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It’s only fitting that I break a four-month blogging break with the news that we’re having baby number four!

And quite soon — the end of March, in fact.  And it’s only one, another major news bulletin.

We don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl, because we’re wild that way.  We don’t go out on the town as often in this stage of life, so we get our kicks by delivery room shouts of genders.  To each their own.

Henry and Arden will be freshly three and a half, and Hunter will be 22 months old, so this puts us firmly at four kids under age four.  I’m just disappointed Kate Middleton couldn’t keep up.  We really had a thing going there for awhile, with our first two pregnancies resulting in births just four and eight days apart, respectively.  Would it have been too much to ask for her to give birth twelve days before me, to keep the pattern alive?

I’m endlessly grateful to God that this pregnancy has been a cakewalk.  I don’t know how I would have managed to care for the others if this newbie had made me viciously ill.  I have several friends who endure this and I don’t know how they manage.  Now that I’m 28 weeks, I’m in the third trimester and feeling more of the effects, which is fine considering I’ve had such an easy time until now.

The twins are really excited about having a new baby in the house, though they each demand that it be their corresponding gender.  Arden won’t hear of it being a boy, and Henry doesn’t even respond if you say it’s a girl.  So that might be tricky on delivery day.  But I comfort myself with the knowledge that literally all of the siblings throughout time have had their newest sibling’s gender be a surprise, except in the last twenty years.  Plus we talk to them every day about how it could be either and how great it will be either way.  They’re like….sure.

Hunter really doesn’t know what’s coming, but all signs are positive.  He adores his cousin Kinsley, eight months, and he points to my belly and says “Baby” and gives it a kiss or a raspberry.  It’s adorable.

Mike and I are really joyful, really excited, and really thankful.  We’re also really aware of what it’s like to have a newborn with other small children, so we’re luxuriating in the quiet evenings and long hours of sleep we have now.  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t filled with dread at the amount of work ahead of me, but I feel much more experienced this time around, and much more aware of how quickly that newborn turns into a three month old, and how quickly that three month old is a sitting-up-and-eating-solids six month old, and how quickly that six month old is crawling, then walking, then turning one and making me weep for my newborn again.

So I’m going to take it day by day — who am I kidding? — hour by hour, meal by meal, nap by nap, until we’re steady on our feet and our lives are functioning again.  I’m praying the Lord will show me the best way to help myself; maybe a mother’s helper once a week?  Maybe preschool in the fall?  Maybe a minivan?  HA — the minivan is certain, people.  It’s happening in the next two months.  I just need a bumper sticker that reads, “Respect the Van” and I’ll be locked and loaded.

Did I just use a gun metaphor in my baby announcement post?

How things have changed.

Bring on baby number four!

 

Last April 2, a day which will live in infamy, we attended the opening of the new 520 bridge.  For you non-Seattleites, the 520 bridge is our famous floating bridge erected and unchanged since the ’60s, now to have a new, longest-floating-bridge-on-earth edition erected right next to it for our commuting (and the governments’ tolling) pleasure.  The high-priced tolls have left many Seattleites more than a little outraged, so this event was intended as a goodwill gesture to remove the bad taste from our mouths.  Key word: “intended.”

We would never have considered going to the opening of a bridge with three small children, but a friend of ours works for the Washington State Dept of Transportation and told us it would be really fun with lots of trucks for Henry to touch and lots of trucks for us to eat from.  Plus it would be free.

We said sure, we’ll come to your bridge.

Our first clue that this event would be more popular than we imagined occurred as we tried to exit the freeway to the bus station to catch a ride to the bridge.  It was organized like so: park at the park-and-ride, get on the bus, go to the bridge, take the bus back to the park-and-ride, go home.  Simple, yes?

It took twenty minutes just to reach the park-and-ride as we watched busload after busload of bridge-goers pass by.

“THIS many people want to do this??” I said as I watched sardine-filled double-length city buses stream by.  “It’s just a bridge!”

