Confession time: I am not getting out blog posts nearly as often as I had hoped.  It isn’t that I had some strange misconception about how much work time I could have– as a third time mom (which is what I’m going to be sharing about today!), I think my expectations were pretty realistic based on my previous two experiences.  What I did not anticipate was what little desire I would have to work…at all. I have never experienced that before, and will share much more about that soon!  It isn’t that I don’t love blogging and connecting with you all, because I do! And I miss it in some ways. But it just isn’t competing with my desire to snuggle with my new little one and enjoy that.

Speaking of…I haven’t shared him specifically here yet!  We have an almost 8 week old now, and it has been an amazing few weeks. Here is our sweet new boy, affectionately nicknamed E3 here!

This was one of my absolute favorite pictures from his first month, taken by my sweet friend Vicky of Blue Daisy Art Photography!  I have so much to share about this sweetest little boy, but today (and by today, I mean the bits and pieces of time over the last week it has taken me to write this!) I want to share a bit about our transition from a family of 4 to a family of 5 (or more so, from  having 2 to having 3 kids!).  I’m sure our experience is different than others.  This is the first thing I have decided to write about because honestly, we were very nervous about this, especially before making the decision to have a third in the first place.  Real life here? With 2, we felt at capacity.  We had a lot going on, we were always a bit or a lot tired, and it felt like life rarely slowed down.  But we didn’t feel done.  We love the newborn stage, and when we pictured our family down the road, there were just more of us. And we knew we were much more likely to regret NOT having more than we were to ever feel like we had had too many.  The moment we saw the test, as terrified as we were, it was immediate that we were thrilled, and our excitement overtook the nerves.  But we really didn’t know what it would look like once he was here!

Our first was 2.5 when we had our second, and now we have a 5 year old and a 3 year old.  However, our now middle child is also much more attached to me than our first was, so we knew we had that difference too.  While I have enjoyed the smaller age difference between our first two kids, and maybe would have liked even less of a difference between our youngest two, I will say this: this transition has been so much easier for us then the transition to two!  I think there are two main reasons for this that I want to share for those who might be in a similar spot.  First, I think it has been easier because our youngest is 3 instead of 2.  Everyone can eat on their own, everyone is 100% potty trained (though they were last time too and I highly recommend making that happen before you add #2 if you can!), everyone can communicate well!  There is such a significant difference in what our middle child can do from the year older that she is from what her brother was when we had her.  The second thing we are noticing about the transition is that when we had our second, our first was still pretty dependent on us to entertain him most of the time (both by age and personality).  And his only playmates in the house were us.  This time, however, it is like overnight our 2 older kids learned how to play together for long stretches of time, and really well!  It has been absolutely beautiful to see.  It isn’t that they didn’t before– they have always really gotten along.  But only for maybe 20-30 minute stretches at a time.  But they have suddenly become such huge entertainers for each other.  And those two things together (age and that we have two others to entertain each other) have honestly made this such a nice transition for us!  Michael and I are being given a lot of baby time by our older 2, and even when one of us is home with all 3, they are pretty understanding.  They also seem to truly adore their new brother, even though they are deeply confused about why he cannot play with them yet!

It  helps that this baby is super sweet, sleepy, and happy to be in his swing at all costs!  It isn’t all easy– especially when just one of us is home.  I am totally not trying to paint a fake picture of perfection here– there have been plenty of meltdowns and hard days!  And we are well expecting that as E3 wakes up more and more and needs to be more entertained, that it is going to get harder.  But for now, it really has been a pretty good transition for us.  I wanted to write this to encourage those of you who might be debating whether you want another or not, whatever that means.  I have a lot of mom friends with 2 who are debating between adding a 3rd to their family.  The truth is, everyone’s experience is going to be very different.  But if you and your partner are on the same page, if you both think you more want another than want to be done, and if the rest of your life circumstances allow for it, then I truly think you should follow your heart and go for it!  Because mamas?  You are Superwoman.  If we can do it, you can do it!  And maybe you will get to witness a new beautiful stage from your older children like we are (before it all goes crazy again!). 

Curious how to know when kids are next in the first place? Here is some advice!

Other mamahood posts here!