A couple of days ago, dear husband took off with the two older kids on a huge (huger than expected) adventure on a tight budget. Backing up briefly, the eldest child’s love of Greek myths spurred the travel-loving hubby to envision taking that child to Greece. The tough economic times dashed some considerable flexibility for travel. Brainstorm: spring break! Who goes to Greece in the spring? Long story short: flying isn’t so much cheaper (but frequent flier miles were cashed in, oodles of them) and staying there is so much cheaper. Off they flew. The huger than expected part of the adventure is coming in the timing: general strike in Greece the day they were to land. They have made it and got a 12-hour layover and bleary-eyed sightseeing of trippy art adventure in Madrid to boot.
I can’t say more, because I really won’t hear the story until they return.
I’m not sure of the math (I’m terrible at math) in all this but I guess four children and two parents are the same as two children and one parent? By same, I mean same amount of work, perhaps.
This is, to borrow a phrase, fuzzy math. Childrearing isn’t such. My friends who murmur about how do we have time to raise four children always hear me say something about how children fill the space so one takes the same time as two. One is rarely as loud as four, though. And indeed, even when shrieking, two aren’t as loud as four, either, at least so far.
I’m just a couple days into this one parent/two small children adventure (think of me with a smile because over the next days no one will hear me ask about turning lights off or doing homework, questions asked so often they could be considered mantras or near-eternal nagging of the eldest two). Already, though, I am reminded that while some things are more tiring: say, my arms are working harder to do all the parent holding of toddler, there’s such a freshness that comes from shaking up the dynamics in a family. My seven year-old—number three in the sibling order—is the oldest. And the whole enterprise—web, meals, morning routine, and bedtime—is ratcheted down a whole lot. Plus, it’s cozy, just having two smaller kids. It’s almost like I forget sometimes they are as little as they are.
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I’m sure to write more about all that as I experience it. Here’s one practical thing, though, that I know parents with two kids know—and I know I’d wholly forgotten: when you are putting the kids to bed, you can snuggle toddler up with her bottle and read the chapter book to the older child. You don’t even have to feel guilty, because the toddler thinks you’re reading her the chapter book (technically, I guess, you are). Besides, when you have book-obsessed toddler (as we do), you don’t have to feel like you’re stingy about story reading; she gets stories, many, many stories read to her all the daylong. And then, they both go to sleep. Who knew? (Yeah, I know, many, many parents knew).
By the way, we are reading (that’s rereading for about the one hundredth time to me) Laura Ingalls Wilder’s On the Banks of Plum Creek. We’ve just gotten through the grasshopper-plagued summer. I really can’t stop thinking about how harsh life was out there on the prairie. Somehow, as I’m watching the health care debate and debates about finance reforms and the general questions of the day, I keep wondering what progress is supposed to look like, and why we decided somewhere (capitalism, I get it) that personal gain (specifically that crazy wealth is some ultimate goal or achievement) trumped the good of the whole. The glimpse into hardship of that sort would make you think (naïve thought, sure) that you don’t want people to risk so much, that your goal really is assuring that people are housed, fed, educated and all that good stuff. I have been holding my two nearby kids really close and mulling just that. And while I’m holding my two nearby kids really close, I’m feeling exceedingly grateful.
