The Transitions From 1 to 2 Children and 2 to 3 Children

Today I was in a doctor's office and when he heard that I have 4 children he asked, "So what was the hardest transition?  From 1 to 2, 2 to 3, or 3 to 4?"

In hindsight I should have asked him how many children he had before answering, but I quickly answered as I always do to this question.  "From 2 to 3, defnitely!"

My husband and I agree on this 100%.  We are not at all sorry we had an 3rd child.  Having 3 kids is awesome, but it was a hard transition.  Our 4th child was added to our family via adoption at age 3 so that was a little different than adding a newborn child via birth, but still as far as numbers and 2 parents learning to manage 4 children (even a 3 year old one who didn't speak our language for a while), that was not as hard as the challenges that came with learning to manage 3 young children.

Of course with my definitive answer about 2 to 3 children being the hardest transition, you guessed it, the doctor has 2 children ages 5 and 2 years old and his wife is pregnant with their THIRD CHILD!

So, I had to quickly add in some things about how it really is great having 3 kids and you learn to let go of so many things and how well they play together!

The conversation reminded me of a blog post I wrote on the transition from 1 to 2 to 3 children a few years ago.

Maybe someday I'll write a post about going from 3 to 4 children, but for today, here's a repost of my thoughts from 4 years ago.  All still true!

Originally published March 8, 2010:

So before we add a 4th child with our adoption from Ethiopia and I completely forget what life was like with only 3, here are my thoughts on the transition not only from 2 to 3 kids, but 1 to 2 also. 

When you have your 1st baby and you give him a bath for the 1st time in the baby bathtub, you are thinking, "Is the water too hot? Too cold? How much soap do I use? How exactly do I wash that area of his neck under his chin (the spot where the spit-up collects)? How do I get this slippery baby out of the tub? What if I drop him?" 

When you have your 2nd baby and you give her a bath for the 1st time in the baby bathtub, all you can think is, "Wow, she is so tiny! I love the baby bathtub! Oh how quickly she will outgrow this!" 

When you have your 3rd baby, you think, "I know I didn't give him a bath yesterday, but I'm so tired I think I'm gonna skip that bath again today. He's a newborn; it's not like he played in the sandbox or anything! I mean, how dirty could he be?" 

When you have that 1st baby obviously everything is new and exciting. But it is a huge life change! Nearly everything becomes different overnight when that baby is born! Honestly it is hard for me to even remember life with zero kids but the adjustment from 0 to 1 kid has to be the hardest. 

I think everybody ought to have at least 2 kids, because the huge blessing of that 2nd baby is that you enjoy them so much more. Now you know a little more what you are doing, you worry less, and you know just how quickly all those phases pass! The baby is the easy part about having a 2nd child. The big adjustment is managing the toddler/bigger kid with the baby. There is no napping when the baby naps if your 2 year old is awake! And try having the patience needed to manage a toddler when you have been up all night with a newborn! My husband used to say the adjustment to 2 kids was harder on the dads because their free time diminishes substantially. After mom has been juggling two kids all day, when her husband gets home he's either taking 1 or both those kids. The other big adjustment with having a 2nd child is the sibling fighting. In my experience, this is an issue earlier if your firstborn is a boy. From day 1 you will have to worry about him being too rough with the baby, both by accident and on purpose. I remember distinctly the first time my son hit his baby sister. Oh the conflict when your mama lion instincts see your precious baby hurt by someone but realize that someone is your beloved other child! At the same time, you get to witness the blessing of watching the sweet interactions between your 2 children, and watch their friendship grow. With the addition of a 2nd child there's also the issue of managing 2 different kid schedules. With one baby, life revolves around their nap schedule, but with the 2nd baby you will have to navigate around the older child's activities, and you'll find yourself waking up that baby to go pick up the older child at school. But as a positive, most second born kids are more easy-going as a result! 

Now the transition from 2 kids to 3 brings, for lack of a better word, chaos. If you are a momma that must have your children under control, perfectly dressed, noses wiped, nobody crying, and everyone with shoes on the correct feet every time you go out, don't have 3 kids (or at least not 3 close in age to each other). Because you are 1 momma and there are 3 of them. Chances are very high that anytime you are out and about with all 3, someone will spill a drink, have a fit, get lost, fall down, or do something embarrassing. You just can't control them all, all the time. The best way I can describe having 3 kids is more life! 

