Ever wanted to know how moms of many spend their days? Go check out Larger Families–today we’re documenting typical (or not-so-typical) days in our bloggers’ lives.

Look at these little weirdos. Who do they get their crazy personalities from, anyway?

Lots of big changes afoot here, and I haven’t had a moment to breathe much less blog about them. But I’ll be back soon with an update…and hopefully more goofy pictures.

Left to right: William, Owen and their cousin Jack. Adoring the heck out of a tree and each other.
(sorry for poor quality; iPhone is useful for a lot of things, but taking good pics isn’t one of them.)

…Mom is the only person who will be the least bit concerned when the toilet paper runs out.

We’ve been busily documenting our adventures and misadventures on the road over at http://www.momroadtrip.com. We’re heading from Denver to Salt Lake City today, and we’ve seen nothing but hills and shrubs for the last two hours. I’d love to write more, but we’re about to stop for lunch–so just head over to the Mom Road Trip site!

Nikki won the drawing for a free copy of THE BABY BONDING BOOK FOR DADSby Jennifer Margulis and James di Properzio, a beautiful book with inspiring and accessible advice helping fathers form a connection with their babies, and coffee-table-quality photography. Congrats Nikki, and I hope your husband loves the book!

I’ve been reading a lot about going car-free–partly in response to the painful gas prices, and partly for environmental reasons–and am wondering how people with multiple children, particularly those who don’t live right on a train line, pull it off. I stumbled across this post, for example, talking about how hard it can be to get a taxi to pick you up when you have a baby–and the blogger only has ONE child.

Anyway, I’m not turning our car in tomorrow or anything, but I’ve been thinking about ways to cut wayy back on our driving and keep running up against theoretical obstacles. I posted about them over at the Chicago Moms Blog. What do you think? Are you planning on cutting back on how much you drive, or finding alternative methods of transportation? Are you a car-free family already? If you have kids–particularly more than one–how do you manage it (or plan on managing it?)

For a class project, Jacob and two of his classmates filmed, acted in, and edited this movie (though the instructor added the “special effects” later). He’s the one in red. isn’t he cute–and a good actor?

Following our move to Chicago from small-town Michigan almost a year ago, I admit there have been a few things that have dampened my urban enthusiasm just a tad. Things like sharing a teeny (teeny in my experience, anyway–for the city it’s quite spacious) backyard with several families. Trying to figure out an intimidating and huge school system. Street parking and the necessity of learning to parallel park. The fact that my window got smashed in in front of the Lincoln Park Zoo within two weeks of our moving here, and then the police caught a kid breaking into my minivan in front of my friend’s house in a very nice residential neighborhood just a few blocks from my home. (As I told the officer, there was nothing of value in the van, and the old-french-fries-and-musty-shoe smell the kid had to endure as he searched in vain for cash and valuables was punishment enough). And the much, much higher cost of living (mostly housing, oh, and sales taxes. And did I hear that Chicago’s sales tax just got raised AGAIN?) Sometimes it all gets to me a bit and I fantasize about running for the ‘burbs.

But I can’t deny that there are a lot of things I just love about living in the city, and since today was a really great, warm, summery day and put me in a fantastic mood, I’m feeling moved to share a few:

The diversity. In our local park, we see every imaginable skin color and hear the sounds of many different languages. We live in an area with many Orthodox Jewish families–so many that I’d say we are definitely in the religious minority. My boys’ best friends are Indian, Pakistani and Greek. I love that in less than a year the fact that many of the faces they see look different from themselves has all become totally normal and commonplace to my kids.

The architecture. At first the fact that I lived on a street where most of the buildings looked almost exactly the same was a bit unnerving to me. But now I love looking up and down the blocks and seeing row after row of brick two- and three-flats and bungalows. They are similar, which gives the neighborhood a really neat, uniform look, but they’ve all got their own special charm.

The people I meet. There are more people here, so maybe there’s just a bigger pool to draw from; but I have met more interesting new people in the past ten months than I probably had in the last five years. I made some great friends in Michigan, but I often went weeks without meeting anyone new. Now, I meet somebody new almost every day.

I’m the kind of person who tends to get restless after living anywhere for a little while, and I have a bad case of “grass is greener” syndrome–so it can be easy to overlook the stuff I love while pining away for what I wish I had. But everything is a tradeoff…and even though I’m definitely missing a few things about small-town life, for right now I’m feeling content and happy with my lot in life. Even if my “lot” is, by rural Michigan standards, barely the size of a respectable bedroom.

City girl or country girl? I may never decide once and for all, but at least I can learn to slow down and enjoy the stops I make along the way.

I wrote about our struggle with video game overkill and parental distraction back in February. And, while the seemingly never-ending dreary weather (Seriously? A blizzard on March 27, what-was-that-all-about, God?) made me, on some days, want to turn on the X-Box, climb under the covers and let the kids fend for themselves until it’s all over, I’m pleased to report we’ve made some progress. Here are a few things we’re doing differently ’round these parts:

1) Video games/computer games are only allowed on weekends or over school holidays, period. When school’s out for the summer it’ll go back to weekends only. Generally we are pretty busy one day each weekend, so the video games only really get used on the other day. This is working out great! Once the kids adjusted to the fact that they just can’t turn on the computer or games during the week, they just…stopped asking. No arguing or constant monitoring like there was when I tried imposing daily limits, and I’m much less resentful of the time they spend playing on the weekends because I know it won’t last all week. I decided to hold off on setting TV limits until I saw how they would react to having no video games, and interestingly, they didn’t just swap out one form of electronic entertainment for the other. They have a couple of shows they like to watch but for the most part they’ve been spending their time playing, talking, and drawing. Score one for mom!

2) We’ve implemented weekly date nights with the older kids. It wasn’t until I took Isaac out for pizza that I realized how long it had been since I’d actually sat down and had a conversation with him with zero interruptions or distractions from his siblings, work, or other goings-on. Date night doesn’t have to be anything fancy–sometimes I just take a kid grocery shopping with me; if there’s a little wiggle room in the budget we might go grab a bite to eat. More important is just the intention to give each parent some one-on-one time with each child separately. It’s amazing the stuff they’ll talk about when you get them alone, and how eager they are for a little undivided attention.

3) As for work-life balance, I had promised myself I was going to start shutting the computer off at 4 PM every day and spending the rest of the evening with the family, without fail. At that? I have failed miserably. I’ve had a bunch of deadlines, one after the other, and have stumbled across some interesting blogs and in general have just found myself spending way too much time on the internet, but I’m telling myself that part of it is that I’m feeling listless because of the crappy weather. Once it gets nicer out again, I plan on spending most of my time outside.

Actually, I’m looking out my window now and…it actually looks kind of sunny out there. I think it’s about time I put this away, got out the jackets and hats, and headed to the park. Later.