I typically will wear a baby up to about 9 months.  When grocery shopping, that means that the shopping cart is free for the youngest.  The other children know to stay near by.

When we are crossing a parking lot or street, children three and younger have a buddy.  Very early on, they learn to walk holding a buddy’s hand.  No protests allowed.  If they do arise, we go back to the car immediately and address the situation and try again.  As of now, Malachi is still learning, so his main teacher is me.  He’s gradually getting the idea and will hold his buddy’s hand for short periods of time.  The problem now is that he wants to hold two buddies hands.  Since Ceili Rain is older and sticks with us, she usually will grab the other hand.

Buddies are also in charge of buckling up their little buddies.

Crowds freak me out when I am out with my crew.  We have several ways we negotiate crowds or cramped spaces.

1.  Ducklings:  When there is a crowd and very little wiggle room and Mark is with me, we call, “Ducklings.”  The kids have learned to line up behind daddy “duck” and I bring up the rear counting about every two or three seconds. 

2.  T-shirts:  When we can prepare ahead of time (and I actually can remember) we wear matching t-shirts.  When we went to D.C. a couple of years ago, we wore red sibling shirts.  We now have matching “school” shirts.  Those were worn when we headed to the homeschool conference last year.  Yes, we get lots of compliments and shocked stares, but my main goal is to make sure I see seven to eight (if Mark is with us) little red or orange shirts bobbing along.

3.  Grab Your Buddy:  If it’s not too crowded but an unfamiliar place, we have the kids buddy up.  We still have one and half who don’t really have a buddy (Liam is still part time since Malachi can be stroller bound if needed to wrangle him).  They stick close to me (or Mark) when we are moving and grooving.

Check out how Vitafamiliae makes it through a parking lot without squashed kids.