On Having Two Kids (or "Don't Shoot the Baby with the Cannon")

This post is for Kelly, because I am writing it with my new ipad keyboard, hence it no longer looks like I'm typing with my elbows. Also because Kelly is about to have two kids.

A long long time ago, what feels like forever ago, I thought I would never love another kid. I was wholly dedicated to one tiny, perfect individual and could not imagine having someone else in my family, couldn't imagine giving the same amount of love and attention to a second person. I actually felt like loving the second one would take away from loving the first, which was crazy and wrongheaded. I felt sorry for both of them; to the first I felt like she would have to share me, and might feel resentful and short-changed. To the second I felt like he would get half a mother or be an afterthought, a tag-along in the Nora caravan.

I am happy to report now, six months later, that I was wrong on all counts.

It's a funny thing, falling in love with your child. There are about seven or a million different ways to fall in love, and you cycle through them with the passage of time. It's like the levels of hell only in reverse. I look at my baby, Theo, and I think "I am not even up to capacity on you yet and I already am over the moon. Holy." I went through all of the doubt and regret and fear when I was pregnant, so by the time he arrived I was like "OK let's do this; let's see what happens."

The first stage is meeting your new baby. When Theo arrived, the first thing he did that I love him for was being born fairly smoothly and relatively quickly. I didn't pass out this time, and I felt every damn thing - as flaky as it sounds, I finally had the 'birth experience' I'd always wanted. When I first saw him, all I could do was go "ooo oooo ooo oooo" like a demented ape, while  looking at my husband like ARE YOU SEEING THIS? Theo made his presence known by immediately pooping and peeing all over me, thus setting the tone for his first several months of life. The second thing that made me love him was that he breastfed effectively right off the bat, therefore making me feel right away like I could do this; I had it in hand. I could manage this baby.

The first weeks and months of a baby's life are normally, and in my previous experience, harried and chaotic and full of worry. Not so with Theo, really. Four days after he was born we spent the day at the beach. Nine days after we brought him to the Canada Day celebrations, including baby's first fireworks. He was a relaxed and chill little guy who drank well, pooped like nobody's business and gained weight like a champ. We towed him along with us to the cottage, to the beach, to here and to there. The thing with a second child is that you already have a first child, whose needs still have to be met and who has to be occupied during the days, so number two gets to have a richly varied set of life experiences very early on.

I am looking back at this period through rose-coloured glasses, I realize. There were problems with Nora, for sure, as she dealt with sharing her mama with a new arrival. We had prepared her pretty well for the baby and she was instantly in love with him - a real wonderful big sister. She couldn't get enough. But we hadn't prepared her very well for just how time-consuming breastfeeding would be. She was at the tail end of potty training, at the stage where I was still wiping her, and inevitably she would have to go just when I'd settled him onto the boob. I learned to do a lot of things one-handed while breastfeeding: wiping bums, making macaroni and cheese, making dinner. Now that Theo is almost 16 lbs I can't really do it any more. He dangles too much but Nora quickly learned how to wipe her own bum and help herself to the fridge. Anyway, Nora got resentful of all the breastfeeding and all the naps and quiet time and how much he had to go into the ergo carrier. There were some awful moments. But it petered out at about 6 weeks, and now at 6 months there's nothing of that left. They are a twosome, in love with one another.

Two areas that I have learned are super tricky with two kids: sleep, and illness. When I am alone with both kids, I find it difficult to steal away for 15-20 minutes to get the baby to sleep and leave Nora alone to her own devices. So he sleeps in a baby carrier for naptimes and is used to a bit of chaos and noise. And my sleep is totally busted now that I play bedroom pingpong most nights, back and forth, back and forth. And illness - well, Nora started school in late September, and now the plague hits my house monthly. Theo has had two colds - one rather serious - and having two kids night-coughing at once is hell. I never sleep. I have a giant mystery dent in my back bumper and I nearly ran over my neighbor a little while ago. I am permanently impaired.

As for the title of this post, well, Nora has already started to involve Theo into her imaginary play. He is the ice monster in her imaginary "Frozen." He lays there on the floor gurgling while she plays with the toy pirate ship, firing cannonballs at him (a light plastic ball with zero velocity), and he has more than once been 'random bad guy.' He doesn't mind. He is delighted just to be invited. He grabs at her barbies' hair and irritates her and I can see already how it will be for the next 5-10 years.

