So THIS Is What They Meant!

All through my pregnancy with BB, as I chased around my not-quite-2-year-old BJ, people kept telling me, "Oh, it's so much easier with two! And yours will be so close in age, they'll be able to keep each other entertained. Trust me -- it's SO much easier with two!"

And I have heard variations on that reassurance running through my head, with a steadily ironic tone, all through having two kids in diapers, all through trying to keep a 2 year old occupied while breastfeeding a baby (again, and again, and again), all through night after sleep-deprived night with two kids who didn't sleep through the night, all through feeling like the only way I could possibly survive being a parent of two kids 22 months apart would be to clone myself....

Day after day, night after night, with no Mommy clone in sight, I kept telling myself: It will get easier. It has to.

Only within the last 6 months or so had I begun to see glimmers of what those well-meaning folks might have meant. And just now, as both kids were driving me wild by being underfoot while I'm trying to make dinner, I finally got down to their eye level and said, not unkindly, "That's enough! You two go play together for half an hour! I'm done!"

And, without even the slightest hesitation, without even a peep of complaint from either one of them, BJ grabbed BB by the hand and they galloped off to the kids room. They have spent the last 20 minutes deeply involved together in some elaborate scenario that (as best I can tell from eavesdropping a bit) seems to involve re-enacting The Lorax (incidentally, last week's movie night choice for BJ) while also setting up a zoo all over the living room.

I know it won't always be like this. Hoo boy, do I know it well. But 20 minutes of playing together contentedly simply because I asked them to? Enough time for me to get dinner going and check email and even write up this blog post?

The heavens might as well open up above me now, with a full choir of angels singing "Hallelujah!"