First of all, get yer mind outta the gutter. Is it out? Continue on…

We have lots of little family rituals. One of those rituals is the Friday Night Dinner Out. We always go out to eat on Fridays. Except, as long as I can remember, it has been just my 4 kids (3 before Addy) and Tony. Tony’s 3 kids stay with their Mother on the weekends so we’ve never really had Dinner Out with the whole crew. We made special arrangements to have them stay over tonight and so we had the rare opportunity to do Dinner Out as a complete unit.

Can I just say Three Ring Circus? It isn’t a reflection on the children’s behavior. They are all VERY well-behaved, ridiculously helpful, so good to each other. Noah can be a little, um, spirited? But he’s 4 (I can say that for a few more days, anyway!). It is the rule, not the exception, that when we take the kids out we get compliments from total strangers. So it’s not them. It is just that there are SEVEN KIDS. And frankly, that’s a lot. It doesnt feel like a lot at home. It doesn’t feel like a lot when they are off playing in sets of 2 scattered throughout the house or when 3 are at school or when 3 are off in bed. And that’s our day-to-day reality for us most of the time. So it really surprises me how huge of a group we are when we walk into a restaurant. A crowded restaurant on a Friday Night. With All These Kids. When we walk through the door, it feels like the kids just keep coming and coming and coming. Sometimes I literally laugh out loud. We get stares and whispers everywhere we go, as a group. People ask the same questions over and over: “Are they all yours?”, “How old are you?” (seriously, this is what Every Single Person asks us) and then the comments “You are so brave!” or “Wow, I bet you sure keep busy!”. Tonight our waiter made a joke about drinks being on the house! haha. We are lucky that we get mostly supportive responses, no one has ever been overtly rude, we don’t get some of the comments we’ve read about other large families getting. I’m not sure why. Maybe I look scary? That’s probably it :-P. But we are still the Three Ring Circus when we walk through the door: “Table for 9 people? 7 kids menus”.

We had a great time. Family Dinner Out is way more fun when a complete family unit. There was Pictionary and Hangman. There were stories and jokes. And of course, the highlight of every one’s dinner was Addison’s Antics. She’s such a crack-up and the kids can’t get enough of her. Sometimes I feel like she is on stage and the rest of us are just her faithful audience. She is a great entertainer.

Tonight we ordered her her own kids meal. For real. Because the girl can PACK IT AWAY! Last Friday Dinner Out, she ate most of Noah’s meal - far more than Noah ate. So this time, she got her own Mac&Cheese, Broccoli, bread stick and water. Yumm. I had brought her baby food and a bottle but of course she turns her nose up to such ridiculousness. She wants The Real Deal. She ate half of her (very large) meal and shared dessert with Tony. I mean, the girl can EAT. And when she eats, she eats with GUSTO. Her whole body shakes and she kicks and eats frantically, like she can’t fill her belly fast enough. I would assume this is orphanage behavior except it is actually pretty new. She has never been so interested in food as she has been this week. I think she gained 5 lbs at dinner alone!

At dinner she amazed and amused by learning to suck through a straw. Finally. I am so glad this day has come. She has never been big on the sippee cup and bottles are so darned labor-intensive. Straws are just so handy! But she hasn’t quite mastered it yet. Sometimes she blows bubbles instead - oh the fun! And also when things aren’t quite interesting enough, she likes to suck until her mouth runneth over…all over her chest and my hands and anything else in the direct path. Apparently there’s a learning curve.

Earlier today, Addy’s sister taught her to “play” the recorder. You’d have thought she had mastered a classical piece of music by the reaction from the kids. They freaked the heck out! “Addy is so big, isn’t she big Mom? Look how big? Listen, just LISTEN!”.  I don’t know what is more precious - the accomplishment? Or seeing how proud her siblings are of her?

So I think it’s safe to say that Addy has mastered the wondrous life-expanding art of sucking and blowing. Hurray for new talent. Boo for new messes. haha.

After dinner tonight, we came home and set up shop for a big sleepover. Tony took the big kids out for a special late night movie but not before everyone had a collective dance party. Highlights of our evening of fun include Addison’s oldest brother, who is 13, asking to find some good music to slow-dance with her and Addison’s only sister asking to change her diaper (and doing an amazing job for a first-ever diaper change). Seriously when all the kids are together? I may as well be chopped liver. I’m invisible. Which is fun becuase then I just get to watch and take it all in.

For those of you who believe in prayer, or in lighting a candle or sending positive energy my request right now is that you will send up a thought for our family that we will continue to have these moments, these nights, these memories for a long long time to come. It is a possibility that in a few days these moments may come to an end for all of us and the thought breaks my heart in a million pieces (understatement of the year). So if you can spare it, please send it our way.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 23rd, 2007 at 10:35 pm and is filed under Moving, Parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.