The Third Kid

Most mornings when I get out of bed and start getting the crew ready to take Gianna to school I leave Pia sprawled out in the king bed all by herself. In between making breakfasts and packing G's lunch and exhorting people to please go brush your teeth and find your shoes, I run upstairs to make sure Pia is still asleep and not army crawling her way off the bed. I could use a baby monitor but this is way more fun; plus, I can't find the other half of our monitor. 

And almost every morning I have to scoop my still-sleeping baby out of bed to load her in the car. I was reflecting on this as I gathered the necessary strength needed to break the universal law to never, ever, ever wake a sleeping baby and for a few seconds I felt bad for her. Poor Pia. Always getting naps skipped or interrupted to hop in the car, sometimes for her own therapy appointments, sometimes for school drop off/pick up for Gianna. For a moment I believed what the culture at large would say; she doesn't get as much attention or love or focus or-

My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of feet clomping up the stairs. Suddenly the room was full of voices and small bodies clambering onto the bed.

"Is Pia awake? Can we see her?"

"I want to give her a hug, can I play with her?"
"Pia!! Hiiiiiiiii!!!!!" 

As I watched my two big kids fall over themselves to worship their PiaBaby, who was now awake and smiling with delight, I realized...she's got the good life.

She is adored by her two older siblings and gets way more talking and laughing and singing and signing than Gianna did when it was just her and I hanging out all day when I was a new mom. At night, when she wakes up after the other kids have gone to bed, more often than not Brad and I lay in bed with her and soak in her smiles and laughs, even though I guess we "aren't supposed to play with the baby at night; she'll never learn to sleep."

I just wasn't this laid back with the first kid, and while I was more relaxed with the second, I feel like I've gotten a lot more comfortable about who I am as a mother, and Pia gets the benefit of my previous experience in a way my big two don't. I see my six year old and realize just how quickly the days of babyhood fly by and it doesn't make the stress over precise naps and food diaries seem as dire. I won't say there aren't times when  the very physical demands of having a baby in the house overwhelm me, or that I'm always cheerful to be awake with a baby hitting a new milestone in the middle of the night, but I think I can see the joy in it all more readily.

And the food. I mean, it's pretty unlikely I would have let a 10 month old Gianna go to town on some spaghetti and meatballs or steal my Popsicle. There's a certain sweetness about this third baby that I can't help but savor.

i took this picture with my iPad mini. Cuz I'm fancy.

Please pray for our Sweet Pia....Friday she will have her cochlear implant surgery. Thank you thank you!

Lately

This past Friday I got a 6 year old in the house. Aside from the requisite "Where is my first born baby and who is this giant that replaced her?" and "If I've been at this parenting gig for 6 years why am I still failing frequently?" feelings I am digging the 6. The 6 does this:

 Yes. She is washing potatoes for dinner while I snuggled a teething PiaBaby and grouchy Dom. When I told her I could not have made dinner without her help she grinned so big her smiled wrapped around her face. (I love that line from Rudyard Kipling. It has always stuck with me. I can't even remember what story it's in, just that he wrote it.)

Yesterday after retrieving the 6 from school we made a quick trip to the Joe's which quickly turned into a grocery store walk of shame. Partially because the children wouldn't stop emoting but more because Pia pooped all over the place. Initially I played it cool; "this is why we sometimes bring our diaper bag, " I pepped talked myself. "This is why we always have an extra outfit on haaaaand--oh." Not today. Not in this diaper bag, not in this bathroom.

So I did the only thing I could do. I put her in a clean diaper and put her back in the sling and we grocery shopped with a baby clad in only diaper and her pink pilot cap. Except that because she was in the sling with her pudgy arms and legs and shoulders squishing out, she looked totally naked as opposed to partially naked, since the diaper was hidden by the sling.

And a dumpster diaper no less! You'd think if you were going to take your baby to a natural foods store in nothing but a diaper you'd have the decency to do it with cloth. No one actually said anything to me about it, but I know they were looking. Sometimes crazy-acting kids create a really good buffer.

The lack of a cloth diaper brings me to my next unfortunate confession: I'm so behind on the laundry that Brad walked around the house collecting the over-flowing hampers and dumping them out into a pile in the basement. We look like....hoarders. Or worse. I don't know. And even as we've been chipping away at the mound of clothes we know that we're all just walking around, dirtying up more clothes faster than we can wash them.

at least we had the Hanna Andersson hat on. Euro-chic covers just about any fashion mishaps, right?