Going Crazy, Wanna Come?

Disclaimer: The following post will probably have very little to do with Dubai, its customs, its climate, or our experiences here. It will probably have a good deal to do with my current, child-induced bananas state of mind. So if you’re an anthropologist or a Dubai-o-phile and have wandered onto my site by way of research or something like that, then you should probably stop reading here. But if you are a friend of ours and are wondering how we are doing, or, more specifically, how I am holding up in light of our recent relocation, then I invite you to read on. And I graciously welcome you to my own personal festival of pain.

Now at the outset, before I start complaining about the kids, let me just say that I am well aware that there are plenty of people who want children but, for one of countless possible reasons, do not have any. For those people, it could potentially be very aggravating to listen to someone bitch about the kids they do have. And to those people, I apologize in advance. I realize that I am a huge jerk and that, on days like today, I take for granted how lucky we are to have been able to bring three healthy little people into the world.

Three healthy, horrible, terrible, no good, very bad little people.

I often think about how insane it was to have 3 children in the span of just about 3 years. And I say to myself, Hey, Mommy, you brought this on yourself. It’s not as if you opened your front door on 3 separate occasions and found 3 abandoned baskets of infant sitting there. No, you asked for this. In fact, people much wiser than you had warned you about this. But you did it anyway. So you really have no right to play the crazy card now.

And then I think about celebrities and paparazzi. I think about how people say of them: They have no right to complain about the tabloids and the lack of privacy; no one told them to be actors; they brought it on themselves.

My response to both of these arguments is the same. Yes, we may have each chosen our respective lines of work (me: a non-paying, sleep-depriving, identity-devouring role as the mother of 3 young girls; them: a tremendously lucrative, universally coveted position requiring work only a few weeks a year and much of said work involving either sitting around “bored” on set all day or kissing attractive co-stars). But believe me: NEITHER OF US UNDERSTOOD WHAT WE WERE GETTING INTO. Sure, I may have expected that I would be tired, and that there would be a lot of dirty diapers, and that there would not be a lot of sleep… and they may have understood that, in the million-to-one chance that they became superstars, there would be red carpet obligations and photo shoots and autographs to sign… but trust me, neither of us fully comprehended the implications of what we were doing at the time we started. And for that reason, I say, both Jennifer Aniston and I are on solid ethical footing when we vent about our (extremely dissimilar) lots in life.

So let’s go back to the very beginning. What did possess me to bear so many kids in so few years? I’d say it all comes down (as much of my life does) to my incorrigible and unavoidable Type A personality. I don’t like to do many things, but the things that I do take on, I like to do well. Go Big or Go Home. I held off on having my first child until I was 30… and then I was determined to churn out as many mini me’s as possible before I hit 35. (Yes, theoretically, I could have made 1 more person, but even lunatics have occasional moments of clarity.) And you want to know something that makes me sound even more cuckoo for cocoa puffs? Child 1 and Child 2 were born 18 months apart, and thus I was going to be damned if Child 2 and Child 3 weren’t also 18 months apart, because yes I am THAT into symmetry. Granted, I came up a little short, as Child 2 and Child 3 ended up being 19 months apart, but lord knows my intentions were good.

Another reason I wanted to have all the kids at virtually the same time was because I know myself, and I know how sensitive I am to stress, and I believed that once I got out from under the rock of one developmental stage, I would never want to crawl back underneath it. Do all the diapers at once, I figured, and then all the tantrums and then all the orthodontics appointments and then all the proms and then all the college applications. Or else I might squeeze through the wormhole and see the other side and realize that it was much, much better there. And then we would end up with a smaller family than I had originally envisioned, which was simply Not Acceptable. (Being an only child myself, I’m not sure where along the way I decided that I would like to have 3 children; I was just grateful that I ended up with a man who also wanted 3.)

So it all seemed like a great plan at first, when the kids were so young that I kind of thought of them like a litter of puppies, and they were as easily distracted as if I were holding a tennis ball for them to fetch. But now it is different. Now the oldest is 4 months away from her 4th birthday, and she’s more sophisticated than any dog I’ve ever met. Combine her rapidly improving skills of reasoning (and manipulation, which is the unfortunate side effect of increasing awareness, I’ve learned) with the middle child’s recent arrival at the Terrible Two’s doorstep with the baby’s, well, infancy, and the result is sheer madness. (How sad that I almost wrote “Shear Genius,” which wasn’t even a good show.) (But while we’re on the subject, it was criminal that Dee won.)

These days, I am faced with no Supernanny, and a seemingly never-ending supply of: (a) wet diapers; (b) juice cups that need to be refilled; (c) whiny requests beginning with “I WANT” (teddy bears, pacifiers, food, DVDs, socks, shoes, different shoes, different shoes, different shoes, and MOMMY); and (d) full-fledged tantrums (Daddy and I have been carrying around the same grocery list for 3 days now, because we have yet to make it to the cash register on any of our last 3 trips to the market). And my own body is apparently in on the revolt: the sleep-deprivation has given me a permanent queasy stomach and dull headache, and I am developing pains in the most inconvenient places: most notably, the joints of the arm that I use to carry the children, who weigh anywhere from 15 to 30 pounds. I often find myself thinking that I simply cannot do this anymore… but I have no idea how to implement my resignation (other than running away from home, which is utterly impossible now that I live in a foreign country where I have no friends, no car, and no idea where to run to).

Which brings me here, to you. It is the middle of the afternoon, and Daddy and PopPop have taken the two older kids to a movie (ostensibly, to get them away from the crazy lady before she damaged them physically or psychologically), and I have finally gotten Baby to nap after what I honestly believe was 40 days and 40 nights of her crying. And I know I should be sleeping (I tried to go to bed early last night but of course a defective baby monitor woke me up) or eating (how long can a person subsist on surreptitiously gobbled Oreos alone?) or taking a shower (don’t ask how long it’s been, because you will be so horrified that you will feel dirty by association). But instead, I wanted to check in with you, because I know that you have been coming to my site to see if there are any updates, and I really appreciate your readership, and I don’t want to let you down. I’m sorry that I didn’t have any funny Dubai stories to share. Nope, nothing here but an exhausted mother letting off some steam and trying to fend off the urge to blame all of her children’s recent bad behavior on the move. Because in my rare rational moments, I realize that, even if we were back home in the States, a 3-year-old would still be a 3-year-old, and the same for a 2-year-old, and so on. And I’m sure I would still be tired.

Difference is, once I’d dramatically thrown my stuff into a suitcase like the runaways do on tv, I’d know where to go.

But I’m here. In Dubai. So I guess I’ll have to stay and take care of these kids after all.

Good thing, too, cuz the truth is, I couldn’t live without ‘em.

Hey, Baby is crying. Good timing! I actually feel better now. Thanks for listening. xo.