Family Life Triage {How moms of many, multiples, or both do it}

For many months,well, let's be honest since the twins were born nearly 18 months ago I have been asked several times "How do you do it?" I could never quite figure out how to answer other than, "By the Grace of God." or "Honestly I don't really know, you just do." Tonight as I was carrying the first of the twins ready for bed up the stairs to her crib it came to me! I finally know how to explain how it is done!

FAMILY LIFE TRIAGE is what I thought of as I was climbing those stairs with Ellie. What a catching name too! Here is how a seniro just might play out.

After a full day of activity, well who am I kidding, it could happen any day or at any time, you find yourself with 2-5 kids crying all at the same time. So, what do you do except sit down and cry with them? TRIAGE! Here is the way I like to run down the cryers as well as the rest of the gang.
In order of who gets moms help or attention first.

1. Youngest child or if hurt the child with the greatest injury.
2. After #1 is taken care of it goes up to the next oldest child in need. Again according to age and or injury.  Example: Our 7 year old may trump one of our 17 month olds if she is injured badly enough.

This continues until all crying stops. If, I am lucky enough a few stop crying on their own and realize they can cope with life without needing Mom they way they thought they did. Somtimes though more join in on the crying and the number in TRIAGE goes up. Then I just stop and cry! Haha. Oh, one more important thing to remember, enlist the help of older non crying children! My older children can often comfort a smaller sibling or help them while I tend to those in the most dire need. Side note: I can't say how many times my "big" kids help me with the twins or even Ashlyn! They are probably the reason I have not gone insane yet! haha "big" kids ROCK!

Some out there may think I am ignoring my other children who need me, but in reality I believe I am teaching them good life skills on how to handle their emotions, conflicts with siblings, or "small" hurts on their own knowing help is comming if they still need it in a few minutes. In the end every child gets checked on, tucked in bed, hugged, kissed, and told they are loved. But, TRIAGE is the way we handle multiple meltdowns that occur at the same time.

I also TRIAGE house work. Most important first and so on. There are times when an item on the list sits at the bottom of the list for days.

I want to state that I am NO supermom. I regularly have days when nothing gets done because I don't want to do anything, my kids go to sleep in their clothes and have not brushed their teeth, the twins eat food off the floor and not single dish gets washed or put away, this is just how I make it through each day.

Now you have an answer to "I just don't know how you do it!"

Took a Time Out Today

This morning after I had put our 3 older children on the bus and the Twins woke up for the morning and had their breakfast I sat back and just enjoyed the hours of the morning with them. I am very thankful that I did. I was able to witness some pretty special moments of twin bonding between Eli and Ellie.

To start off the morning they showed me just  how much they love each other. There we were just sitting and playing on floor and I was just enjoying the moment and drinking in how special each of them are and they stood up and started hugging each other! Eli was even giving Ellie kisses! This went on for at least 2 minutes. They would hug let go look at each other a giggle a little then hug again, until finally Eli was done and pushed Ellie away. To me that was such a special moment. Through out the morning they would play often apart but one would always get and check on what the other was doing. Usually they just turned around and went back to what they were doing but, it was like they were checking up on each just to see if they were OK.

One day not that long ago I was taking another moment to take in the uniqueness of each of the twins and I asked them, "Which one of you decided you just couldn't do this on your own and asked for a partner to take on the world with?" Well Eli started the hugging and from the first ultrasound at 6 weeks he always measured a day farther along than Ellie. I have decided Eli needed a hand to hold and I am ever grateful that God saw fit to give him a hand to hold.

Today showed me that in the busyness of life it is important to stop and hit pause. The world is just spinning so fast for everyone that the little things get lost. Today I found a few of those things watching our twins. I hope anyone reading this takes a moment and hits pause today to just take in the world around them and enjoy the beauty we pass by everyday without thought.