[masraum]

Originally Posted by varmint

My wife is a wonderful person who likes having small kids around. I am an ******* with a short fuse.

Family down the road has four foster kids. Ages 6-10. My wife volunteered to babysit once or twice a week. Goddamn exhausting. After about three hours the dogs are hiding. Make it stop.

It's got to be 100x harder when they aren't "yours". And it's not exactly easy when they are yours. My wife started watching the oldest 5 days per week when he was 3 months old. I was there for most of that because I was working from home. Then the second came and we were watching a toddler and a baby. For about 4-5 years, we had 1 and then 2 for 5 days/week, usually for 10 but sometimes for 15-16 hours a day (daughter worked in the medical profession and we lived 2 miles from where she worked. We moved and things changed so that we'd have them at our house several times per summer for 3-5 days per week.

One kid is pretty easy. Two kids is more work, and feels like three kids. Three boys feels like a cross between a wild life preserve and a failing nuclear reactor. As the amount of children increase, it feels like the work increases exponentially.

I understand, my wife is a cross between a saint and wonder woman dealing with 3 boys 3-9. I'm hanging on by my finger nails. I do pretty good most of the time, but the facade cracks sometimes.