15 kids and countingMay 26, 2003 by Asif Zamir

When you have children in your full time care, you have to get used to:

1.) misplaced everything. Prescription glasses, keys, cellphone, batteries, everything you needwill be missing. EVERYTHING. They play with everything. They see you touch something, they want to touch it. You tell them not to touch something, they want to touch it. I’m still trying to trick them into using the vacuum.

2.) everything is covered in slime. Children produce a natural disgusting slime (okay okay not really) and they cover everything in this slime. My clothes, my car, my keyboard, monitor, youname it. I go to church with spit up on my shirts and pants, boogers cover all my possessions. There are boogers on my eyeglasses right now.

3.) being tired all the time, yet having adrenaline enough to do anything you need to do.

4.) having no available cash left over because they need something (or they broke something or lost something and you have to buy a new one).

5.) privacy no longer exists. There is a child hiding under a table, in a cupboard, under a bed,in a closet. There is a teen sitting so quietly in the corner you don’t even know they are there. They hear every fart and every prayer.

6.) birthdays, Christmas, etc involves me giving out money so presents can be purchased for me.

I love it. 15 kids so far, yes fifteen. Not bad asif. Now to get a wife and start making some biological ones :)

Nadine is 6 years old, she loves to collect frogs in a jar and bring them in the house, I told her to stop doing both of those things. Did Nadine fill a jar with 100 baby frogs (she counted)and then bring them into the house and accidentally drop the jar, spilling live frogs all over the floor? Yes!

While yelling at her about this, I accidentally call her Renee, she points to a 5 year old on the sofa “Asif I’m Nadine, that’s Renee.”

I fell asleep on the sofa and woke up with an armpit filled with ketchup. What I’ve learned is, don’t try to fight it, just enjoy it while you can.

On another note, N and I was driving down Steeles Ave and we saw these 2 small children, maybe ages 5-6 trying to flag down drivers. So we stopped to see what was going on, it was actually a young father and his 2 children, the father had walked away for a second. They had come here for camping in the Etobicoke area (near that campground around Wild Water

Kingdom) and had somehow ended up far away while running errands. They reminded me of those “end of the world survivor” type families. I know a few. Anyway, we drove them back tothe campground since we were actually headed that way. Made sure everything was okay andthen left.