When we were pregnant with Lucy, we had a couple of people tell us “two is ten” as a somewhat ominous warning about what we were getting ourselves into by adding a second child to the mix. Now, as I’ve mentioned before, I do tend to be a pessimist, but this seemed somewhat melodramatic even to me. I mean, I’m no math major, but two is two and ten is ten, and there are a lot of differences between them.
It took me about five days into the plural version of parenthood to see their point. We were doing fine, really, as long as both Cari and I stayed 100% focused on the task at hand at all times. When we kept a one to one defense on the kids and kept the demands low, as in, getting Logan dressed for preschool was the apex of our day, low, we were unstoppable. Then we did something crazy like Leave the House with Both of Them, and Cari did something crazy like Go Outside to Talk to Our Neighbors right before we reached that critical moment of making it out the door.
Logan decided to start potty training the day after we brought Lucy home from the hospital, because that’s how good he is at coming up with creative ways of refocusing our attention on him when it seems to be drifting, so we had the little portable potty packed up by the front door, ready to take with us. I was changing Lucy’s poopy diaper on the couch, because when you have a second child, that changing table is so not going to get any more use. So, there I am, right in the middle of cleaning up baby poop that Lucy had squirmed and gotten everywhere, when Logan announces: “I have to go pee pee!” and starts to pull down his pants. Before I can even make it over to him, he’s got his pants down and is standing over the teensy tiny little potty spraying a stream of pee around the living room, very little of which is even making it near the potty. I rush over to help him with his still novice aim, and then turn back to find that not only has Lucy smeared poop all over herself and the couch by now, but our dog Elliot is also eating it.
“Cari!!!!!!!” I bellow at the top of my lungs, loud enough to bring her running back in from the front yard where she was having the audacity to have an adult conversation. She returns to find both kids naked and crying, the house covered in pee and poop, and me, furious at her for having the audacity to leave me outnumbered. A few minutes later, Cari pulled her coffee out of the microwave, cold again after it’s third of fourth time being reheated, and went to take a drink anyway only to find a toddler sock in it.
This poop on your couch and pee on your floor and sock in your coffee moment is, in a nutshell, the difference between one kid and two. One of my clearest memories that captures the exhaustion and chaos of adjusting to life with a newborn when Logan was a baby was this time I sat down to drink a warm cup of tea after finally getting him off to bed, and looked down to realize I was so tired I’d gotten the cup and the tea bag, but hadn’t remembered to put the hot water in it. That’s one. With two, for starters, it’s going to be coffee and not tea, because let’s face it, you are going to need all the caffeine you can get. You are going to heat it up at least five times because let’s face it, parenthood is never having a hot cup of coffee again, and you are going to find a sock in it and have no idea how it got there and frankly, you are not even going to care, because you are covered in pee and poop anyway and it’s going to be a while before you even find time to wash your hands, so what’s the harm in a few sock germs anyway?
When we finally made it out the door that morning we waved feebly at the neighbors, lounging on their back porch with their newspaper and hot cup of coffee, chatting about who knows what but probably not poop, and hollered: “Sorry about earlier, two is ten!”
They looked at us with confusion, and I explained, waving a hand at the mewling newborn and the two year old running circles around us, “The children, they had me outnumbered.”
I mean no disrespect to those of you who actually have ten children, or anything in between. In fact, I mean nothing but total and complete respect. I honestly have no idea how you do it. Sometimes I see you out in public, managing three of more children like obedient little ducklings trailing along behind you and I am that creepy woman who stops and stares. You might be thinking I am placing judgement on your decision to have three of more kids, because that kind of stigma is real around here, where the houses are small and the mortgages are big, and people seem to think that two kids is reasonable but three is a little excessive. But I promise I’m not judging, I’m thinking: I have no idea how she does it.
People will ask me if we are thinking about another baby and I will say, only half joking: “We thought we wanted three until we met two.”
Our margin for error is already so slim, I just can’t imagine fitting another child into it. Part of it was Lucy’s colic and the fact that she screamed non-stop for her first four months, and part of it is Logan is an incredibly exuberant, energetic, related little guy who was used to having both of our undivided attention whenever we weren’t working, but I think most of it is just that this is hard, hard work.
When Logan was a baby both of us gave him a bath together each night while gazing adoringly into his eyes and teaching him new words or songs, right up until Lucy was born. Lucy was about six months old the first time we even put her in the bath because she was finally sturdy enough for Logan not to drown her out of exuberance or jealousy, it’s a little tough to tell the difference with him.
Lucy splashed and smiled and looked generally amazed at the properties of water, and I was wracked with guilt because surely we could have managed to get her in the bath a few month sooner if we’d known she’d like it that much, instead of all those times we quickly passed her under the water in the middle of someone else’s shower and called it a day (ok, ok, I’ll be honest, there weren’t even that many showers…).
But that’s the thing with the second child, instead of brain enrichment exercises and motor development activities and baby massage classes, you are worried about things like Keeping the Baby Alive, because your three year old is always either trying to carry her around by the neck, or knocking her over to see what will happen, or leaving his sharp, glittery metallic stickers places where she can eat them and possibly cut open her intestines. Truthfully, you don’t really want to push those motor milestones anyway because now you know that sitting leads to crawling, and crawling leads to walking, and it all goes down hill from there. A non-mobile baby is a baby that you can a) find, and b) stand a better chance of keeping alive, and that’s more than half the battle right there.
