My kids are 6 years apart. I don’t meet a lot of people who have a big age gap like that, and I have to say it’s real mixed bag. But I’m sure there are pros and cons to any age difference.

For example, my friend’s kids are 16 months apart and she said every time she’d finally get the newborn to latch on, the 16 month old would do something like throw himself into the fireplace (with a fire in it).

The way it worked for us was that Rose was finally at the relatively low-maintenance age of 6, and then—like the totally nutty folks we are—we went and threw a newborn in the mix.

And now I’m 46 and have a rambunctious, energetic preschooler who wakes me up in the middle of the night. And I’m tired. So tired. All. The. Time.

But there are also times when it’s totally magical. Like when Sid is having a tantrum and we’re at our wits end, and Rose implores us to try to remember what it’s like to be a little kid, and then somehow soothes him out of his rage.

And like today, when they decided to make cookies for Santa, on their own with no adult supervision. I listened to them from upstairs:

“Sid, if you eat too much batter you’ll get a stomach ache.” “And then I’ll DIE and go back to the EARTH!!!” “No Sid, you won’t die from a stomach ache, but you will die someday, everybody does. But you don’t have to worry about that for a long, long time. OK?”

So for today, I’ll say I wouldn’t have it any other way. And now I have to go and bake the rest of those cookies because apparently 4 & 10 year olds only have enough attention span for one batch.