A big part of having the five girls in my life is practical: dressing them, feeding them, etc.  One of the trickiest things I’ve found about caring for them is keeping each of them dressed!  They’re each growing at different rates, so it’s a struggle to remember what sizes each of them wear — and to make sure I have clothes for each of them!  At times each of the girls bring clothes from their homes to my house, but their parents and I have found that it typically works better for them to have clothes already at my house.  None of the girls have extra clothes just lying around, so it takes pressure off of everyone if clothes are available for them at both places instead of us all struggling to make sure clothes go back and forth.

With that said, I try to have basic clothes at my house for them at all times.  There are a few tricks I’ve found that have made life easier for me:

1. I buy the basics in bulk. If you were to come over to my house today, you would find that I have two pairs of pajamas for each girl, a couple of bathing suits for each girl and an assortment of undergarments (including socks!) for each girl.  Whenever I need a “basic” item, I try to buy five sets of it at once — that ensures that everyone has one of whatever it is.

2. I buy ahead of time. When I see something on sale, I buy it if I can afford it at that time.  For example, when swimsuits went on sale a couple of months ago, I bought five bathing suits on clearance for the price of one at regular price.  One of my goals for the upcoming winter months is to make strong swimmers out of the girls at our local indoor pool, so I knew that the bathing suits would be a great purchase.  Just last week, I found winter warmies (hats and gloves!) on sale for very cheap so I went ahead and got them because winter is quickly approaching here in Tennessee.  I want to keep their little heads and hands warm!

3. I don’t underestimate God. A couple of weeks ago, on an unseasonably cold day, I had a mixture of the fabulous five in my car as I went to drop them off at their different places.  One of them mentioned how they didn’t have warm clothes at my house and I told her that, the following weekend, I would go and buy them some warmer shirts (I picked that weekend because I would get paid the day before!).  Only a day later, I had a friend who has read a lot about the girls call me and ask if I was in my office because she wanted to stop by to see me.  Before she left, she pulled out a HUGE stack of darling winter clothes that she had bought for my girls while she was out shopping for her own son.  I was in disbelief at how quickly God had provided something that the girls needed.

Since I’m single and on my own, I don’t have a big budget when it comes to the girls.  So, sometimes I have to get creative.  Before the girls were in my life, I would buy a new outfit at Target for myself every so often, without really thinking about it.  These days, I’m much happier to just make do with what I already have for myself and instead get basics for them instead.  I’ve learned how to stalk the sale aisles at Target and Old Navy and you’d be surprised by how much that helps me get things for them like leggings, skirts and jeans.  Shoes are my least favorite thing to purchase for any of them, mainly because of how fast their little feet grow.

Organizing the clothes is a whole other process in itself!  I put my dresser in the girls’ bedroom and I use it to organize their undergarments, pajamas and skirts / pants / shorts (depending on the season).  In their closet, I have the bars divided into different sections based on what the clothes are and grouped by sizes.  When I have the girls frequently, my laundry increases by quite a bit but I do my very best to stay on top of it and make myself immediately put it away in the right place so that it will be easier to find outfits for each of them.  Another thing that helps is picking out their outfits the night before because mornings can be crazy with the fabulous five.  Confession: I’m usually so tired by the time I get the girls in bed and asleep that I feel like I don’t have the energy left to pick out their clothes for the next day and I end up putting it off until the morning.  Bad, bad, bad Amy Beth!

I was going to save this until next week after I finished the questions about the fabulous five girls, but I can’t stand it.  This past weekend, I went to Atlanta with my cousin Cate to photograph her soldier’s return from Iraq.  He’ll be here for a two week stay before returning to Iraq to finish out his deployment.

Some of the photos are blurry, mainly because I was crying my eyes out while I watched them reunite.  I think you’ll like them, though, blurry or not.  Make sure you turn your sound up before you begin watching.  I dare you not to cry.

Welcome home, soldier.

– — –

All images by me; audio “Come Home” by One Republic.

