Three Under Five

When I first began listening to podcasts a couple years and change ago, I was knee-deep in small children. Like, even more so than now. The twins were two and Nolan was an infant. I began listening to podcasts to have an adult voice in my ears and to liven up my days, which were more full of diapers, snot, and Cheerios than grown-up conversation. I sought out podcasts on motherhood out of desperation for solidarity and maybe a ray of hope that this too, shall pass.

As I listened I began to notice a theme. Or at least a catchphrase. “Three kids under five,” came up frequently, like it was some Holy Grail of Difficulty in parenting. Most of the podcasters were older than me and everyone spoke of that season in tones of reverence. It was the season that buried them, one of the hardest parts of their parenting careers, maybe one of the hardest parts of their lives. Three kids under five was a lot. It was exhausting. It was to be survived.

I looked around at my own life at the time. Three kids in diapers. Three kids who couldn’t put on their own shoes or jackets or socks or mittens. Three kids who were along for the ride as I drove my minivan in circles around the parking lot to find a cart big enough to wheel everyone in the store together. Because two of those kids were too little to walk through the parking lot without a hand to hold, yet one of my arms was burdened with the third in a car seat.

Three kids under three.

Three kids under five sounded pretty good to me. Five years old — or almost? That’s big kid territory right there. Five to me represented independence, some sort of helpfulness, maybe even stability. With three kids under five, at least one of them would be in school part of the day. At a minimum, it implied they were potty trained. Surely Five must be practically able to take care of themselves.

“Three kids under five,” I would think, “Must be nice.”

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At the risk of sounding like a complete idiot, I’ll tell you I realized pretty recently that I still have three kids under five. In fact, I’ve had three kids under five for three years. The first year I had three under three. Then three under four. Earlier this year I upgraded at last, officially, to three under five. Before three kids, I had two under any age you could throw at me. Under a year, under a month, under a day. Under five minutes.

I’ve been exhausted lately and annoyed I feel that way. Surely I should feel “better” by now. Whatever that means. Certainly I should feel more energized and less drained. There’s no longer a baby in our house and I’ve been a parent now for how long? The days and even years blur together, as the quantity of small children multiplies the intensity of their years. But then I stop and do the math and realize I don’t even have a five-year old yet, though I’m due to have a couple of them in just two short months.

The truth is, I’m still in that “three under five” season the podcasters spoke of with such exhaustion. I’ve been in it for a long time. And while we’ve introduced some improvements over the years, (Caden and Brooklyn 3.0 learned to put on their own clothes, the 4.0 versions can buckle their own car seats, and glory hallelujah everyone is potty trained), my days continue to be filled with the management of temper tantrums, multiple snacktimes, and the wiping of little bottoms. (They learn this essential life skill eventually, right?)

At first, it was a novelty, having three kids so close together. We drew stares and questions and compliments everywhere we went. Each day was a challenge, a puzzle to figure out, a new adventure to survive. Now, to be perfectly honest, I’m tired of it all. Physically weary, yes. Exhausted from the mental burden of caring for the same three kids day after day. Worn out from always carting three kids from place to place to place. The past few years have been more or less the same scene: me in the minivan with three small kids in car seats and an overstuffed diaper bag.

I’ve been the one at classes, at storytime, at the park, at playdates, at Target, and the drive-thru of the nearest coffee shop with three kids in tow for three freaking years. The novelty has worn off.

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My kids love open gym time. The benefit to having three kids in a two-year timespan is how they all enjoy the same activities. They laugh at the same shows, play with the same toys, and here they’re all the same age to tumble around together for a couple of hours. Even better is that they have yet to mind me dressing them in matching shirts. It’s one of the tricks I picked up in the past few years: when doing a headcount I only need to look around the cavernous space for the exact same shirt three times. I think other families use this tactic for Disneyworld. I use it for open gym time on an average Wednesday.

The local school districts throughout our state offer exceptional parent-child classes and weekly playtime events. These have been staple activities in our house. I’m used to having more kids in my lap than anyone else at circle time. Other parents may have three or more kids, but with more traditional age gaps, they only attend with their youngest. I’m so used to dividing myself in three so there’s enough of me to go around the room I hardly notice anymore.

I discovered early on that those enormous minivan-versions of carts at Target (bless them) can hold twin two-year olds, a baby in a carseat, a week’s worth of groceries, and a box of diapers. For the first six months of his life, Nolan lay in his carseat while I piled groceries around him, higher and higher, usually throwing a loaf of bread and a bag of Goldfish on top of him as I ran out of space.

