triplets in tears

it's hard to fathom what it would be like to have triplets. but i can approximate how incredibly helpless you feel when there are three children in your proximity all crying at the same time. you want to scream, you want to cry yourself, you can't help but crack up laughing. that shaky, maniacal, snorting laughter, reserved for when you're nervous and totally out of your element. how can it get so wild?

all three of mine went at it at bedtime tonight -- oldest because he gotten a big whomp to the head when a wooden easel fell on him (kinda hard to feel sorry for him, he was ignoring me and he was doing that nutty thing he does when he drags his forehead on the floor and crawls along not looking where he's going -- another thing that makes me want to scream, cry, crack up... chuckling now thinking about it), middlest because he was supposedly still hungry (his favorite stall tactic) and youngest because he's a baby, he was legitimately tired and he was completely within his rights to let loose squalling when the zoo monkeys started their bizarre brand of caterwauling.

so off to bed. the only solution. cue the sob story violins though -- hubby is out of town and now i've got to shake all these sobbing kids off of me so i can make a change. it got uglier. oldest (cradling his big bumped head in a bag of ice) started to boo-hoo about how i never snuggle him anymore, how he comes to me first thing in the morning and i never roll over to hold him, that i must not love him anymore. i've put youngest down on the floor where he proceeds to climb up on the CD player and attempt to electrocute himself drooling into the open CD slot. middlest comes flying across the bed to grab me as he always does when i'm giving either one of his other brothers a moment's attention. it's a real disaster. the one i need to hold is crawling away. the one who needs me to hold him is getting downright hysterical. and the one who needs to just be held all the time is, well, trying to be held again. it's arms and legs leaning, flapping and dodging every which way.

my solution was to put littlest to sleep first then lay down with the two oldest. they both needed a little extra mama today. and though they were the last thing i needed a little bit extra of, i'm proud to say i gave. wasn't easy. wasn't pretty. but tomorrow is another day and i'm going to start it with a big hug for all three.

i have a real soft spot for moms of multiples. there's no amount of sleep or patience that can get you gracefully through a freakshow like we had here tonight.