Happy Blogiversary to me!

At only 165 posts for a year, today is my blogger anniversary. Today I celebrate one whole year of sharing my adventures of motherhood with the population at large. (Mostly family, but that's just fine!) It was at the behest of my grandfather, The Curmudgeonly Professor listed on the right, that I began my blogging journey. And I have thoroughly enjoyed it!! It's been fun to have an audience to share all my blatherings with! So to all my readers, thank you for enjoying this journey with me and I hope to have many more things to blog about in the future!!

On that note, and after a comment from my mother yesterday, I am going to attempt to describe what it's like to get five kids into the van, and buckled into their seatbelts! Now that's an adventure worth sharing!

This is how it goes:

"Go get in the car and get buckled!" I yell.

One, possibly two children will trickle out to the car at this point. They will push, shove and fight to see who gets in the car first. Katherine will join them, usually crying about something, and climb into the car declaring that she can't close the door. I will then holler at the children remaining in the house that they had better get in the car, or else. Or else what, I'm not sure, but by golly, they better get their little keisters out to the car!!

Alrighty, so now that everyone is in the car, I take the baby out and buckle her in. She's mostly cooperative, with the occasional protest and arching of back, making it nearly impossible to buckle her in. During this time I holler at the children who are NOT buckled in and climbing around the car to GET BUCKLED!!! Michael is usually the first to comply, Lillie follows and Katherine starts to cry, fuss and holler about how tight her seat belt is. She is still in a five-point harness and has to inform everyone how utterly horrid it is every time we get in the car. Poor, safe, child!

Then, Andrew, who has been standing outside the car, asks if he can please sit up front. (Can you blame him? Who would want to sit in the back with all the chaos?) I usually say yes, and then he proceeds to dump all the crap on the passenger seat onto the floor. I then warn him that if he fiddles with stuff, he will be banished to the back of the van. Meanwhile, Katherine is sort of buckled in and I tell her if she doesn't hurry, I'm going to climb back there and do it for her. This is an empty threat, and she knows it, but it's my motherly duty to make this threat! She begins to fuss again and struggle with her seatbelt. (Her struggle is all self inflicted. On a good day she can do it in a minute flat.) At this point in the fiasco, it's been about 10 minutes of getting in the car.

I finally hop in the car, start it up and back out into the driveway. Katherine starts to cry and complain that she isn't buckled yet, at which point I explain that I can no longer wait and she'd better do it quickly. So, with much crying, she finally finishes buckling herself in. And, Ta-Da, we are on our way!!

Tired yet? I am!! Sometimes I'm amazed that we ever get out the door!!