But the kids used to fit better in those enormous carts than they do now. They’ve gotten bigger over the past couple of years, as kids do. On our most recent Target run it felt like I could hardly contain them all in the big red cart. The cart felt heavy, burdensome. I still get stares, but the exclamations and questions over how cute or how old they are have more or less subsided. More frequently now they’re asked when they’re going to start school.

Last week at our parent-child class the teacher told us to put our kids on our laps as we sang a song and bounced them. I looked around the group of a dozen other parents; two had two kids with them, the others had just one. Once upon a time, I would have risen to the challenge, and plopped all three kids, two toddlers and a baby, in my lap. Now, at a collective weight of approximately 109.2 pounds, I listened to that instruction and gave it a hard NOPE. “You guys can sit next to me and bounce yourselves,” I told Caden and Brooklyn. Let me experience having one kid in my lap for once.

Soon enough I’ll have only one kid at open gym time. Then none at all. A staple of the past few years will become a thing of the past, a remember when that they probably won’t remember. I’ll remember, though. I’ll remember taking a headcount every couple of minutes, the few photos I have in their matching shirts where they’re not all a blur, the way they chased each other around and around the cavernous gym pretending to be their favorite characters together — “Catboy!” “Gecko!” “Owlette!” “Let’s go!” — without getting tired.

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As the weather has turned colder, I’ve been refocusing my attention in the afternoon, to play with the kids purposefully. We watch a little TV, have a snack, build or bake something, circle up around the table for art time, and often I just watch while they run around the house like crazy people, because, after all, they’re still three kids under five.

When Caden and Brooklyn were younger, I was more intentional with our afternoon time. Mornings were for activities and errands, but the afternoons were ours. I’ve been trying to reset myself back to that time, to that routine. Because, as hard as it is to imagine, we have less than a year of afternoons left before Caden and Brooklyn head off to Kindergarten.

I can’t wait.

Also, I wish it were still three years away.

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Can we hold both of these things, simultaneously, and let them be true at the same time?

I’m sick of having three kids under five.

I’m going to miss having three kids under five.

Below Me

I walk through the kitchen and step on a stray Cheerio. Into the dining room and my stockinged feet crunch up a half-eaten cracker. I strip my socks off and toss them in the general direction of the laundry room only to walk in the living room to step directly on - most nightmarish of all - a LEGO.

I really need to look down more.

You’d think I’d have learned this by now, almost five years into being a stay-at-home parent. Most of my life these past five years has happened below me. My two-year-old has even been demanding it of me lately. “Mommy! Look a-me!” he says. Which means he wants me to squat down at his level, to look him in the eyes. Sometimes I sigh because it means I have to abandon the task at hand. Slicing an apple, stirring the pot of macaroni, wiping down the kitchen table. All things that I could continue to do while also listening to him talk. Things that also all take place below my eye level.

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There is a spot in my lower back, just to the right of my spine, that pinches in pain anytime I remained bent over too long. I know exactly where it is, can pinpoint its precise location, though it only acts up if I spend too long sitting on the floor to do puzzles or fold laundry without back support. (So...for a decent portion of my day.) It could be one of the ravages of aging, sure. I attribute it to parenting. All that work I do in the space 42 inches from the ground on down.

I’ll feel the twinge in the middle of the night when my body, which was previously dozing comfortably beneath a pile of blankets, is woken by a call of, “Mommy I need you!” I blindly fumble my way down the hall to readjust someone else’s blankets, and as I bend over there it is, that shot of pain. Or when my son tells me to “look a-me”, and I bend over too fast, a motion my body apparently wasn’t ready for. I grab my back with my hand, a 30-something who maybe looks wizened before her time.

Read more about my aching back and all this life that’s happening below me over on the Twin Cities Moms Blog.

The Repetition of Motherhood

I didn’t know last Thursday was going to be the one that broke me. The day that sent me, crumbling at 3:30 in the afternoon, to text a message over Voxer to my friends in pure desperation. I met this scattered tribe of writing mamas through a year-long writing course, a gift from Tyson a couple Christmases ago. This group of women turned out to be more of a gift than the actual gift of the writing workshop itself.

“This parenting thing is no joke. The kids have been so difficult lately and I’m feeling 100% completely drained by the day-in-day-out of life with kids,” I wrote, “ And then my anxiety comes out as anger so I feel even worse. I also feel behind on everything from my writing to the amount of library books on loan to me to picking outfits for our family photos to organizing every single room in my entire house. Maybe that sounds silly. Life is hard.”

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The day had started off normal enough. Better, maybe, since it was the first day of the week we didn’t have to be out of the house well before 9 am. At 8 o’clock that morning I had been calm, sipping coffee that was still hot and swatting Nolan’s hand away from my egg-topped avocado toast.