You have one more child and with that one more child you have more joy, more wash, more hugs, more crying, more smiles, more messes, more laughter, more teeth to brush, more dancing, more throwing up, more playing, more getting hurt, more "I love you"s, more runny noses, more kid artwork, more dishes, more memories. 

More love! 

Of course, the more is there with each of the transitions but it becomes more pronounced with the move from 2 to 3. For example, moving from 1 child to 2 children the noise will double in your household, so for the move to 3 children it triples, right? Wrong! Multiply the noise level by about 10! I'm not sure why it works like that but I've noticed that math is true even for playdates among non-sibling kids. A playdate with my 1 child plus 1 friend (2 kids) = rather calm and quiet but if I add another friend (3 kids), suddenly it is like a stampede of elephants have invaded my home!

How many children do you have?  What transition was the hardest?

For When You Don't Feel Like Scheduling the Family Portrait . . .

I should have done it weeks ago, set up a session with our photographer for our annual family pictures.  A younger, more energetic version of me, who had fewer children vowed we'd do this once a year every year while the kids were growing up.  But, now there is zero motivation to schedule it, plan everyone's outfits, and, of course, endure the 1 hour of torture that is getting my children to cooperate for photos!

But looking at this picture from 5 years ago, when my oldest children were 1, 3, and 5 years old, I'm really glad to have captured that moment in time!  It is so fleeting!  Those children are 6, 8, and 10 now.  They have changed so much since then!

As much as I love that picture, I haven't forgotten the reality that day.  The photographer was late (which was really unusual for her), the mosquitoes were terrible there in that little wood, my 3 year old had to go potty about 2 minutes into the photo shoot, the 5 year old got his clothes dirty sliding on his knees before the 1st picture was even taken, and there was a little gazebo that the 1 year old just wanted to run around over and over again instead of posing for pictures!

And still, I know it was worth it, every bit of wrangling those monkeys, to remember them just as they were.

Find more Wordful Wednesday here.

The Most Stressed Out Moms

I heard about the results of a survey where they polled 7,000 U.S. mothers.  Who do you think reported the highest levels of stress - moms of one child, two children, three children, or moms of four or more children?

The survey found it was the moms of three kids who were the most stressed!

Do you want to see the survey?  Here it is.

Surprised with the results?  I know I talked to several moms at a dinner this evening who were.  But, I get it.  As a mom of four kids, I see it.  That once you have four kids, you just have to let many things go and not worry about them.  Things you might still be trying to do or do well with 3 kids but they are really not easy to stay on top of for more than 1 or 2 children.  I know I always say about our experience going from 3 to 4 kids that it was already chaos with 3, so yeah, what's 1 more?  Except maybe an excuse for the chaos!

What do you think?  What number of children is the most stressful?  And why would moms of 4 or more report less stress than moms of 3?

The Third Child

When my firstborn was in pre-K, he pretty much never brought home any artwork. I'd wait outside his classroom to pick him up and admire all the adorable creations hanging on the line above so many of the other children's names, but by my son's name? Nothing.

He was too busy doing all the other centers in the classroom and skipped the art center, every day.

I'd prod and question him. "You didn't want to make a pumpkin picture?" "Maybe tomorrow you'll make something." "Daddy would be so excited to see something you made at school!"

Then 2 years later came my daughter into the same pre-K program and she pretty much camped out in the craft station for the entire 3 hour school day apparently, and brought home the following amount of creations EVERY DAY!
And she didn't want to part with any of them. They were all priceless keepsakes!

My house was so full of construction paper treasures and sequins that fell off and glitter and feathers and macaroni necklaces. I'd have to stage elaborate stealth operations to be able to throw away secret piles I'd squirreled away long enough that she forgot about them.

And now 2 years after my daughter's pre-K year, my youngest son is in the same pre-K program. And like his brother, he prefers not to do the craft activities, but instead builds zoos and museums and towers out of the blocks every day and fills his shoes up with massive quantities of sand on the playground.

