So how is life with three kids?
Honestly it depends when you ask me. Every day we’ll have the sweetest, calmest moments where everything seems great. We’ll be making pancakes, sitting around the table together, and all happy. The baby will start to cry and one of the older kids will run over and cheer her up. There will be cuddles and sharing of toys and cooperative cleaning of the house. And we’ll think, yeah we’ve got this. This is amazing.
And every day we’ll also have moments of pure chaos. Moments where at least two children are crying and having meltdowns and someone is hitting someone else over the head or biting them and throwing toys across the room. There’s screaming and tears and no one is listening. And we’ll feel like failures who are messing everything up. And it sucks.
Up and down, back and forth.
I’m not surprised - I completely expected hard days and easy days. If anything I’m surprised that the good moments outnumber the bad ones so much. But the bad moments are so spectacularly bad. Like when we’re driving home and left 15 minutes later than I wanted to, which means we’re late putting them down for nap, and someone is so overtired they’re screaming as loud as they can “IT’S TOO LOUD! EVERYONE STOP TALKING!” Trust me when I say it’s not helpful to point out that they’re the only one making noise.
The other day I promised that I’d put up the Halloween decorations while E&G were at daycare, so when they got home they ran around looking at everything that hadn’t been there that morning. One of our children was so excited he kept screaming “Christmas Halloween!! HALLOWEENHALLOWEEN!! Christmas Halloween!” Big smiles, giggling, and so happy. The other child was underwhelmed and kept asking why there wasn’t more? Insisting that we had more the year before (despite the fact I ADDED to our decorations this year). There were tears and screams and general disappointment.
Here’s the thing. It’s almost never about whatever they’re crying about. It’s just how the emotions happen to be coming out. They might be tired or sad or had a hard day. So I don’t take it personal when I’m told my decorations that I just spent all day putting up are awful. I try to remember that they melt down around me because they’re comfortable around me. They feel safe showing me their emotions. And we’ve gone through a lot recently - global pandemic, changing schools, new sibling. It’s a lot.
I was talking with someone I know who also has three kids, just two years ahead of us (her children are 6, 4 and 2 years old). She was checking in on how we were doing, and I was asking her what life with three looks like. Her comment was that it’s so fun, hard and chaotic. I can already see that it’s so true, and I love it.
So we just take a deep breath, and wait for the hard moments to pass. It always does, and we’ll be back to the next cute moment. Overall I’m giving us all a bit a grace - I think we’re all doing so well.