“Why are WE doing it?”  Mike asked helpfully.

We escaped the traffic by parking a block away from the park-and-ride.  We loaded the kids in the stroller and Hunter on my chest and headed for the line.

I did a very aghast, hand-to-the-chest expression as we turned the corner and saw the line for the bus reached the entire length of the park-and-ride.  We shrugged and dutifully headed for the end of it until we realized everyone was two deep — the line snaked all the way back to the front again.  A haunting feeling followed us as we got in line, one of diving into the sea only to realize we had no idea how to swim.

Mike and I spent our time in line strategizing for successful bus boarding.  We sounded like gymnastics coaches, except instead of saying, “You need to pop on that vault and twist hard left to make the double-flip complete before sticking the landing,” we were saying “You need to unload both kids while I’ll hold their hands and the bag, you collapse the stroller and stack it as small as possible, I’ll walk them on and we’ll collectively pray for seating.”

I’m sure everyone around us was assessing our three kid/large stroller situation and concluding that this would be additional free entertainment (or hugely annoying should they be seated next to us).  The bus driver waved us on and we executed our launch plan and strode onto that bus with ease, making me prouder than if I’d actually accomplished something.

The novelty of it being their first bus ride, coupled with the mélange of asses directly in their tiny faces, made for two quiet twins who absorbed every mile of our adventure.

We disembarked and walked out from the underpass into the bright, unusually warm day.  The energy of everyone being off of the punishing buses, the sight of the huge expanse of bridge stretching across Lake Washington, the aroma of food trucks  and the plethora of selfies being taken convinced us this had been worth it.  The kids were excited and we felt victorious for overcoming the annoyances to get to a once-in-a-lifetime event.

We headed straight for the enormous trucks we knew would enthrall Henry and Arden.

We were having a grand day out.  This was fun!  This was easy!  The views were stellar and we were loving the truck action.  The true peak came when a truck driver invited the kids to sit in his cab.  I thought they might faint.

Arden promptly honked the horn which made the truck driver jump like it was the first time he’d heard it.

We spent ninety minutes walking half the length of the mile and a half long bridge, which in kid time is like half a day.  A happy half day, we thought.

We were still patting ourselves on the back when we decided to head to the food trucks for some lunch.  The kids were getting hungry and we knew if we didn’t feed them we’d be heading straight for meltdown town.

As we approached the row of food trucks, we saw deeply frightening lines, lines that would make the heartiest foodie abandon all hope.  We decided we’d just hurry home and feed them there.  Now as I type the words “hurry home” I throw my head back and laugh.  Oh the naiveté.

We moved through the crowd toward the bus line as the kids whined for food.  All of a sudden we stopped; the sea of people we were moving through wasn’t on our way to the bus line, it was the bus line, and it stretched back along the bridge so far we couldn’t see the end.  What we could see was the end of our sanity.

We later learned WSDOT expected several thousand people, but 27,000 showed up.

Panic set in.  The bus was the only way off the bridge.  We hadn’t packed any food, like absolute fools.  The kids were hungry, tired, and beginning the meltdown.

“I’ll get in line for the bus and you go get those tacos we saw.  Then we can at least feed the kids while we wait,” Mike suggested.  “But no onions!  They had pickled onions!”  He strapped Hunter to his chest and pushed the twins in the stroller over to the line of misery.

I ran to the taco truck and waited twenty minutes to order, specified no onions, and twenty more minutes to receive the tacos.  Before they came out, my phone rang.

“WE’RE AT THE FRONT OF THE LINE.  WHERE ARE YOU?” He was officially freaking out.

“I’m waiting for the tacos! What am I supposed to do!?  Just let people go past you until I can get there!” I said.

“Arden has peed her pants and is crying!” he yelled.  “Henry is asleep!  How do we get him on the bus!?”  He, and now I, was in pure parental panic.