But, my little 3rd child is blessed to have a momma with the perspective that only multiple children can bring. He gets no secretly judgmental comments from me about the lack of creations. I stand outside his classroom and smile at the other children's piles of artwork compared to the empty space beside his name. And, truthfully, I really am kind of glad. Yay! Nothing to take home! No wet paint or shaving cream getting all over our clothes and the car during the transport home! No figuring out how to display or store or trash the artwork!!!

And we all marvel at the affects of birth order on personality!

Find more Finer Things Friday.

Toothbrush Management

Four years ago when we went from two kids to three kids the hardest part hands down was dealing with sickness.

That first year of 3 kids (ages 4, 2, and 0) it seemed like someone was always sick and we had several illnesses that ran through ALL FIVE OF US! I remember thinking, "I could do this if not for the sicknesses!" I could balance the attention among 3 healthy kids, but make that 1 sick kid plus 2 healthy ones and it got tough, and hand me 2 sick kids or 3 at a time and it felt near impossible. And don't even get me started on caring for 3 young children by myself while I was super sick. So miserable!

Most people can handle sitting up nearly all night for one night with a sick child, but what if that child gets well just in time for the next child to catch it and suddenly it becomes a marathon of sleep deprivation, round the clock nurse duties, and constant wash?

So, I became a bit of a fanatic about keeping everyone as healthy as possible. No, not going to extremes like keeping toddlers home from church for fear of them catching something. I'd rather my kids be sick all the time and in church most Sundays than live a germ-free life away from church. But, that first year I used a lot of bleach and Lysol -- door knobs, light switches -- any time someone showed the first signs of being sick, to try to keep the rest of us from catching it. It never worked.

But, in the past couple of years I think I've figured out a few things that do help lessen the spreading of the sickness within our family. This past winter we all had bouts of sickness, but none of them shared!!

We even had 3 separate (as in at least a month apart, way longer than the incubation period of Strep) instances of Strep throat, which is highly contagious, but my kids never spread it to each other!

One thing I did different this year was a new system for toothbrushes.

Instead of having all three of the kid toothbrushes in a holder on the counter where they could potentially touch each other, I separated them into individual plastic bins in a drawer.

And, here's the kicker, I believe.

Each child has their own tube of toothpaste!

It never occurred to me until recently how that toothpaste tube touches every toothbrush and can spread those nasty Strep or stomach virus germs.

Call it paranoia, call it overkill. I really don't care. We are hopefully, prayerfully going to have four kids living under this one roof next winter and this toothbrush/toothpaste system is staying!

And nobody eats after each other! Kids are little germ reservoirs. I don't care how healthy they seem, I'm not finishing off their food. That sandwich they only ate one bite of can be saved again for them, but anyone else that eats it is eating at their own risk!

I have some other tips on keeping the family healthy I'll share in another post at a future, undetermined date.

Find more Works for Me Wednesday here.

Is it really chaos?

It's that time again -- the 5 Minutes for Mom Ultimate Blog Party! Welcome to the It Feels Like Chaos party!

Feel free to grab some ear plugs at the door; it's always LOUD around here!

And I must warn you against eating any of the cake!

The ice cream, however, gets rave reviews!
To introduce ourselves, we have 3 biological children ages 8, 5, and 3 years old and are in the process of adopting a little girl from Ethiopia.

As if having 3 young children and an adoption in progress wasn't enough crazy, we recently added a puppy to the chaos. Madeline is a 16 week old golden doodle puppy who really, really loves taking baths, in fact just this week she's discovered a new tactic that nearly guarantees her a much coveted bath:

Yes, that is mud covering her furry blond feet. Sorry for cutting off her head, as it turns out children may be easier to photograph than puppies! And for the record, the puppy is now getting a bath and blow-dry more times each week than I do!

So what's up with the name? Is it really chaos?

Well, there are occasionally backwards jeans.

Teeth have been known to fall out! And we anticipate losing 60 or more in the next few years! And our tooth fairy is way stingier than the tooth fairy for my kids' friends, so I don't know what's up with that! I tell my kids, "Well, their teeth just must be better than your teeth, maybe they brush more!"

I got a sewing machine for Mother's Day last year, The Internet has taught me to sew, and now I make more than half of my daughter's clothes, like this dress I made with this tutorial this week. I delighted in how sweet and girly my daughter looked in it. Then after school, she came home and made mud pies with her brothers while wearing it! Awesome!


