In this weeks Friday Flashback I talk about what it was like trying to leave the house with two kids… Noah was about 21 months old and Abby only 3 months old at the time. Thankfully leaving the house isn’t quite as much of a hassle now… though trying to leave the house with both a preschooler and toddler comes with a whole new routine and set of headaches!! =)

 

Two under Two in Tow

 

When you have a second child, it should come with a warning: “It will take you 3 times as long to get out of the house than it does with just one child.”

Well at least it does if both kids are under the age of 2.

Maybe I just got used to being able to leave the house semi-quickly with just the toddler. As long as I had a sippy cup of water, some snacks, a diaper and some wipes, we were good to go. Leaving the house took a little longer than if I was leaving by myself, but nothing worth sweating over. Now though… that’s a whole different story.

For some reason I feel that it now takes us hours just to be able to leave the house for 30 minutes. Our routine now looks something like this:

1)      Fight a wiggling toddler while you try change his diaper and get him dressed.

2)      Change the baby’s diaper and get her dressed.

3)      Nurse the baby to make sure that she doesn’t get hungry the minute you walk out of the door.

4)      Change your top (or pants) because the baby spit up a more than acceptable amount on them while you were burping her (at this point you don’t care if it’s just a little spit up… you don’t even notice that anymore).

5)      Strap the baby into the car seat.

6)      Spend 2 minutes trying to find the toddler’s socks that he took off while you were nursing the baby, find one then give up and get a new pair.

7)      Put shoes on the toddler to avoid another sock fiasco.

8)      Gather purse and pre-stocked diaper bag (yes, you need this again because you now need to travel with an arsenal of baby and toddler products. It is best to always, always make sure that this is packed and ready to go.)

9)      Pick up the car seat to put the baby into the car. The moment the car seat is an inch off of the floor you hear what sounds like an explosion came from her butt. You look down and see your baby giving a look of both relief and discomfort.

10)   Take baby out of the car seat and change her diaper… again. If it was really explosive you may even need to change her clothes and pre-treat the old outfit.

11)   Put baby back into car seat, grab purse and diaper bag and toddlers hand.

12)   Open car doors, throw purse and diaper bag in front seat and put the car seat in back.

13)   Walk around the car to put the toddler into his seat. As you pick him up, you smell an offensive smell coming from his butt…

14)   Take both kids back out of the car, undress the toddler from the waist down, try to get him to leave his socks on, change his diaper, dress him… again… and then quickly get both kids back into the car and drive off.

By this point you are sweated wet, but you’re happy to be out of the house. Unfortunately as soon as you stop the car and get to where you need to be, the baby is hungry… again!

There are some days where the hassle just doesn’t seem worth it and you think to yourself… “Do we really need (insert item here… milk, eggs, bread, whatever) so badly that I have to go out for it today?” and you just don’t leave the house after all.

Then again… had someone told me this before I had my second, I probably wouldn’t have believed them. Maybe it’s better this way after all!