Welcoming a new addition to the brood

“You don’t know what you’re in for with three. Three is much harder than two.”

 

“You’ll be grand – the change from one to two is much harder.”

 

Ever since we announced that we were having a third child, pretty much everyone who has been down this road before us has offered one of those pieces of advice. I suspect the ‘three is much harder than two’ crowd are simply out to scare the bejesus out of me (spoiler alert: it worked.)

 

You do what you can to prepare – there are boxes to come out of the attic and DIY, decorating and laundry to be done. Schedules are drawn up, employers are informed. You make every adjustment and still wonder – how on earth does another person fit into our lives?

 

So our darling daughter arrived the day after my last post went up and, if I may say so, she’s gorgeous. An absolute angel. I’m completely besotted, as are her mum and her brothers.

 

We’re two weeks in and I’ve likened it to when you get the stabilisers off your bike for the first time. It’s that “holy cow, I think I can actually do this!” feeling while your mum assures you that it will get easier as you figure out the rhythms. All the while you’re thinking: “don’t ask me to do anything but stay the course for a while, or I might veer into traffic.”

 

But what about her? The age gap between the boys is significantly larger than the age gap between B and the new baby, so by the time B arrived, Mrs. M, AJ and I were, for want of a better word, settled.

 

We had our routines, we had our inside jokes. You develop your own language and secret shorthand as a family and when a new person arrives, you wonder how they’re possibly going to get up to speed. Imagine having to join a club where you have to watch the first seven seasons of a TV show just to know what anyone is talking about. Now imagine the show is on all day, every day, and everyone else is watching new episodes while you try to catch up.

 

But B adjusted, and we adjusted to him. He’s in on the jokes now and has his own routines and conventions, just as we have our own nicknames for him and behaviours we watch that make us roll our eyes and think “Typical B”. It’ll take time, but she’ll get there too.

 

We brought our daughter home from the hospital the day after she was born. I opened the door of Madden Mansions to let Mrs. M in with the car seat but, as usual, B charged ahead – he’s two and a half and conducts his business at the sort of volume rarely heard away from the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. Inches from the sleeping baby, a pile of toys came crashing down – we held our breath, ready for the first real crying fit.

 

She opened one eye, sighed exasperatedly, and went back to sleep. “Typical boys,” you could almost hear her think.

 

Yeah - she’s going to fit in just fine.