There may or may not have been a moment this week when I called my husband at work and said, "All 3 kids are muddy, the dog is muddy, the 8 year old needs to be at soccer practice in 30 minutes, and I really just wish the mom would show up and deal with all this." Yeah, I know I AM the mom, and I did suck it up and deal with it all, even making it to the practice on time.

But the really crazy thing about the mud that made me wish I could turn-over my mom position just for an hour or so? Is that it hasn't really rained here in I-don't-know-when! My children created the mud by toting water from our outside faucet to the dirt under their swing set with buckets!

Back to the "Is it really chaos?" question.

Random face decorating is common around here.


There's usually a science experiment going on.


And somehow my toilet paper always ends up looking like this:

It used to be a toddler wildly unrolling the t.p. and this frugal momma rolling it back up (I mean it's not really used t.p., just unrolled)! Now, the puppy is the culprit!

My in-box pretty much always looks like this:


And while sometimes being the main manager of all the chaos leaves me feeling like this very tired bear.

I wouldn't have it any other way!

This blog is about sharing the crazy journey God has us on -- the messes, the fun, the joy, the pain, the struggles, the crafts (for the uncrafty, of course), the cooking from scratch, the attempt to live frugally for a greater purpose, the learning, the loving. The chaos! But, as the Sanctus Real song says, "It feels like chaos, but somehow there's peace." The peace comes from the only thing truly good about our home, and that is Jesus. I am so glad that He's "up to something bigger than me"!

Thanks for joining our party! Feel free to come back any time for a front row seat to all the chaos. And the best part? You get to enjoy it without having to clean up from it!!

Find more Finer Things Friday

Spring Break Sleeping Arrangements

Spring Break

3 Kids

1 Puppy

2 Parents

1 Hotel Room

How did we make it work?

Wall to wall beds, Baby!

And that arrangement with the air mattresses on floor for 2 of the kids and 1 sleeping on the couch that turned out to not be a fold-out bed as expected?

Was way, way, way better than the arrangement where 1 kid slept on the non-pull-out couch and 2 kids slept in the king-sized bed with my husband and me (with the dog in her crate next to our bed)!

Don't ask me how I know!


Find more Wordful Wednesday, Wordless Wednesday, & Not So Wordless Wednesday.

What do a Fighter Pilot, a 50s girl, and Iron Man have in common?

A fighter pilot, a 50s girl, and Iron, what do they have in common?

They're all mine!!!

All for One and One for All

A Corn Maze

My 3 kids ready to tackle it, together.

May they always be there to help each other through the mazes of this life.

Find more Wordful Wednesday and Wordless Wednesday here, here and here.

A Blessing of Having 3 Kids

It's still a zillion degrees here so the only pictures I have of my 3 kids together are of them soaking wet! I haven't done an official "What it is like having 3 kids" post in a long time, but just this morning I was thinking about how having 3 kids has mellowed me (in a good way, I think).

My husband had an early meeting so I did the morning routine by myself and elementary school drop-off for my older 2 kids and took my 3 year old in wearing his pajamas. We walked all the way through the school to the cafeteria where the kindergarteners have to wait for the 1st bell to ring, and all the way back out, passing all kinds of friends and teachers (teachers my 3 year old will likely have some day and yes, they may remember him as the kid in the rocket ship jammies). My little guy even high-fived the principal on the way out. Our principal is a really, really nice, very tall man who my 3 year old adores! The principal jokingly asked my son, "So, you goin' back to bed?" I laughed and wished my toddler would go back to bed when we got home.

But, as I walked out I thought, there was a time in my life when I would have been embarrassed about taking one of my kids somewhere like that in their jammies. Even at 7:50 am I would have felt like it revealed some kind of failure on my part as a mom, but now?

I don't care. I really don't. Having 3 kids as close in age as I did (still do) forced me to give up on the striving for perfect. I had to admit I can't do it all. And living in this new realm outside of striving for perfect, is a much better place to be.

I have no doubt that one reason God blessed me with more than 2 children is because He knew I needed to let go of some things, like my pleasing-the-world tendencies, and lean a whole lot more on Him!

And besides, my 3 year old is pretty cute in his jammies!

Find more Thankful Thursday here.

