looks. Now looking back my reaction might not have been the best, but in the moment it was just what came out. I leaned over close to the ladies and whispered so the kids couldn’t hear me. “Don’t worry. She’s not talking about child pornography or anything sexual involving naked boys. She just wants to watch a dinosaur cartoon.” The two older classic southern belle women quickly grabbed their gold colored handbags, fastened their red hats, and marched to another isle. HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Not one of my finer moments in defending my children’s behavior.

I really wasn’t feeling well. I was really, really tired. I shortly found out after all of this I has strep (Getting better now. Thank Jesus for antibiotics).Anyways, the kids really wanted to do decorate their private boxes so we did. It was really fun.

  

Stinker

I think Titus likes his "privacy" more than anyone. 

According to him, "I'm going to put so much candy in this thing."

This was literally Stevie's paint plate AFTER she finished. 

She is very detail oriented and took great care in washing and drying her brush after using a new color

Neela on the other hand takes a different approach to keeping her paint organized. ;)

Now here comes my mental breakdown. After everyone was done with their boxes, I gave everyone dinner & a snack and let them play or watch a show. I had to finish work and it was due that day, so I really needed about an hour to myself to sit down and concentrate. Normally, my kids are really good about this. So I went to my little home office desk and finished up what I needed to do. I probably worked alone in my room for about 45 minutes. I came out to find out that Olive has gotten out all of the paint and proceeded to dump. it. everywhere. All over the table, the floors, baseboards, window blinds, etc. She had also covered her hands with paint and painted the walls of my house. To make matters worse, both Stevie and Neela were playing in the paint as well. Not as messy as their little sister, but for sure not in a clean way. They definitely knew better.

I didn’t really take pictures of the complete damage.

But here’s a quick snapshot I took before I cleaned the table.

And yes, they decided to use limes to paint with as well.

At first, I was really trying to keep it together. I gave everyone walmart bags, paper towels, wash cloths, and cleaning spray. Apparently, mountains of wet paint are beyond cleaning power of my children because they just seemed to spread it everywhere (walls included). I pretty much lost my cool and sent everyone involved to bed. I wish I could say I didn’t yell, but clearly that wasn’t the case. I was fuming mad. I’m trying to get my house ready to sell. Before sending them to bed, I strongly gave an intense diatribe about how hard dad works to keep things clean and how mad I was. I really was furious; seeing paint smeared everywhere in the house just made me so agitated. I stayed up about two hours and cleaned it all up. Well, about the best I could. I think the reason, I shared that story is I felt so bad about it later that night. I might have been the 102 fever, but really I'm sure it was an overreaction about the paint, but I didn’t sleep a wink that night. I hate when I lose my temper like that. I mean I absolutely hate it.

I guess the reason I shared that little story about me losing my cool is that I think everyone does from time to time. It’s not acceptable nor positive, however, it is human. We all overreact from time to time. The next morning all of the girls climbed in my bed and we all apologized. Kids are so quick to forgive; I love that about children. It’s something I am trying to learn from my kids J

Be Blessed,

Seth

"Hold on! Let me get you a bowl... nevermind, I guess you can just puke in my hands"

Disclaimer: I figured I would let the world see the full oddness and craziness of the Megow life. Those who can't take it, well, they can move on. However, if you can handle this one, you will probably be fine in the future (hopefully) :D

The past three weeks have been crazy at for the ole' Megow clan. I've had sick kids before. I've also, had sick kids before as a single parent. I have ALSO, cared for sick kids while I was sick myself as a single parent. However... there has never been a month on God's green earth last the past one. I'm pretty convinced my kids figured out school was starting so they all got together to come up with plans to get as many germs as possible for make themselves sick to get out of school, hahaha... But I'm kind of serious. That meeting might have happened: (Spoiler: Each of these these my kids actually did within the past month. Pro parent, I know)

1) Licked a stranger. (My kids love to pretend they are dogs. They get in big trouble for licking, but at least they haven't started humping strangers yet ;)

2) Licked a walmart shelf. (So apparently a bag of sugar busted. I was just looking at the muffins when I turn around and all of my kids are on their hands and knees licking the busted sugar on the shelf.) - Side note, kids like sugar.

