We have a small fenced play area off to the side of the house that has a swingset, a sandbox, picnic tables and a concrete slab where the kids love to ride their bikes and tricycles.  Lately we've had tons of these little black and yellow caterpillars all over the place and the babies kept trying to step on them until they understood that if they let them alone the caterpillars will turn into beautiful butterflies in a few weeks.  Now the kids are having a great time hunting caterpillars so they can meet them before they turn into butterflies.

This evening we took them out for a little bit - I think they've got cabin fever, its been raining a lot over the past few days and they haven't been able to go out at all.  So they're running around, picking up acorns and looking for "catypilyars" when all of a sudden we hear a bunch of oohs and aahs.  They had found the grandaddy of all monster caterpillars.  Check this thing out - the little black and yellow one to the side is the kind they're finding all over.  Thank goodness we haven't run across any more like this, might give me nightmares   If anybody knows what this guy is gonna turn into please let me know!

        

After potty training five children at the same time I've learned quite a few tricks by trial and error. I can save you time, money and heartache during one of the toughest phases of child rearing.

When your child begins to get interested in YOUR bathroom habits its time to start getting them "pre-trained". Demonstrate how the toilet works, allow your child to flush it, and let him or her watch you using it.

As soon as your child begins expressing an interest in the potty you will need to go out and get a potty chair of your choice. The style or type is not important as long as it is convenient for you and your child to use.

We had every type imaginable - hand me downs, yard sale buys and baby shower gifts since we needed so many at once. Honestly the fewer bells and whistles they had the more we liked them. The ones that "rewarded" the child with a tune when they were "successful" quickly had what we like to call batteryectomies. The three piece ones with lids that turned into stepstools were a pain to use and had too many parts for the kids to put back together on their own. We liked the simple two piece ones with a removeable insert the best. Plus I highly recommend that you also get the kind that fits over the top of your standard toilet once your child is trying to master the art of #2 - its too high to start your child out that way, but makes cleanup a breeze when you need it the most

My biggest money saving tip is not to waste your money on so called training pants or the pull up type of diapers. A diaper by any other name is still a diaper and your kid knows its a diaper no matter how often you call them "big boy pants".

Training pants are intended to allow your child to feel wet without leakage based on the theory that the child won't want to feel wet and this will speed up the training process. The problem is that not all children are bothered by feeling wet and because they're not designed to hold much you'll go through many more of these than regular diapers, plus they cost more than regular diapers.

Once your child has been "pre-trained", they understand the principles of using the potty and they are beginning to be aware of having the urge to go, you should simply switch them to underwear during any part of they day that they are awake. This will speed up the potty training process tremendously because no child is comfortable walking around with wet clothes.

Because there WILL be accidents it is best to make the switch to underwear when you'll have several days in a row to spend with your child - perhaps over a three day weekend or other vacation from work. Explain in advance to your child what you will be doing. Its a great idea to take your child to the store with you when shopping for his or her new underwear, allow them to help with the selection and make it an event.

Begin by taking your child to the bathroom and placing him or her on the potty every 30-45 minutes. Reward your child each time he or she successfully uses the potty. Your choice of reward can be anything you choose, but must be something of value to your child. For instance, our oldest did very well with stickers as a reward until it came time for #2 training and then we had to move up to hardcore rewards, a truck for every time he went poopy in the potty (he was our toughest), but all the quads needed were gummy bears. We gave them one for tee tee and two for poopy and that was all the incentive they needed.

Keep taking your child to the bathroom as scheduled and before long they will start to tell you when they need to go and you'll be able to start stretching the time between bathroom visits. By the end of your long weekend your child should be getting the hang of it. Be sure to make it a habit to take your child to the potty immediately upon waking and before each nap or bedtime.

Your child will still be wearing diapers at night and during naptime but you'll know when you can start taking them out of those when they begin to habitually wake up with clean and dry diapers.

        

During my pregnancy with the quadruplets we were fortunate to learn about the programs that formula companies and other baby product firms have for multiple births. These large companies will provide the parents of twins, triplets, quadruplets and other mutliples with generous donations of free or discounted products.  For instance, Carter's sent us gorgeous yellow footed sleepers for all the babies and two packages each of blue and pink onesies  (Thank you so much Carter's!), and Gerber sent us spoons that were too beautiful to use so we put them away for the children in their memory boxes, and the coupons saved us an AMAZING amount of money.  (Thanks bunches Gerber!)

