Sometimes I question our sanity in deciding to have three kids.
There are times when it feels like I am living in an episode of Outnumbered, with our three kids running rings around us and Heather and I struggling just to keep our heads above water. Like the fictional Brockman family, we too have two boys followed by a girl, with the biggest differences being that (a) they’re much funnier than us and (b) their adventures were limited to 30 minutes per week rather than being 24/7, like some nightmarish version of Big Brother.
There are times when the kids bicker and moan and the general volume level would make the front row of a heavy metal concert seem like a Trappist monastery on a quiet day. “Isaac pinched me.” “Kara hit me.” “Daddy said something about three one-way tickets to Siberia.”
There are times when Heather and I would like nothing more than five minutes’ silence with a nice cup of tea, rather than having to serve as an unarmed version of UN peacekeeping forces.
And then there are moments like this one, when they’re all snuggled up on the sofa watching something on a tablet together and enjoying each other’s company, and the only sound you can hear is raucous laughter.
It’s moments like this that remind us why we had our third child. Kara completes our little gang of three, our three amigos. She adds a dynamic that we would never even have realised was missing if we had just stuck with our two boys. And, despite all the squabbling, there are more laughs than tears.
Well, most days anyway.
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