You Know You Have Multiples When:

I have watched many many families with multiples (from twins-quintuplets) over the years, and had to laugh when I came across this list on a blog!  Many of you moms/dads/friends of “singletons”, may think that moms of multiples are crazy….but all of these statements are soooo true :-)

It’s a bit long, but quite entertaining, especially if you have been there!

You Know You Have Quadruplets When:

• Your stroller has a steering wheel
• Your Costco 2% rebate check comes in at $300
• Dinnertime is officially declared an Olympic Event
• You are the only parents who can utter, “Stop playing with that, it’s not YOUR penis” with a perfectly straight face.
• You arrive at your doctor’s appointments early just to read the magazines in peace.
• Root canals are a great chance to catch up on your sleep.
• You laugh at singleton moms that are struggling to get their stroller out of the car.
• You wonder how come singleton moms need a diaper bag the size of a suitcase, while you travel with enough for your babies in a bag half the size.
• You can unload four babies from car seats and put them in your stroller WHILE you are laughing at the singleton mom getting her stroller out of her car.
• Your husband has seriously tried to add GPS and motorize your stroller.
• Men whom you have never met ask to 'test drive' your stroller.
• There is no room in your refrigerator for food, all available space is occupied by pre-prepared bottles of formula.
• You look at a closet full of diapers and think “I’m running low”
• A regular sized pack of diapers lasts only 3 days.
• Every morning you mentally prepare yourself for the worst before your enter “that” bedroom, (naked toddlers, wet bed sheets, diapers on the floor and four little voice saying “poop, poop”)
• Your biggest dilemma is how to keep those dang diapers on.
• You've either used, or considered using duct tape on diapers.
• You are obsessed with diapers.
• You can throw French-fries to the rear set of seats without looking and none end up on the floor.
• You consider wearing jeans being 'dressed up', and it's a formal event if you're wearing make-up
• You can change diapers standing up, while in line, at the Children’s Museum.
• You feel like a sheepherder instead of a parent
• You have people asking if you run a daycare because that’s what your yard looks like.
• You can carry 4 plates of food and 4 cups to the table without spilling anything and you’ve never been a waitress.
• A trip to Wal-Mart for diapers is a vacation even at 1:am.
• You don't think twice about going to Target with bed-head
• Your stroller costs more than your first car.
• You have a stroller addiction.
• You can hold at least four conversations at the same time.
• You no longer have a proper name you are either “The Lady With the Quads” or Moooooooooommmmyyyyyyyyy
• You consider the commute to work Mommy time
• You consider your shower Mommy time.
• Your shower is now the most precious time of the day, if you get one.
• You find yourself singing songs from Yo Gabba Gabba while at Wal-Mart
• You can quote Monster’s Inc. verbatim.
• You do your grocery shopping in stores with aisles wide enough to accommodate your stroller
• You automatically divide or multiply everything by four
• Complete strangers take pictures of your kids in their stroller... and they wonder why we call them the Paparazzi???
• You have diapers in your purse, in the glove compartment, your desk drawer and in every room of the house – just in case.
• Every square inch of seating in your vehicle is taken by car seats.
• Your vacuum cleaner never makes it back into the closet.
  You can sweep, talk on the phone, AND read to your children all at the same time.
• Your monthly grocery budget is greater than the annual budget for the State of Rhode Island.
• Four hours of sleep is “fully rested” and falling asleep over the kitchen sink is a “fulfilling nap”
• The first thing you ask upon arriving home is for the poop and pee report.
• 2 minute tasks take 30 minutes because you have to keep returning to the play room to break up fights, peel the kids from the wall, change a diaper you can actually smell from the next room, break up more fights, remove a child from the top of the couch, perform surgery on the VCR because there is an UFO inside of it, fill sippy cups back up with water because whatever was in them disappeared mysteriously (only later when you sit down on the couch you will find where it went) remind them not to jump on each other, break up a few more fights and change more poopy diapers.
