1 + 1 = 0

So you’ve had a child, he or she is a few years old. It’s time to play again! All of the bad romantic comedies you saw while courting your wife had this absolutely right: while there may be some romance in baby-making the first time around, there is absolutely no romance in baby-making the second, third or fourth time around. Prepare your body to be used.

Being used for your body is necessary, really for one reason: have you met the only children out there? A cast of serial killers are better adjusted. Only children are the kids at college that go through four roommates in a semester, the people at work who get irrationally peeved when someone makes a funny noise when they walk past their cube. It is cliché, but true, that only children get waaaay too much attention and, because of all the attention they get from their folks, have an unrealistic view of how important their own feelings and concerns are. Really, who wants to raise an ass? So, if God and/or biology allows, do your first kid a favor and improve his personality by popping out a second.

When you do have a second child, in many ways you’ve doubled your work. And while one child was enough work for one and a half people, two children is an appropriate amount of work for three parents. Unfortunately, your wife will not find this to be a reason for you to take on a second wife.

When you’re watching them yourself, it’s a ton of work. If the baby is still immobile, then whatever game you’re playing with the older one will have to wait while you (choose one) finish feeding the baby the bottle / finish changing baby’s diaper / finish putting baby to bed.

If the baby is older and mobile, it’s the terror of your older child(ren). Want to play blocks? The baby will knock down any towers that are built. Coping with this leads to any number of creative strategies. You try to play with one kid in one room and the baby in another, or maybe you let the older child climb onto the dining room table, or you treat the baby like a middle-ages ogre and barricade it into part of the room (and you’ll realize why playpens were so popular back in the day). And you’ll see firsthand how having a second child really is detracting from your ability to parent and have fun with the first (and you’ll be depressed about that).

When the baby gets even older, you’ll then be pulled in two directions: the baby, demanding that you hold it or read it a book. The older child, asking you to “watch this” or participle in their stuff. Part of you will sit and wonder how the hell people with 4 or 5 children even survive. That’s 4 times the work or 5 times the work. It will strike you as unbelievable.

Yet one day, when the second child reaches 18 months, or maybe two years, or maybe two and a half (I’m not sure when it will happen, but it will happen), one day you will be in the other room and instead of the children fighting over who gets to spend time with you, they will, seeking amusement, look to one another.

It will be a glorious day. A special day.

I can vividly recall the day my wife, after an exhausting (mostly for her) multi-month stretch, called me at work and said “Oh my god, for the last 20 minutes, they have actually been sitting in the other room, just playing with each other. It’s like I went from having two kids and feeling guilty for not being able to pay attention to them both to going to having no kids, because neither are bothering me. This is unbelievable!”

Most of the time, one plus one equals two. But at times, maybe only for 20 minutes at a time, with kids it equals zero. A beautiful, perfectly round, pristine zero.