So, How is it With Three? (Revisited)

We come back to this question.  Several weeks back, I had written that it was easy, barely different than life with two.  Naturally, things change.  As Hatch grows older (and Leo and Patrick grow older), our day-to-day gets a little more difficult.  However, I still contend that it is probably not much harder than two, minus that my hands are usually filled by one baby and that my reactions are a little slower, especially if I am feeding said baby.  Patrick and Leo have become best buddies.  Patrick is, of course, older and therefore more verbal and Leo (our baby gorilla) is active.  I wish there were a word a little more powerful to accurately describe him, but that will have to do.  They make excellent playmates: Patrick, the master-mind and Leo, the exectutor.  This combination means that chaos sometimes visits...and that gets a little overwhelming.  Very fun, but very busy.  And if I haven't showered and have only changed my pj pants today because I happened to spill coffee on them, so be it.  I'm otherwise occupied.

Twenty to twenty-five minutes after waking up this morning, I had changed three diapers, the toilet paper had, by a pre-school report, "fallen off" the roll in both bathrooms, Leo had consumed one container of yogurt, one bowl of oatmeal, a glass of milk, and half of a tube of tinted moisturizer and had snapped yet another necklace in half.  Patrick had found a very large screwdriver and was "fixing" a broken guitar (I have yet to figure out which guitar or what he meant by "fixing.")  Hatch was up, ate, and back down again.  I redeemed one Groupon and watched a half of an episode of Wife Swap, had a cup of coffee, and spilled my second.  I learned that we have no wipes, no trash bags, and groceries are tragically low.  The kitchen table was (and still is) occupied by things that should not be on a kitchen table (one of my biggest pet peeves), our living room is re-arranged in a configuration I am not sure that I like, I mentally listed the approximately six orders of business to tend to in order of importance.  This is how a typical day looks, all day long.  As busy as it is mundane, for sure.

Hatch is now three months old.  He's still such a sweet baby, always happy, always smiling (even if there are tears in his eyes.)  He is tolerant, not stirred much by noise, and adores his big brothers, his dad, and me.  He's a peach of a little boy.  I'll take half a dozen more, just like him.  As with all of the kids, I wish that time would slow down a little.  The newborn phase has come and gone, he sleeps through the night, takes fairly routine naps, and is filling out all over.  I don't think he's as small as he once was, though his feet are still super-tiny (at least compared to Leo's baby "paddles.")  When we go to pick him up, he smiles and immediately snuggles in to our necks.  It's just heaven.  He's a little angel...for now. 

We have found that getting out of the house is a little harder than it once was, as we are again heavily-loaded on the baby supplies, the diaper bag, boppy, appropriate blankies and toys, etc.  It takes quite a bit of organization and planning, which doesn't always go off without a hitch.  Adam and I both struggle with our need for control of a situation, which means we sometimes have stressful exits.  Just this weekend, in such a fashion, the car ride to Cinncinati to visit family started a little quietly.  A little bit of attitude was thrown around, but was squashed in a way so classically ours.  Adam serenaded the following:

Nobody but me gonna love you like you ought to be loved on.
Nobody but me gonna cry if you up and le-ee-eave. 
You can do what you want to, but I'm asking pretty please,
Don't go lovin on nobody but me.

To which I had to serenade back:

The beating of my heart is a drum and it's lost and it's looking for a rhythm like yo--ouuu
You can  take the darkness from the deep of the night and turn it to a beacon burning endlessly bright,
(I gotta follow it) 'cause everything I know...well, it's NOTHING 'TIL I GIVE IT TO YOU...

So, it short, life with three is busy.  It's perhaps a little harder than life with two, but we manage.  We may have our strange ways of doing it, but that's nothing new.  Even Patrick, from the back of the van, will quip in his usual "You guys are so weird."  It's ok, though. It's good.