The short answer is that I don’t know how often or when I’ll have any of the girls.  I usually know when I’ll have MacKenzie, since I have to drive so far to get to her but it’s anyone’s guess as to the rest of them.  I try to just be available to Aviean’s mom and Angelina / Juliana / Olivia’s dad so that, when they need me, I can happily take the girls.  During this season of life, I tend to have Aviean more on the weekends and Angelina / Juliana / Olivia more during the week but it varies from week to week depending on what help each single parent needs.  I only have all five girls together if it is a weekend or a holiday, but I frequently have some variation of the girls a lot of the time.

That means I basically need to be ready for any or all of them at all times; knowing this helps me stay on top of grocery shopping, laundry, etc.  The better I plan ahead, the better it is for all of us.  If I get a call letting me know that I need to pick Angelina / Juliana / Olivia up, that means I’m going to have to go straight from my office to the daycare to get Juliana and Olivia and then back over to Angelina’s school to pick her up from aftercare.  It’s usually 6 p.m. before I can get all three of them into the car, so it is a big help if I already have something at home that I can fix for dinner.  The same goes for other things, too, like laundry and medicine and diapers; if it is already at home, I don’t have to take a bunch of little girls into the grocery store with me.

If I know I’m going out of town (to do photo shoots or for work), I make sure to tell all the parents ahead of time so they will know in advance that I won’t be able to help with the girls for those days.  Typically, if they ask me to take the girls, I don’t say no; the only times I can remember having to say no in the last six months or so were times when I was sick and didn’t feel like I could take care of the girls properly.  I try my very best to be as available as possible for the girls — and their parents!  I don’t have much of a social life anymore, but I don’t mind it since I’m currently not dating anyone.  If I was to begin dating someone while the girls are still in my life, I would definitely set some boundaries to make sure that I had time to build a good foundation in that dating relationship.

When I don’t have the girls, I do one of two things: either I see it as a time to rest or I see it as a time to regroup and get ready for the next time they invade my house!  If I go two days without having any of them with me, I start missing them terribly and end up sanitizing their toys, reorganizing their clothes, etc.  It’s hard to have little hearts in your house some of the time but not all of the time, but it’s just part of life when it comes to the fabulous five.

As promised last week, I’ll be answering all kinds of questions I’ve received recently about my relationship with the fabulous five.  To organize them, I’ll be addressing one question at a time which means I’ll have several different posts up each day.  If you read my blog through a feed reader service (such as Google Reader), you’ll see each post as I put it up; if you read my blog by coming straight to the blog each day, you’ll want to check titles on the newest posts at the top of the page to know if there’s a new post up.   I’m excited about giving you a more detailed look at how the girls are each a part of my life!

The most often emailed question I receive is from new readers who want to know how five different girls ended up in my life.  Here’s the answer:

MacKenzie, age 9, met me when I was doing an event at her home church.  If you’re new to my blog, for several years I was the director of a ministry that reached out to girls in grades three through twelve through faith-based after school programs run by college-aged girls.  Throughout the year, we held sleepover events for up to 300 girls at a time — yikes, right?!?  During one of those events, MacKenzie’s dad (who worked as the church janitor) was there from the church to help handle clean-up from our event.  He had brought his daughter, MacKenzie, with him and she and I just bonded from the minute we met each other.  The event was for middle school girls, and MacKenzie was only five years old, but I asked her dad if she could hang out with me instead of having to follow him around the church while he cleaned.  He agreed and, four years later, I still get to be a part of MacKenzie’s life on a regular basis.  She lives 1.5 hours from me, so I don’t get to see her as often as the other four but I make it a priority to see her as often as possible.  MacKenzie is raised solely by her father.

Aviean, age 5, is my cousin’s daughter.  Through a variety of circumstances, my family didn’t know Aviean (or even of her existance) until she was three.  Since then, Aviean and I have gotten the chance to bond quite a bit, especially over the last year of her life.  She lives in the same town as me, so I see her fairly often. Out of all of the girls, she is the only one who is related to me.   Aviean lives with her mother, who is not related to me — though we’re developing a good friendship.

Angelina, age 8; Juliana, age 4 and Olivia, age 3 are the latest addition to my round-up of little girls.  I met them in early 2010 when I threw a birthday party for Aviean’s father (my cousin).  My cousin mentioned he had a friend who had the same birthday as him with no family around to celebrate.  As soon as he told me that, I demanded to know the friend’s phone number and called the guy up to ask what he was doing for his birthday that night.  He didn’t have plans, so I told him to come and bring his three daughters to my house later that evening.  I only had a couple of hours left to change the party plans, but I quickly got some gifts for him, wrapped them and made sure that the birthday cake read his name as well.  That night, as he walked through the doors, I fell in love with his three girls.  They came over to play the next day and have been a part of my life ever since.  Angelina, Juliana and Olivia are being raised solely by their father.