But at the very bottom of it, I can say that it isn't a cliche when a mom tells you 'Oh your heart grows to fit the second one in'. I didn't believe it at the time. I do now. I have two different individuals but they fit together like little puzzle pieces, and both of them are my favourite people in the world. Seeing Nora as a big sister just gives me a whole new way to love her. And I look forward to falling even more deeply for Theo as time rolls on, because I know that's how it goes.

Also, now that Nora has a little brother, she has learned a bit more about anatomy. The other day she drew a four-eyed alien with a 'peanut.' Oh did I laugh.

All Work and No Play

Here is a post i drafted a long time ago and never hit 'publish'....

I have been reeeeal quiet lately. I mean I haven’t actually been quiet – I have in fact been making quite a ruckus in my house, stomping around, dismantling things, making use of every spare inch of space that my place does not have and making a real unholy mess. But I haven’t felt compelled to write about it just yet. These days, I am working three jobs.
There’s the job I’m paid for, where I am obligated to be for 7.5 hours out of each day but actually takes up 10.5 when you factor in transportation and preparation. It’s good, but I have to talk to strangers and I feel pressured to blow-dry my hair, which knocks it down a whole bunch of points. Then there’s the unpaid-yet-arguably-more-difficult job of shepherding a young child through life, ensuring that she is adequately clean, dressed, fed, slept and supported emotionally. A disproportionate amount of this job involves dressing stuffed animals in doll clothes and sparkly gewgaws. It is not rare to hear “MAMA! Can you put the giraffe’s ears inside this easter egg!?” or “THE BEAR NEEDS ANOTHER NECKLACE! I can’t do it! Mama you do it!” usually while I am in the other room with chicken juice all over my hands.
I love this job and I’m good at it. In fact, if they paid me 80 grand a year to do it – or hell even 60 – I’d walk away from the office job so fast I’d probably leave my inside shoes behind. But it’s the third unpaid job that’s keeping me hopping these days. And actually this job isn’t only unpaid, it actually COSTS me. This is the job of renovating and making things. Each evening I become a project manager, carefully plotting out a schedule of the evening’s plans in my head.
This week’s plans look something like this:
5:20 p.m. – get home. Feed child delicious nutritious goldfish crackers I made the other evening after work. Feed crazy pets while cursing.
5:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. – dress stuffed animals in various shreds of cloth, bits of costume jewellery, the aforementioned easter egg halves, hair elastics, mardi gras beads, etc.
6:00 p.m. – begin to cook nutritious well-balanced dinner for family.
6:30 p.m. – husband comes home. Takes over animal-dressing duties. Snacks on imaginary play food served by young child.
6:45 or 7:00 p.m. – family begins eating well-balanced dinner.
7:05 p.m. – husband and I are finished well-balanced dinner. Daughter still thinking about it.
7:30 p.m. – child finishes dinner (or close enough), drinks milk, maybe has yoghurt which buys me some project-management time. Maybe toss in a load of bread or pizza dough, bake muffins, or make more damn goldfish cookies. **** sometimes there is a bath here. Maybe twice a week. Don’t judge me, my child doesn’t stink. During bathtime I will intend to clean the toilet and surroundings but will actually spend my time on facebook. ****
8:00 p.m. – sew wings of peacock Halloween costume. I’m not sure what peacock wings even look like though I am sure they must have them. OR put handles on newly-painted kitchen cabinets OR (last week) put another coat of mortar on my fireplace bricks OR knit an elaborate sweater that has taken so long it’s on the verge of not fitting her anymore OR sketch out plans for an entirely new house because I’m fed up with the current one OR plan how to make peacock feet out of polar fleece. 9:00 p.m. – throw in a load of laundry. Daddy attempts to brush child’s teeth and wash her hands, which takes about 15 minutes and a lot of bargaining. Child is usually naked by now. Since she became potty trained and able to undress herself, she has become a nudist.
9:30 p.m. – Stories. Wrangling her into pyjamas either before or after stories, then bed. I am embarrassed about this. It is my major failing in my career as a parent of a small child, that she doesn’t get to bed until my own bedtime. My mom likes to tell me that I ‘wasn’t a sleeper’ either but the fact is, my kid’s happy enough to sleep in until almost 9 a.m., she is just wired at night and firing on all cylinders. The peak of her day, mentally, is between 7:30 and 10 p.m., it’s so nuts. I am trying to work out the intricacies of naps, daycare, bedtimes, but it’s all so much scheduling and coercing and truthfully I don’t have that much energy for it, given all my jobs.
Then I go to bed. It’s glamorous, I know, but at least while I’m in bed I use my ipad to ‘design’ fantasy houses before falling asleep. Anyway, so far, my fireplace is done (well 90% done) and it looks amazing. I can’t believe how covering up the bricks with mortar and then white paint has transformed my entire living room, like it’s opened it right up.
What began as painting a chair turquoise last year led to painting my kitchen cabinets red and white (damn you Pinterest!) so I have been painting quite a lot lately. My brother brought home a respirator for me to use, since the BIN primer I used for the fireplace AND the kitchen cabinetry is rather toxic-smelling, only I don’t have respirators for the entire family so we have to plan for Nora to either be out of the house or in the basement while I am actively using it. It’s proving to be a bit tricky, and it’s causing the whole thing to take an unreasonable amount of time. Time during which we have had to get used to having no cupboard doors on our (messy) kitchen, or even fronts on our drawers. I dismantled everything while hubby was away on a thanksgiving fishing trip, and was henceforth committed to finishing the job. Thankfully, we are in the home stretch: all painting should be completed this coming weekend, and then the new handles can go on. I will post pictures when I am done.
Oh and also I am pregnant.

