As the panic sets in

Maybe it's just because we had a horrible day yesterday. Maybe it's because November just keeps getting closer and closer. Maybe it's the pregnancy hormones. Maybe it is everything all rolled up into one big ball of scary.

I am starting to get VERY worried about how I'm going to handle having three kids. Three...as in more than two, which is how many parents there are in the house. This means that we will be outnumbered. Holy crap. What the hell am I going to do?
It all kind of hit me yesterday, otherwise known as the "Day All Hell Broke Loose". From the start it was a bad day. I was in a crappy mood, left over from my Monday blahs I guess. Whatever it was, I was impatient and snippy and not a very fun mommy to be around. My girls sensing how bad a day I was having got together and decided to give Mom a break and be perfect angels all day....HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! No, really, they decided to be on their absolute worst behavior imaginable. Natalie was all sass and back talk. She wouldn't do one thing I asked of her, even if it was to go outside and play. Nope, nothing doing. She was adamant about staying as close to me as possible while screeching and whining and basically acting like a 2-year-old. Vanessa was clingy and irritable. She wanted me to know what she wanted without actually telling me. Maybe she thought I had developed ESP overnight. She would scream at me in what I'm sure were words only deemed appropriate for sailors (and I truly think if the sailors could understand what she was saying some of them might even blush). There was nowhere to hide. I couldn't get away from these two little hellions. And to make matters so. much. worse, Vanessa wouldn't sleep. She was tired, there was no question about that, but she wouldn't lay down and take a nap. I tried everything. Of course she ended up passing out way late so it would totally screw up bedtime...which it did. She didn't go to sleep until 11pm last night. We had started bedtime rituals at 8:30. Talk about a long night after a long day.
So, with all this craziness with my two beautiful little girls yesterday, the one thing that someone said to me was, "just think, pretty soon you will have three!". Way to kick me when I'm down. It seems like every time I complain about a bad day or my kids are running in two different directions away from me or I am telling one girl to just leave the other ALONE I have to hear someone remind me that it will just all get worse in a few months. Thanks. I think I get it. Three kids is harder than two. Yep. Makes sense. Is that really what people think you need to hear when your two kids are driving you nuts? That it can only get harder? Yeah, I think not.
Last night as I was desperately trying to get Vanessa to lay down quietly and Natalie was crying because, apparently, only I can lay in bed beside her the correct way, I was totally freaking out. How am I going to manage all three girls? Larry does what he can, but the girls want me. How am I going to be in three separate places at once? Right now I have to put Vanessa to bed first in any way possible, and then I have to go read to and lay with Natalie. If one doesn't get to sleep and cries or yells the other one wakes up too and we have to start all over again, but this time with one kid who is angry they are not first. Or that they are first. Or that they have to go to bed at all. At some point it just becomes chaotic and nothing good or productive happens. And I end up with kids awake at 11pm. That is just not going to fly when Natalie starts school in two weeks. At this point she can sleep in in the morning. Not so much when she has to be to school by 9:15. And then add a screaming baby into the mix.
I am sure everything will work out and we will be able to find some kind of routine that works for us. Just like we did when I was freaking out before we had Vanessa. But right now it seems more like a big black hole that I am falling deeper and deeper into. And if any of you moms of multiples (Andie? Michelle?) have any advice on how to get more than one kid to go to sleep please pass it along. I really need it!!! But please don't tell me it is only going to get worse...or I might just have to punch you!!