Outnumbered

I remember walking through a hospital corridor several years ago and seeing a woman pushing one baby in a stroller, while a young toddler walked alongside.  I didn’t have children of my own yet, but I somehow knew, in that instant, that having children that close together would absolutely drive me mad.

I’m just not cut out for it, the constant changing of diapers, the trying to bottle feed one while spoon feeding the other, the overnight feedings combined with teething woes, hoping beyond hope that they will both take a nap at the same time, so that I could cope through the rest of the day. Day in day out, needs needs needs.   It just wasn’t for me.   I have got to have some down time or I won’t be very pleasant to live with.

And thus, my children are five years apart.

Little did I know that there would be a whole different set of challenges with an age spread.  The first of which was just agreeing to try to get pregnant with the second one.    Going in to motherhood, you have no idea that by the time you have survived the sleep deprivation, the weaning from breast or bottle, not to mention pacifier, security blanket, and numerous annoying habits, potty training, bouts of crying when you leave them at preschool for the first time, tantrums, discipline, getting them to go to sleep by themselves, the year or two when they insist on waking you in some bone-jarring fashion, and five birthday parties full of sugar-hyped screamers, the thought of starting all over again at square one sounds about as enticing as standing in front of a freight train.

And yet that sucker is barreling down on you with its big biological clock plastered right to the front of it in plain view.

So, after a few weeks of either feeling renewed newlywed bliss or more often, the freakiness of being the subjects of some carefully-watched clinical research study, you find yourself staring at two pink lines, saying, “Yikes! There’s no going back now.”

Oh sure, you calm down, you smile, you rest your hand on your belly and think, wow, there really is a little one in there.  But then the nausea sets in and you begin to recall the so-called bliss that got you here and begin to seriously question whether it was worth it.   If you’re lucky - if he’s lucky, and the nausea goes away in a few weeks, he’ll begin to look like your Prince Charming again.  But if that nausea decides to stay the entire nine months, or, in other words - it’s a girl, that man better find a really good place to hide because if your paths cross again there’s going to be a whole different kind of fireworks between you.

But then, as life happens, that nine months is over before you have fully accepted what you’ve gotten yourself into.   You see them place that baby in her Daddy’s arms, a love in his eyes that takes your breath away, and the hostility of the last nine months drains away in the time it takes her to wrap his heart around her little finger.   

Later, when big brother caresses her little cheek and softly sings to her with that same adoration, you finally relax.  You just know that all will be okay.

Then she learns to crawl, then walk, then run, then worse....jump.   And it’s not until you’ve rearranged the furniture to accommodate the hamster Habitrail of huge indoor toys to keep her entertained, or just somewhat contained, that you realize what you’ve done.    When the entire family sits glassy-eyed, tazered to their spots like blue silhouettes on a downed electrical wire, just watching her bounce off the furnishings like a squirrel whose acorns were laced with something a little nutty, you just know that surviving the first five years with this child will pale in comparison to what you thought you’d survived with the first.

And no matter how vastly different the older child is - or maybe because you realize how different they are, there is a moment when it hits you like a lightning bolt between the eyes, oh my goodness, there are TWO of them now!

I’d venture to guess that moment came when the little one started talking, in our case, paragraphs, entire dissertations, a full eight months ahead of where her brother was when he uttered a few grunts that could pass as “airplane” or “train”, and from that moment on, your previously quiet, joyful house, was filled with whining, arguments and eardrum-piercing screaming matches that were surely the cause of the rash of For Sale signs going up in your neighborhood.

Ohhhhh, the headaches of having an age spread.   The repetitions that you are sure you could continue to recite without interruption, even from a comatose state.   Please try to remember that she is only two.  She really will outgrow this, I promise!  Seriously, I can not take another minute of that whining - just let her have the toy already!  I know it isn’t fair, just do it anyway.  What is going on in there?  She was happy a minute ago, so what did you do????   Leave her alone.  You have got to stop trying to be the parent.  We are standing right here.  We will take care of it.   What on earth is wrong NOW?  Okay, that’s enough! Just stop!   No hitting.  No pushing.  No grabbing.  No throwing.  No, no, no, NO!!!!  If you keep whining and fussing like that, I will put you in time out.  I didn’t ask you if you wanted to, I’m telling you to.   We are NOT going to start our day like this!

You would think that by now, after all the hard work you put into “raising” the first one, that they would have some iota of self control, some inborn first born thing that tells them how to deal with issues the same way you do, but nope, as it turns out, they are still just kids themselves and now, on top of everything you thought you’d already perfected in this parenting thing, you’ve got to learn the toughest performance of all - the balancing act.

It’s hard enough to figure out how to care for their individual needs when they have similar personalities, when they are both compliant, quiet children who smile pleasantly  and have little imaginary hearts and halos floating around their heads at all times.   But when that second child comes along and sets ablaze everything you ever thought you knew about motherhood, and you now know how deceived you were by that first child’s quiet nature, keeping your balance between them is like walking a high wire with a purring kitten strapped to one leg and a bucking bronco strapped to the other.  All day long, you try to shift your weight so that the whole act doesn’t come crashing down.  

With each step, you are trying to manage opposing forces - Logic and reason versus simple commands, moral lessons versus basic etiquette, encouraging independence versus total dependency, quality time versus quantity time, paying attention versus the center of attention, reassurance of your love versus acceptance of your love.     It’s dizzying on a good day, a long way down on a bad day.

For on those days when it all comes crashing down and somebody winds up in a heap of neglected tears, you remember the original lady with the baby in the stroller and the young toddler walking alongside, and suddenly, you’d give anything to be able to just toss a couple of squeaky toys in their direction and watch them both giggle with delight.