Repository for assorted "how do you cope with several very young children" bits, as they come up.

ON MEETING NEEDS:

[In response to questions from someone pregnant with #3 with two older ones five and three, I think:]

It was a harder adjustment for the older kids than for me. Be really sweet to the older ones.

Our load was lighter because the boys liked to sleep and live in little sweat pants and shirts, so if they'd take a bath, I'd put new clothes on them that they could sleep in, and in the morning they were already dressed. If they weren't too dirty at night, falling asleep in what they wore that day was fine.

"Were you able to feel like you were meeting everyone's needs" isn't a fair way to ask. Would "feeling like" you were meeting them be better than doing your best to make unhappy kids happy? You just need to do the best you can. You're pregnant. No backing out now. For getting out of the house, I would aim for having everything ready fifteen minutes before we had to leave. I was always a last minute person, and remained so when I had one child, and started to be late for the first times ever when I had two, so when Holly came, I backed the planning WAY, way up. These things helped:

• Pack what you'll need the night before and put it in the car.
• Keep extra stuff in there. Bottled water, cheerios or other long-lasting snacks in little containers. Have it in the car all the time.
• Baby wipes, towels, little blankets. Let them live in the car, or at least pack up hours before, so the last trip to the car is just kids.

I used a backpack to carry one of them. They're not good for tiny infants, but for a kid who can sit up and hold on, it's great. I could put Marty up there and still do things with Holly. When Holly was older, I would go for walks at night and she would fall asleep up there. Or when we went out Keith would take Marty in the frame backpack, and I'd take Holly in the Snugli (front sling) and Kirby got all the running-around and hand-holding attention.

Instead of having a rule that kids had to hold my hand in a parking lot, I would park near a cart and put some kids in right away, or tell them to hold on to the cart (a.k.a. "help me push", so a kid can be between me and the cart). And they didn't have to hold a hand. There weren't enough hands. I'd say "Hold on to something," and it might be my jacket, or the strap of the snugli, or the backpack, or something.

Kirby was 2 1/2 when Marty was born.
Marty was two months short of three when Holly was born.

Right at this moment they're all in Marty's room being friendly and chatty. Kirby just got back from karate and they're sharing the stories of the day.

They're 19, 17 and 14 and it's WAY easier now than it was fourteen years ago.

Sandra, January 2005

UPDATE March 2009

updated UPDATE August 2015

Marty is married, living in our old house, and working for Target, but plans to go to the University of New Mexico full time beginning in January, to study economics. He's taken all the classes he can take at the community college.

Holly has been working in Chama, New Mexico, in a couple of jobs (restaurant and art gallery/gift shop) for the summer, and will move with my sister to Española, my home town, to share a house with her cousin and his partner and soon-arriving baby for a while. Holly has worked several jobs since the 2009 update, and travelled by herself across the U.S. (Albuquerque to Washington DC, with many stops to stay with friends), and to India and England.

Toddlers can grow up to do things you would not have thought of or planned for them, and they can grow up happy and whole.

UPDATE December 2021

Marty has two toddlers (one is nearly four, so... he's graduated from that designation), and has been married for seven years. Marty did finish that degree in economics / geography, and is working as an analyst for the police department.

Holly just turned 30 and moved into a house of her own. She helps me babysit those four little grandchildren, sometimes. So does the oldest grandchild. It's harder for me, being old, than it was when my own were little and I could carry two of them.