One of the craziest things about having worked in ministry with college-aged girls is that all of my college girls are now sending me wedding and baby shower invitations!  I’ve had either a wedding shower, wedding or baby shower invitation in my mailbox every single time I’ve checked my mail this month. Even crazier, this past weekend alone, two of my college girls got engaged with 24 hours of each other.  Um, whoa!

Since some of my college girls are still living nearby, I’ve had the pleasure of doing their engagement photos or, in some cases, even their wedding photos.  On a recent warm day, I headed out to the old mill area of town and did Caleb and Lizy’s engagement pictures.  They’re getting married in December, which seems a little crazy to me.  Lizy, wasn’t it just yesterday that you were a freshman in college, signing up to volunteer in our ministry?  How did time suddenly fly by and you’re old enough to marry? Yikes!

To see more photos from Caleb and Lizy’s engagement shoot, go here.

This is the animal that I mentioned last night. Two of my college girls, Nina and Anna, claim it is a bat.  I claim it is a wild hamster.

Also, this is my puppy Cuddles, the one who might be a bat in disguise.  Can you see it?

Lastly, I am greatly disturbed by how few emails I have received since last night’s post indicating that my future mother-in-law is, indeed, somewhere out there reading my blog.  Was it the part about my puppy potentially being a bat that made you fear for your son’s future with me?  Or was it the lollipop thing, ’cause we can totally threaten Aviean with timeout if she keeps it up with the whole imaginary lollipop thing.

1. Last night I watched two straight hours of Sister Wives.  Basically, these four women are married to the same guy which, you know, is illegal.  And fascinating.  And illegal.  And weird.  And, you know, illegal.

2. Two of my college girls claim they saw a bat in broad daylight.  They even took a picture of it.  The bat looks eerily similar to my little puppy Cuddles.  I frequently hold Cuddles’ ears up in the air and say “Bat-puppy to the rescue!”  I’m disturbed by the fact that my puppy could be a bat and I’ve just never realized it.  Have I been living in the presence of a bat this whole time?  Even worse, did I name a wild bat “Cuddles?”

3. My cousin Marisa is still on her honeymoon and she has not updated her Facebook one single time to give any of us an update on how the honeymoon is going or how her new husband is enjoying the gifts I gave him her at her lingerie shower.

4. I just spent the last hour and a half sitting in a booth at IHOP with Cousin Cate as we continue to (im)patiently wait for her soldier to arrive back to the US for a two week R & R visit before he heads back to Iraq.  Whenever her phone would ring, we both almost jumped out of the booth hoping it was him calling.  We debated driving to the airport tonight to just start stalking the international arrival area, but we were afraid someone (i.e. the security guards) might think that was weird.

5. I had a dream the other night about my future mother-in-law.  I dreamed that I was at her house and I was completely ignoring her son (my future husband) because I just wanted to hang out with my mother-in-law.  In my dream, the woman had read my blog.  Are you my future mother-in-law?  If so, please email me.

6. I’m joking about emailing me.

7. Unless you are the mother of a single, emotionally available male who enjoys long walks on the beach, little girls trying to give out imaginary lollipops and two puppies, one of which may or may not be a bat.  If I have just described your son, forget emailing me: please call me.  Stat.

8. I’m going to bed now.

9. If bat-puppy gets me in the night, it was nice knowing you.  In my absence, please raise the fabulous five to fear the Lord and flat hair.

10. Goodnight.  Sleep tight.  Don’t let the bat-puppy bite.

I was talking to someone about the girls the other day and they commented about how “busy” I keep them when I have them, based on the stories this person reads from my blog.  She described how I’m always taking them to do something or on a trip and wondered, out loud, why I never “just keep them at home.”

