One, OK - Two, Bad - Three, FUNNY

 Hubby and I have this little philosophy about kids. We have three under 3 1/2 and most of the time things are ok. However, if one of them start's crying there is now some kind of Murphy's Law or mathematical equation that spins into effect that there's an equal or even greater chance one or both of the other two will chime in as well. The other thing we've discovered is that math in this instance rarely adds up to the correct sum.

It's like my sister (mother of three) always says, add more kids, and the parenting gets easier. EASIER?? Yes. Ironically if you are overwhelmed with three, adding 2 or three neighbor kids (which sounds insane on a surface level) will actually DECREASE the chaos around you, not multiply it. Wacky but true. The added children, though increasing your numbers two-fold, will infact keep your children busy and out of your hair more often.

So you would think, one kid crying ok, two kids crying, bad, three kids crying, head for the hills! Simple logic decrees that the more crying children the less likely your sanity will remain intact. HOWEVER, hubby and I have found a loop in the system. Yes, one child crying (especially the infant) can cause one to sweat profusely and increase your speed to appease the child and get it what it needs to calm down. Now TWO kids crying at the same time is actually the worse kind of parental stress, even more than three would be. You see, when all THREE kids start crying... well then it actually becomes funny. On more than one occasion if all three are wailing at the top of their lungs, tears streaming, snot flowing, red faces... well just once glance across the room at the other hapless partner and the seemingly endless chaos suddenly becomes humorous. You can't help but laugh. Maybe it's a stress coping mechanism, maybe we're crazy from lack of sleep, but I know hands down I'd prefer all three crying to two any day... but then again I've never really been that good at math anyway...