‘Wait til you have two’

It seems to me that anyone who has more than one child is teetering on the edge of madness. I can barely mention Sam’s penchant for cat food or his Houdini-style attempts to free himself from his buggy in the middle of Lewisham High Street to ‘friends with more than one kid’ without them stifling a laugh. ‘Just wait til you have two,’ they snigger.
To them, it seems, wrestling one baby back into the pushchair is a breeze - a holiday, no less. I’m lucky, they tell me. I have time to go to the loo, to write this blog, to eat a sarnie, to make a cup of tea and to prize my baby’s fingers out of the plug socket. They don’t.
Come 8pm, when I’m slumped in an exhausted heap on the sofa, they’re still hanging up the third load of washing or scrubbing crayon off the carpet. While I’m up just once in the night seeing to Sam’s sore teeth, they’re lucky to get four hours’ sleep thanks to kids wetting the bed, toddlers wanting to play and newborns screeching for a feed.
Today I sat in the garden with the paper while Sam bum shuffled his way around harassing the cat. It wasn’t my idea of total relaxation, but at least I got to skim over the headlines – which is more than my ‘friends with more than one kid’ get to read. So all I can say to them is yes, thanks for the tip – I WILL wait til I have two…
On a similar note, did you read this in the Times last week? http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/caitlin_moran/article1469531.ece
Good on you, Caitlin Moran.