Third Child Syndrome

There were some drawbacks to being the youngest child in the family. For one, my baby book only had about two pages completed. That used to really bother me until I had a third child of my own. I think his book might have his full name and birth date and that's about it. How sad is that?

I always got stuck in the worst possible spots in the vehicle on our family vacations. It was an eleven hour drive from Houston to Tulsa (with my Dad driving, but my mom could usually make it in ten). We would often make that trip during the five day Thanksgiving holiday and would leave late at night after our parents had everything packed. This was back in the seventies and the car that I most remember us having was a Buick LeSabre. My dad used to take two buckets and turn them upside down in the floorboard. He then used a piece of plywood that was cut to fit perfectly over the buckets in between the front seat and the back seat. He would wrap the plywood with blankets and lie it across the buckets to make the seat a bigger "bed" for Jerri and Curt to sleep on during the trip. I was always stuck up front in between my mom and dad. My parents used to ask me to switch "laps" because it would become uncomfortable for them during the long drive with my feet kicking them in my sleep. I used to hate it when I had to lie with my head in the driver's lap and also contend with the steering wheel being about a 1/2 inch from my face. (Does anyone else think that might’ve qualified as child abuse?)

We once borrowed my grandmother's van and took a two week trip to Niagara Falls. It was awesome, except while my sibling’s each got a whole seat to themselves, I had to lie on a pallet in the very back by our luggage or in the small floor space right behind the two front seats. My sister slept the entire trip but my brother would sit up and complain that I was in the way of his feet. I pouted during much of the time on that trip about my poor sleeping arrangements and that being on the floor made me car sick. I can only imagine how miserable my parents were with all of the complaining going on within that van.

Caden always says we don't have enough pictures of him. I remember feeling so slighted when I was younger for the same exact reason. Of course, we do have lots of pictures of him but not nearly as many as we do of the girls. This was obvious recently when we were doing a school project that required pictures of him at various ages. As we rummaged through the photo boxes we came across tons of Lauren and many of Cassidy, but finding some of him were a little more challenging. That's just wrong, but it seems to be the norm for the third child and beyond. Your time and energy is drained with each new mouth to feed and rear end to change. I really wish I'd put more effort into keeping up with his baby book. I'm not even 100% sure at exactly what age he started walking or when he lost his first tooth. I'm sure I won't be a recipient of this years Mother of the Year award. Again!