Life with three

I started this blog when Ada was only a few months old.  I was freshly home from what had been a career that I loved.  Scott and I were still newlyweds really, and we were a bit shell shocked by the way a newborn had shifted our universe.  It felt so hard to have that one baby.  It was so hard to have that one baby.  I was lonely and a bit baffled by motherhood.  I missed work.  I missed getting dressed every morning while it was still dark outside and driving through the city to my exit.  I missed the "careerness"  of it, and I was struggling to figure out how to fill the hours.  I knew that I wanted to be at home, but I was struggling to find purpose in the constant feed, change the diaper, burp the baby, put the baby down for a nap.

And here we are, six years later.  Six and a half years later, and it is once again hard.  But hard in such a different way.  The constant feed, burp, diaper changing is now lost in the midst of homeschooling and parenting and budgeting for a family of five rather than that family of 3.  And I feel like I hardly see Scott as we are in the trenches of parenting young children and much of life feels like tag teaming rather than running side-by-side.  I feel like my voice constantly sounds frantic.  Is that Evie crying?!  Can you grab her while I finish dinner?!  Are Ada and John fighting again?!!  where did I put the math work book?  It's lost in the gigantic pile of papers that we call the school room.  and on and on and on the frantic goes, and it's hard to stop and nurse Evie without it feeling like an inconvenience, much less find the time to talk to Scott or actually think through parenting decisions rather than just reacting to the situation at hand.

 I write all this not to say that this is good or how it should be.  Instead, I write it to say that this is the adjusting that is now taking place.  Adjusting to Ada meant figuring out what to do with what felt like too much time.  way too much time.  Silence and a quiet apartment and how do we fill our days?  And now adjusting feels like, how do we dial down the frantic?  How do we stop running around and reacting to situations and switch to purposeful parenting of three?  I know that life can still be purposeful, and I know that much of that will happen naturally as we move out of these early survival weeks into more normal, predictable weeks.  I know that I will wake up one day, and we will have adjusted.  Which is another thing that honestly makes this adjustment easier.  With Ada, I didn't know that we would certainly adjust; it just took time.  This time, I know the adjustment will come.  Scott and I say that a lot.  Think about what life will look like six months from now!  a year from now!  Not to wish away the time, but to remind ourselves to breath and not panic because this isn't the new normal.  It's not.  Of course life will be fuller, busier, and yes, more frantic, with three children instead of two, but it won't always be this frantic.  Evie will get older.  Things will settle down.  We will figure this thing out.  (With much prayer, of course!!!)

But, but, the melancholy in me feels a bit of grieving over that quiet apartment, that one baby, and the excitement we would feel when Scott got home from work (at about 5:00 versus 7:00 or sometimes 8:00).  It was simpler.  And we were so young.  Or it feels like we were so much younger.  Because, though it felt like it wouldn't happen, we did adjust, and I had all of this time to enjoy baby Ada.  Long walks and looking at her and talking to her, and even naps with her.  But though there are less of them, I still have those moments with Evie.  In the wee hours of the morning when she needs to eat and the rest of the house is sleeping.  Or late in the evening when Ada and John are finally asleep and Scott and I can finally sit down and breathe.  Those are the moments that I take the time to look at Evie, drink in the smell of her, the sounds.  Feel the weight of her in my arms--all curled up in that newborn way with her diapered bottom sticking out. 

So here we are.  So different from the first time we became parents, but also so much the same.  We are figuring this thing out.  I am praying.  A LOT.  And we are confident that we will survive this and our family will come out on top. 

I always have more that I want to blog.  Ada's ballet recital, Christmas, I started weight watchers (because that has been different too!!!  It was much easier to lose this baby weight six years ago!!), and just the general information about what Evie is like.  So maybe I will get to that.  We'll see...