These generous companies have programs where they donate their products or provide coupons with great savings for expectant and recent parents of twins, triplets, quadruplets and quintuplets.  When we had our quads we were overwhelmed by the generosity of many of these companies, we couldn't have made it through the first year without the formula and baby food donations, you'd be amazed at what it costs to feed this many babies!  I've placed a list of Free Stuff for Twins, Triplets, Quads and Higher Order Multiples on my Squidoo page at http://www.squidoo.com/quadruplets.

        

We finally got the pictures we were promised of Ryan at bootcamp and boy does he look handsome in his uniform!  We were sad that we didn't get to go visit him at his graduation from bootcamp but its difficult enough to travel across town with five kids in carseats, there was no way we'd be able to take them across country.  His mom, stepdad, brother and sister got to go see him though and I'm very glad about that, I know Ryan was happy to see some familiar friendly faces in the crowd.  He's got a few more weeks of training then he'll get a little bit of leave before his next assignment.  He hasn't decided yet whether he's going to come visit us or go to Korea to visit his mom, but we're selfishly hoping for the former   - the kids sure have missed him while he's been gone!

        

Sadly, my mother-in-law's boyfriend passed away this week.  Don was a big cuddly bear of a man and the children just loved him and all the neat noises and faces that he liked to make for them.  He was a happy guy who always had a joke to tell and he was very good to Betty and to us. 

Don was diagnosed with cancer a mere three weeks ago and he was taken from us much too soon!  We will all miss you terribly Don but we're glad to know you're in a better place.

        

We took all the kids over to mom and dad's last night for a family dinner with my brother's family before they left this morning to head back to Korea.  All the kids had a blast playing together and we got some great pix!  We're always sorry to see them go but we're so glad that the cousins all had such quality time to play together and get to know each other better over the last few weeks.  I'm also VERY happy that they got to go see Ryan's graduation from boot camp in Fort Sill while they were here.  They brought back some wonderful pictures of him (see my previous post about him leaving us) and he looks very happy, and so handsome in his uniform.

Yesterday was Jacob's 4th birthday but we didn't want to have his party on the day Mike & Camille leave since our dinner was about them, but they gave Jacob some great toys, including a Leapster L-Max.  Thanks you guys - you're the greatest!  Have a safe trip and come back real soon

Next, we have to figure out what to do about a party for Jacob, he's got more presents hiding in the closet (shhhh - don't tell him where) and I've promised him a dumptruck cake.  This is going to be my first attempt at a shaped character cake which is probably the reason I'm not in more of a hurry, but I'll be sure to let you know how the cake turns out.

        

Since we took all the kids to the amusement park last week, the quads schedule has been all messed up and it sure has affected their moods and attitudes.  Then just when they're getting back in the swing of things they all come down with the sniffles, we've got runny noses galore amongst the quads.  We had planned to take all of the kids to Chuck E. Cheese along with my brother and his family, it would have been the first time for the quads, but we decided that it was a bad idea given their colds and how long it took them (and us) to recover from the last fun outing :S  So we just took Jacob, our oldest who will be four next week, and his cousins.  They had a blast and I think the parents even had a good time, we had some nice conversation, decent food and we got to watch the kids enjoying themselves.  It is wild how all those tokens magically turn into tickets that magically turn into trinkets that magically disappear on the trip home.  Next year during their visit I'm sure we'll be much braver and they'll all be able to go



P.S.  Yes Mom - I know he needs a haircut, but lately he's acting scared to death of the scissors.  I'm working on him

        

My husband does this thing with the bath soap that drives me CRAZY!!  Whenever the bar of soap gets too small for him he'll quit using it and get a new bar, well he leaves like a 1/4 of the original bar, way too much to throw away so I continue using it until it TRULY is too small, but then I never get the pleasure of using the brand new full-size bar of soap   So finally I realized that he is never going to change so maybe I should do something else about it.  I started saving up all the bars of soap in a cup under the bathroom sink.  Its amazing how fast the cup fills up around here, so I occasionally grab all the bars, take them to the kitchen and make myself a new big bar of soap.  I put all the small pieces in a small glass bowl and microwave them for about 30 seconds at a time, stirring after every 30 seconds.  Once the mixture is liquid enough to mold I use the spoon to smash the mixture down into the bottom of the glass bowl.  Be careful - the bowl will be hot!  Let it cool and pop your new bar of soap out.  If it doesn't come out easily just put the bowl in the freezer for a few minutes.

