I swore I would never be that parent who gave their child a phone or a tablet in a restaurant, but here we are. Here we are also getting stares dragging my twins through a restaurant barefoot because they keep throwing their shoes.
No one tells you just how tough the 2- to 4-year-old stage is, especially when you have three toddlers under four. Yes, I got told about the ‘terrible twos’, but I had no clue what it meant. Whether I would be a stay-at-home mom or doing what I am doing now, which is working multiple jobs, this current stage is hard… period.
I have 2-year-old twin boys and an almost-four-year-old boy.
A typical day for me is getting woken up at 5:30 am by the babies, powering through a REGYMEN workout at 6:15 am, rushing home to eat breakfast (sometimes eating while walking out the door), loading and unloading our dishwasher, cleaning up around the house, then rush out the door to work, drop the babies off at daycare, and make it to my desk at work. Work on multiple items at once in the marketing department at Henderson Auctions, pick up the babies from daycare, get home from work, cook dinner, play with the babies, bathe them, read to them, put them to bed, work on things for my second job, and then pass out while looking at my phone.
During that whole day, I deal with screaming twins who do not know how to share and a toddler who gets mad at me when I fuss him for the 18th time for bringing food in the living room. Then, I deal with dragging the twins off of the vehicles outside because they absolutely have to climb them, carry one of my twins throughout the house (yep, even when I have to use the bathroom) because he is my clingy one, grab a pacifier for one of the twins who is screaming “nu-nu!” at the top of his lungs, clean up a whole bag of flour that got dumped on the kitchen floor by the kids, pull one of the twins off of the counter after he dragged a chair to it to get on it, try to drink my coffee in peace while my toddlers scream through the bottom of the door because they refuse to nap. Then, my oldest boy who is about to be four next month is still not potty-trained. I am trying mamas, I am trying. He refuses to go even though he knows how to. On top of that, he is in this spitting, hitting, and giving attitude phase right now.
I am seriously struggling. I look like I have it together on social media, but toddlerhood is absolutely hard right now.
I may not parent like some do, but my children are alive and loved.
Instead of staring at a mom and judging her out in public, help her. Smile at a mom who is walking her barefoot toddlers into a restaurant. Who knows if that is the easiest thing to do at that moment than to have three meltdowns at one time by three toddlers.