Life with Three Kids at an Amusement Park

3 Kids

in

1 Stroller

with

1 Drink

illustrates

togetherness at its finest

or

maybe it just illustrates that their parents were too cheap to spring for another drink or another stroller to haul the tired children around an amusement park over the weekend!

Find more Wordful Wednesday and Wordless Wednesday here, here and here.

Life with the Three Stooges

Life with my three kids is often hilarious! There is just something about the combination of three different kids and the stuff they come up with to do and their interactions with each other.

Like today, they decided it would be funny to use 2 of our portable phones that are on the same phone line but have the ability to call each other. So, for literally 45 minutes they were thoroughly entertained calling each other and my husband and I.

Some of them were upstairs and they'd call downstairs, then they'd switch and one would come down and another would go upstairs. They traded off who talked to who, making comments like, "Your voice sounds funny! How was your day? What are you doing? Okay, now let me talk to Mommy."

And yes, those 3 potato heads they created do remind me of how different my 3 kids are personality-wise, but how well they come together!

Find more Wordless or Wordful Wednesday.

Mommy-Daughter Date

My 4 year old daughter and I go on a date every Tuesday. What do our mother-daughter dates look like? Well, that picture was today.

2 cupcakes, 1 glass of milk with 2 straws, 2 hours alone with just my girl

It redefines priceless!

There is this magical, blessed bit of time every Tuesday because she gets out of preschool at noon, her big brother is at elementary school until 3pm and her little brother is at Mother's Day Out the same place she has preschool until 2pm. So from noon to 2pm it is just us girls! I have the option of letting her stay at school until 2pm for "stay & play", most of the kids stay, but she doesn't. Because she's mine, all mine during that time!

Granted Tuesdays are tiring because it means 3 different school pick-ups in addition to her ballet/tap class later in the afternoon (or swimming this time of year), but it is so worth it to have precious time alone with my sweet middle child.

A wise lady told me when I became pregnant with my 3rd child, "If you go out of your way to give attention to your middle child, you'll probably end up just about right." I've found her advice so true. The oldest automatically gets a lot of attention because everything they are doing is new and exciting. The littlest automatically gets attention because they are the baby (and in my 3rd-born's case, because they demand it, loudly!).

Find more Wordless or Wordful Wednesday and Works for Me Wednesday.

It's that time of year!

It started a few weeks ago, the gradual bombarding.

Everywhere I went with my kids there was a flyer with specific instructions about where to be and when and sometimes what to wear or bake and bring, and of course the numerous ways I could volunteer to help out with the upcoming big event.

A field trip, an open house, an art fair, a 1st grade musical, a preschool water day, a class trip to the zoo, a field day, a friend's birthday party, another friend's birthday party, a baseball end of the season party, my child's birthday, the beginning of swim team season, a dance recital, the end of school party, the teacher gifts . . .

and on it goes. . .

I've seen other bloggers post on this so I know I'm not alone in thinking the busyness of the pre-Christmas season is nothing compared to the April/May of a mom!

Here are 13 ways I'm attempting to manage it this year:

1. I will volunteer to help with some things, but quietly pass on the sign-up sheet without writing down my name for other things (For example: yes, I will chaperone the field trip, but I will let someone else bake cookies for the open house)!

2. I will write everything down on my calendar and check it daily!

3. I will use my crock pot, nearly every night.

4. I have cooked ahead some freezer meals.

5. I have lowered my expectations about exactly how clean my house will be during this season.

6. But, will be extra-diligent about keeping up the organization systems that make things run more smoothly, like kids putting their shoes on the shoe shelf, baseball hat always on the same hook, and laundry done often before it becomes too overwhelming!

7. Nearly all the things crammed on my calendar are truly fun things, so I will attempt to live in the moment of each one, and enjoy it without worrying about what is next on the agenda.

8. For every crazy, frenzied, jam-packed day we have these next couple of months, we will have at least one day of absolutely nothing planned over the summer!

9. I will keep my camera charged.

10. I will prioritize a quiet time each day and exercise, too!

11. I will not stress that this blog post is not formatted quite as perfectly as I'd like.

12. I will lay-out clothes and pack bags the night before.

13. I will thank God for the privilege of a front-row seat to my kids' lives!

So how do you do it? Any good survival tips to share?