Keep a pair of scissors and a couple small resealable plastic bags in the bathroom - just when you think you've got to the end of a tube of toothpaste, hair gel or makeup you can cut off the end of the tube and easily squeeze out what's left.  Store the remainder of the tube in a plastic bag and you'll be able to get a few more days to a week's worth.

We have so many different sets of sheets at our house that they end up in a jumble in the linen closet.  Finally one day a lightbulb came on and I realized that the easiest way to keep all the matches together and to keep them properly folded is to store them inside one of the matching pillow cases.  This way you can keep them much better organized and you never have to search for that odd piece again.

I love to pull recipes out of magazines or print good ones that I find online, but they end up all in a jumble.  Now I divide them into meal combinations and put them in clear plastic sleeves within a three ring binder.  They're protected from cooking messes and it makes it quicker and easier to plan a whole meal.

I'd love to hear about your favorite time and money saving tips!!

        

My little brother works and lives in Korea and he and his wife and kids come back to the states once a year for a visit.  They've got two beautiful kids, ages 4 and 7, that our children just adore.  Well, we got brave and decided we'd take all seven of the kids to the local amusement park a couple days ago.  The kids have never even all been to a sit down restaurant together, they truly don't get out too much, and we were pretty nervous about taking them so my mom, mother-in-law and aunt all came along to join in the fun.

The kids turned out to be pretty great actually, they listened well and had a blast riding all the small rides.  Jacob, our oldest, likes the rides the least so he spent a bunch of time in the gameroom with nana, thrilled to be winning tickets galore that he got to exchange for trinkets.  The girls liked the rides the most, the little boys just kinda tagged along because they weren't about to let their sisters show them up.  Amazingly, Sarah - the smallest of the four - is the biggest daredevil of them all.  We went on the tilt-a-whirl and most of the kids hated it, it just spins way too fast and forces you backward in your seat.  They couldn't wait to get off, a couple of them screamed the whole way, but not Sarah!  When the ride stopped she wouldn't get off, just said "not done!"  I had to promise her we'd ride it again before we left the park and she made sure we did - a couple times!

I'm soooo glad they had a good time cuz its gonna have to last them awhile!  They were TERRIBLE for the rest of the day and have been ROYAL TOOTS for the couple days since.  These kids are very set in their schedule, we've encouraged that because its the only way to get everyone to sleep at the same time, eat at the same time, etc - but they missed their nap that afternoon, slept in the next morning, and refused to give in at nap time the next day so their schedule is just all messed up and the rest of us are paying for it.  By next year at this time we'll likely have forgotten about the "after ordeal" and get brave enough to try it again

        

There's something about red crayons - they just won't come off the wall no matter what I try.  We try to control the crayons whenever the kids are using them, but somehow they walk off anyway.  The kids break them so there are twice as many to try and contain, and they skillfully hide them I think for use when we're not looking.  They recently started a mural on the wall in the living room behind the couch where we didn't even find it for a couple of days, and one day the boys snuck some crayons in for nap time and the whole room got a makeover.  Some of the things I tried to remove the art from the walls with didn't work at all (window cleaner), but others worked on most of the marks (Mr. Clean Magic Eraser got most of it), but NOTHING worked on the red at all.

Today my husband says "you know, I heard that furniture polish might work."  So he goes and gets some out of the cabinet (ours was Scott's Liquid Gold Wood Cleaner) and with just a bit sprayed on a paper towel he proceeded to get all the red crayon off the wall.  It was amazing, didn't even take much effort.  We were worried about discoloration so I'd recommend trying a small spot first but honestly there was not much chance of the walls looking worse than they already did   I just wish I understood how he could go through weeks of listening to me gripe about the walls before coming out with this gem of an idea.