Dirty Dozen? More Like, Crazy Beautiful Half Dozen

Welcome (back) to my blog dear reader! I am so glad you are here. 😄 I hope you enjoy your time here.

Twitter has spoken! I posted a poll on Saturday to see what topic people would want to see and with 75% of the vote, being a member of a large family was the winning choice. I will still be posting the other topics, starting next week.

Now, I am not just a member a big family, but I am the oldest of the six kids. I have three sisters and two brothers. In the modern world, where one or two children are the norm in non-blended families or families without step-children, I know my family is perceived as odd to a lot of people. We are counter cultural and against the status quo. Because of this, my childhood, my teenage years, and now my young adulthood experiences were and are much different from a lot of young adults around my age.

There were almost four years of my life where I was an only child. I personally am very glad this happened when I was so young. As a toddler I was able to play and use my imagination to keep myself occupied. But even more than that, almost twenty-two years later (as much as she can drive me crazy) I cannot imagine life without my sister. She was born exactly a month before I turned four years old. Because our birthdays are so close together, there were several years when we had joint birthday parties. I loved them. Sometimes we would agree on a theme or other times it would be a combination of two themes. It was crazy, fun and created some of my favorite birthday memories. We also shared a room for seventeen years. We know each other so well that it is next to impossible to play a board game involving bluffing against each other because we can read each other’s faces like a book. My sister is one of my closest friends and right hand gal in so many things.

By the time I was nine, my sister was five, and we had a three year old brother and a new baby sister. At this point I could easily change a diaper, feed a toddler, and make my own lunch. There probably was not a day that my amazing mom, as much of a super woman as she is, did not take advantage of the skills she had taught me. Because we were homeschooled, Mom was busy with teaching various subjects and feeding the baby during the day. (Unless the baby had a bottle, feeding was the one thing I could not do. 😄) My sister was also pretty good at helping out in her own way at just five years old. Even my little brother would help by playing with the baby by holding toys and books for her to look at while she was laying on a blanket. There were times I can remember my sister and brother wanting to help with things before they were ready, like changing diapers or wanting to help set the table before they could barely reach the edge. But that was how our family worked. Everyone helped out and pitched in on the chores based on age and capability.

By the time I was twelve, I had passed on some of my chores to my sister and brother because brother number two had arrived. This makes five of us kids and I was not even a teenager yet. It was busy with school, sports, and friends for all of us minus the baby. But this time of my life was pretty great. I had started basically teaching myself through homeschooling, using the syllabus that my mom and dad had given me. And when the time called for it, I helped with teaching the younger ones. It was always fun to watch my little brother and sister teaching each other. My youngest sister at the time was helping my brother with a spelling test because she had learned how to read recently and when she found a word she did not know, my brother says “I can tell you what it is. Just spell it for me.” 😄 As funny as this situation was, I was glad that I was listening in to a certain extent so I could jump in before she started spelling the word. Funny situations like this happened all through my childhood and into high school.

High school was a new challenge academically but I also had a third baby sister to help take care of during my freshman year. My oldest sister was ten by this point and was also a huge help to my parents. As a teenager, I babysat a lot. And I was not paid unless it was a special date night. Some people might find that a bit strange, but for me it was just my job as the oldest child to help take care of the rest of my siblings. I babysat so much that, when I was a junior in high school, Mom took my youngest brother, who was four and my two year old baby sister to the grocery store so the older kids could get homework done and my brother was in awe of the amount of food on the shelves. The dairy section, for this milk loving little boy, was especially fascinating. It was one thing to read about grocery stores in books, but seeing it in real life when I was not available to take care of him was a whole new experience. To this day that kid loves food. 😄

Now a days the family runs fairly smoothly, more or less. Everyone has a job to do and we are all capable of taking care of ourselves. We all still have chores to do to help keep the house tidy. Daily life for me as a young adult might seem strange to some people, but to me, scheduling who is showering when, helping put away a mountain of groceries for eight people, and just the general noise of the house is my normal. It’s crazy, chaotic, and sometimes messy. But it is ultimately beautiful and I would not change it for the world.

☀️💙