Going From Two to Three

Although I have heard lately that three is the new two when it comes to how many children people are having these days, the majority of my friends are still calling it a family at two and often ask what three is really like. I recently saw a headline in The New York Times about summer movie sequels which I thought described going from two to three much more brilliantly—in a mere four words--than I ever could:

The Same, but Worse

In other words, more of the same in terms of the trials and tribulations of child rearing. One child is hard. Two children are hard. Three children are hard. And so on and so forth (I won’t even touch the greatest officially recorded number of children born to one mother—sixty-nine—with a ten-foot pole. "Hard" seems woefully inadequate).

Worse in that someone is up at 5:00 AM and someone else is still up at 10:30 PM. Worse in that the baby might not get out of his pajamas all day and the oldest might wear his too-small Baltimore Ravens' jersey for three days straight and counting. Worse in that everyone's bangs are always too long and everyone's shoes are always too tight--except the baby's, because you haven't actually gotten around to buying him shoes yet, because you are waiting for him to grow into the ones that used to belong to his older brother's, which you are still looking for...

But sometimes, just sometimes, it is the Same, but Better, because by the time you get to the third child, you just don't care about any of that stuff anymore (except for the sleep, you never stop caring about that) and realize that you don't have to be the perfect parent. You just have to be good enough.