Despite all of my non-encouragement, Lucy’s crawling now anyway, which means she’s doing things like finding the tissue box and eating several before Logan’s tattling skills come in handy and he lets me know. She’s talking now too, and of course one of her first words is “no,” because that’s a very helpful word when you’re constantly being kissed by the poor attention-starved dog, or being knocked over by your brother, and also because instead of lullabies and baby flash cards, that’s one of the words she probably hears the most around here. Even when you’re doing your very best at positive parenting and praise and you teach people how to do this for a living, there are still a heck of a lot of things to tell a three year old “no” about. Things like no, don’t feed your sister dog food, and no, I don’t believe that Dinosaur is the one who scratched her, and no, you can’t didn’t earn your special treat because you woke up us and your sister up eighteen thousand times last night, and no, you can’t have chicken nuggets for dinner every single night even though, yes, I know you love them and you don’t love lentil and spinach pasta but I am doing my best here to keep all of you alive and well-fed and well-cared for and it is no easy task while trying to hold down a job and a marriage and some semblance of my sanity. Ok, I haven’t said that last bit, but I might one of these days, I really might.
And still, the obvious take away here is that two kids is sometimes ten times the work and stress and chaos, but it’s also ten times the love and amazement and wonder. You will not believe how different two kids raised by the same two people can be, and you will start to realize that instead of busying yourself taking credit for this and blame for that, you can just sit back now again and soak up how incredible it is to be a part of growing and loving and knowing these incredible human beings. Just when you think you’ve reached your breaking point your three year old will say something like: “I like how you made dinner Mommy, you did a great job” (even though he’ll still refuse to eat it a few minutes later), and your baby will light up when she sees you and wrap her chubby little arms around you and burrow her face into your neck, and you will know that being a mother brings out the best in your even more often than it brings out the worst. Even if you’re exhausted all the time, at the very least you’re living, actually living. You’re feeling all the extreme emotions life has to offer because you can’t just drift along comfortably when one minute you are seething with frustration that your three year old turns getting dressed into a 30 minute battle every. single. day. Then, the next minute you are bursting with pride to watch him crawling next to his sister, cheering her on.
But the other take away is this: that it is hard, hard work. I have absolutely every privilege and advantage a person could hope for when it comes to parenting, or at least a good number of them. An education in child development, a loving and supportive wife who is a fully present and participatory co-parent, the back-up of our extended family, and incredible community of friends and fellow parents. We have a house, jobs, the good health of our children and ourselves.
Still, there are moments and days, and weeks, and even months when raising these two tiny human beings takes absolutely every thing I have to give and pushes me to the edge of my sanity and doesn’t always show me a clear path back again. So let’s all try to be a little kinder to each other, those of us who are fellow parents and those of us who have parents, and those of us who might one day be parents or know someone who is.
I mean this both on a personal and a policy level. There are absolutely things this nation can do on a policy level, like, you know, pay parents to stay home with their teeny, tiny babies for a few months so you can actually get to know them and learn how to feed them and love them before throwing the demands of work and the incredible cost of child care back in the mix. Or, figuring out some kind of living wage that means a single parent doesn’t have to work three jobs and might actually get to see their child now and again. But there are things we can do on a personal level too, and that’s always been the level where I’m most comfortable anyway. We can stop all this ridiculous judgement and pressure over things like how you choose to feed your baby, or carry your baby, or raise your baby, and do our best to offer some compassion and understanding or a helping hand instead. Also, as two kind, elderly gentlemen taught Cari and I this week, we can tell each other “good job,” now and again, because your own kids might do it once in a great while, but it’s actually incredibly unlikely, and parents need some praise just as much as their kids do.
While I was at the grocery store the other day, wearing Lucy in the ergo and loading the groceries into my car, an older gentleman came up to me and said: “Let me help you, I don’t know how you women do it, carrying babies and doing the shopping, and all of that.” He loaded my groceries for me, and actually wound up spilling them everywhere because they were heavy and he was quite elderly, but I was so touched I was moved to tears. At first I was a teensy tiny bit offended at his summary of “women’s work,” and I also felt the urge to tell him that this was just the tip of the iceberg, and I also had another child and a job, and this was actually the highlight of my week because I got to sneak away from work a few minutes early and spend a quiet moment with my baby before entering the chaos. Instead, I just said thank you. Because even though trying to hold a baby while loading groceries is the least of my worries at this point, it was actually really nice to have a complete stranger pause for a moment in their day and say “hey, that looks hard. Nice job, and let me help you.”
Then, the other night while Cari was taking the kids out to have chicken nuggets for dinner because she doesn’t cook and I was working my second job, Logan was a big, big helper. He watched Lucy while Cari got the food, he helped Lucy eat, and he chatted with Mama about his day at school. This was huge because trying to eat dinner in public with the kids and both parents, let alone just one, can really turn into a disaster faster than you can say boo. It was even huger because an older gentleman came up to Cari at the end of dinner and said: “Congratulations, I’ve been watching you with your son and him with his sister, and he is so good with her, and you are so good with him, and you should be proud…you are doing a great job.” And Cari cried too, and she carried that with her just as I carried my moment with me, like a small treasure you can take out and examine when you need to, and then put back in your pocket for next time.
And you are, you are doing a great, great job. It’s not easy but you do your best, and you love your family, and you give them all you have and then you give them more. You make mistakes but you say you are sorry, and then you try again tomorrow, and you have so, so much love. I’m proud of you, for how hard you are trying, and how hard you are working, and if I see you out there in the big, busy world, I hope I have the courage and take the time to tell you so. I hope you do, too.