I'm nervous posting about this topic. I fear that the universe is lurking, waiting to spring a surprise on me. Universe: please note I never say never in this post. Well, except in that last sentence. But that doesn't count, that was merely explanatory. No, really.*

Topic? I had one, I'm sure. Oh, right!

So I had always imagined myself having three kids. But I hadn't really given the number a lot of thought.

I think it was mostly because I have two sisters and we get along well. When we don't, then there's always someone to complain to about the other. And three seems like a party, you know? A small party, sure, but a party nonetheless.

The Man has always thought two was the perfect number (he just has one brother) but was willing to discuss three.

Then we had two children.

Now we BOTH think that two is a great number to stick with.

See, when we had The Boy we were new parents, coming off of years of doing our own thing and sleeping on our own schedules. We could adjust our lives to accomodate The Boy's needs (including his need to be awake all the GD time) and still have time to pursue our own interests. We had settled on a three year age gap between The Boy and his sibling-to-be, and were lucky enough that the powers-that-be co-operated. I was due with The Little Guy a few weeks after The Boy's third birthday (TLG arrived only 11 days after TB's birthday but that's another story).

That's when I began to entertain the idea that two might be my limit. Even though The Boy was getting easier all the time (hurrah for children who can communicate with words!), I still found my needs and his becoming more incompatible as my pregnancy wore on. It didn't matter to him** how awful I felt, or how difficult it was for me to move around, he still needed full-on Mombie. That was the beginning of my being pulled between the divergent needs of two children. My body (home to TLG at that point) was telling me to rest, The Boy was needing me to play. I tried to find a compromise: quiet games, reading, watching Dora's Pirate Adventure endlessly etc.

Then when TLG was external, it got to be more of a challenge. TLG's crying bothered The Boy, The Boy's need to play the drum all the time bothered TLG. And so on, and so on. I'm still struggling to find a balance between TLG's current intense need for my physical presence and TB's intense need for my mental presence. There is no phoning it in and when I do get time to myself, I actually need to decompress before I can get any work done or even just relax and hang out with friends. It doesn't take me long and I don't get the bends*** or anything but I do need a little transition time from full-on Mombie to full-on whatever.

So juggling their divergent needs is still a challenge, but I'm moderately successful most of the time****. I don't think I could add another kid into the mix though. I think my mind is divided into all the tracks I can manage, one for The Little Guy, one for The Boy, one for The Man and my marriage, one for me and my interests, and one Other Stuff (family, friends, etc). If I had to give equal weight to another person I think something would have to give, and I know what it would be: me and my interests.

I would give my children anything, but I can't give them everything and giving up the things that help me regenerate would help no one. And I think having a third child, and trying to be the mother I want to be to three children, would be too much for me*****.

That's really my most important reason right there: I can be the type of mother I want to be to two kids, but I don't know if I can do three. And that's not the sort of thing you experiment with. Two kids = relatively sane Mombie. Three kids= who knows?

And if I stop at two, then my kids will be in school full-time in 5 years. That's 5 or 6 hours of writing time each day and still time to hang out with them after school. If I have a third child, it would be a minimum 9 years (presuming a thrid child arrived in two years' time and went to school full time at 6) before I could have that much time each day. I have long term projects simmering that will keep for 5 years before I bring them to a boil******, but I don't know if they'll keep for 9.

I'm happy (and lucky to be able to) take this time in my life to concentrate on my family while writing and doing theatre on the side, but I'm not willing to keep those things on the backburner forever. And as my kids begin shifting more parts of their lives outside our home, I want to do the same.

There are also practical considerations, like the size of our house and of our car and the fact that both of my boys were premature, which probably means that I would have another premie. What if this one was even earlier? What if this baby had some prematurity-related difficulties? Could I handle running back and forth to the hospital for another child while caring for the two I have now?

Also, at the end of my pregnancy with TLG, I had a lot of trouble walking (not your usual pregnancy awkwardness, an actual bizarre pain while moving issue). Could I deal with being rather immobile and trying to care for a six year old and a three year old at the same time?

I'm not sure I'd even want to try.

When I had The Boy, 7 weeks early and just moved into a new house, I had a lot of trouble adjusting to not being pregnant and I looked forward to being pregnant again. When I had The Little Guy, I sat up in my hospital bed that first night, thinking 'man, it is soooo good not to be pregnant'. I kept grinning at him in that little plastic bassinet and relished feeling comfortable for the first time in weeks.

I think newborns are cute, and I'd gladly snuggle yours, but I don't look wistfully at them. Looking at my sons' tiny clothes makes me smile to think of them so small, but I don't wish them (or me) back to that point.

