Without her mom, Dana Wood would not be able to make it.

Her mom pitches in and helps with the kids. She has loaned Wood her car. She picks up necessities when her food-stamp money runs out each month.

Wood, who is a single mother of four children, ages 12, 10, 5 and 3, lives in Waimanalo in a two-bedroom home. It's a mansion compared to the place she had lived in last year. There, she caught 23 rats in a span of a week.

"I was crying every day," said Wood, 35. "I could hear them at night. I had a baby and was so afraid. I called everywhere trying to get rid of them. I finally caught three and left them on the resident manager's desk. He found me this place here."

Wood works as a nursing assistant for a Kane'ohe elderly home. She doesn't receive welfare or child support. Her attitude is one of grin and bear it. Life is a series of choices, she said. Field-trip money or toilet paper. Shampoo or clothes.

"I just somehow make it," Wood said. 'When my kids ask me for things, I say sorry. It's a lot of grinning and bearing, and being humble.

"It's hard to ask for help. I mean I brought these kids into the world and they're my responsibility. I have to take care of them."

Just last week, the television broke. Now, the one form of entertainment the entire family enjoys sits dark in the living room, she said. For a while, she fiddled with it and could get it to work, but now it's out completely.

If someone adopts her family, Wood said, she would appreciate a television, clothes and toiletries, like toilet paper, shampoo, conditioner and soap of all kinds. These are things that food stamps don't pay for, she said. The kids' wish list reads like any other kid's. Denning wants a bodyboard. Darian, an interactive toy or a DS game. D'Shane wants an interactive toy that moves and talks. Dane wants a small bike that a toddler can use like a Tonka truck.

"It's hard," Wood said. "It's truly hard. My parents help a lot."