Sucks to be a baby...

We have a pecking order in our house. In general it looks something like this:

Whoever is screaming and crying
Whoever is crying
Whoever is screaming
Husband
Me
The cats

It is rather fluid though, and not set in concrete. Like tonight, for example, the cats collaborated - the white one sat on the pile of freshly folded black T-shirts, and the other made it her mission to walk half a step ahead of me all night and meow. So they made it up the list. They had their dinner, before I got mine.

On any given day in our house, you can expect to hear the phrase "sucks to be a little baby...". It's harsh, but true.

Oldest child has the most experience in manipulating, second child has the most experience in hitting, which means third child has a long way to go to get to the front of the pack. She's the last to have breakfast, last to get dressed and the first to get turfed out of her pram if the others need a seat.

Like today, when the toddler spectacularly capsized off his bike into a giant puddle, on an afternoon that was 5 degrees at best. Baby was thrown onto my hip, toddler thrown in pram, four year old screaming she wanted to be carried too, and we took 5 minutes to walk the 50 metres home. Toddler and 4 year old thrown in the warm bath, baby thrown on floor so the others could be dealt with.

She's a good wee girl and takes it in her stride and I've rewarded her by making her my favourite. Until she's 2. Then she has to fight for her place in the order and pull out all the crying/whinging/screaming stops, like the rest of them. I'm sure she'll be okay - she's learning from the best.

And I'd finish this post of with some sort of witty comment to summarize - but The Husband wants the laptop to stream the Tri-nations ABs vs Australia test. They're about to do the haka, so time is of the essence. I know my place...