It’s true that having children makes it harder to manage life with horses. Suddenly you can’t make it down to the barn every morning. Or you can, because you have to, but you’ve got the baby slung in a backpack or asleep in the car. Or you’re carefully shutting the infant carrier into the tack room so the cats can’t bother the baby, and you’re mucking stalls as fast as possible, and you don’t get around to grooming–the horse or yourself–at all. And you’re tired. Exhausted. Exhilarated and frustrated, every day.

When you come back from a day-long show, and the baby launches herself sobbing into your arms, and your husband looks as if he’d like to, you can no longer say, “Well, that was a great day! I think I’d like to go take a bath!” No, you’re giving the bath. You’re up with the baby. Your husband has earned some rest, and oh, by the way, he’s going golfing tomorrow.

You don’t fit into your good breeches, and you can’t find a sitter for the 6 a.m. hunts. You realize that you can’t pick out hooves and restrain a toddler at the same time.

Then, suddenly, the toddler is out of diapers. He goes to preschool. He goes to bed early. You can find more time to ride.

Then, if you’re me, you get pregnant again. You discover that two children are four times harder to manage than one. You wonder why you thought that first newborn was a challenge. The second newborn is a snap, compared to her older brother.

Then a miracle occurs. Not all at once, but gradually. The children grow, inch by inch, day by day.

You haul the 3-year-old and the 3-month-old to the Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event, because you can’t bear to miss seeing the first year it’s a four-star, and your boy, Matthew, is mesmerized. You’ve taken him to the barn regularly since he was 2 weeks old, but the cross-country opens his eyes wide. On the way home he begs for riding lessons.

So you find some barn kids, and you hire them. All summer long one of the barn kids holds the baby. You give strict instructions: Do not go near the horses. Do not put her down in the dirt. Another barn kid helps your son tack a lesson pony. Meanwhile–so exciting–you ride.

Then while you’re untacking, Matthew takes a 15-minute lesson. His pale blond hair pokes through the vents in his helmet. His face is serious. He chants, “One, two, one, two.”

The barn kids carry Katie around the barn. They show her the horses through the bars of their stalls. “Say, ‘pony,’ ” they urge.

“She can’t say, ‘pony,’ ” you call out from across the ring. “She’s only six months old.”

The barn kids stare at the pony. They flick a glance toward you. “Say, ‘po,'” they say.

Three months later, Katie points a chubby finger at Matthew’s lesson pony. “Po!” she says, and the barn kids cheer.

Winter comes. The boy clamors for real, half-hour lessons. The baby girl screams with rage. “Po, po,” she sobs. Finally you corral a small lesson pony. You stick the girl on it and hold her there during the boy’s lesson. She grabs at the mane and laughs.

They grow so fast. The boy wants a pony. He longs for a pony. He’s only 5 years old. You know he doesn’t need a pony yet, but you also know how rare good ponies are, so when the perfect one comes along, you grab it. The boy names him Hot Wheels. He’s a lazy, benevolent animal. Matthew hangs from his neck, and the pony licks him.

Now the boy joins Pony Club. He can’t write yet. He stares at the manuals. He can’t read. You explain this to the other D1s. He’s only in kindergarten. They read to him aloud.

He passes his D1 test with good marks. You see him rise up, grow an inch taller right in front of you, from pride.

The girl is wicked jealous. She wants riding lessons. Now. She’s 3; it’s time to start. You have helmets now in all sizes. You have paddock boots lined up in your closet, every size in a row–the ones the boy’s outgrown, the ones both kids are wearing, and the ones the older Pony Club parents have passed down to you.

The boy goes in a local show, trots Hot Wheels all around the ring on his own while you hold your breath. The girl goes in leadline, gets a giant blue ribbon like everyone else in the class, comes out jumping up and down and yelling, “I won! I won!” And her brother, who finished last because he missed his diagonals, but who knows he did a good job controlling his pony, kisses her and says, “I’m so proud of you, Katie. You did great.”

You build your own barn, finally. The morning after you bring the horses home, the boy wakes you at dawn. Together you walk to the barn and turn the horses loose. They run in the green pasture. The boy sighs.

Santa brings pitchforks for both of them.

It’s summer, and they’re riding. You don’t need babysitters now. When it’s your turn to ride the children sit on the hill and watch you. Sometimes they critique your style. Once the boy takes photographs. They are useful around the barn. They can recite the symptoms of colic, and they know what to do when they see a horse in trouble. (Get Mom).

The boy takes his pony to Pony Club camp, comes home every night grubby and bubbling with joy. He learns to canter. He becomes a speed freak. It turns out his pony is not so lazy after all.

The girl needs her own pony. She longs for one. She refers to the empty stall in the barn as “my pony’s stall,” and she insists that you hang the buckets extra low. She’s 4 years old, and she doesn’t need a pony yet. But when she’s playing by herself, you hear her whisper, “Hurry, pony,” and finally you start spreading the word. You’re looking for another perfect pony. Smaller this time.

The pony drops into your lap. Shakespeare. The girl hugs him. She scolds him. She falls off him and looks up at him, amazed. She runs her fingers through his winter coat.

You take the kids to an event by yourself. They applaud your dressage test, although afterwards, Matthew says, “What happened in that first canter?” When you admit that you need some improvement there he agrees. He and Kate grin when you go clean in show jumping–but they wait to hear your time before they applaud. They cheer and cheer when you get around cross-country.

Then Matthew sees a 10-year-old girl on a small pony flying around the same course. His eyes widen. “There’s your goal,” your trainer says to him. “You and Hot Wheels, before you outgrow him.” And Matthew slowly nods. You’ve seen that serious look on his face before.

On the way back to the stabling you hold your horse with one hand, your daughter’s hand with the other. Your daughter looks up at you and smiles and says, “Someday I’m going to be a real rider, Mommy. Just like you.”