Find more Thankful Thursday, Thursday Thirteen

A newborn's perspective on being the 3rd child

This picture is nearly 3 years old now, but oh how it captures what it is like being the 3rd child!

Can you imagine how huge my daughter's head and son's head sticking into that baby gym must have seemed to my newborn son?!!!

And you know that is a 3rd child (or 4th or 5th) because otherwise those toddlers would never have been allowed so close to that fragile newborn!

Is it no wonder that now, as soon as that 3rd child finishes breakfast every morning he begins to ask, "Who will play wif' me?"

Find more Wordless or Wordful Wednesday.

Logistical Issues of Having 3 Kids

Recently I blogged here about having 3 kids, and said it was a topic I could go on and on about. So consider this a continuation. I am really so thankful to have 3 kids and to have them fairly close in age, the positives definitely out-weigh the negatives.

But, that being said, there are some logistical issues inherent to having 3 (or more) kids. Many of the issues surprised me and I never would have thought of them before actually having a 3rd child.

13 Logistical Issues About Having 3 or more kids:

1. 3 car seats may not fit in your vehicle

This is not as easy as it may seem, many back seat rows are not wide enough. If you have a 3rd row in your vehicle you will now need to use it to accommodate a child and if you have a smaller SUV, once the 3rd row is up there may be no room for groceries or even a stroller in the back. This is where you may (like us) find yourself suddenly on the market for a vehicle with a 3rd row that can be partially folded down. I became very familiar with the terms "50-50" split and "60-40" split (meaning part of the 3rd row could be a seat and part flat for cargo)!

2. Many restaurant tables are set up for families of 4.

You may have to wait longer to get a table big enough for your family of 5.

3. You are going to clock many, many years at your local elementary school!

Even before we signed up for a 4th child (the one we're adopting from Ethiopia) I was staggered the day I did the math and figured out we'd have a child at our elementary school for 10 years! Good thing we really like the school, the principal and the teachers!

4. You may need a whole 'nother level of babysitter (or consider hiring 2).

Things are more manageable now, but there was a time when we had a 4 year old, a 2 year old, and an infant and you can't just leave that combination with the high school girl down the street while you go out for the evening! For our very occasional date nights, we began using a lady who is a full-time nanny for someone else during the day (so basically a professional caregiver who would be up to the challenge of our 3)!

5. Many hotel rooms have a maximum of 4 occupants and that includes kids.

So once your 3rd child is more than an infant you may have to look to adjoining rooms or a suite.

6. The Schedule!

Playdates, practices, recitals, field trips, teacher conferences, school open houses, birthday parties, lessons, doctor appointments ALL TIMES 3!! It is enough to make you nuts. You limit each kid to 1 outside activity, say "no" to any unnecessary commitments, keep a really good family calendar, try to schedule doctor and dentist appts. with all 3 kids together (But beware, the pediatrician's exam room suddenly feels really small and really loud when you are in it with your 3 kids plus the doctor!) And for the most part, you just embrace the crazy!

7. It will take at least 10 minutes to "load up" your vehicle every time you go somewhere.

Just getting 3 kids strapped into the vehicle takes a while and then you have to allow for the lost shoes and last minute needs for drinks to go or a trip to the potty!

8. Your grocery cart is full of kids and there's no room for groceries!

If your kids are spaced close together and your oldest is still under 5, you will want them all to ride if you have any hope of getting shopping done. I became an expert on which stores around me offered the carts with a baby seat as well as the 2 plastic seats near the front for older kids.

9. It takes a lot of groceries to feed 3 kids.

Once all 3 of your kids are drinking milk, you will go through massive quantities in a week. We use 5 or 6 gallon jugs in a week for our family of 5! I've got a system in our fridge where I can store 6 jugs so I don't have to go to the store more than once a week!

10. Serving meals for 5 people takes more time than you think!

Just dishing up 5 different plates takes some time, and then if you have little kids you have to cut 3 different plates of meat.

11. Safety

When you are one adult and you take 3 young, mobile children to the park, it is impossible to keep your eyes on all 3 at once! You must keep watch like a tennis match the best you can from one child to the other. Dressing them in matching clothes really helps here! And crossing parking lots you only have 2 hands. So you teach them to hold each other's hands or I have been known to hold 2 kid hands in one of my hands before!

