The a Difference a Year Makes

About a year ago, I posted a light-hearted look at some random things I dealt with as a new mom of three children three and under. A few weeks ago, having the general impression that my head is barely above the water we were in back then (we're still on survival mode at least one day a week on good weeks), I thought it would be helpful to find the post and re-post it to this blog.

In reviewing it, I am happy to say that, though my impression is that not much has changed since then, there are so many things that no longer typify my life like this list once did. It really has gotten easier. Even "survival mode," I've noticed, means something entirely different a year later, and I'm happy to report, less literal.

Sigh. It's good to get some perspective.

Without further ado:


You might be a mom to three short people if:

• You are grateful for six hours of uninterrupted sleep.
• You finish a phone conversation, take off your glasses, then realize you meant to hang up the phone.
• There are days that you consider yourself successful if, at the end of the day, everyone is still alive and you got a shower to boot.
• Your showers are accompanied by at least one other person, unless you take one at 6 a.m., 3 p.m. or 9 p.m.
• Grocery shopping by yourself refreshes and renews you.
• Despite your couch looking like this most of the week:

or at best, this:

your husband is just grateful to have something clean to wear to work.

• A date with your husband consists of putting the children to bed and zoning out to a movie in the next room.
• When someone at the store snidely jokes that you need to figure out "what causes that," you think to yourself: "I'm not sure I can remember."
• You marvel at the thought that some people actually need to use birth control at this stage to keep from getting pregnant again.
• You congratulate your children for doing things like this:
• When pulling into a parking lot, your first objective is no longer to find the space closest to the store, but the cart corral.
• A suggestion from your husband that you go to a coffee shop and blog for an hour makes you giddy with excitement.
• You can't remember the last time you had both a warm meal AND two free hands.
• Upon your infant's cry of hunger, two non-lactating short people offer--and attempt--to breastfeed her.
• You let them.
• You consider it "a break" to go anywhere with only one or two of your children.
• You have found yourself in a public bathroom stall with all three children, holding 2 of them.
• Throughout the day, you periodically burst into melodramatic and sarcastic renditions of theme songs from Little Einstein or Super Readers.
• You wonder if your brain cells will ever regenerate enough for you to have an intellegent conversation.
• You don't remember if or when you've ever had one.
• You can tell what time of day it is, based on the cleanliness of your shirt.
• At bedtime, you can easily identify a half-dozen stains and/or bodily fluids on said shirt.
• Almost none of said bodily fluids belong to you.
• You are grateful for this.
• You lose your train of thought mid-sentence.

It takes a few minutes for either you or your husband to notice. . .

and . . .


It really isn't worth the effort to figure out what you were saying.