Mom Lesson: One Is Enough For Me
Posted by Rachel Engel
Last week I babysat for a friend while she and her husband attended a very important promotion ceremony. Her little boy and my daughter are only 7 days apart, so I felt like it was going to be a piece of cake; they're basically the exact same age, how hard could it be?
OH MY HEAVENS. Thank the stork I was blessed with only one tiny fertilized egg instead of two. I would be pulling my hair out left and right, and what would be left would be gray if I ever found myself in the position of being the full-time parent of multiples.
Seriously, hats off to all you mamas of twins, triplets and beyond, because with one kid crying, and the other pulling up on the walls (and the changing table and the dresser and the crib, etc.) I wanted to throw my hands in the air and say, "I give up! Y'all win! The house is yours!"
Okay, I'm sure part of it was the fact that I was absolutely not his mama - he knew it, and he didn't like it. And on top of that, my kid crawls the walls all the time, that was nothing new. But I swear, when it was all combined at the same time, with my dog barking outside the nursery because he detected a new-smelling person in the house, and my husband leaving me to take a shower, telling me, "You'll be fine, they'll play together," it was overwhelming.
And, dude, "they'll play together"? No, as a matter of fact, 9-month-olds are notorious for not playing together. Perhaps they'll play next to each other, and they may stare at each other while they play by themselves. My daughter was more interested in his baseball-inspired pacifier than she was in the kid himself. Many times I had to pull her arm away and tell her to keep her hands to herself. She really listened, too (NOT).
Another thing this circus playdate taught me was how different boys and girls are. Not in the obvious, "Hey, you have an innie and I have an outie" way, but in just noticing how boys' feet are thicker, their hands are bigger, and they are way, WAY more cuddly than girls. Once again, that just might be my daughter's crazily independent personality. When I hold her, she pushes away from me like she can't wait to be headed off to college tomorrow and get away from her severely attached mother.
The little boy, though? He kept leaning in to me and giving me hugs and cuddles, which of course made my heart melt. My husband noticed this (when he finally took pity on me after his ridiculously long shower) and kept making wiggly eyes at me. I'm sure he'll want me to babysit for my friend again isoon so he can soften me up to the idea of having a boy (I had never even changed a boy's diaper until last week, so it's not a dislike of baby boys, it's a fear of the unknown).
All in all, it was a good evening, but it made me very grateful when his mom and dad came and picked up his happy, cute butt, and I was left all alone with my one tiny baby - who crawls the walls.
Sigh... one isn't THAT much easier.
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