“Go play!” I told him. He scampered off to join his brother and sister, though I knew he’d be back all too soon. I cleared away spoons and bowls, rinsing them off in the sink and watching soggy cereal bits swirl away. I ate my own breakfast as I cleaned; multitasking, the life of a mom. Bite of avocado toast, rinse. Sip of coffee, fill the dishwasher. Bite, sip, wipe, rinse.

My only plan for the morning was to take the kids to the park in a probably futile attempt to burn off their energy. Without a firm schedule, just for the moment, I almost didn’t know what to do with myself.

That lazy feeling was the opposite of the weekly dreams I used to have, far too often, where no matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t be on time. One week it would be the airport and I was about to miss my flight. A few times it was a class at school I could never get to before the bell rang. I would forget a book and go back to my locker, over and over again, or pack a suitcase that never seemed to fill. Every time I would wake up frantic, anxious, panicked, sweating. Growing up as the kid who was always late for everything, these dreams were truly the stuff of nightmares to me. But not this morning. I took another sip of hot coffee before telling them to go upstairs and find some clothes for the day.

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No specific thing actually sent me over the edge that afternoon. There was plenty of screaming and sibling battles. There was the house that looked like a hurricane (or, ahem, three) had hit every single one of its 2200 square feet from the master closet to the playroom. There were a couple of writing deadlines I couldn’t get out of my head but also couldn’t get to work on, because: children. There was the several-months-potty-trained toddler who pooped his pants enough to warrant a bath. Not just once but twice, including immediately after I sent off my plea over Voxer. I was resigned to my fate at that point as I wearily dragged him home from the park in the wagon. I wondered how badly his pants were leaking, if I would need to hose down the wagon when I got home, where all my emotions had gone. It was another day in a long series of days with the grind of working, cleaning, disciplining, and attempting to find patience for the most ordinary of things.

I recently read it takes our brains 28 minutes after an interruption to get back on track to what we were doing before we were interrupted with the same level of productivity. Reading that, my immediate reaction was, No freaking wonder I can’t get anything done! Twenty-EIGHT minutes? As a person who feels as though she is frequently interrupted 28 times in a single minute, I’m basically doomed.

Maybe the nightly dreams of my youth are coming back to haunt me now in motherhood. I’m not missing something as momentous as a flight, as tangible as the bell to sit down for history class. Yet the continuous, fruitless repetition that now takes over my days is undeniable. I may no longer be frantically packing that suitcase, but instead corralling the shoes and jackets that take over the mudroom again, and again, and again. I’m not turning around for the umpteenth time in a crowded high school hallway to retrieve a book from my locker, but I struggle to keep my thoughts in an orderly line as my children derail them over and over with requests for the TV to be turned on, by the shrieks of another sibling squabble, to answer the question, “Where is the Earth?”, with small people showing me - “Look mom!” that a T-Rex stomps “like this” and his arms can’t touch “like this”.

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My friends rallied, as they do, as I knew they would. It is hard, I’ll be praying for you, they said. I’m right there with you. Sending you love. You’re not alone. It is. So. Hard. Cheering you on! I feel emptied at the end of the day, too. It’s not silly. Being a mother is hard.

The solidarity and love as each little ping alerted me to another message pulled me through the rest of the day. I read through each little message once, twice, three times or more, each one a reminder that I wasn’t crazy, I wasn’t alone, that parenting every day in and out is actually hard, holy work.

My Motherhood Journey Through Food

First pregnancy (twins!), first trimester. I want no food. Nothing. Absolutely no food. Wait, I want ice cream. Yes, ice cream sounds good. Nevermind. We don’t have any ice cream and it’s been five minutes so now it sounds terrible. Maybe an apple? No, not an apple. Chewing anything that long makes me want to puke. What about Thai food? Thai food sounds so good right now. In fact, only Thai food sounds good and I think I need some curry, stat. If I can’t eat that then I can’t eat anything. Oh and also an Arby’s roast beef sandwich. I don’t remember the last time I had Arby’s but now I want to eat one of those sandwiches every day until I die.

First pregnancy, second trimester. Phew. Food is just food again.

First pregnancy, third trimester. I am so hungry all the time. Also, I can’t eat anything. I am so full and huge and my stomach has no room to even exist in my body anymore, much less have room for food inside. I am going to eat very small amounts of food all day long. I probably look like a glutton because I constantly have food on my person but really I can only eat one bite every five minutes or I will probably, actually, literally explode.

Vanilla milkshakes. With every meal in the hospital after giving birth. The hospital, of all places, made the most amazing milkshakes. If there’s a time in life that you get to overdose on milkshakes, it’s after giving birth. To twins.