I guess when it all comes down to it, two feels good. Two feels right. Our family feels complete.

Now, if I were to suddenly find myself with a third child on the way, I'd be happy about it. It would take some adjusting of my plans, but I'd adjust. But given the choice (and, barring unforseen birth control issues, I *am* given that choice) I want to stick with two.

You, of course, should feel free to have as many (or as few) kids as you like.

*You see, posting about something like not wanting to have more kids is like inviting the universe to knock you up. I'm hoping to avoid the wrath of the universe by choosing my language carefully. I wouldn't choose to have more, but if I did, that'd be cool too. No really. Really. No, I'd be fine with it.

** Not that it SHOULD matter to him, but stick with me, my point is arriving soon.

***Like how I extended the diving metaphor there? Or did you miss that? Are you in over your head? (HA!)

**** Good thing I don't need to put that on a resume: Mombie - moderately successful most of the time. No one would hire me.

*****Lots of women can swing it, that doesn't mean that I think they aren't doing a good job or that I think they don't take enough time for themselves. I think they must be drawing their mothering energy from a different place than I am. Also, this weblog is all about me, remember? Are you new or something?

******I am the metaphor QUEEN!

A long time ago when The Boy was a baby (i.e. 3 years ago), he awoke one morning, sat up between me and The Man, leaned over to his Daddy and said, as clear as day, "Hey, Bob."

Naturally, I cracked up and after The Man finished his faux-fluster of "Do you often have someone named Bob sleeping here? Is that why The Boy has us mixed up?" He cracked up as well.

It's become somewhat of a running joke with us now.

Then, this morning, The Little Guy was in a post-nursing delerium, lying on my lap and babbling, when he stopped suddenly, looked up at me and said, as clear as day, "Hey, Bob."

Ah, milestones. It's always a relief when your kids reach them.

Sooooo, apparently I suck.

This may not be news to some but now I'm even worse than you thought. It turns out that I would be held in low esteem by Our Lady of the Cone Bra (aka Madonna) herself because the boy isn't completely toilet-trained at (almost) 4 years old. Apparently, parents who have kids in diapers past age two are 'inattentive'.

I have several issues with Ms. Ciccone's (or is that Mrs. Ritchie's?)stance there but I'll take the statement at face-value first.

Not toilet-training your child by age two means you are inattentive? Okay, that *could* be true in a way. A child in diapers is easier to care for than one who needs to be monitored for bathroom needs, and the effort required to train a child that young is certainly greater than the effort required to train an older child. Ergo, a more attentive parent would be more likely to be able to (or willing to) train a child under two. And a less attentive parent would be less able (or willing) to train a younger child in the ways of the bathroom. So, I'd have to give her that. A 3-year-old in diapers may indeed have a less attentive parent than a toilet-trained two-year-old.

However, that being said, there is an awful lot of assumption built into that statement. And you know what happens when you make an assumption? Well, like The Man says, you make an ass out of umption. You can't really judge whether individual parents are inattentive based on what is wrapped around their kid's butt. The kid may not be ready for underwear, or the parent may not be prioritizing that skill. Our common guidelines for raising children are way broader than that.

I also resent that Madonna can make that sort of sweeping generalization (are there any other kind of generalizations?) without having to live the life of an ordinary parent. I don't know how involved she is in the day-to-day life of her kids, so I won't assume that she paid someone else to be attentive to her need to have her kids out of diapers by age two. I do know, however, that she has someone to cook, clean and shop for her. She probably has a driver, and a personal assistant to run messages, make appointments and answer the telephone. And at the very least, the nature of her work and her husband's work means that they both can be home together a lot, so there are at least two caregivers present a lot of the time.

Why does this matter? Because it is a lot easier to focus on one kid and that one kid's intense needs at any given time if you don't have to juggle all the other details of family life. It is much easier to remember to put little Lourdes or little Rocco on the can every half an hour if someone else (or several someone elses) is fending off telemarketers, preparing supper, ironing your shirt for the meeting tonight and entertaining the kid's sibling while you wait for poop. If you have to do all that yourself, you may find that holding off on toilet training until your child is old enough to communicate effectively is more realistic.

I guess the funny thing is that even someone like Madonna is not immune to the lure of the parent competition. This is a high stakes game and you have to believe in your position or it feels like all will be lost. It's too bad that so many of us have to frame our beliefs in a way that puts other parents down while we come out looking good. I think we all fall victim to this mentality in the first days of parenting, but most of us grow out of it as we grow more confident.

