I love the idea of these challenges, but sticking with them seems to be more challenge than I'm up for. I may go back and revisit some of the questions though bc I like them. We'll see.
Since my last substantive Yogi post about the adoption, it feels like everything has changed. Again. In the space of a weekend the little guy started crawling AND he decided that eating wasn't such a bad idea after all. These two things have brought about big changes in our daily routine.
The first is that I can't take my eyes off the little rascal for one.minute. He may be small, but he's FAST. As an example, I was cleaning the bathroom yesterday after setting him up with trucks and taxis to roll around the tile floor. He was playing and I was scrubbing. I left the room for one second to grab the mop I had left just outside the bathroom door and in that moment he headed straight for the toilet brush. YUCK!!! I managed to intercept him before he could pull the handle into his mouth which is a good thing since that is something I'm not sure I could recover from ;), but yikes! A close call. The first of many I'm sure. At any rate, all of this motion is really raising the bar around here. I thought I was busy before. Man oh man.
The second is that in a matter of weeks (2?) we have gone from five bottles a day with the occasional attempt at solids, to five smaller bottles a day with an additional three solid meals. This means that the bottle cleaning labor remains steady while the "what should I feed him?/how should I cook it?/when will I buy, prepare and clean it up?" labor has ramped up in a major way. I'm sure I'll get into a rhythm with this too, but I'm not there yet. At the moment I am a cooking, cleaning, washing, diapering, baby entertaining machine. This is what I do. All I do. Every day. Ok, breathing deeply. That's better.
About this time last week Yogi started getting fussy in the way he got fussy when his bottom two (at this point only) teeth came in. It's a particular brand of fussy that we're now calling "toothy". It has earned a name bc it has become such a familiar state, one that seems resistant to any intervention we can think of. This recent toothiness results from the emergence of two (they seem to come in pairs) on the top. These teeth are taunting all of us. They will.not just break the f*&k through. They are taking their time and in the doing, they are torturing us. Puny, whiny days and wake-up screaming nights. I officially hate these teeth.
A crawling, eating, teething baby is nothing to complain about of course. It is a blessedly normal development. Unfortunately the timing is off. Our easy peasy, I don't even require you to cook baby decided to start behaving like an actual 10 month old right about the time we started talking seriously about #2. Suddenly the "Yogi MUST have a sibling" energy is growing more cautious. Are we really up for another one? How will we make it work? Where will the extra time and energy come from?
In the last few weeks I've grown envious of our straight friends who were relieved of the responsibility of making this choice by just accidentally getting pregnant. Certainly this brings its own kind of pressures, but at least it's out of your hands. At the moment this is enviable. Instead what we have are lots and lots of questions.
If you have more than one, how did you make the decision about #2? If you're pondering this yourself, please chime in and tell me we'll figure this out somehow.
Parenting Right Now
2 years ago
7 comments:
We are thinking about number two. And our lives are crazy. We just figure that eventually she will be more independent and it will get less crazy. Bit we always wanted more than one. So for us the question is when. Not if. And we hear you with the "toothy" fussing! Nothing helps!
We have two because my wif and I both love our siblings. My wife went through a difficult illness (and subsequent passing) of her father. She feels that without a sibling, she would not have had someone to help make difficult decisions about his care and the afterwards. She wanted to give that gift to our children, if at all possible (you can't predict how the world will work, so...)
Also, I have a friend whose father was an only child. He said it was no big deal, growing up an only child - but in adulthood, it's sometimes lonely not to have a peer to have similar family experiences, or to have a holiday with. He was thrilled to hear that we were having another baby.
Sounds like a wonderfu joyus journey
Sounds like a perfectly normal baby! Having a kid is exhausting (wait until toddlerhood!) and takes a lot of energy. Not 10 minutes ago I was typing an email about how I wanted to start ttc in Jan but now in my mind it is getting pushed back because I am tired and I can't imagine going through ttc again or having two kids. But, people do it all the time so you just have to jump if you are ready. My personal rule has always been that we would not have two kids in diapers so I knew we would wait until chunk was potty trained to have #2. Just my own thing but yeah, I hear ya. I have an 18month old that runs (!) and eats all the time. Hang in there.
your boy is adorable! sounds like things are changing all the time!
we ended up with #2 and #3 at the same time :-) when hook was born we were fairly certain we would not have any more but we wanted hook to have a sibling and he was so much fun (and exhausting and all that) that we could not imagine not having another. in our case it took quite a while to have the twins so there is a big age difference but i have no doubt it would have worked out no matter when we got pregnant!
A comment on the bottles and food....hang in there. This period of time is very short overall. Soon it will be 3 bottles and 3 meals, then 2 bottles, then 1.... shortly after his first birthday, he'll be eating all solids and cups of milk. You'll be there soon!
oh my...beatrice is on the move too...i can't even clean the bathroom she's so fast...so envious of you and your clean bathroom!
and i'm really thinking about #2...i never really thought beyond bea, but i do feel like it would be nice for her to have a sibling...but i'm getting up there, i need to decide quickly if i want to have #2 before i'm over 40...oy.
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