Cacophony

Being a mother of four has produced a variety of experiences that I have never had before so I have needed to expand my vocabulary in order to describe them. Here is the latest.

Cacophony- noun-loud confusing disagreeable sounds

This can easily be produced on a beautiful Saturday morning at the local farmers market. It starts out nice and quite with Shillelagh in the sling, Fiona holding my hand, and Athena walking alongside holding the bag. We casually stroll through and view all the wonderful goods for sale and stop for a few moments to enjoy the live music. We stop and pick a few good looking eggplant and also find some lovely cherry tomatoes. Shillelagh decides that since cherry tomatoes are her absolute favorite food, she must twist and lean out of the sling to reach them almost knocking the entire container out of my hand. At that point Jesse and Huckleberry arrive. (This many kids means we take 2 cars) Shillelagh is kicking and crying to get more tomatoes for herself, unhappy with the speed that I am trying to shove them in her face. So, Jesse offers to take Shillelagh and I take her out of the sling to hand her over. BUT, she then grabs my index finger and proceeds to pull very hard saying "Pull, pull!!!" meaning she wants me to go with her. So I follow the child that has a death grip on my finger while the entire family follows behind closely, all seeming to talk to me and each other at the same time.

We make our way over to the candy store, which, by the way, is the main reason the kids wanted to come. We all pass the store and while Shillelagh has taken notice of a teddy bear in the store window, I get a chance to ask why they aren't going to get the candy they are so anxious for. That is when we become a cacophony. The older kids immediately start to argue while Jesse is trying to talk to me and Fiona is in her continuous 3 year old ramble, while Shillelagh has again decided to move along immediately with her death grip on my finger and our entire group is blocking the sidewalk so that no one can pass by.

So you may ask, why are we here, in this evil mix of chaos and pleasure? We thought that perhaps we could all get along for more than 5 minutes to enjoy our last Saturday at the Farmers Market. Stroll, enjoy some free samples, great live music, and pick up some candy as a special treat. But you just can't do these things with 4 kids. It is physically impossible because your brain is fried before you even think about why you are there in the first place.

The big kids went into the candy store, Jesse sat to talk with Fiona and answer some of her questions, while I struggled with Shillelagh, trying to keep her from running into the street. In the end I think we stayed for a total of 15 minutes. The last 5 minutes of which I was in the car with Shillelagh feeding her tomatoes while she was buckled into a car seat. To top it all off, the gang strolls over to the car after their jaunt to the candy store and Huckleberry and Fiona both step into an enormously soft pile of doggy doo doo. It was so large that Fiona had a huge chuck on the toe of her sparkly pink princess shoe. Thank goodness she didn't try to get into the car!

We are home and exhausted and don't plan on leaving the house with children until the move next Sunday. And perhaps not even that soon!