A BAKER'S DOZEN | CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN¹

Chapter 1

[ movie - cheaper by the dozen ]
[ chapter one ]

THIRTEEN IS OUR NUMBER. It's the number of games my husband, Tom, coaches at Lincoln College every season. It's the number of kids we try to keep track of. And of course, the kids are a baker's dozen, if you know what I mean.

I couldn't help but narrow my eyes at the pink slip that was haunting me at my desk. It was a detention slip from school, scheduling me in for the upcoming week for fighting with another girl in the locker room. I sighed and quickly gathered my courage, shoving the slip inside my bag, hoping that I would forget about it.

"Lorraine, remember we're 11 kids here so don't take too long in the bathroom." I warned my younger sister, Lorraine, as she walked out of our shared-bedroom

"It really depends if nobody interrupts me or not because it has to be perfect." Lorraine, without a hint of embarrassment, admitted to me with a small smile

"She's definitely going to take forever." I couldn't help but mutter to myself and I knew Lorraine heard me since she gave me a slight glare, and in return, I gave her an innocent smile

I huffed in annoyance and threw myself onto my bed, letting my body get used to the warmth that was provided to me by the blankets. I huffed and removed my bag off, letting it rest in empty space beside me as I started to eye the ceiling. I rolled over on the bed, so my stomach would be pressed against and the mattress, and it wasn't long before I felt my body relaxing and slowly drifting off to take a short nap.

I grunted when I felt my body jerk itself awake, and I gasped lightly, before rolling onto my back. I turned my head to glance at my alarm clock and released a groan due to the fact that only a few minutes had passed. Not wanting to take a nap again, I rolled myself out of bed, dragging my bag on the floor and started to make my way to the hallway.

Thirteen's an insane number of kids, but having a small family was never an option for us. See, Tom loved growing up with seven brothers and sisters. And after my sister died, I spent most of my time wishing I had seven brothers and sisters.

Tom and I met at Illinois Polytechnic University. He was a senior dreaming of becoming the head football coach there. I was a freshman dreaming of becoming a sports reporter. He wanted eight kids, I wanted eight kids. Bam.

An hour after I met him, I knew he was the one. We just had family at the wedding. Oh, and Shake McGuire, Tom's best man. What a hot dog.

A year later, we had our first--Nora. I loved taking her to work with me. After Jamie, Charlie, and Lorraine were born, we realized our dream of living in the city and having eight kids and two careers wasn't going to work. As much as we wanted our big careers, we wanted our big family more.

So Tom settled for a division III coaching job at Lincoln, I quit writing for the Tribune, and we moved to the country. Tom and I got busy when we moved to Midland. We had Henry, Sarah, Jake, and Mark in consecutive years. Then we went for magic number eight, and instead, we got the first set of fraternal twins--Jessica and Kim. Ten kids.

With each child, Tom and I got further from our big career dreams. But we didn't think about that. We had our hands full with ten. We were happy, and we were done. Then we went to a party celebrating Shake McGuire's appointment to athletic director at our Alma mater.