The Three-Armed Woman

Hi. Remember me? The woman who would not shut up about her cervix? I'm back with a pressing evolutionary question, which is this: why don’t moms grow an extra arm when they give birth to their second child? It would be so much easier to manage all the nursing and simultaneous picture book reading and imaginary soup eating and potty emptying* and snack making and owie kissing and washing machine loading and forehead smacking and 3pm beer drinking with one more upper body appendage.


But, no. Somehow we are expected to do it all (and, if the media reports are correct, to Do It All) with the regular number of arms. Which is why I haven’t written in over three weeks because, dude! Not enough arms!


Not to mention the fact that I’ve had nothing more interesting to say than, “Man do I love this baby,” and “Could someone else please take this baby for a few hours so I can nap—or maybe hop a quick flight to Hawaii?”


It turns out that having two kids isn’t quite the logistical nightmare that I’d anticipated—nor is it a breeze. Like everything in life, it falls somewhere in the middle, shifting slightly toward one pole or the other depending on everyone’s level of sleep deprivation and hunger and hormones and propensity for regurgitating their meals (thankfully that’s no longer me!). Which is all to say that we’re all doing quite well, considering—even though only two people sent us muffins.**




*The two-year-old claims to love her new sister but naturally has been acting out in various ways ranging from a dramatic increase in whining and clinging to, more winningly, deciding to potty train herself.


**One batch of muffins was technically not “muffins” but “granola,” as that was deemed more likely to stay fresh when shipped across the country. If you want to send us granola, too, we won’t argue.In fact, we’ll even give you credit for sending us muffins.


photo courtesy earl53, morgueFile