Five Good Reasons Why My Blog is Dead

1. I had a baby. Like, another baby, so now I have two, and life is busy. Also, typing with one hand is the pits.
2. I haven't got much going on worth writing about. There are enough people on the internet describing their babies' poop and lack of sleep.
3. I converted my computing to an ipad, and it is absolutely NOT meant for writing anything beyond status updates and photo captions.
4. Only four people read my blog. Hi mom!
5. I spend all my time on facebook, pinterest, blah blah blah I am such a cliché. I find the process of going into this program, uploading images, getting everything lined up, etc., really tiresome.

Anyway, I like to write, so if I ever get a keyboard for this thing you may see a resurrection of gennyland but for now, sorry, the blog is dunzo.

Mommy Blogging

I’ve tried never to make this blog about the trials and tribulations of parenting. There are enough blogs out there dealing with these topics and I think people are getting a bit sick of it all. My facebook feed is all about reasons peoples’ toddlers are crying, links to the youtube video of that admittedly-hilarious comedian talking about life with kids, and videos of kids crying to songs on the radio or discovering rain for the first time.  

But I would be kidding you if I could pretend to write about other stuff right now. I’ve got nothing happening on the home renovation front, work is a bit of a slump despite moving to a brand new building, family life is stable, and I haven’t been to the cottage since September. Meanwhile, Gennyland is busy - Nora is as hilarious as ever, and I am expecting number 2 (a boy) in June. I don’t want to bore people with the mundane specificities of my days, but Nora and I are having a good time enjoying each other’s company, laughing, crying, learning stuff.  I could spend a few paragraphs listing the indignities that my aging body is withstanding through this happy unexpected baby surprise (Namely, a lot of constipation, gas, grey hair and peeing) but I don’t think anyone’s interested in that stuff.

There is one issue that pops up here and there in response to all the mommy-blogging going on: I read an article earlier today saying that it seems like parents do nothing but complain on the internet about how hard their lives are. I would like to chime in on this one, because I do feel it’s relevant in my situation.

Where I work, in my particular field and division only one other person (out of 16) has a young child. Most of the people in equivalent positions (program officers) are either childless or are men with grown children.  In the mornings they come in and tell me about the movies they saw the previous night, the trips they’re taking on the weekends, the hip evening activities they have taken advantage of, all the travel they look forward to doing for work, and the fabulous elaborate meals they cook on Saturdays with friends. I think that’s great. I really do – I remember those days fondly. I keep my lips sealed and nod and pretend that I can relate to their fabulous carefree lifestyles. But when they start asking me “why don’t you ever travel for work?” (I am supposed to*) and “what are your plans for the weekend” and I start to answer honestly, their eyes glaze over.

