Parenting of two. Volume 5: Embrace the crazy

This is the fifth post in a series about the struggles we as a couple face parenting two children. The issues and topics can also be applied to parents of one child, but the struggles just become amplified when you have two. (We compare parenting one child to the calm before the storm. Because parenting two children often feels chaotic and scary. ) As parents we have so many struggles both internally and externally, and we thought it valuable to share them. Each post in the series will revolve around a single issue or topic, which I will talk about in the various contexts of our family life. First topic was on Time. The second topic was on Space. Third topic was on Sleep.  Last topic was on Routines. 

About a month ago, on a Friday afternoon, I was strapping the kids into their car seats after retrieving them from day care. Cole's friend had just been picked up by his dad. Cole's friend also has a new baby sister (born in September). I was doing the usual negotiating with Cole to stay in his seat, while trying to keep Bevin calm since she still HATES the car, while simultaneously trying to buckle her in in the most difficult car seat ever made by BabyTrend. Finally, I finished and looked up and Cole's friend's father was also just finishing getting his kids strapped in, one of whom was cranky. He said to me pleadingly and full of exasperation, "Why didn't you tell us???" And I laughed. Because I had tried to tell him. When his wife was pregnant and our boys were at a Strider practice at the BMX track during the summer, I did try to tell him how hard it was. But it's hard to accept that when you are already expecting your second. There's no going back. And honestly, you can't really know what having two kids is like until you have two kids and no amount of advice or sharing of experience is going to help you fully understand. It's the same way with having the first kid. Everyone tells you to "get all the sleep now" and all that wonderful "advice" but you have no idea what you are in for. You just take the plunge and hope you can swim.

Having just come out of the fog of the first year, I was not going to tell him it gets better or easier or different, because as a parent already, he knows that things change. He knows they don't stay the same and that eventually his son won't scream whenever someone holds the baby for too long or have a fit when the baby wakes up from her nap. It's just hard when you're in the thick of it. You just want someone to commiserate with. So I told him my best advice. And it was not advice I had come up with myself. It comes from a co-worker with two kids of her own.

She says this: You have to embrace the crazy. Do this by accepting that your children have ruined your lives. We all know they are wonderful human beings and that our lives would be so different without them. We know we love them more than life itself. But, let's face it - they have ruined our lives. Okay maybe the term "ruined" is a bit harsh and perhaps too brutally honest and maybe one day my kids will read this and think I'm a mean mother for writing it for all the world to see, but hear me out -Their mere existence has altered our independence, our freedom, our sleep, our ability to completely eat a hot meal. Our lives were easier in lots of ways before they existed.

We can't just leave the house on a moment's notice. In fact, we have to plan to leave the house a half hour before we know we need to leave because then we'll actually get somewhere on time. We can't leave for work without giving 50 hugs, 27 high fives, and 36 kisses. We can't go to the ski mountain every weekend.  We can't ever have a peaceful car ride to far away places. We can't drink all night and sleep all the next day. We can't even drink part of the night and sleep even part of the next day. But guess what? I'm okay with this. I'm okay with this because Keith and I had a ball during our 20s and early 30s. We got to party it up, sleep late, go on spontaneous road trips, and planned vacations. We did it. Now life is different because we wanted it that way. We changed it. We got married. We brought these little people into our lives because we knew on some level that however many headaches and heartaches they brought us, they'd bring that much more love into our lives.

To say that she looks up to him is the understatement of the year

Hallway shenanigans

This has nothing to do with having two kids, but this was today. We got 2 feet of snow on top of a foot of snow. The fact that Keith was literally able to look up at the roof without stepping on a ladder is pure craziness. 

Keith is lucky Cole was too tired from snowshoeing around our and getting stuck in snow that was taller than him to copy this most awesome Daddy move.

He has so much love and excitement inside of him that he just doesn't know what to do with that energy. So he squeezes. And, most of the time, this is her reaction.