Toast, Toast, Toast

Over the years I've developed a number of coping strategies for dealing with the kids. Some of these are simple (chocolate) some more difficult (our upcoming vacation), but all of them have worked to make my life easier. Often these coping strategies are great studies in logistics mnagement - a job for which I think I was born. I was thinking about this recently, about how DH and I do things other families find easy - bath time, meal time, getting to kinder on time (okay we fail this one regularly), going out to eat, getting everyone dressed or undressed - simply by virtue of good logistics and (we hope) a mimumum of yelling. Let me give you an example. I went for a job interview when the kids were about a year old. Somehow the topic of the kids came up and they asked how I cope with getting them to creche on time - presumably a thinly disguised question about how the hell was I going to get to work on time myself. Because, of course, parents of triplets are incapable of being punctual, efficient, productive members of the workforce (who? me? bitter?). Anyway, so when they were a year old the procedure was like this:

Starting point: parent dressed, fed, watered and ready to do battle. Car unlocked.

Step 1. Least resistant child dressed, then the other two in order of least to most resistant. Kids dressed ALL the way to shoes. Care factor if their clothes are mismatched: None.
Step 2. Kids sat down to eat breakfast, while parent throws pre-packed backpacks and pre-packed lunches into the back of the car, and makes sure that their own briefcase/backpack/bag of random crap is in there too.
Step 3. Toast gets made and buttered (or vegemited, or jammed, or honeyed.)
Step 4. Kid who finishes brekky first gets put in car, strapped in, and handed toast (for distraction purposes).
Step 5. Kid two, same as above, toast.
Step 6. Kid three, same as above, toast. This time parent takes key and locks door behind them.
Step 7. Kids in car, parent in car, quick look to check: yup, toast, toast, toast, we're all good, let's hit the road.

So you see? Getting out the door in the morning, following the toast, toast, toast plan - well, frankly, it worked then. It works less well these days because each kid wants a different breakfast, their resistance to getting dressed is a bit like Luke resisting the Force (powerful, but defeated in the end), and neither parent is as sprightly as they used to be. This whole post just sums up my parenting philosophy. At it's most basic: you cope in the ways you have to, in order to make your life easier, and more pleasant. Dummy/no dummy, bottle/no bottle, co-sleep/no co-sleep, potty trained/not potty trained, TV/no TV, matching socks/not matching socks: WHO THE FUCK CARES. Do what you need to do to keep your life, and your kids' lives, pleasant and with a minimum of shouting. It's not that hard, people. (Okay, it is, but that was a good ending line so I'm leaving it there.)

Oh, and I didn't get that job I applied for - and I think it's because the BossMan was terrified I'd shove him into his office chair with a piece of toast.