My good friend Eileen has a hilarious saying. It goes something like this: "Two kids are more than double the work. It's the exponential factor. Kid times the power of kid."
So true, so true.
Carter turns 6 months old this week. I can hardly believe it and at the same time, I feel like I've been mothering two kids forever. I guess when you do something every day, all day, it's like dog years or something. Six months feels like 6 years.
Last weekend Seth was headed out on Saturday morning for a bike ride, and I was trying to do some baking and get the boys out the door to a friend's house for an Easter egg hunt. Seth brought Carter downstairs after a morning nap and placed him in the highchair in the kitchen. He smiled while I hustled around for about three minutes. And then he started crying. And then I buzzed by him and caught a whiff of a poopy diaper. I picked him up, slung him onto my hip and did a few more chores on my way up the stairs to change his diaper. When I set him down on the changing table, I realized the diaper had leaked all over him and me. I took him straight to the bathroom, holding him by his shoulders and ankles, trying hard not to get poop on anything else. Jasper waltzed into the bathroom with a muffin in hand (breaking a rule of no food upstairs, but it wasn't the time to go over rules). I asked him to help me lift Carter's bath seat into the tub. Jasper moved slowly and tried three times to hike it up over the tub wall. Then he slowly tells me he can't do it because he's holding a muffin. Trying to express my immediate needs for help, I told him to just put the darn thing down and put the seat in the tub.
He took his time, headed for the toilet (lid down, thank goodness), and set his muffin right on top of the toilet lid. Then, with great excitement he helped me get the seat in the tub where I promptly placed Carter for a hose-down. Jasper turned around, picked up the muffin, continued eating and watched me give his brother a bath.
There was a time in my life when I would have freaked out about the thought of using the toilet like the kitchen counter. It's still not appealing, but I see what kids do, and frankly, it's not the worst. There's the boogers he brings to me. And our loud conversations in the grocery store aisles about why it is inappropriate to have your hands down your pants in public -- for some reason, it gets other shoppers' attention when you say the word "penis" in the produce section. And we're potty training now, so you would be hard-pressed to surprise me when it comes to exactly where one might find pee in my house.
I love these boys. I love how much they crack me up. I love that they laugh at silly things, crave my attention, want me to play with them and snuggle close with sleepy eyes. I know it won't always be like that. But before you get the impression that I'm delusional, I should acknowledge that I am also sleep-deprived, tired of the never-ending loads of laundry, exhausted that just when you get the kitchen clean, it feels like time to cook another meal.
But I wouldn't change any of it. Even though kid times the power of kid is insane.
A few pics from recent days.
