Family of Five

I am lucky enough to have three adorable children!  Blessed, really, if we wanted to split hairs about it. One of the unfortunate side effects of having beautiful children is that everyone in a fifty mile radius wants to touch or talk to your child.  I'm sure all of you have this same problem since all your children are just as equally beautiful.

Most of the time the interaction is limited and mostly from a distance.  It usually goes something like this: "Aww, how adorable!" or maybe I'm lucky enough to even get a coy little wave from an elderly women.  For the most part the interactions are pretty tame.

Then you get the crazies that make it their job to touch your finally-well-after-having-three-weeks-of-a-snotty-nose child, on every area that isn't covered by clothes.  They want to touch their feet and their thighs and their hands.  I guess they didn't get the memo that kids put everything in their mouths.  Including their hands!

In reality, I don't mind.  I mean honestly, all I can think of when those little old ladies touch my kids hands in how they are probably going to die from some whooping cough that my precious baby angels are living as hosts for.

How cute!  Now you have dysentery! 

But what has been really interesting is how the interactions have changed since adding a third child.  Forget the fact that she looks nothing like my other children.  I've already talked about the fact that complete strangers say and ask me anything when it comes to adopting.  One of my favorites that I forgot to mention, Is when people tell me about how great it is that I wanted to adopt and that their friends-sisters-cousins-newphew twice removed adopted a baby and when that baby got older... he killed them in their sleep!

...

That's nice.  Some families get to look forward to their kids going to collage or getting married or landing that fulfilling job.  Not me!  The mother of an adopted child.  I get to look forward to waking from a restful sleep with a knife in my chest.  Oh, the rapture!  But I digress.

Getting back to the point at hand (which I'm not really sure I have) in which the comments of strangers have gone from enduring with a tinge of creepy to just down right rude.

It's not too many kids.  See, they all fit!  ok, nobody grow.

I have three kids.  Three kids is not really a lot of kids.  I see tons of families that have at least three kids.  In fact, I know a family that has five kids and they seem pretty normal.  So I don't know why people look at my three kids and say things like, and I quote:

"Wow, that's a lot of babies."
"Are those all yours?"
"Looks like you got stuck babysitting all the kids today."

or my personal favorite, coming from a little blue haired lady who you would just assume had 16 kids herself...

"So, you've closed up shop, right?"

To which I answered, "Oh, sure.  We've decided to outsource."

What?  I'm her mom.  I can say what I want!

She just kind of stood their glassy eyed for a minute.  I kinda hoped she was having a heart attack but alas, she recovered.

What the heck!  Who says that?  The other three I could kind of understand.  I mean, I kinda do look like a babysitter with my eclectic grouping of children.  But to ask me to close up shop?  This means that you know that all the children where mine and that I looked like I might have another at any moment.

One of these things is not like the other.

I'm sorry!  Is my joy for bringing children into the world effecting your ability to buy your preparation H?  I thought not.  You don't see me getting all upset about you still being alive and you saying things like:  "So, You're going to die soon, right?"

No, no of course I would never say that.  But people think it's totally ok to say things like that to me.  Three kids.  It's just three kids!  I'm not a glorified basketball team, I'm a family of five!  Five is very normal.  Average even.  Three is the new two kids with a white picket fence and a dog.

Although, I keep trying to convince my husband that a family of six is just crazy.

Antenella