September 7, 2004
Catching up
Q: when is the difference between 3 and 2 greater than the difference between 2 and 1?
A: When you're dealing with children.
When we went from one to two, it was really no big deal; I took the big kid, Penny took the small kid. Now there's two of the big kind, and still only one of me. You see the problem.
I recall talking to a friend with three kids, around the time we announced our third was on the way. Expecting words of reassurance, or at least an acknoledgement that life would eventually return to a semi-normal state, I was a bit taken aback by his reply. "It's hell," he said.
In all seriousness, things actually are going pretty well. The kids are adjusting, and, believe it or not, I'm actually getting more sleep than I was before the baby was born. Of course, it also helps that Eden is absolutely adorable.
And I'd like to thank everyone for the well-wishes left below; they are muchly appreciated. I passed them all on to Penny as well. After all, she did most of the work. Most.
Everyone's experience differs. My (and my wife's feeling) is that the biggest difference was from 3 to 4. (Of course there might have been a good reason for that. Our first 3 were born in the space of 3 years. #4 was born 5 years later. We had five years to get used to a family of 3 children, so it really was a jolt to have #4. Additionally a friend told me that the increase in difficulty of juggling 4 balls over the difficulty of juggling 3 balls is quite large. Maybe the dynamics of family are similar to juggling :-)
Posted by: David Gerstman at September 7, 2004 11:05 PMYou guys are talking about numbers of children that are incomprehensible to me. Three kids? Four? Oy. I guess me spazzing about a second is overdoing it a little, huh?
Posted by: dabrettman at September 8, 2004 9:35 AMOne explanation on the difference of 2 vs. 3 kids from a friend: "With 2 kinds you can still run a man-to-man defense, with 3 you have to go to the zone."
Posted by: Craig at October 4, 2004 2:27 PM
