From Two to Three

Sinus backup. I’ve got a cluster in my sinus – but it’s worked its way into my brain and I feel completely inept right now. I’m supposed to be working and then cleaning up the house and then heading to the grocery store. Instead I am an absolute lump. Maybe I should just let my body fold into sleep and give up until the afternoon – when I will be forced back into motherhood and household duties.

But I keep thinking about three kids. I dropped the little ones off at the sitter’s this morning and reveled in the candor that ensues when I hang around for a few minutes to chat. She’s just so refreshing in her outlook on parenting, discipline, and little kids. She KNOWS little kids, as she’s been doing the nanny/sitter thing for like 20 years, not to mention she has 2 kids of her own. She also knows how to kick the nonsense out the door – both when she is dealing directly with the children and when she’s reflecting on the role of an adult in a kid’s world. She says things like “knock it off” a lot and “No touch” and makes this ehn, ehn, ehn sound that perks up the little ears in the house and warns them to back away from the lamp, the box of tissues, the picture frames. It’s an honest relationship with the kids. This is my world, and you are in it, and this is what you have to learn to get by until you are big enough to join me here.

There’s truth in that we are different people when we are around different people. I can be most honest with my sister – yes you, my dear sister. We chat endlessly about the trials of motherhood: how we yelled so loud yesterday that the kids were stunned to stillness; how we are so exhausted by the very idea of heading to the store with three kids because we are fully aware of the stares we’ll get and the spectacle that is a mother with three kids. I can’t put it into one sentence what happens when you go from two kids to three, and I so totally wish that I could. Three kids wallops you! It just takes you to a different dimension.

Jamis had an overnite this weekend, and although I don’t have to change his diapers and he can get his own juice, I felt a great sense of freedom at only having to manage two! It was this crazy release. Two kids. Only two. It felt like a vacation. I say that we are more accustomed to thinking in pairs. We’ve got two arms, two hands, two feet, two sides of the brain. Once you throw a third kid in the mix, you spin like batter in the mixing bowl. Yes, that third kid makes me feel just tossed – this way and that and I can’t get my bearings. I’m just trying to keep it together. It’s ridiculous that I start counting the kids to make sure they are all okay, accounted for. It’s only one more person. Three isn’t a large number. There are families with 4 and 14 kids. I wonder what happens after three kids. Are you just accustomed to the madness, the shattered-brain syndrome that I’ve come to know? Oh, what’s one more? I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ll ever know. I don’t know if I should even imagine it.