12. Visiting at friends' houses

Even having my 3 kids fairly close together, there is still a pretty big difference from my oldest to my youngest and occasionally it is challenging to visit friends who only have kids at one end of the age spectrum. If someone only has older kids, your baby or toddler is going to be pretty out of place in their home that now is not baby-proofed and only has toys for older kids. Alternatively, if your friend only has little ones, your oldest may be the strange, big, rough, older kid in a room full of babies!

13. 3 Kids = a lot of stuff

If you don't already, once you have 3 kids you will need to keep your clutter-control tactics on high-alert. The volume of clothes, toys, paperwork, crafts, birthday party loot bags, etc. that will need to be managed is mind-boggling. No more saving every piece of artwork that comes home from Sunday School!

Okay, I'm really worried this all sounded too negative. Did I mention how much fun it is having 3 kids?!!!!





Find more Thankful Thursday, Thursday Thirteen

Sibling Sweetness

"The best thing about having a sister was that I always had a friend." -Cali Rae Turner


I caught this shot of my younger son and daughter at an Easter egg hunt this past weekend. I love it because it illustrates one of the great joys of my life -- to watch the friendships develop between my children!

Find more Wordless or Wordful Wednesday.

Caught on Camera

***This was originally published Feb. 8, 2009. The ages of my children have changed by about a year, but basically all this kind of stuff still happens!***

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! In this blog carnival created by MckMama everyone has fun telling all the things they DID NOT do (but really did). You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week. This is my first stab at a Not Me! post but surprisingly I could think of tons of things I DID NOT do, so here goes!

I DID NOT catch my 1 year-old eating a cracker with completely filthy, dirty, black hands!

I most certainly DID NOT take a picture to document this filthy cracker hand for all the world to marvel at my super parenting abilities! Seriously, y'all, how does a hand get that dirty and then get a cracker without a mother noticing?


I DID NOT happen to find this article entitled, "Babies Know: A Little Dirt Is Good for You" that same day by chance and declare myself an awesome mother for allowing my kid to eat dirt that very morning!


I DID NOT spend an entire week documenting every moment with the bunny mascot from my daughter's preschool class so we could complete the Bunny Journal.

And when my little girl woke up the night before the bunny had to be returned to school crying that she didn't want to take Benjamin Bunny back to school, I definitely DID NOT wildly dig through our stuffed animal bin, pull out a white bunny from the bottom and declare it Benjamin Bunny's long lost sister Becca Bunny who could stay at our house forever and ever! No, I would NOT do that because that would be mind games and I DO NOT subject my children to that sort of fantasy world! And, by the way my daughter DID NOT fall for the long lost sister bit and is NOT now carrying Becca Bunny everywhere!


We DID NOT go to the car show and let our 3 children climb all over, rub fingerprints on, and pretend drive all the brand new cars while the salespeople frowned at them!



My cart DID NOT look like this leaving Target on Friday. We DO NOT attract attention from other storegoers when my 5 year-old chooses to ride in the bottom like this!



Okay, now your turn, what did you NOT DO this past week?

From 1 to 2 to 3

One of my newest bloggy friends is Lisa from Little Writer Momma and she posed the question last week, "How was it going from 2 (kids) to 3 (kids) for you?" I used to get asked that question all the time, but now many of my in real life friends have had their 3rd (and a couple even 4th) kids so I don't hear it as much, but it is an interesting question. So before we add a 4th child with our adoption from Ethiopia and I completely forget what life was like with only 3, here are my thoughts on the transition not only from 2 to 3 kids, but 1 to 2 also.

When you have your 1st baby and you give him a bath for the 1st time in the baby bathtub, you are thinking, "Is the water too hot? Too cold? How much soap do I use? How exactly do I wash that area of his neck under his chin (the spot where the spit-up collects)? How do I get this slippery baby out of the tub? What if I drop him?"

When you have your 2nd baby and you give her a bath for the 1st time in the baby bathtub, all you can think is, "Wow, she is so tiny! I love the baby bathtub! Oh how quickly she will outgrow this!"

When you have your 3rd baby, you think, "I know I didn't give him a bath yesterday, but I'm so tired I think I'm gonna skip that bath again today. He's a newborn; it's not like he played in the sandbox or anything! I mean, how dirty could he be?"