So, Madonna, I feel a little concerned that your arrogance is masking a lack of confidence in your own parenting. Your kids seem to be doing okay, as far as I can tell anyway. Maybe as you relax into your own parenting style you'll be able to explain why it was so important to you that your kids be out of diapers by age two and you can leave the rest of us out of it.

I must go practice some more inattentive parenting, it's hard work being this slack.

By the way, I found the link to the entry about Madonna's comments at Ann Douglas' blog The Mother of All Blogs. You should visit her there, she's swell! And she never complains when you kijack her blog with your longwinded comments (or maybe that's just me!)

Hi Angie from AGK - You are quite welcome. By the way, my email is chris@mombie.com.

It used to be listed over in the corner but it seems to have disappeared. I'll get on fixing that.

This afternoon, I found a disc with an old favorites file on it and discovered that while many of the links are dead, some are oddly active...

From my epregnancy calendar that I created when I was pregnant with The Boy (in 2001):

This is day number 1670

You're 238 weeks pregnant

Your baby's age since conception is 1656 days / 236 weeks

There are -1390 days until your due date! (-496.4% to go)

I'm doing suprisingly well for someone in her fifth year of gestation. And I'm remarkably slim, considering.

Well, it doesn't hurt, per se, but it does act like a virus, compelling me to keep moving my new system throughout my house. I'm not sure I'm interested in being this organized - ha ha.

We moved into this house in November of 2001. Through various complications (previous commitment to my in-laws to house-and-cat-sit, The Boy arriving 7 weeks early (ten days after we moved in)) we never had a chance to set the house up the way we wanted at first. Then with The Man's increasing responsibilities at work and The Boy's habit of not sleeping (or should that be non-habit of sleeping?) coupled with the fact that the big picture person in this household (i.e. yours truly!) was severely sleep deprived, then pregnant, then taking care of an infant and a three year old, we only applied band-aid methods to getting various things done around here. This has led to a very hectic existence at times, for example, knowing that we *have* Hallowe'en decorations but not having a damn clue where to find them.

Now, had I had the 8.5 weeks between when we moved in and when The Boy was due, I would have been able to unpack in an organized way, setting up systems for things like recycling and storing holiday decorations. But, alas, I did not (meanwhile, it was pretty damn cool to have The Boy here, and heathy, even earlier than expected, despite the complications).

Sooooo, that brings us to now. Well, more specifically last week, when I once again located the book* How to be organized in spite of yourself by Sunny Schlenger** which, for a change I read instead of skimming and losing it again. Reading the book led me to Google her, which in turn (somehow) led to me buy Organizing from the Inside Out by Julie Morgenstern and Sink Reflections by Marla Cilley (a.k.a. The Fly Lady). Then, I read those books too.

Now, I usually have a problem with other people's systems, because if I don't like every piece of the system I have trouble following any piece of the system. It's like some dumb animal piece of my brain tells me that if I don't follow every teeny system rule then no part of the system will work. This time, however, I decided to override that habit of mine and pick and choose appropriate parts.

So, for the last week I have been working towards getting my house under control. I've thrown out 6 garbage bags worth of stuff, I've set aside boxes and boxes of stuff to give away, I've reorganized my kitchen into 'zones' so everything is where it makes sense rather than just where it fits and I've come to appreciate the value of breaking big jobs up into little chunks.

Usually when I try to organize things I take on one huge task at a time (i.e. clean storage room) and get discouraged as I'm repeatedly interrupted or the task begins to seem insurmountable because I end up surrounded by clutter, trying to sort without a real plan in mind. Things might end up tidier but they don't end up actually organized. But since reading these books, I've started using a timer to measure my progress instead of measuring by task. So I set the timer for 15 minutes and work away until it goes off. If things are going well, I set it for another 15 and keep going. So far, so good: I've organized the kitchen, the dining room, parts of the recroom, the upstairs bathroom and parts of my office.

I figure by mid-November I'll have the place organized the way I want it, with a system in place to keep it that way. Cross your fingers for me.

*There's a joke to be made about how many times I've lost that book, but I don't feel inclined to self-mockery today. You go ahead though.

**There's a joke to be made about her name but I can't formulate it, think on it and get back to me.

Meanwhile, back at Mombie HQ, our valiant heroine comes into check her email at 10:30 Thursday night and does not successfully navigate her office furniture. The bizarre new orientation of her pinky-toe suggests that an ER visit is warranted and four hours and three x-rays later...

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a break!

I can walk just fine and it hurts a lot less than you'd think, but the bruising is fantastic.

If I had realized how long I'd be sitting in the ER staring at my foot, I would have brought stuff to give myself a pedicure.

