The Great Frousin Visit of '08

When Garrett was born, I considered my close friends to be like aunts to him. I called them "fraunts." Soon, some of the fraunts started having kids of their own, which yielded "frousins!" Our little friend family is very special to us, particularly since Garrett and Mary don't have any actual first cousins. Our frousins are our age mates and it is a priority for us to try to see them once a year. This year, Fraunt Emily and Fraunt Anna courageously drove from the DC area all the way to Urbana! They packed the frousins in the car like little sardines. In total we had 8 kids in the house, all under the age of 6 (Garrett, 5.5; Aidan, 5; Connor, almost 4; Ella, 3.5; Mary, almost 3; Kerrigan, 2.5; Charlotte, almost 1; and Mackenna, 9 months.) Pretty much every six months after Garrett was born, one of us had a baby! Wow.

Each family had their own room in my house, although eventually we had to move the babies to their own room (big brothers and sisters are compelled to touch their baby sisters). Then we had a family in each room, a baby in the entryway, and another baby in the library. One time I had to make a phone call at night and I went out to the car so that I wouldn't disturb anyone. Chris moved to another house for the week. He came home around dinner time to touch base. It took about 30 seconds for him to get that deer-in-the-headlights look and announce his departure. We fraunts thought things went remarkably well! All the kids sat for their meals and ate a good portion of their food. That's a big deal when there are so many distractions around. Probably the craziest time was bath time. I have some great video footage of that. Imagine 3 boys in the tub, 2 girls in towels, Mary on the toilet, and babies crawling around the floor--in a single bathroom. Anna and Emily were the masters of the bath, rotating kids in and out, passing diapers overhead, and flinging jammies on damp bodies in a single swoosh over the head. Very impressive. It should be an Olympic sport, I think.

We had fun, busy days playing in costumes, playing pirates, pretending to be spacemen (I found two boys in my closet one day; they told me it was their rocket ship), doing art projects, blowing bubbles, having three-wheel races in the driveway, going to the indoor playground, munching on popsicles, making chalk outlines of our bodies, and watching movies. At the end of the day we fraunts enjoyed a well-earned refreshment and went to bed early in order to brace ourselves for the next day. Although we didn't get much time to do grown-up friend stuff, I was so impressed with how well we worked as a team to take care of the kids and make sure that they had a good, memorable visit. Good job mommies!