5 Terrible Twos Tackle Turkey

WEST HILLS — It’s Thanksgiving for the Quezada quintuplets, and all is chaos.

Andrew is eating water with a spoon from his glass. Raymond is throwing plastic plates on the floor. Patricia has fallen off her seat. Tiffany is screaming at the top of her lungs. And Kimberly, the smallest, sits quietly at the kid-sized plastic table that tonight holds the holiday banquet, eyeing her four siblings.

Suddenly, with a Martha Stewart flourish, mother Marcella Quezada unveils the turkey, cooked ahead of time by Ralphs and donated by the Girl Scouts. The shrieking raises to a pitch.

“They think it’s a big chicken,” father Ramon Quezada confides above the din.

Then, as Marcella plunks the golden brown bird on the blue and orange table, there is the briefest moment of silence as the children--2 1/2 years old--stare at their first cooked turkey.

“Pobrecito,” says Andrew, and all the children agree. Poor little thing.

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For the past two years, the Quezadas have had at least five reasons to celebrate Thanksgiving.

Raymond, Andrew, Kimberly, Patricia and Tiffany were born in that order on Feb. 9, 1995, after Marcella took fertility drugs.

If all goes well, they should have a sixth sibling taking in the Thanksgiving show next year.

Marcella Quezada is pregnant again.

The 28-year-old found out in June and was as surprised as anyone by the news. The quintuplets came only after she began fertility treatments. Since she no longer takes the drugs, Marcella didn’t think she stood a chance of becoming pregnant again.

The sixth child will put her almost equal to the McCaughey family in Iowa, whose newborn septuplets celebrated their first Thanksgiving on Thursday. Quezada said she doesn’t have much advice to give.

“Every set of multiple births is different,” she said.

The Quezadas aren’t exactly overjoyed at the prospect of a sixth mouth to feed. Samantha, as they have named the baby girl, won’t even get to enjoy a large selection of hand-me-downs.

Marcella disposed of the clothes as the quints outgrew them, thinking there were no more toddlers on the way.

“It’s hard enough with five,” said Marcella. “I had thought about maybe having another one when they were older. I wanted it to be like you see on TV and commercials, where the mother is taking her time with the baby in the bath or something. There’s no way it’ll be like that now. It’ll always be rush, rush, rush.”

And rush, rush, rush it was Thursday. Marcella worked a half day at her job as a manager at the Carl’s Jr. in Ventura that she commutes to an hour each way. Thursday was her last day until the new baby is delivered by caesarean section Dec. 16.

Ramon watched the kids at home with one of the two baby sitters that cost some $1,400 a month. Then came the Thanksgiving meal, delivered by the leaders of Girl Scout Troop 506 from Van Nuys: a turkey, two pans of mashed potatoes, stuffing, baked yams and cranberry sauce with pecans and apples.

As the meal was warming in the white kitchen oven, the children dashed around the house, excited by new visitors. The children are the definition of the “terrible twos.” Andrew, nicknamed Gordo, is already 55 pounds and has discovered the secret of the various gates that block off parts of the home.

In the space of three hours, he grabbed a hacksaw, the carving knife and a glass bottle of Welch’s grape juice before his parents could stop him. Raymond, meanwhile, tossed a book at one of his sisters and threw a temper tantrum, scattering plastic plates on the floor.

The girls are not nearly as bad, said Marcella. Kimberly, in fact, even showed some of her mother’s talent for organizing, quietly moving behind her brothers to clean up the stuffed bears and cars they left behind. When she was done, the house was returned to its previously immaculate state. Keeping up with the mess is a necessity, Marcella said.

Before the meal was finally done, the Quezadas ended up acting like coaches at a turkey-eating contest. They rushed around the mesita, the tiny plastic table, sometimes on their knees, sometimes cutting food, sometimes cleaning up spat-out rejects of turkey or yams.

All the conversations were in Spanish--the children’s primary language.

“Eat, eat,” Ramon said, hustling from child to child. “It’s like chicken.”

By the end of the meal, the parents were exhausted. It was time to change Andrew’s diaper. And soon the kids would be put to bed. Then, finally, their parents had their Thanksgiving meal.

But it wasn’t served at the family’s dining-room table, which has been moved out of the little house entirely to make room for the new baby.

So the Quezadas ate hunched around their children’s tiny table or on the floor.

“It’s tough,” Marcella said, sitting back on her heels. “It’s tough.”