I ran across a fellow mommy blogger yesterday at my neighborhood’s July 4th bike parade. She mentioned that she never has time to write despite her valiant attempt to carve out solitude.
Why? Because she’s wrangling THREE KIDS UNDER THE AGE OF SIX from sun-up to sun-down.
“Never mind blogging,” I said. “How the hell do you find time to shower?”
Anytime I meet any woman with kids PLURAL, I want to bow before them, hand them a beer and possibly a joint. As a woman at home with a kid SINGULAR, I spend a lot of time immersed in the natural habitats of stay-at-home moms: parks, libraries, children’s gyms, public pools, science museums, Target and Chick-fil-A, to name a few. In these environments I’ve observed many women with kids PLURAL performing their motherly duties on a scale of EFFORTLESS to EXHAUSTING.
As a mother of ONE I applaud these Herculean beings for carrying the lion’s share of child-rearing. Whenever I ask these lean mean mommy machines how they feel about the age gap between their kids, I always get the same response no matter how close or far apart their children are in age.
A few examples:
Mother No. 1 – two kids, ages 2 and 4: “We wouldn’t have it any other way. They entertain one another. It actually makes my job easier.”
Mother No. 2 – three kids, ages 5, 4 and 3: “We wanted to knock ’em all out at once. I haven’t slept in five years, but it’s all good.”
Mother No. 3 – two kids, ages 7 and 3: “Four years is the perfect gap. Our oldest was out of diapers by the time his sister was born. He was SO helpful. He even got up in the night to feed her.”
Mother No. 4 – one kid, age 16: “One was enough. I don’t bite off more than I can chew.”
Unless medical reasons played a part in family planning, no mother I’ve ever met says she waited too long or too short to have more kids. I find this oddly reassuring.
Both Joe and I are the eldest of three siblings born to ambitious, saintly mothers at a time when mothers didn’t chronicle the poop habits of their children on the internet or drive themselves mad preparing all-organic, non-GMO meals or expertly crafting decorations and popular flower girl dresses for birthday parties then photographing backdrops these creations for Pinterest so that other moms might drive themselves equally mad making napkin rings that look like woodland fairies.
But I digress.
The point of this post is simply to state that I’m in awe of mothers with more than one kid. Hats off to you all.
If I ever join your club, you’ll smell my stink from across a room. I’ll be the mom who forgot to put on deodorant, eating Cheerios out of my kid’s hair. My face will be greasy. My clothes will not match. I’ll have not written a blog post in a year and I probably won’t care because I’ll be too busy fantasizing about going to bed. So I can sleep. For four hours.
I know. I know. Not all moms of kids PLURAL are running ragged and eating “nerve pills” to get through the day. Some of you have it totally and heroically under control. To you deities, I say BRAVO. When the time comes for me to bring a second bundle of joy into this world, I beg you to take me under your maternal wing. Tell me your secrets. Spill your sins. Assure me that you’re no worse for the wear, that your house still gets vacuumed and your dog still gets walked. Tell me you still have time to yourself that doesn’t involve the work place or a gynecologist’s office.
Tell me you feel mentally balanced 100 percent of the time.
Or just tell me the truth: that some days you pour a little whiskey in your coffee, plop the kids in front of SpongeBob, hand out Happy Meals and hope for the best.
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PS. The photo was taken in April when Joe’s best friend from high school came over to visit with his four-year-old daughter.
I need some whiskey just thinking about all of this! 🙂
People are asking us all of the time about number two and Mia is one month old! I’m blessed with a pretty calm baby but she’s still nursing eight or so times a day and takes up the majority ( you know 99%) of my time… I keep asking Tom how I’ll do it for a second newborn with her running around! Plus, daycare for two?
I have so much to say about this post, but know that I’ll likely put the whiskey in my tea one day and indulge my coffee with Baileys:)
Sounds to me that those who have multiple kids find it easier than the mom’s with a single kid (at least from your survey). Get busy Heidi! 😉
Hi. I LOVED your blog post today. I’m a mother of 4 beautiful girls aged 10,7,5,2. While there are difficult times, there are also so many joys. I’m divorced so I parent the kids by myself. I am truly blessed! I’ve been the mom not showered, no deoderant because I forgot, the mom that thinks its too much trouble sometimes to get dressed so I go do stuff in lounge wear (gotta love those fleece pants lol). I still am all those things. I’m the mom with the mismatched socks (and sometimes shoes). I wouldn’t change anything 🙂 The time that we get to ourselves ends up being after the kids go to bed lol. It won’t last forever, so we gotta cherish the time with our kids… Best job in the world lol
PS: sorry for the ramble lol
I have three boys, 19 months old and 5 year old twins. I don’t have time to walk the dog or vacuum nearly as much as I should. Some days, all I get to eat is what is left on their plates. I have a pedicure gift certificate that I have been dreaming of using since Mother’s Day. AND I WOULDN’T CHANGE A THING. (Well, maybe make me rich enough to have someone else do the cleaning, haha). I want to spend time with them while they are still little, I don’t want to miss out on anything, so the cleaning can wait. I would love to be a stay at home mom, but that isn’t an option for me, I have to work full time.
Someone once told me that having two kids was not twice the work of one kid, but rather one hundred times the work. And then I think about my parents, with FOUR of us (all of us teenagers at the same time)…I honestly don’t know how anyone ever does it.
Here’s something I’ve been wondering about for some time: does a mother’s age play a part in how many kids she chooses or doesn’t choose to have? Do you think women who’ve enjoyed many years of childless freedom are thrown for a bigger loop when they start having kids in their 30s? Many of the women I know who started having kids before age 25 tend to have not only more children, but children closer in age than the ones who waited until their 30s. (This is merely a general observation. It doesn’t hold true for EVERY woman I know.)
It makes me wonder if spending your 20s relatively unencumbered means you become extra crazy when a baby enters the picture BECAUSE you’ve had so much time to yourself for so long.
My mom was 22 when I was born. She was 23 when my sister Holly was born and 26 when my youngest sister arrived. She never felt like she had to give up a career or any selfish pursuits when she started her family because she didn’t have a lot of time to nurture a career or selfish pursuits before kids. On the flip side, she became an empty-nester at an early age, which means she’s now free to be as selfish as she wishes, though that rarely happens because she sucks at being selfish. (MOM: BE SELFISH. YOU EARNED IT.)
Anyway. I’m just curious what you guys think. Is there any truth to this theory? I’m especially interested in hearing from those of you who became mothers at a young age.
Of course I realize a mother’s age impacts fertility and all that jazz. Naturally a woman who starts her family at age 38 has fewer child-bearing days ahead of her than a woman who starts her family at age 28. What I’m interested in is whether age impacts a woman’s DESIRE to have more children? Do younger moms have more patience and energy and thus desire bigger broods?
Fourth to last paragraph, I almost died laughing.