A Different – And Desirable – Level of Crazy

I have completely neglected this blog.  There are a few reasons for it, or some might call them excuses, but I think they’re pretty valid.

1.  I started a part-time job about a year ago, and while I love working in a somewhat official capacity, it leaves me less free time to write recreationally,
2. Re-writing about the antics of a two-year-old does not help me cope like it did when I dealt with them for the first time ever, and
3. I have three children.  Three beautiful, amazing, demanding and very different children.

Last weekend, some childless friends had us over with some other friends who have a two-year-old and six-month-old.  (They are in the thick of it.)  And the dad said, “Having two kids is not twice as much as having one kid.  It’s like three times as much.  It’s more than two kids.”  Yes.  A thousand times yes.  And then he turned to Greg and me, and I responded, “Three is like having five.”

Truly, once you have more children than you have arms to hold them, you are in a different ball game.  Writing about the daily shenanigans, brawls, mishaps, messes, spills, poop, and yes, pee of three children doesn’t hold the same wonder that writing about how crazy life gets when you add a second does.  It doesn’t seem like a special level of crazy anymore, because you adjust to it.  I am so used to not being able to complete a sentence or a thought that in the moments I am able to do so, it feels strange.  And if the kids are home and it’s quiet enough that I can string cohesive thoughts together, it means something bad is happening.

But I do want to write and document these moments and years.  Yes, they are crazy, but boy, are they amazing.  And I don’t want to miss the joy of what having a house full of noise and love represents.  Today, I found out that someone I know who is 17-weeks pregnant with her first child (after trying for a long time) has a cancerous tumor on her bladder.  And when you get slammed with news like this, which it seems like the past year has been full of stories of loss and heartache, it also seems a little weird to me now to vent about how challenging our healthy, crazy lives can be.  I don’t want to take these days or years for granted, or be ungrateful.  Right now I’m sure there are many, many parents who would trade places with me, who would give anything to pull their clothes out of the shower while in it because their two-year-old threw them in for fun.  (That happened yesterday.)

So, I’m not sure how much I will write, I only know I want to do more.  And I hope to tell funny stories and make people laugh because they can relate, but I also might get more pensive in my writing this year.  I’m not sure what the future holds in so many ways.  It wouldn’t be my first post of 2016 without a quote from the Dowager Countess.  In the first episode of Downton Abbey, during her fight with Isobel about the future of the hospital, Violet says, “I suppose we only know what we are capable of when we test our limits.”  I am looking forward to a year of testing mine, and coming out the other end a better mother, wife, and I hope, blogger.