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Having three kids basically makes you a bouncer
21 April 2024
Having ONE child makes you a
parent. Having TWO makes you a referee. THREE or more? You’re basically a
bouncer.
I somehow foolishly hadn’t quite
anticipated everything that my role as being a mom would encompass.
I had anticipated the flood of
love. The labour-intensive honour of looking after a small and needy baby. The
privilege of showing an eager and inquisitive toddler the world. The miracle of
joining and enabling a young pre-school child in discovering their world. The
years spent guiding a young child through primary school. The challenge of
teenagers, eager to explore their boundaries and experiment with greater
independence. The responsibility of nurturing a child into an adult who is
responsible, kind, confident, caring, loving, capable, has a great work-ethic
and everything else that goes along with raising a fully-fledged human being.
I was all prepared for the above.
I didn’t quite know how I was going to achieve it, but I knew what the end goal
was. And I was fairly confident that I would be able to pull it off, growing
alongside them. Stretching not only their boundaries and understanding of what it
would all entail, but also mine. We’d be in it together. A partnership of sorts
if you like.
Now what did really take me by
surprise was some of the by-products of raising children.
And few things sum it up better
than this random quote I came across a few days ago. In fact, it captured it
perfectly. Having one child makes you a parent. Having two makes you a referee.
Three or more? You’re basically a bouncer.
Having only one child, when I had
my Luke was fairly uncomplicated. Yes, it was challenging and we both had to
muddle through this parenting thing together. But I had way more time with only
one child. My attention wasn’t divided. And I was only dealing with one set of
challenges at a time. When I was potty training, then I was potty training. That
was the phase we were in. No other distractions or difficult areas of parenting
to traverse. When it came to teaching him anything for the first nearly four years
of his life, he was my sole focus.
And then, when he was 3 years and
10 months old, Amber was born. And things became a little bit more tricky. In
fact, I was super complacent before Amber was born, thinking that I would
absolutely rock this two-children parenting gig. I mean, I’d already done it
once before, right? How hard could it be? Surely I was an expert by now? I’d
already done all of the challenging stuff once before.
But somehow, because Luke was
already nearly four years old, he had become fairly independent in many ways. Able to
bath himself, dress himself, brush his teeth, eat on his own, etc. And when
Amber was born I was once more flung back into full-time dependence from a
teeny tiny little baby. I had forgotten in the nearly four years that had
passed how big the time investment was with a small baby. Cooking supper with a
baby on your hip. Your life divided into roughly four hourly feeding intervals.
A quick trip to the shops no longer merely entailing putting a safety belt on a
child in a booster seat. No way sirree bob. It encompassed a cumbersome
snug-and-safe baby seat. A torture device to carry. A huge baby bag with extra
nappies, a spare dummy, blankets, snacks, usually more than one different
change of clothing in case there was an explosive nappy situation, to name but
a few critical essentials. The explosive nappy thing happens more often that
you can actually imagine. These are always hugely impressive. In a bad way, if
you catch my drift.
When Luke and Amber were both tiny
they were firm friends. But once they got a little bit older I discovered that my kids were not immune to what inevitably happens. Siblings do what
siblings do. They bicker and annoy each other. The vie for attention and they
want the same toy or even random object. Who knew two kids could fight over an
empty toilet roll. But hey, they do. So in addition to parenting two kids, I also
played a starring role as referee. I swear they would get a kick out of just
bickering. And developed it into a competitive sport of sorts. Hence, I refined
my role as referee. Yay me. Sigh.
Cole was born two and a half
years after Amber. And this time I wasn’t surprised by the needs of a small
baby and the addition of another child into the mix. Amber was still relatively
small and at one stage I had two kids in nappies. I’ve spoken to many people
with three kids, and they all seem to feel roughly the same. The jump from one
kid to two kids is sometimes quite big. But by the time you add a third child, you simply just
go with the flow and they’re born into the chaos that already exists. Nothing
really fazes you. You’re already doing multiple things at the same time. In my
case I was doing the primary school run with one kid and helping Luke traverse
the whole new world that was school. Homework in the afternoons after school. Packing
lunch boxes, school sports, constant play dates with friends, helping at school
cake sales, Cubs on Friday afternoons, karate lessons twice a week and so it
goes on. Amber was a very attached toddler and demanded lots of my attention.
We’d do fun things together at home in the mornings while Luke was at school
and baby Cole just chugged along and did everything and went everywhere. So I
was juggling three kids at three different stages in their lives and all of the
challenges that forms part of that.
And then Cole got slightly bigger, developed his own personality and became a little person. And then there was definitely 3rd player in the game. Imagine having a 3 year
old, a 5 year old and a 9 year old. Now I’m doing drop-offs at 3 different schools
with 3 different drop-off and collection times. Everyone is doing some form of
extra-mural. Luke was doing school sport, karate and Cubs. Amber was dancing
and doing Playball. Cole was swimming and doing Playball. And all of them
wanted playdates all of the time. It was wonderful. It was wild. It was absolutely
crazy. Yet I didn’t even realise it at the time. It was just life. And I completely
and utterly loved it!
However as they got even bigger,
my role changed once more. In addition to being a Mom I was now not only a 3
player referee. But also a bouncer.
It was ridiculously busy. Manic at
times. And involved a lot of mental mathematics to keep it all together.
But here’s the thing…
I loved every single minute.
Moreover, I was desperate to add
a 4th player to the game.
#truestory