Thanks to my Mom for sitting in the ER with me.

Thanks to The Man for dealing with a very cranky Little Guy who really wanted Mommy (or really wanted some milk, at any rate)

Unrelated thank you: Thanks, Andrea, for inviting me to hang out with the cool kids.

I was really relieved last week when I read this because it was good to know that I'm not the only Mombie who worries about things like how she would get two kids out of the house in case of a fire, or how far she could walk carrying two boys if necessary.

I mean, I know that it is unlikely that I will ever be faced with having to rescue my two kids single handedly, or hell, that 'rescuing' will be necessary at all but as I am a person who likes to frontload her worry*, I do think about these things**

So just as you are wondering whether this entry has a point, I will assure you that it does indeed and that I have reached it.

I am now worried about how I singlehandedly will get both of my kids out of their carseats in the event of an emergency.

Why has this occurred to me now? Funny you should ask***

On Saturday, me and the boys were heading out the harbour arterial (a highway-ish road connecting my small city to the larger one next door - speed limit 100km/hr) on my way to pick up my delightful and charming friend, Jan, when I noticed that there was a lot of dust flying off the back of my car. And I was just thinking how weird that was, since I hadn't really driven anywhere dusty, when the car revved a couple of times all on its own and I realized that the dust was smoke ****. I got a little fright and decided to pull on to the side of the road and check it out.

After putting the car in park, I realized that I might be too close to traffic and put the car back in drive to try and pull in further. The car made an unpleasant noise and flatly refused.

I looked in the rear view mirror at my two boys and had a the tiniest little panic. What if the car was going to catch on fire? Should I get the two boys out now in case the flames were imminent? Would we all be safe on the side of the highway while I waited for someone to come and get us?

I decided to base my judgement call on the fact that I have only once seen a burnt out car on the side of the road but that I knew that I would have trouble containing two squirmy kids if I took them out of the car. So I got out and looked around the car, and popped the hood and looked under there. Nothing looked out of place and nothing was on fire so I kept the kids in the car and called my dad to come and get us.

And I called The Man to tell him what was going on, I called Jan to tell her I was not on my way after all and I generally walked around on the side of the highway feeling antsy. Oddly, no one stopped to check on me even though I was standing on the side of the highway, looking upset, next to a car with its hazard lights on. Even a cop car passed me.****

After about 10 minutes, the boys started to get cranky. The Boy was upset because our plans would have to be changed (he is very Garth-like in that he fears change)and The Little Guy because he wanted to continue to nap in his carseat yet I steadfastly refused to keep the car moving. (Jerkmom strikes again!)

Anyway, blah blah blah, my dad arrived, it took me forever to install the carseats in his car (don't you think it is awful that necessary safety devices are so damn complicated? can't they invent a seatbelt winch to help you tighten those things?) and he took us home where I tried to call the roadside assistance people only to discover that I needed the vehicle identification number. The Man and my dad returned to the scene of the crime (the crime, of course, being the car defying ME) to get the VIN (sadly not wine) to see the car resting in a lovely puddle of oil. Hurrah!

I spend the rest of the evening in a weird sort of post-stress fugue state with just one question in my mind "How would I get them both out quickly in an emergency?". The three answers I came up with were 1) teach The Boy to get out of his carseat on his own 2)practice sitting between the carseats and undoing them simultaneously 3) start getting The Boy to carb-load so he can get up to the forty pound threshold for using a booster seat (once in a booster I will be able to release him with a single button press.

Okay, so 3) is not really feasible but I think I will work on the other two. Not because I think that an emergency is inevitable but because like Pasteur said "chance favours the prepared mind" and if I have even a tentative plan in place, I won't worry about it anymore.

Or I could do what Greg suggested and keep my SuperMombie cape handy and should a situation arise, I can don my cape and use my super powers to save myself and my kids. I think this is probably my best option.

Or something.

*that is, I'll consider all the possibilities now, figure out some solutions and modify as the actual situation demands.

**no, they don't keep me up at night, and I don't spend hours on the topic. Therapists in the audience: take a deep breath.

***well, you didn't ask, per se, but let's pretend that you did so I can use this tired old narrative device and actually get my story out.

****some clarification for my readers from bigger centers. This is Newfoundland, people will usually stop to help someone who seems to be in trouble, especially if that someone is a woman (apparently) alone. Also, when I mention traffic don't think I mean hundreds of cars were streaming by, ignoring me. Again, this is NL, I was passed by maybe 30 cars in the 15-20 minutes I was on the side of the road.

****not billows of dark smoke but wispy streams of smoke, streaming off out the back of the car in a not un-dust-like way.