Three kids

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Tiny Updates for Tiny Humans

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It’s time for a bit of an update. Things that seem totally normal in our life right now, but I know if I don’t write them down, I’ll forget them. And some of these are things I don’t want to forget.

First, let’s talk F and her sleep. SHE SLEEPS! The sleep consultant was completely worth it, and I’ve been recommending everyone I know who has kids to immediately get one. At bedtime we’re back to just laying her in her crib and walking away. That’s it. Some days she’ll happily sing to us over the baby monitor, and others she’ll just go straight to sleep. She’s sleeping 11.5 hours a night, which is slightly less than her siblings probably slept at this age, but I’ll take it. We’re not getting up in the night anymore, and she’s not waking at 4am. Naps seem to be fixed too. I’m sure that’s where a lot of my optimism has come from lately, because everything seems easier when we’re not all tired.

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Underwater

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I’m not sure I can fully express the burnout that we’re feeling. And I know it’s not just us - when I get together with other parents now, all we talk about is how hopeless we feel, how exhausted, how angry, how done we are. How we can’t possibly keep going another day, but we have no end in sight. We’re all struggling so much, but also dealing with a ton of guilt, because we feel like we can’t complain, because we chose to have these children. We even hoped and prayed for them.

I’m not sure any of us expected life to be like this though. A never ending pandemic where no one cares about keeping kids safe. Work that expects you to devote all your free time to working as if you don’t have kids, and barely pays you enough to combat inflation or pay for daycare. Daycare where we have to send our children so we can work, but they’re all so understaffed and burnt out themselves dealing with this pandemic, they have to keep shutting down.

Sour Patch Kids

As our children get older, it’s interesting to hear them talk more. It goes from learning words, to sentences, to actual random thoughts in their mind. And that’s where things get interesting. I start to hear about dreams they have about a mama dinosaur that their brother is afraid of but it’s really just “a nice dinosaur because it’s nice.”

I’ve also learned you really can’t take anything personal with kids. I was prepared for them to tell me they hated me, because I think that’s a normal part of growing up. That doesn’t phase me. Even saying that I’m the meanest mama ever and that I never let them do anything doesn’t phase me. (Sometimes they’re right!). It’s the specific ones that I think about days or weeks later. The ones that come out of no where.

Ongoing Pandemic

As this pandemic continues on and on and on, one thing I’m very sick of is how long I spend searching for things. Do we even remember fully stocked shelves anymore? When a shopping trip meant you knew you’d be able to cross everything off your list? Because so many people in the world are still getting sick and missing work, it’s really messed with the supply chain. Apparently these things were hanging in a precarious balance that could easily be tipped. Current things I’ve been unable to find or am having a hard time finding: baby formula, tampons and contact solution. All completely random things that I don’t feel like I could predict, but all things that are essential. Which means when you can’t find them, your life is interrupted while you spend all of your extra time and energy to find these things. Extra time and energy that you didn’t really have in the first place. It’s soul sucking.

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Our Weekend

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Work has been insanely busy and stressful lately, I feel like I don’t get to see my kids enough during the day, and there’s never enough time to cross everything we need to do around the house off my list, but last weekend was the first weekend since F has been born that we haven’t felt like we were drowning. So there’s that!

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Green Day

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At this time of year I am 100% looking and planning forward to all the events in the next two months, since April and May are always busy months for our family. So St. Patrick’s Day is not much more than an annoyance. Weird coming from the person with Irish heritage, but “celebrating” this holiday has always had negative connotations to me - pinching and food I don’t like and alcohol. It was the one day I always made sure to not be home when I lived in Southie.

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This Season

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Nothing about this pandemic makes sense to me anymore, but one of the more annoying things is that some daycares let parents into the buildings while others do not. I understand the logic, and I’m not someone who’s going to fight against people who are trying to keep my children safe, but I will admit that it would be so much easier if I was allowed inside the building.

Yes I’d like to be able to see what’s going on in my children’s classroom, and be able to check that they have enough extra clothes that still fit them and if the baby needs more diapers or not, but also because it would be easier to gather everything. It would be nice to be able to strap the baby into car seat and gather all the things that need to go back and forth every day from inside a building. And not in the cold or the rain.

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Barely Two

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My alarm has been going off at 5:30 recently, which is actually sleeping in for me. I get up, make breakfast for E and G, shower and get myself dressed, and then I’m on kid duty. It becomes a very loud and wiggly assembly line as each child needs to be changed and dressed and chased around the room. So many wiggly feet to capture with a sock.

I was halfway through dressing the smallest, and trying to corner the middle since he was next, when E caught me yawning one morning. “Mama are you tired?” he asked me.

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Life Now

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So how is life going these days, anyway?

It honestly changes minute by minute. So quickly I feel like I constantly have whiplash and don’t have time to breathe. I know we’re in survival mode and it won’t always be like this. We’ll get to a point where I’ll have time to respond to emails again, make those doctors appointments I’ve had on my list forever, and not feel constantly tired. And then I’ll look back and wonder where these days went.

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A Dark Car Ride Home

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There are times, and today is one of them, where I look around and I’m so thankful and over the moon happy for this family that I have. Pinch my arm because I’m not sure how I got this lucky, happy. Not all days are like this, of course, and if I’m being honest the whole day didn’t even feel like this. But it ended well, and so as I’m sitting in the dark with a baby that’s almost asleep, I’m holding on to that feeling.

Most days I’m just spinning in circles trying to do damage control and make sure at least the majority of the children are fed and not crying. My mental to do list is constant and never ending, and when I collapse in bed at the end of the day (or the start of the next day? Trust me it’s late) I don’t have a lot of time to think about where we are in life.

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Minute by Minute

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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.