The horde invades

The horde (as Sarah calls them) invaded my home yesterday afternoon, and just left. I’m pretty sure this is the first Sunday in my entire life that I started cooking breakfast for four children before seven a.m. That’s because I gave up trying to sleep around 6:45, when three of the four were downstairs conversing, and the fourth, Rebecca, was snoozing in my office. She sleeps like a log. Which is a good trait to have, what with there being three brothers who get up at godawful hours of the morning.

I’m starting to see why mothers of young children are tired all of the time.

Breakfast was pretty funny, or more to the point, the before-breakfast drama. Max declared that he was dying of starvation and proceeded to illustrate that by lying on the floor and sighing. Then he got up to see how I was progressing with breakfast and said, “Ooh! Bananas!” as he spied the fruit on my counter. Suddenly, he was no longer dying of starvation. Miss Rebecca, meantime, was hanging around seeing if I was going to let her help. Of course I was. She stirred the batter while I got the waffle iron started and set the table. The older boys helped by playing The Simpsons on the Wii and shouting for me to look every time something new came on the screen, as this was a set of new levels none of us had ever seen. (You can insert an eye-roll here.)

Breakfast was very rewarding, though. You take a simple box of mix and create waffles with it, and you get to hear “Yay! Waffles!” from all four kids, and then get told that these are simply the best waffles they ever ate in their lives. The first time I made them French toast, that was the best French toast they ever ate in their lives. Superlatives and children: Perfect together.

Yesterday, I picked Jake up from synagogue and we spent a few hours together without his siblings. We had lunch, worked on his haftorah prayers (his bar mitzvah is in two weeks), and then went shopping for a few things before the invasion. I am a very smart woman. I bought bananas and watermelon to supplement the pineapple in my fridge, because I knew full well that I would be approached by seven-year-olds telling me they were starving and had to eat something. The bananas are gone, and the watermelon came in handy just before dinner. (Pizza. Easy. Fast.) And since I don’t care for pizza, after the children finished, I sat down to have some cold roast chicken. So did Max and Rebecca. Now that, I wasn’t expecting. Kids can really put the food away.

Many hours of Wii and a couple of videos later, I wound up putting Rebecca in my office, which caused Gracie to sleep in my room for the first time in weeks, and even got her to remember that she likes jumping into bed for some attention from time to time. Which almost made up for being awakened before six by three boys conversing in the Great Room. That brought Grumpy Aunt Meryl out of bed. They were quiet for about forty minutes, and now we’ve reached full circle.

And I am going back to bed. Five hours sleep is not enough—it wasn’t all the kids’ fault; I had sinus issues last night. But the rain finally came (chasing Rebecca out of bed) and my headache’s gone, and so is the invading horde. Quiet reigns again.