Meals in tinfoil. And in take-out containers. Casseroles in disposable aluminum pans. Also individually-wrapped granola bars, dry cereal, and dried fruit. Some kind of dark chocolate. All within arm’s reach. The early postpartum months of meals from friends and constant breastfeeding.

Coffee. Enough said.

Baby food. Cereal puffs. Banana slices. Cheerios. Yogurt. And all of these things ground into every crevice of every high chair and car seat.

Normalcy. We’ve survived the first year and I’m making real meals again! Actual real, human meals with things like protein and carbs and fruits and veggies and healthy fats! Yay!

(Read the rest over on the Twin Cities Moms Blog!)

Good Girl

“Why are you so quiet over there?” a relative asked in my general direction at a family gathering. I was around 10 or 12 years old and lost in thought.

An older relative fully snapped me out of my reverie when she replied, “Shannon’s a good girl. She’s always quiet.”

This relative didn’t intend anything malicious by what she said. It was meant as a compliment. She said it fondly, lovingly, with a caring smile as she looked at me. I’m sure it came from the way she had been raised, in the era of “children should be seen and not heard” and that sort of thing.

I grew even quieter. Her comment had given me more to think about.

It’s true, I was a quiet girl. Not out of a sense of shyness or because I didn’t have anything to say. I didn’t hesitate to raise my hand in school and I wasn’t scared to speak when spoken to. I was just in my own head a lot. As a girl who spent many of her days and even nights with her nose in a book, there was a lot going on in my head.

Was I a “good girl” because I was quiet? I had always identified with the good girl strain of things. Typical firstborn, straight A’s, type A, honors classes, perfectionist, always followed the rules. Was this another thing I was or needed to be? Were good girls quiet, too?

My quiet continued throughout young adulthood. I was a good girl. Whatever I may have thought in my head, I didn’t express it out loud.

I was quiet in the days and years following September 11th, as people around me vilified Muslims and anyone who wore a turban. That a few terrorists had come to define an entire world religion, an entire people, was disturbing to me. I was young, newly absorbed in high school, and I didn’t know how to use my voice to combat the terrible parodies and ignorant language I heard around me.

I was quiet when my confirmation teacher told us to blindly adhere to the tenets of Catholicism. “For example, you can’t get married as a Catholic if you know you can’t have children,” she told my group of 9th graders, “It’s hard for even me to understand, but because I’m Catholic, I believe it.” That sounded absurd to me — both the rule (if it actually existed) and her blind adherence to it. My mind swirled with thoughts, questions, and opinions for the rest of class, but I swallowed them and got confirmed a year later anyway.

I was quiet during the first presidential election I was able to participate in after turning 18. I silently, resentfully voted for John McCain because I felt the entire Christian culture pushing me to do so, despite the fact that I was intrigued by the youthful, eloquent, hope-filled Barack Obama. Truth be told, I had a strong feeling that Obama would win after eight years of the Bush administration. It helped me feel slightly less guilty about my own vote, but the fact that I didn’t vote the way I wanted still bothers me.

I was quiet as my church small group discussed homosexuality and gay marriage. Though people in the group came from all sides and opinions on the topic, my own brain was in turmoil. I wasn’t quite sure what I believed. I’d heard a lot of things from the church on this issue. Lots of “love the sinner, hate the sin” kind of talk. That didn’t sit quite right with me — so we were supposed to welcome them through the door with open arms and then later tell them to change? It all sounded like the very opposite of “God is love.” This was a much more difficult belief to swallow. I had been hearing these ideas from the church for so long now, how did I even stand up for gay rights? My brain swirled as a I attempted to harness a multitude of thoughts and express them well. Maybe I had been quiet for too long at this point. It haunted me that I didn’t know how to form the right words to stand up for my LGBTQ brothers and sisters.

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As I’ve grown older, I’ve been practicing how to use my voice. The 16-year-old girl who wanted to be liked and seen as “good” doesn’t really care about other people’s opinions now that she’s a 31-year-old woman. To be quite frank, she has no more fucks left to give.

(My teenage ears are earmuffing themselves out of duty. Now it’s a regular part of my vocabulary.)

There are too many abuses going on in our country, in our world, now, for me to remain quiet. Immigration, border walls, LGBTQ rights, sexism, institutional racism, the rights of children, the rights of mothers, slavery, climate change, the importance of journalism, politics, and that damn President of ours. Just to name a few.

I’m using my voice to say:

Not today.

Not on my watch.

This is not okay.

I cannot stay silent.

Really, I think I’m growing into who I’ve always been.

(Read the rest over on the Feminine Collective.)