Seventeen years later, our tacos appeared, absolutely riddled with pickled onion.  I sprinted to the line, where Mike stood holding a sobbing (and soaking wet) Arden, a passed out Henry, and a fussing Hunter.  As I ran I realized that we not only had no time to eat the tacos, but both my hands were holding plates, thereby making me useless for helping us to board the bus.

Mike was in that dark place of parental frustration and helplessness so acute that there was no reaching him.  He was enraged and I was panicked and I kept saying, “I think I’m having an actual panic attack, what are we going to do!??”  There wasn’t a single surface where I could put the plates, Arden was lunging at me for comfort, the line was moving, people behind us were angry, and there was an enormous feeling of anxiety covering the crowds.

Before we could think any further, the WADOT official forced us to cross the street to the waiting bus.  We stood there waiting to board, me telling everyone to EAT as fast as they could, when Mike looked down and exclaimed, “I SAID no onions!” with such contempt I actually thought he might jump off the bridge.  And who could blame him?  I might have followed.

The bus driver hollered at us to get on the bus and instead of trying to do our original maneuvering, I just said, “Push the stroller on the bus!” and Mike hoisted the whole thing on, kids and all, and in a miraculous moment for which I am still grateful, it worked.  We were the last ones on the bus, and the stroller fit right in.  I heaved a sigh of relief so intense I am still having aftershocks.

Then we chowed.  When I say “we” I mean our offspring.  We stuffed those tacos in their mouths, onions and all, and we didn’t get a lick of one of them.  They inhaled street tacos like they had been raised on them.

At the end we all had hands covered in pork sauce, and a gracious angel from heaven reached over and handed us some baby wipes from his bag.  It was the perfect moment of grace after our waking bridge nightmare.

Later I compared notes with a friend we’d run into on the bridge, and she said they had felt so trapped that they actually climbed the grass hill of the overpass with their two-year-old and nine-month-old, stood on the bridge overlooking the bridge and ordered an Uber to take them back to the park-and-ride.  Forget car seats; they tossed kids in that sedan without hesitation. Anything to escape the special circle of hell that stewed beneath them.

When I heard this story, all I could do was nod yes, yes, a thousand times yes.  It was every man for himself, it was desperation, it was parental disaster.  Most importantly, now, it was over.

I think the best way to summarize my feelings about Costco would be to borrow from my daughter.

Today, in Costco, after she screeched from dropping her spoon from a sample of Indian lentils:

Me: “Arden!  We do NOT yell in a store!”
Arden:  “It’s NOT a store!  It’s COSTCO.”

She gets it.

It’s not a store, it’s a planet; one teeming with food in mass quantities, offering samples right before lunchtime, otherwise known as appetizers, and feeding four of us two hotdogs for $3.23 that I would never otherwise eat.

We go about every other week, and it is always enjoyable, satisfying, necessary work.  And I always go alone with three kids.  That might sound oxymoronic, but alone really means “the only person over three feet tall in my party.”

I want to emphasize that I built up to this feat, doing it for the first time three months ago. Before that, forget it.  I’d bring only two kids or another adult to assist.  Also, the first time I did this I felt heroic upon completion, only to turn and see a mom getting hotdogs with a toddler in her cart and newborn twins wrapped across her chest in a Moby.  I was knocked off my high horse faster than you can say free refill.

Like her, when I roll in with two kids in the cart and one on my chest, the stares roll right along with me.  I am entirely accustomed to this and don’t mind in the slightest.  We would be able to buy so much more food if only Costco gave me store credit every time someone said to me, “You’ve got your hands full!”

 

Friends and family are often deeply perplexed as to why I don’t go when I’m alone in the actual Webster’s definition of the word.  The answer is simple: I love Costco, but I do not want to spend “my time” there.  “My time” is evenings or naptime, or the occasional hour-escape by myself on the weekend.  I want to go to Costco on “kid time” when I need something for us to do anyway, and I have food that needs to be restocked.  Besides, they love it.

