Two or more Club

The last 4 out of 5 weeks we have had illness. Five different viruses and counting! Holy cow, we had better have some freakin great immune systems after this fall! Hopefully I will feel well enough this weekend to make the kids' Halloween costumes, visit a pumpkin patch, write my research paper, take a quiz in my online course, organize the garage, etc......... There is no rest for the weary! I had my second test this week in Micro. and I think I did better this time round even though I was still sick. I also missed my first class of the semester this week. I hated doing it, but was so miserable I just needed to stay in bed.

So I wasn't able to post this when I wrote it and now the weekend is over! I was able to accomplish all of the above and more of my to-do list. Here is the thing about having two kids....you are sort of in this exclusive club. The 'beyond 1 club', the 'constantly exhausted club', the 'whoow are people really this busy? club', the 'how in the world do people do this? club'. I could never have imagined being able to (or having to do) all of the things we do in a single day. I could never have achieved the things we did this last weekend in an entire month. When I had Teilee I was able to take what I called a 'down day' every now and then. Watch a TV show, an occasional movie. I haven't had one of those, not even being sick, for at least a year. Kids work you in slowly too. When they are babies they sleep a lot and you think, 'Man this is a lot of work!'. Then they get active and you think, 'What was I complaining about? That was the honeymoon stage!'. Then your second comes and you imagine what crazy amounts of time you had with the first, to engage, to play, to do activities, to work! (Don't kill me parents of one, I remember how damn difficult that was too!) Now it is unfathomable the amount that I do, the lengths to which I stretch my body, my emotions, my person. So anyways about the club.... We members of the club, can say nothing and understand everything about the other parents crazy schedule. We marvel at how successfully the other one can achieve what they do. Be it volunteer work, school, side businesses, working outside the home, working at home, we all share an equal respect for the other parent. This respect is often conveyed at the grocery store, or the post office, or Taco Bell, with a sympathetic smile and courteous holding of the door. When you are a parent of one you are attended to by the adoring public. Awwwww... how cute you baby is...how old is he/she?....How wonderful of a parent you are....Here is the door....Have my chair.....Do you need any help? Parents of two are often shunned. We are the ones with the older obnoxious child that is very clearly craving attention due to the diversion of the second child. What bad parents we are that our first child is so clearly starved for attention that they are jumping up and down shouting at the top of their lungs. Can't we control our brats? This is clearly unacceptable behavior for a two/three/four/five year old. You shouldn't have had more than you could handle. We get a lot less help, a lot less admiration, a lot less consideration from our non-young-children-ridden public. Thus the reason for the club. When parents of the deuce club sit near each other in a restaurant and children run amok through the tables, it is a blessing to have found another sympathetic soul to gaze lovingly at our snotty, loud, obnoxious wild child. They know that under that demeanor there used to exist this perfect, quiet, well behaved, adorable only child. The downside of this club is that it is extremely exclusive. You may be a deuce sympathizer (a rarity and extremely valuable commodity) but unfortunately it is still an impenetrable society that is secret ridden and crazy busy! But here is the deal: We are the deuces, we are constantly busy, wondering how we are doing it, why we are doing it, and when is it going to get better, but we are every so grateful that we haven't entered the club of the tri-spawn!