Where my moms at with “little kids” and “big kids”? 

It’s almost like having two families and it ain’t all tacos and glitter slime. We leisurely stretched out our child-bearing years; 

a. Because we knew we’d throw someone off a bridge if we didn’t have at least two years between babies or 

b. We just kept on reproducing at an astonishing rate and here we are or 

c. I know there’s way more reasons, but I’m tired and that’s all I have in me for excuses. 

So, here we are ladies. We’ve been pregnant or feeding an infant for so many years, we don’t remember when we started. Or maybe we had one and had to take off 8 years to recover. The last time we wore a bikini, it was cool to pluck out every last eyebrow we had and then draw it back on. Our bladders either randomly pee all over us or won’t squirt urine for nobody or nothin’ no matter how hard we squeeze or how many Kegels we force out while driving the maxi-van.  

We have our “olders” – you know, the first, second, third or maybe fourth kids. Our right-hand-men at this season in life. The ones we procreated in our twenties when we still had the will to live and research parenting strategies and really cared if they knew how to read. The first tries – the ones who are mostly polite and don’t cry or poop in public and mostly know how to be good people. 

The ones that benefited from having a young, shiny mom who made heart shaped cookies and sewed shirts for holidays because parenting was still fun sometimes and her ovaries made adequate progesterone and she didn’t feel like clawing down the dry-wall and peeing all over it everyday…or just sleeping. 

Just me…?

Then there’s the “little kids”. The fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh…you get the idea. The ones that came in your thirties. The ones that you never even dreamt would exist because you decreed emphatically that you would 100% be done with child-bearing by your 30th birthday. Thataways, you’d have time to get yourself together to enjoy midlife when your kids would be fairly self-sufficient but you’d still be young enough to like, run a race or mountain climb or write the next Great American Novel. 

Well, those ones are the Spawns of Satan. We remark often how much more crazy these ones are than the first round. We wonder if it’s us or them.  These guys refuse to be potty trained and poop and throw up all over everything. They eat their boogers and destroy things like iron sledge hammers and piss in their toy boxes. 

They cartwheel down the halls in church and call other kids “butthole” and “jerk” and slap grandma straight across the face because she can’t deflect fast enough. They’re filthy and smelly a majority of the time and you’re just happy if they’re outside eating mud rather than crawling all over you after you’ve had an organ removed. 

These are the ones that you look at everyday and say, “I really gotta do something about this one.” And you go to your bookshelves and pull out the books and games and learning resources you used with the older ones. You lovingly spread your parenting hoard out on the table and stare at it wide eyed. “Holy hell. Did I really do all this garbage with all those others? This looks like so much work.”

These ones of the second herd are the ones that you feel even worse constant mom-guilt about because they really know nothing of heart shaped pancakes on Valentine’s morning or consistent discipline or the Back to School Brownie bites you used to make but don’t anymore because you either forgot or were too tired. They don’t know about matching outfits for Sunday or going to the grocery store or spending the night at grandma’s because like mom, grandma is over it. We’re all over the demons crawling the walls. 

These are the kids that cause you to argue with yourself, “Do they really need a themed shirt for every single holiday?” or “Can’t a few animal crackers and an orange be called ‘lunch’?” or “Swimming is totally a bath, right?” These are the kids who might possibly make it to seven without learning to ride a bike or tie a shoe because “You don’t know how to ride a bike? WHAT.”

These are the children that you love so much it makes you weep because they’re the last babies and they still have dimples on the backs of their hands and need you to hold them and want lip kisses and they don’t require any kind of discussions of means girls or mustaches or periods or going out on Saturday or when they have to work next. They don’t crash cars or take your iPhone charger and lose it at a friend’s house. 

There’s no parenting book that outlines or warns us of these paradoxes. I guess it’s because most people are smart enough to cut themselves off after 2.3 American children. No one ever says, “If you stretch this fiasco out for too long or birth too many of those little guys, you’re going to have to stream seamlessly from tampons to diapers, dating to constipation and college to phonics all in one long-a$$ day, folks. Oh, and Mom, you’re going to be going through ‘The Change’ for about 10 years and you’ll feel like your insides are melting into a pool of watery diarrhea, but get in there and wipe that little butt.” 

But, by the same token, there are some glittery stars in this scenario. You have reinforcements that you do not have to pay for their services with the second wave of babies. With the first set of children, I couldn’t go anywhere without them. We didn’t live near family and couldn’t afford not trust babysitters, so I just dragged them everywhere. Hair stylist, grocery store, doctor’s appointments. They had to go in public and had to be clean and had to know how to speak, etc. 

The “little kids” however, are managed with the “divide and conquer” technique. We all take turns watching them at home so no one outside the family has to see them and everyone can go do their things they need to do. I can shop alone or go to the doctor and no one needs to know and exclaim loudly that I HAVE SIX CHILDREN!!!!!!

This also means that they get disciplined regularly by a 10 year old and I sometimes come home to every single dish we own in the little square blow-up pool outside and no one knows how the 4 year old got the black eye or where the crockpot went. 

I stand at the helm of this sh!t-show and regularly think, “What is even happening here?” And more importantly, “Who put me in charge?” But then, late at night, in the quiet solitude of bedtime, my husband and I lie entwined in bed dreaming about the future like we always have. 

We talk about how we’re going to be paying for church missions until Jesus comes and we both get a little gassy thinking about weddings and he thinks he might have to deliver pizzas or get a sugar-mama to afford all the plane tickets I’m gonna need to fly to wherever my babies are to watch them have babies or help them move into new houses or hold their hands while they wade through all the garbage that is life and I realize that it’s all okay. 

We’ll exorcise the demons out of our “little kids” and we’ll figure out how to marry off the “big kids” while wiping butts and noses and I can’t think of any more important mission to have on earth than to be there for all the humans I spawned. There’s no comfort in this mortal world like knowing your mom is there. Just a plane ride or a bike ride or a phone call away and I intend for all my demons to know that solace until there’s no more breath in me. 

So, whether you have one, two or three herds of kids or just 2.3 household children, I guess my message is this: hang in there. Your sacrifices are all worth it. I’m still in the thick of the war, but I’ve won a few battles so I know there’s hope. I know we mothers are meaty effin soldiers who can march straight through the bullets the world fires at us with automatic rifles filled with poop cartridges. 

We can rise triumphant and save all our herds and ourselves from total destruction and I had no idea this droning essay was turning into a battle cry, but “power on, ladies, power on!”.

You make a difference.