Should you venture there with one/two/three/baker’s dozen of your own progeny, my hot tips follow:

Get Gas First

Costco is a good time, but nobody wants it to continue once we’ve exited the building.  Once we’re in the car, it’s time to go home, it’s not time to ask the kids to endure another errand.  They like getting Costco gas on arrival, but getting it afterward is like asking for one of them to pee on the car seat after holding it successfully all this time.

Park by a Cart Bay

Even if it takes a minute longer to find a spot (and it nearly never does), this is essential for getting kids into the cart safely and returning it later without leaving them alone in the car.

Costco IS the Activity

The entire reason Costco works as a morning errand is because I am not rushing.  I am not  going to Costco on my way to a play date or an appointment.  No – that would be masochism, which is not my brand of fun at all.  I make a trip to Costco sound like a trip to the park and the kids are all in.  This doesn’t take nearly as much work as it sounds; they already love going, so I just say, “Do you think we should go to COSTCO today?!” and they’re already squeezing their little feet into their Natives. (One of them can do this successfully, the other cannot, and I do not blame her; it’s hard.)

Make a List

There is enough to think about in a warehouse with three kids without having to ask oneself if there are eggs in the fridge at home.  Or having to walk each aisle slowly to mentally assess if there’s anything one has forgotten.  Make that list and then haul your massive cart across that shiny cement like you were born to do it.

Let Samples be Your Friends, But Discriminate Against Your Friends

Eating free snacks is a highlight for the little gremlins, because they share my genes and are predisposed to love anything that’s a snack and anything that’s free.  Free snacks is a unicorn that must be ridden across the sky.

However, I take full advantage of the fact that the twins face me in the cart, and Hunter faces me in the Ergo, because then I can see what snacks are ahead before they can.  Costco loves to push flavored yogurt, “cracker cookies” and other garbage, so if I spot those I steer clear or make an early announcement that our train will not be making a stop at that station.  “Oh that’s yucky yogurt, that’s not the kind you like,” I assure them.  For now they believe me; we’ll see how this goes when they’re old enough to read.

Involve Them

I think attitudes transfer pretty easily, not just to kids, but in general, and this applies here.  If I’m stressed and annoyed at having to do this, they pick up on it.  Instead I really try to have fun and let them feel like it’s a group endeavor.  I’m constantly talking. “What else do we need, you guys?  Let’s check our list.  Shoot, we forgot your favorite salad in a bag!  Back to the cold room!  Do we need anything else in there?  Oh and later let’s remember to get napkins.”  They totally dig it, and – hand to heart – remind me of things I’ve genuinely forgotten.

Henry: “We forgot the quesadillas!”

He means raw tortillas.  But he’s right.

Lunching There is a Double-Edged Sword

Eating hotdogs after shopping serves several purposes: lunch is done with no cooking or cleaning, it’s a treat for being well behaved while shopping, it’s a treat in general because we don’t eat hotdogs at home, and it’s $3.23 for two dogs, which feeds four of us, so it feels almost criminal to walk on by.

HOWEVER…it’s a little work to get it done.  I make the twins stay in the cart so that they can’t mess around on the benches, fall, or run around.  Hunter stays on my chest, and we get our hotdogs and then park next to the end of a table.  I need a little table surface so I can put our hotdogs and drink cups down while I’m trying to hand things to each of them.  I fill condiment orders, then hand them each half a hotdog while I fill the cups 75% with water and 25% with lemonade, which is possibly their favorite part of Costco.  Then I stand in front of them and remind them over and over, “hold it tight with both hands!” because I recoil at the thought of a hotdog dying on the floor.  All this while trying to feed Hunter and myself, and providing them sips of their precious lemonade.

People stare, and I just keep trucking, because once this is over, we’re home free — riding home with a car full of fresh groceries, full bellies, and smiles as big as the one drawn on the receipt.