When All Your Kids Cry at the Same Time

Photo: Mary DeCrescenzio

We were on one of our first outings with all 5 children, so we loaded up the family van and made our way to Karate for my son's orange belt test. As his mom, I wanted to be there to support him even though I knew it may be hard to keep all his siblings quiet for the showcase. I brought the double stroller, packed with our 1-month old and 2-year-old, hoping to keep them contained and easy to manage. My husband could sit with the 4 and 6-year-old, and he and I could both try to catch a few quick photos with our free hands.

Crying Child #1: On the way into the studio, I realized that Sadie had mosquito bites all over her arms in addition to having been sick and fussy all week. So the only consolation for her was in her Daddy's arms. Everything was making her cry this week--even her own Birthday party! So watching Karate for an hour was no exception.

Crying Child #2: I was not surprised that our newborn was going to cry because his feeding time was 7 pm, which was halfway through the Karate show. But before I could feed him...

Crying Child #3: Gaby was sitting in a folding chair, and her finger got cut by the folding joint, so she was bleeding and crying. I ran her into the bathroom to put cold water on it and compression to stop the bleeding, and thankfully the Karate staff had ice and bandages. Before she recovered:

Crying Child #4: I went into a smaller room to feed the baby and watch the younger 2 girls. During that time, Sadie poured every crayon from all 3 large crayon boxes onto the floor. And Emma wanted to run back and forth between her Daddy's chair and the room I was in, which meant that Sadie was following her. She also wanted to stand on a chair in order to see the gym area, of which I said no several times, requiring me to reprimand her. That, of course, brings Emma to tears, so by this point I was close to tears myself. I am used to having this type of chaos at home, but in public, I was certain that all the parents were staring at us and terribly frustrated for our disrupting their children's performances. At least Karate is a loud sport, so hopefully our noise blended in.

Ruben and Emma cleaned up half the crayons and then tried to continue watching Caleb perform. I picked up some crayons but did not want to miss Caleb receiving his belt. I had to watch it from outside the building because Sadie was crying again, so I held her outside and looked in through the lobby windows.

Amazingly, as soon as the show was over, no one was crying, and the rest of the crayons had been cleaned up by the Karate staff--certainly out of sympathy for the stressed out parents of 5 under age 8. Caleb had completed the test and was awarded his new belt, and we were ready for a happy family dinner.

But I knew my stress levels could not handle that. So I came home with the two youngest while Ruben took the older 3 to dinner. Once I got the babies into bed, I sat down in my recliner to relax and watch Property Brothers. The night was somehow a success!