• You not only are familiar with what a 186 count box of baby wipes looks like when they are all removed from the box one at a time, but you know for a fact you can’t put them back because you’ve tried.
• You curse stores for only having two of something in a package, or for only having two of something on their shelf.
  You buy Baby Motrin, Cough Syrup, etc, 4 at a time, and the clerk looks at you funny, while the whole time you are wishing they sold it in gallon containers.
• You pull 4 tickets for Car seats at Babies R Us to take to the register, and when you get there the clerk says, “Ma’am, I think you picked up too many of these or they must have been stuck together”
• You’ve fallen asleep in any of these places: The shower, washing dishes, sitting on the floor reading them a book, with your fork on the way to your mouth.
• You agonize over what it will be like when they get to school and you have four teachers to visit on parent night, three different sets of homework, and your babies aren’t even out of the NICU yet.
• Instead of a wallet full of photos you carry around a CD because it holds 700 megabytes of them.
• 700 megabytes is 1 night worth of photos.
• Everyone in the neighborhood knows who you are, even though you’ve never met them before.
• The grocery store clerk has commented on the 6-9 gallons of milk you buy each week, telling you it would be cheaper to buy a cow.
• You know how to prop bottles with wadded up receiving blankets.
• You’ve ever truly considered strangling someone who said, “you’ve got your hands full”, "are they all yours", or “I’d shoot myself”.
• You’ve ever been so sleepy that you can fall asleep with the baby lying on your chest and fail to wake up despite the fact that the baby is screaming directly into your left ear.
• You are both shocked by the rudeness, and amazed by the kindness of strangers in the same 60 seconds upon entering Wal-Mart.
• Wal-Mart is probably your favorite store, since its open 24 hours and diapers and formula are cheaper there. Oh, and you consider going to Wal-Mart at 11pm “going out”
• If you’ve ever charted poops, pees, and food intake in an Excel schedule.
• You know at one time you did have a spouse, but now you can’t remember
• You have to wash the dinner dishes by hand because the dishwasher is full of bottles and sippies.
• The singleton mom in front of you at Wal-Mart buying one can of formula and one bag of diapers complains about the price and you have to restrain yourself from hitting a complete stranger.
• The clerks at the grocery store have to regularly restrain you from pummeling any singleton mom that takes the last multi seat-shopping cart.
• You are both revered and hated by the staff at your pediatrician’s office.
• You don’t see anything unusual with the fact that you know not one, but several, quadruplet moms.
• You no longer have to wonder what a “poop painting” would look like.
• A complete stranger walks up to you in the mall and says “my niece has quadruplets, her name is _________ do you know her?” and you can answer “yes I do”
• The awareness of silence strikes terror into your soul.
• You know the black market value of a Runabout stroller.
• You know the black market value of a Choo Choo wagon.
• You know what a Choo Choo wagon is.
• You consider cereal dumped on the middle of the floor, not to be bad parenting, but rather a unique picnic breakfast!
• All kids are aware that any sippy cup left unattended is fair game.
• Whining is heard not just in stereo, but in surround sound!
• You go to an amusement park with your quad stroller only to realize YOU’VE become the source of amusement, or you go to the Zoo and find the other visitors watching your kids more than the animals!
• Your peri says you look like a beached whale at 24 weeks.
• You know what the word Peri stands for.
• You use the word singleton.
• You need a hitch for your stroller
• Your stroller dictates what kind of vehicle you can drive
• You refer to your babies as A, B, C and D
• $15.00 baby outfits seem too expensive.
• You buy a single weeks worth of formula, and the clerk asks you if you are stocking up.
• You laugh at singleton moms for sterilizing pacifiers. You can’t stop yours from sucking on each others fingers, nose, ears, toes etc, so you just shake your head because you know those germs are building up their immune system.
• You pick up a dropped paci, and just blow the dust off rather than rinsing it because after all, 5 minutes ago they shared it with the dog, and you didn’t get to it in time before they put it back in their mouths. What’s a little dust?
