Quadruplets, Hanukkah and a Fine Patience

First there is a divvying up of tasks: Who is going to light the candles, who is going to say the blessing, who is going to put the candles into their proper slots and who is going to strike the match.

Then there’s the squabbling.

Hanukkah for the Rosen children is sort of like a combination of a holiday and a birthday party. They have the religious rituals down pat. But they are 9-year-old quadruplets--three girls and a boy--and trying to get them organized is like trying to herd cats.

Sandra Decker, a single mother who runs her CPA practice out of her West Hills home, is as good a shepherd as nine years of practice could make her.

There are two menorahs. “Less arguing that way,” Decker says.

But no less chaos.

Jeffrey takes several candles out of their slots and moves them to the other side of the nine-holed candelabra. “Jeff!” his sister Jessica complains. “You have it wrong.”

Tired of the candle-switching game, Jeffrey makes a nose-dive under the table. Anna follows and the squeals of 9-year-olds fill the air.

“I’m not sure what they’re doing,” Decker says, throwing her hands into the air.

“Hiding!” Jeffrey says.

“We’re hiding!” Anna repeats.

Elyssa and Jessica tug at a book of matches.

“Guys, don’t act gooney, now get up,” Decker implores.

For a moment, they listen. The two under the table climb back in view. Elyssa relinquishes the matchbook. Eight arms stop moving and four mouths close.

*

Decker, 43, hasn’t had many moments like this one in the past nine years.

Her pregnancy was unplanned. Although she looked forward to having a child when she learned she was pregnant, the crush of her accounting work in the months before the annual tax deadline postponed the discovery that she was carrying quadruplets until she was many months along.

The quads’ births--which in a rare happenstance took place on the same day that another set of quads were born to a different Valley woman--was a marvel shared by residents throughout the Valley, and their progress has been reported over the years.

That Decker is raising the children by herself added to the wonder of her brood. She and the quads’ father were unable to make their romance work, she said, so she settled in to raising the children on her own.

Once a top accountant in a large Woodland Hills firm, a socially active single woman who lived in an elegant condominium furnished with antiques, Decker now works for herself out of her modest three-bedroom home.

“I guess I pictured myself with children,” she says, laughing. “Maybe a child.”

The quads’ father provides some financial support. “He has to do that,” Decker says. Dating is mostly a non-issue, she says; between work and children, her life is more than full.

Jessica decides that her matches aren’t going to work and jumps up to get new ones. With the split-second stillness broken, like a release in a game of freeze-tag, disorder returns.

Jeffrey begins to place dried wax drippings in the candle sockets. Jessica tries four times to light her match, then howls when Decker leans in to do it for her.

Elyssa begins the prayer, “ Baruch ata adoni , blessed are you, O Lord.”

“Ado-FLUFF!” interrupts Jeffrey, offering his own nonsense version of the prayer before again crawling under the table.

Elyssa finishes the prayer. “I wanna open presents,” she announces and marches off in search of the evening’s gifts. Decker quickly reroutes her to the table for the rest of the candle-lighting

Anna tries to sing a song. Decker again tells Jeffrey to sit up. Jeffrey decides to sit on the back of the chair, with his feet on the seat. Anna continues to sing the dreidel song as Jeffrey wraps his legs around Elyssa’s neck.

When Elyssa fails to react, Jeffrey begins to taunt the still-singing Anna, poking her and gently kicking at her arm. Jessica starts moving the menorahs around the table like a shell game.

Finally, Anna succumbs. “ Doooooooooon’t, “ she wails at no particular sibling. She continues singing.

*

With no age rank among the Rosen children, their birth order is all the more important. They recite it in unison: Elyssa, Jessica, Jeffrey, then Anna. “We found her in the desert,” Jeffrey says. “That’s why she’s the last one,” explains Elyssa.

They attend fourth grade at the Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies. Elyssa and Jessica, who are identical, are in one homeroom. Jeffrey and Anna, who are fraternal siblings, are in another.

“It’s harder now than when they were little,” Decker says. “When they’re little, it’s a physical thing. You have to change their diapers and wipe their noses, feed them their bottles.”

“Now, it’s more of an emotional demand. You’ve got all this push-pull: ‘Mommy, can you help me with my homework,’ and then another one says, ‘You’re helping her and not me.’ ”

After nine years of running her accounting practice out of a small office, Decker this fall converted a room of her house into a work space. Racing out of her office building to pick up the children after school, and even putting them to bed on the office floor while she worked, finally seemed too much.

And now, with classes every day and activities after school, she can actually get some work done. But is it ever quiet?

“When they’re down the street,” Decker says.

Jessica, as if on cue, has a new topic for conversation. “I want to talk about my teacher,” she says. “Now can I talk about my teacher?”

“I want to talk about my best friend Allie,” Anna says.

Jessica, not to be left out: “Can I talk about my best friend too?”

Jeffrey, bored, tries to gross out his sisters. “Jeffrey,” Decker says, “get your finger out of your nose.”

The children are very competitive, Decker explains. She says she once heard that to prevent sibling rivalry, children should be born three to five years apart. “We’ve got like one minute apart, so you can imagine,” she says.

*

But they also work together, and brilliant ideas--multiplied by four little minds--can have less-than-brilliant results.

“When they were 6, I was in the laundry room and the phone rang,” Sandra recalls. “It was someone saying, ‘Did you call 911?’ I said no.

“Jeff called because Anna had a splinter. They must have learned it in school.”

The quads, in their second year of Hebrew school, attend classes three times a week. At age 13, Jewish children are ushered into adulthood in a ceremony called bar mitzvah for boys, bat mitzvah for girls.

Sandy looks forward to her quadruple nachus, or joy. Not many parents, she notes, get to celebrate a beni mitzvah-- several bar mitzvah ceremonies. Decker worries for a moment that the traditional reading portion, at the time of year when her children will have their ceremony, will be short. “Well, then I guess they won’t have much to learn,” she says.

The children, excused from the table, rush into the other room to open their gifts. Different-color outfits for the girls, a jacket for Jeffrey. The swap meet begins almost immediately with Anna agreeing to trade her green-and-white ensemble for Jessica’s black one.

Their surprises exposed, the children quickly move on to other activities.

*

Jeff begins batting a bright orange frog across the room with a paddle.

“That is enough, Jeff,” Decker says.

She pauses and looks at her son, who is still swatting at the frog; at Jessica and Anna poking each other and giggling on the couch; and at Elyssa, who is ping-pinging on the piano keys--a sort of human ant farm, right in her living room.

“They’re going to be teen-agers soon,” Decker says, as Elyssa and Jessica rush to take hold of her sides in a giant sandwich hug.

Decker laughs.