3) Licked various animals. 

4) Licked each other's blowpops and dum dums (Going for that rainbow colored tongue look. That's high fashion in the 6 and under category)

Still for the life of me, I can't figure out why they got sick... :) hahaha

But for real, I do try to do a really good job of keeping the house disinfected and sterilized. I think I could have bought stock in bleach and Lysol. Over the past few weeks, my kids caught ringworm (in the hair), a bad stomach bug, summer colds, and impetigo (uuggghhh... thats the devil). Having four that close in age and handling them by myself, germs are bound to get shared no matter how hard to you try.

I was handling it pretty well too, until I caught the stomach bug. Picture this:
Some of my kids with open sores all of their face and body and others with ringworm, but all of them puking. Where am I? Dragging myself across the kitchen floor trying to clean up their puke while at the same time trying to reach the trashcan before I have more chunks to wipe up. At one point, we were all just kind of laying on the cold kitchen tile, when Olive said she was about to throw up again. I got up as fast as I could to find one of our communal vomit bowls. Suddenly she ran up to me, grabbed my hands and cupped them together in front of her face and just hurled a nice, warm, meaty vomit straight into my hands. Needless to say, I just threw up everywhere immediately. Of course, some got on Olive's head, so she threw up again and then just slipped in it, fell on the floor, and got covered in puke. If the other three weren't also staring at the sheer disgust, I could tell they would have been dying laughing. It was pretty gross.

Hey wanna hear another puke story from a few weeks ago? Sure you do!
So I finally got all the kids their nausea medicine and I took mine, hoping to get some much needed sleep. By now, I think I had been up for about 2 days straight caring for the kids and trying to squeeze in some work from home when I felt up to it. Anyways, I stripped my bed and put down some old bed sheets because I knew all of them would end up in or around my bed. When they get sick, they always end up there. Of course, around midnight, I felt them start to trickle in one by one. I only have a queen so it's pretty tight fit with all 4 of my kids. Also, I like them being close when they are puking because I have this horrible and irrational fear that they might choke on their vomit because they might be too tired to wake up and know whats going on. (Breaking Bad anyone???)

That junk was intense

So by around 1am or 2am, all four had made it to Dad's bed and the throw-up party started. I was just holding hair and catching puke (new t-shirt idea?)

You know you'd buy it. ;)

So, I was doing that for a few hours, when finally I felt myself about to literally pass out for exhaustion. So I just flipped all the kids on their stomachs and laid on the floor beside the bed. I keep hearing people throwing up, but by this point, I'm just too tired to even get up to clean it. "I'll just clean it in the morning." I kept thinking to myself. Finally, I hear someone about to blow some mega chunks and told myself no matter what happens, I gotta get some sleep. I don't know if you have ever been that tired, but I was to the point of body shutting down tired. So I just closed my eyes and started to fall asleep, suddenly, I feel this massive dump of warm ooziness get dumped onto my back. Now in this moment, people can say what they want but if you have ever been this exhausted, you might understand. I kind of just laid there half asleep trying to figure out what I should do about this massive pile of chunk on my back. I knew if I stood up it would just drip down my leg. And I was too tired to get some massive brainstorming to try to get it off. So finally, when I couldn't make up my mind on what to do, I just kind of rolled over onto my side and let the puke kind of ooze it's way down the my back onto my covers. I woke up in that same position and kind of stuck to my covers. hahahahaha. Yep. That's my life. 

Anyways, if you are still reading this congratulations. So once the kids started to get better, I felt bad taking them to alot of public places because I didn't want to get anyone else sick. In case you didn't know, we have an on-the-go family. Man, they were starting to go stir crazy being couped up in the house or at my work office. But we survived Praise Jesus! 

If you want to see how stir crazy we got, check out this video me and Neela made. She wanted me to show her how to dance with a flag stick thing, so I rocked that thing. 

Remember to make someone smile today :)

-Seth

Edit: Also, if you have seen my kids in public lately, please don't be concerned about getting any sort of thing from them now. They are all better, completed all their antibiotics, and have been back at school for a few days now.