I am a mother of three. I have three children. THREE?! Evidently three is a number that tips the scale from sane and typical to outrageous and adventurous around here. Or so it seems from the comments I've heard. Clearly I am not surrounded by people who grew up in the Christian homeschooling community that I did, in which three kids means you are just getting started.
My third baby was born 10 weeks ago. We named him Tristan Samuel within an hour of his birth. We arrived at the hospital knowing neither his gender nor his name. When the doctor showed me that beautiful scrunched up face, I thought he looked like a Tristan. Then, while in the recovery room I asked Dave to look up the meaning of Tristan and we heard him wailing from down the hall. Dave laughed and said "It means the loud one." That settled it. Well, that settled it for the birth certificate. When Maiya met Tristan she asked that we change his name to Tyler. She asked a few more times after that. I love a girl with an opinion.
Tristan is a dream. It could be that this time I was confident I would get less sleep, have more to do than could be done and have the occasional emotional meltdown. So it's less of a shock and consequently less overwhelming. Not to say that I am underwhelmed. Or bored. Or catching up on soaps. I am just a half a notch under totally overwhelmed, but the difference is that I know that at 10 weeks out, that isn't too bad.
While reveling in Tristan's infancy, I am also preparing for my first baby to go to kindergarten in the Fall. I am managing my anxiety about kindergarten by learning about things like PTA and summer reading. Neither of these are terms homeschoolers need or use as parents are the teachers and thus have no Association and reading is never an "extra" assignment; it's a basic part of life in every season. Haven is looking forward to kindergarten as he is excited to learn to read. And the line of shiny computers he saw in the library at orientation did nothing to hurt his ideals.
The preciousness of my time with my kids is real to me. It is a luxury to spend my days with them. It is not a luxury in the classical sense, but that in which you work harder, get paid less and love your life more. Is there a word for that? It is waking up in the morning and showering poop off of another person before you get the chance to sit on the toilet for thirty-five seconds, then having company when you do. It is getting covered with kisses because you put five stitches in a doll stroller, rendering the flimsy thing functional. It is the pride in your child's face when, after years of singing the ABC's he suddenly sounds out a tiny word. It is fastening a dry diaper around tiny hips and looking up to see a beautiful face beaming at you. It is a lot of crappy moments too - like when your children press playdough into the cracks of your ancient wood floor and you just sit down and cry because you have no idea how to remove the helldough - and thus we move along. Things change. Even the crappy moments become funny in retrospect, making even some of them precious. Times three.