LaLaGirl – Twinfinite Chaos! Parenting Multiples and Dealing with Autism

I went to the dentist on Friday. (Eeek! Friday the 13th! What a day for a dentist appointment, huh?) While I was off getting my teeth cleaned and polished and x-rayed and all of that, Paul took the little girls to lunch at Hooters with some of his buddies. I’m actually bummed I didn’t get to join them. Lunch at Hooters sounds a lot better than a cleaning!

While I was at the dentist’s office, reclining in the chair with my mouth open, I realized something I never much noticed before. Hygienists always talk your ear off while you’re not in a position to say anything back to them. Why do they do that? I was annoyed a little bit already because as soon as I told her I had 2 sets of twins, she brought up “Octo Mom” – the gal who just gave birth to octuplets, after she already had six at home. Aside: this is something that happens all the time. Whenever someone we meet finds out we have multiple multiples, they almost always make a comment about either Jon & Kate Plus Eight or some evil twins they saw once on Supernanny. It’s happened so many times, I’ve come to expect it. And since the news first broke of this batshit crazy woman and her litter of children, people keep reporting to me the latest information, like it affects me in some way. Whatever!

ANYWAY. This hygienist was going on and on about Octo Mom and related to me that she and a friend had an argument about the situation, because her friend apparently thinks rationally and said that Octo Mom was a nut. Hygienist got on her soapbox to friend, saying that this is AMERICA, and we can do whatever we want in America, and if she wants to have two dozen children, it’s her God-given right as an American, and nobody should tell her what to do. After all, she said, her grandmother had fifteen children and nobody told HER anything about it. She didn’t mention whether her grandmother had them all at once via fertility treatments, but I imagine that was not the case. This has been, so far, the most inane notion I’ve heard about Octo Mom: that we should support her choice because WE’RE ALL AMERICANS. And all I could do was roll my eyes until I almost hurt myself.

Besides crazy hygienist lady, my appointment went well. No cavities! Yay!

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It’s feeling weird, really. Over the past ten years, I’ve been at various times a full time college student, a full time employee, a full time mommy (toddler twins and newborn twins? Yeah, that’s pretty damned “full time”) and now, finally, I should be at a place where I can get more done. I should be able to find plenty of time to write. I should be able to do more freelance stuff. But instead, I find myself nearly disconnected from the ‘net. Even during those early, crazy days of having babies at home, I still got online to talk to my mommy friends. But not now! I can’t manage to catch my own ass, and when I find myself with some free time, I don’t want to be online. I want to be outside in the sunshine, listening to my kids bicker with one another. I want to lie on the living room floor while they drive cars up over my head and under my knees.

I’ve got so much on my mind lately that I can’t seem to get anything DONE, though. I have a to-do list a mile long, and I’m walking around in a daze. The house is a pit. The kids are wearing crazy mismatched clothes. I keep getting distracted by stuff, so I have a thousand half-finished projects all over the place. And I’m seriously getting to the point where I want to throw a lit match at my laundry room. Even if I ever manage to get all this laundry done, I’ll NEVER get it put away.

I think a lot of this is because the kids are off track from school. Do you have any idea how hard it is just to take a freakin’ SHOWER with all the kids home? Unless I lock them in the bathroom with me, they’ll be outside walking across the back fence while I’m conditioning. It’s nutty. I’m not sure which is the biggest challenge, having a child with autism or having four children who are very close in age. In both situations, the kids feed off the bad behavior and do things as a group that they would NEVER do individually.

Another week. Then I can find a new excuse for why I can’t get anything done.

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