“Is it a rainstorm?” Danielle Busby held the drawing up to the light, squinting at the big green shape with its wild lines and a smudge in the middle. Four-year-old Hazel did not hesitate. It was not a rainstorm. It was a monster.
That small correction — delivered with total confidence by a little girl on a carpet covered in paper and markers — is the whole Busby story in miniature. A crayon monster became the family’s most personal fundraiser.
Is It a Rainstorm?
The scene comes from the Season 4 finale, in a clip Romper shared in July 2019. The five quints are arranged on the carpet, each drawing her own picture, politely trading markers. Danielle explains in a confessional that she recently got into making T-shirts “really just as a hobby” — and since the girls love to draw, why not let them design the shirts themselves?
Hazel waves one drawing around until her mom looks. There it is: the green shape, the green lines, the smudge. “Is it a rainstorm?” Danielle asks. Hazel corrects her — a monster. Another sister shows off an “ice monster,” and Danielle loves it so much she says it would make a great shirt.
Three Months in the NICU
To understand why a crayon monster matters, rewind to April 8, 2015. Ava, Olivia, Hazel, Riley and Parker arrived at just 28 weeks and two days — the first all-female quintuplets ever born in the United States, nearly two months before their June due date. They spent up to three months in the NICU.
Years later, marking NICU Awareness Month, Danielle wrote that she and Adam gave the girls nicknames before they were even born — “and these personalities / nicknames are still holding strong today” — then added: “THAT Y’ALL, is the amazing work of God.” The girls came home around their original due date — five healthy babies where once there had been five tiny fighters in incubators.
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The T-shirt idea was never a one-off. “Every year, I like to do something to raise money for the NICU,” Danielle said in that same confessional — the year before, it had been a charity ride, and with the studio gone, the shirts were the new idea. The plan was simple: sell the shirts the quints designed online and give all the proceeds to the NICU.
The tradition stuck. In May 2024, Danielle was still turning the girls’ artwork into a new shirt every year at her boutique, Graeson Bee: “What these shirts & NICU items mean to the Busby’s & why they came about!! God is SO SO good!” Buyers even got a free autographed Busby photo. The League City storefront has since closed, according to reports — but the shirts, and the reason behind them, never went away.
Eleven Years Later, the Monsters Grew Up
The girls in that carpet scene are 11 now, in sixth grade in a homeschool co-op, and the monster drawing is seven years old. World Prematurity Day falls on November 17 — ten days from now. The monsters were drawn by four-year-olds. The artists are tweens now.
OutDaughtered last aired in 2024, and according to reports, TLC has announced neither a renewal nor a cancellation. The show may be on pause. The fundraiser is not.
Hazel’s green monster is seven years old now. Should Danielle keep printing the crayon drawing from when the girls were four — or is it time five 11-year-olds picked up the markers and designed the next NICU shirt themselves?
