The tunnel of Parenting

My friend Kyra mentioned to me that large families start to enter an 'easier period' when the eldest child turns about 10, and that before that you see incremental improvement in life, and also that the period of parenting that I currently am in has a name - The Tunnel of Parenting.

I totally and completely agree.  It is a giant plastic garden hose like opaque tunnel of parenting.  Yes.

On the other hand, I do see flashes of what it WILL be like, one day.  Far from now.  For example, here's one of my first posts from my original blog; and I wrote it when Samuel was about 3 months old.  I'm incredulous when I read it.  Could I seriously not get my act together enough to take one infant outside long enough to buy some groceries?  That same infant can now fetch and carry for me, make his own bed, bathe himself, feed himself, help in the kitchen, play with his sister and put on his own shoes.  There have been changes, in both of us.  He's a helpful and useful member of the family and not a screaming time bomb and I am a calmer mother, one who isn't frightened of the idea of an infant crying periodically.  And when Clara was born, I went through it all again - a toddler and an infant = the worst combination ever made.

Actually, when people talk to me about being nervous to add a third, especially with the fairly short age difference I have already between children (25 months between each child) I don't always understand what they're getting at.  Hard?  Not really in the ways they mean to say.  Samuel is four, he can do so many things alone, and I encourage that independence.  Clara is two, and wants to simply be a shadow - she'll play with Sam as long as he lets her, or follow me around doing 'jobs'.  The baby?  The baby will nurse and sleep and use up diapers, and that's about it.  No, I'm not worried.

But what I am is excited about the future I hear about when my eldest is six and can brush his teeth without needing me to check them after.  I'm excited about when he's eight and is totally able to express himself verbally and doesn't need me to stand in as a constant interpreter.  I'm excited about when the children can sit still.  I'm excited for the day they show up out of their bedrooms wearing clothing that is ACTUALLY seasonally appropriate.  That one might never happen.

Oh, sure, three children will be harder in a lot of ways.  Our car is squeezed as tight as it can go - we're going to need to buy a van very soon.  We don't have a big enough table to fit everyone.  We're into 'people sharing bedrooms' stage and the choices are all awful as to whom has to sleep with whom.  I've run out of space.  And then I've run out of the extra space I found by getting rid of tonnes of stuff.  And now I just pile things.  Our grocery bill is getting ridiculous and it isn't going to look better for a long time.  I'm really tired of wiping bottoms.  I still haven't totally figured out how we're going to leave the house.

Yes, harder, but in the meantime the older ones are growing.  They don't stay babies.  The tunnel of parenting ends.  And at the end is the fantastic world of getting to sit down after lunch and have a cup of tea.