When you have that 1st baby obviously everything is new and exciting. But it is a huge life change! Nearly everything becomes different overnight when that baby is born! Honestly it is hard for me to even remember life with zero kids but the adjustment from 0 to 1 kid has to be the hardest.

I think everybody ought to have at least 2 kids, because the huge blessing of that 2nd baby is that you enjoy them so much more. Now you know a little more what you are doing, you worry less, and you know just how quickly all those phases pass! The baby is the easy part about having a 2nd child. The big adjustment is managing the toddler/bigger kid with the baby. There is no napping when the baby naps if your 2 year old is awake! And try having the patience needed to manage a toddler when you have been up all night with a newborn! My husband used to say the adjustment to 2 kids was harder on the dads because their free time diminishes substantially. After mom has been juggling two kids all day, when her husband gets home he's either taking 1 or both those kids. The other big adjustment with having a 2nd child is the sibling fighting. In my experience, this is an issue earlier if your firstborn is a boy. From day 1 you will have to worry about him being too rough with the baby, both by accident and on purpose. I remember distinctly the first time my son hit his baby sister. Oh the conflict when your mama lion instincts see your precious baby hurt by someone but realize that someone is your beloved other child! At the same time, you get to witness the blessing of watching the sweet interactions between your 2 children, and watch their friendship grow. With the addition of a 2nd child there's also the issue of managing 2 different kid schedules. With one baby, life revolves around their nap schedule, but with the 2nd baby you will have to navigate around the older child's activities, and you'll find yourself waking up that baby to go pick up the older child at school. But as a positive, most second born kids are more easy-going as a result!

Now the transition from 2 kids to 3 brings, for lack of a better word, chaos. If you are a momma that must have your children under control, perfectly dressed, noses wiped, nobody crying, and everyone with shoes on the correct feet every time you go out, don't have 3 kids (or at least not 3 close in age to each other). Because you are 1 momma and there are 3 of them. Chances are very high that anytime you are out and about with all 3, someone will spill a drink, have a fit, get lost, fall down, or do something embarrassing. You just can't control them all, all the time. The best way I can describe having 3 kids is more life!

You have one more child and with that one more child you have more joy, more wash, more hugs, more crying, more smiles, more messes, more laughter, more teeth to brush, more dancing, more throwing up, more playing, more getting hurt, more "I love you"s, more runny noses, more kid artwork, more dishes, more memories.

More love!

Of course, the more is there with each of the transitions but it becomes more pronounced with the move from 2 to 3. For example, moving from 1 child to 2 children the noise will double in your household, so for the move to 3 children it triples, right? Wrong! Multiply the noise level by about 10! I'm not sure why it works like that but I've noticed that math is true even for playdates among non-sibling kids. A playdate with my 1 child plus 1 friend (2 kids) = rather calm and quiet but if I add another friend (3 kids), suddenly it is like a stampede of elephants have invaded my home!

I could say a lot more about this subject but this post is part of the Moms' 30-Minute Blog Challenge, so I'm out of time. Maybe I'll revisit this topic in a future post!

Join us for Gratituesday at Heavenly Homemakers!

Find more Tuesdays Unwrapped.

And still I probably haven't heard it all!

You know, there is really no way to encapsulate the random that makes up a mom's day.

But in my attempt to try, here are 13 things I've heard recently from my children:

"Do dinosaurs ever need band-aids?"

"See, here in the front of the book is the Table of Continents."

"NO! I don't want clean teeth!"

"Yes, I do want dentist drill holes in my teeth 'cause I didn't brush. I do!"

"Does anybody ever run out of kisses?"

"Tomorrow starts my Stanford testing at school and we're supposed to eat a good breakfast. You should make me eggs! I know, one day I can have scrambled eggs and the next hard-boiled eggs -- but you'll have to make those the night before."

"Knights don't have capes!"

"What do I have to eat to get dessert?"

"Is it almost Christmas?" (Me: "Um, no, Christmas is 11 months away")

"Are stinky people real?"

"I want just pants, no diaper, no underwear! Just pants!"

"No, you can't be Spiderman even if you are wearing the Spiderman costume, you have to be Spidergirl."

"Mommy, do you love Isabella (that's our dog) even though she has bad breath?"

Find more Thankful Thursday & Thursday Thirteen