Suffice to say that going from 3 boys to 4 has been a quantum leap in the amount of time required to settle our day-to-day affairs (laundry, dishes, general cleaning etc.) that by the time the kids go to bed and all of the parental chores are complete there is little time left for much else. However here is a brief recap of what's been going on in the Gallizzi household over the past year or so:
- We now have 4 boys. Essentially 6 years between the first and the last. I love my family, but sometimes the noise level approaches that of jet engines and the ringing in the ears only subsides after a good night sleep.
- Good night sleep...what's that? With a teething baby, children that like to stay up and play rather than going to bed, and waking up early to run in order to stay in some sort of shape other than round I can't say I get a lot of good night sleeps.
- Crazy travel schedule. Misty will tell you that she is not a huge fan of how much I've been travelling over the past 12-15 months since I took on my new job. Since I've taken this job I have traveled all over the Southwest including Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Denver, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, South Texas, San Antonio, Austin, Houston, and Lubbock. The fun part is that I am rarely in the same place twice...the bad part is that I'm rarely in the same place twice!
- Messy House...Holy crap this place gets dirty in a hurry! We have slowly weaned the number of toys in our house, but we still seem to find stuff to trip over. Add to that the fact that my children have holes in their chins when they drink and the baby thinks it is hilarious projectile spit his food everywhere it is a wonder we haven't gotten a dog yet just to lap up the food mess on the floor. It is all we can do just to keep the mess manageable on a day-to-day basis. Unfortunately most of this falls squarely onto Misty's shoulders especially when I am out of town.
- You do dishes how often? Seriously if we don't do them every day we must do them at least five times per week. This is a new, big-as-they-come, dishwasher and we run this thing like we own a restaurant. This doesn't even count the number of times we have to hand wash the dishes because the dishwasher is full. Paper plates sound better every day!
- No joke: 5 Gallons of milk per week and at 3-4 dozen eggs per week. I am partially to blame for the consumption of milk and eggs, but these kids are starting to drink so much milk I'm looking into buying a cow. I will still buy the eggs at a store, because I can't raise enough chickens to keep up with our consumption habits and frankly chickens don't have as much personality as cows. I can't wait to see what it is going to be like to feed these kids when they are teenagers. Look out Country Meat Market!
- Homeschooling: In the past year we have seen our number of school age children grow from 1 to 2. Antonio is now in the first grade and Angelo is starting Kindergarten. What is most interesting about this is that we decided to home school our children (for many reasons), but primarily because we feel that they can learn just as much at home in a shorter amount of time than is required to attend school. We looked at the schedule and realized they aren't getting that much dedicated learning time at this age anyway. Most of their school day is filled with recess, PE, lunch time, music, art etc. So they go to school for 7 hours but only are in the classroom learning environment for about an hour and a half. We are gradually learning what to do (and more importantly what not to do) as homeschooling parents, but this is a trial-and-error approach that has so far been successful, at least by my measures. Now if we could just get the kids out of the house for an hour so Mommy does not go insane...
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