• You intentionally feed all 4 kids from the same spoon and bowel even though one is sick, because you can’t bear the thought of 4 consecutive 2 week cold sessions, you’d rather have them sick at the same time.
• You enroll them in or join every activity and playgroup you can, you visit every playground in a 10 mile radius, sometimes more than 1 a day, just so you can be out of the house from dawn to dusk so you have less to clean up.
• When discussing child proofing and singleton moms say “you just have to tell them no, you can’t child proof everything” and you laugh and say “Wanna Bet?”
• After 20 minutes in the car you realize you are not only listening to the kids tape, but you are singing along with it, and there are no kids in the car.
• The $250 travel system stroller that singleton moms complain about being too big, look like toy strollers to you.
• You’re not sure if what you squeezed on your toothbrush was toothpaste or diaper ointment, but you’re too tired to care, and too tired to check, so you keep brushing anyway.
• You say to your husband “if you wake up these babies I’ll kill you” and you mean it.
• You say to your mother “if you wake up these babies I’ll kill you” and you mean it.
• You say to your dog “if you wake up these babies I’ll kill you” and you mean it.
• It doesn’t matter, you ARE buying them out of ProSoBee, and the other moms can just get over it.
• All of a sudden everyone you know, knows someone with quadruplets.
• Crib Tents? You can’t afford NOT to buy them.
• You know what a crib tent is!
• You consider leashes a viable safety option
• You burst into laughter at the site of a diaper Genie… AS IF….!!
• You celebrate the birthdays of the people who invented the spill proof sippy cup and the auto repeat replay function on DVD players.
• You bought a dog (or have thought about it) to cut down on post meal cleanup time.
• On the way to rescue a paper towel roll on the verge destruction you suddenly realize that it might buy you 5 minutes to check your e-mail.
• The next day, the kids wake up too early, you open their door long enough to throw in a couple of rolls of paper towels and you go back to bed.
• You discover Nirvana when you finally convert to that all one color/all one size/all one style of socks, system.
• Your home has become a complex maze of gates, locks and barricades.
• Your kids have never actually walked through the zoo or store, because getting out of the stroller is NOT an option.
• You are not horrified at the idea of “waking a sleeping baby” to eat. After all, it is time to EAT so says the master schedule!
• You seriously wish someone would sell Orajel in a toothpaste-sized tube. Is this little tiny tube supposed to be a joke? And that’s with the one day supply of infant Tylenol… don’t they know I need a 10oz bottle?
• You delivered 17 lbs of baby, and didn’t set any records.
• Your nickname for a period of time was Bessie.
• You spend more time pumping than sleeping
• You don’t think the Suburban is a large vehicle.
• When hearing of a new pregnancy, you first question is “just one?”
• You call one baby a singleton (before your quads arrived, it was just “a baby”)
• All your friends have multiples.
• Your main connection to the outside world is through Facebook and quadruplet blogs
• Some of your best friends you have never even met in person.
• You send 7 invitations to a birthday party, and you have 15 kids show up, and you were expecting more.
• You don’t want to potty train because the though of trying to take all 4 to a public bathroom yourself sends shivers up and down your spine.
• You make formula by the gallon and it lasts only 24 hours.
• Your pediatrician’s office recognizes your voice.
• It's considered a 'date' if you husband goes with you to the Mother's of Multiples garage sale.
• You refer to your babies as the "blue one" or the "green one" (color coded infants to tell them apart)
• You start to question phrases like: "God will only give you what you can handle"
• And you just pray a lot more in general!

I sent this to many of “my moms” and got this response back from the triplets I nanny for’s mom!

“Cori that was great! Oh sooooo true. I guess I have forgotten how much of a spectacle we really are.”

Are you a mom of multiples who can relate?  Any of these items listed above you are clueless about and want to know more about?  Please let me know, I’d love to hear and answer questions :-)