Her observation made me laugh, because it’s a perfect example of how misleading a blog can be since my entries only show maybe 20% of my daily life at the most.  I do take the fabulous five on many, many “experiences” mainly because I want them to have those experiences.  For some of the girls in my little group of five, it is very realistic that they may have no other opportunities to have those types of experiences if we don’t go on them while they’re with me.  I have a never ending list of things I’d like to take the girls to experience, if only I wasn’t limited by money, time and ability.

But we stay at home plenty, too.   As the girls have each become more and more of a part of my life, I’ve tried to turn my house into a home for them.  They continually have clean sheets on their beds and towels on their hook in the bathroom and ballerina leotards that fit each of them.  Many weeks, I purposely keep them “at home” so that we can have a “family night.”  We have pizza or I fix tacos and then we all pile onto the couch and watch a movie or play board games until bedtime.  Many Saturday mornings, they wake me up so I can start our usual routine: pancakes and cartoons, while I do laundry and clean the house.

Yes, I do give the girls many, many experiences outside of the home.  I take them to museums because I want them to understand history.  I take them to parks because I want them to know what it feels like to play outside.  I take them to the movies because I remember the excitement of the lights going down while you share a bag of popcorn.

But we also bake chocolate cakes, too.

We do normal things at home, normal things that a little girl would do with her mother if she was living with her mother.  Unless some kind of miracle occurs, four of my fabulous five will grow up without having ever baked a chocolate cake with their mother.  Ever.  They will never, ever have the childhood memory of baking a cake with their mother.

And that is why on some Sunday afternoons, you’ll find us making a mess in the kitchen, baking a chocolate cake together.

I am not a spring cleaner, but apparently I’m a fall cleaner.  Something about the fall weather is making me want to get everything in order.  I’ve been organizing my laundry room, stocking up on princess-shaped soups and finding a place for every little thing in my house (as well as getting rid of what doesn’t have a place in my house!).

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve tackled my inbox as well.  I have this horrible, awful relationship with email: I love to receive it (because I am a big, huge fan of the written word) and I love to respond to it.  So, I’ll get an email I want to take time responding to and then leave it in my inbox, telling myself I’ll wait to respond until a time when Olivia isn’t crawling up my leg whilst saying “Monkey!  I crawl you like a monkey!”

And then the email sits there for a month, unanswered.

So, I’ve been working on conquering my inboxes — first my email, then my Facebook messages.  As I’ve been going through email from blog readers, I keep seeing the same phrase over and over again — “how do you…” followed by a question about buying clothes for the girls or taking them to school or deciding what stories to write about on my blog.  I highly doubt the questions are asked in hopes of receiving advice, but more just out of general curiosity as to how my relationship with the fab five works, especially the practical side of it.  Who wouldn’t be curious when it comes to a single girl trying to help raise five little ducklings?

So, I decided that next week, I’d tackle some of those questions on the blog.  I’ve tallied up the most often asked questions, but if you’d like to throw yours into the mix, you can send it to me here. I can’t promise to answer every question I get, but I’ll do my best to answer as many as I can in little posts next week.  So, ask away!

Be forewarned, however, that if you’re planning to ask me how those little girls got to be so darling, I can’t help you with that answer ’cause, as far as I can tell, they were just born that way.

I have this college girl of mine named Stephanie but all the other college girls call her Pookie but I call her by her given name of Stephanie unless I’m talking to my other college girls about her because then I have to call her Pookie so they actually know who I’m referring to.

Anyway.

Stephanie / Pookie looks exactly like Dora the Explorer and I am not even joking.

See what I mean?  She’s got the Dora haircut, the Dora skintone and the Dora face.  In fact, I almost had a Dora birthday party for Juliana a couple of months ago just so “Dora” could have visited us in the flesh.  And,  just yesterday, as I was eating lunch with her in the campus Dining Hall, I mentioned that I’d like to dress her up as Dora one day, in an effort to disguise her without actually, you know, disguising her.

Little did I know that Stephanie doesn’t need a disguise at all, as evidenced by the Facebook status of hers that showed up in my newsfeed this afternoon:

“A little kid just approached me and started looking around for something I couldn’t understand.  Then his mom came and took him away saying “No honey, boots isn’t here.”  That’s when I realized that he was looking for Boots the monkey and thought I was Dora the Explorer.  Welcome to my life.”

All I have to say is… swiper, no swiping!