 I have also recently seen a few colleagues take a day off or a morning off here and there because they’ve “been having trouble sleeping lately,“ and not to seem like a bitter old crone, but by that logic I should NEVER COME TO WORK AT ALL. For real. I haven’t slept a stretch longer than 4 or 5 hours since about November.

I have decided not to share with them what it’s like to work three shifts. I call my day a three-shift day, and the shift in the middle (the one for which I am paid handsomely) is the most relaxing and stress-free of all. I don’t want to make it sound like it’s all horrible because it’s not – at the time some of the things that I do seem kind of unreasonable but it has become the new normal in my world. It’s just when it’s thrown up against the lifestyles of others less entangled than I that it becomes a sore spot.

My day usually sort of starts around 3 a.m. though I’m not even sure where one day stops and the next one starts anymore. Nora is a great one for talking/shouting/crying/screaming in her sleep, but never actually waking up and walking into our room, so that I have to get up and go get her to see what’s going on so it doesn’t escalate. One late-night/early-morning screaming session was caused by a dream she’d had wherein I had cracked an egg on top of her head. “YOU CRACKED AN EGG ON MY HEAD!” Me: “no sweetie, shhh shhh, it’s ok, I would never do that to you.” Nora: “YES YOU DID! YOU DID IT JUST NOW!” (How do you explain that conversation to a coworker when they say “you look tired today”?) She is a wonderful, imaginative, interesting and smart child, with a really vivid imagination and a lot of energy, but her one fault in life is that she is not a terrific sleeper. I long ago reconciled myself to the fact that she will never in her life go to bed early and indeed, she goes to bed easily but very very late for someone under 40” tall. There’s no yo-yo-ing back and forth for endless glasses of water, and she is super reliably dry at night. She’s just – active. The brain never shuts off.  She has full conversations in the dark, complaining about some minor indignity she suffered at daycare that day, worrying about lost toys or parents who crack produce over her head. She doesn’t like sleeping in her room because she claims she can hear loud cars and trucks all night (we live in the country – once in a while she hears the admittedly-very-loud snowplow around 6 a.m.) so she tries to spend each night in our bed, which as another very funny viral cartoon has illustrated can be incredibly disruptive. (He has a book. Of course he does. See it here . Nora is a fan of “H is for Hell.”

Anyway, so my day usually starts with one of these such interruptions. Then I’m awake. Then I have to pee. I make my way to the bathroom to do the deed (thank god we renovated and included a bathroom upstairs. Thank.God.), then I go back to bed where hubby is snoring loudly. I roll him over onto his side again, and try to settle in. He keeps snoring on despite the nose strip and double pillows and repeated jabs to the back. Then the dog has a dream and starts running in her sleep at the foot of the bed. “Oh” you say. “You let your very large rambunctious dog sleep in your bed, no wonder you get no sleep.” Yes, yes I do, because if I don’t, she paces all clickety clickety around the bed all night and her nocturnal twitchings are LOUD against the floorboards and surrounding furniture. At least the bedding is quiet. Plus our bedroom is unheated and I like to stick my toes under her when it’s minus 100 outside. After I kick the dog (gently, more like a nudge) to discourage her dream-twitching, I try to settle back in but now that I’ve awoken, so has Squid (the fetus) and he starts booting me in the belly. Not hard, just noticeably because as Babycenter has told me, he’s only the size of a banana. If I can ignore all this and get back to sleep, I usually have three hours max of sleep-time before either my biological clock or my alarm clock wakes me up. 

I haul myself up, shower myself, shuffle to the kitchen, feed the cat, and make Nora’s breakfast to bring to daycare. This is 6:50, I am chopping up fruit while the cat crunches away, which I actually kind of enjoy. I finish this and head upstairs to choose outfits – another tiny pleasure. I dress myself (usually in the dark), then try to gently awaken Nora, dressing her as she sleeps/wakes up. This is easiest because she has no opinions on what she wants to wear when she’s still asleep, except sometimes socks are contentious. I pick her up and bring her downstairs and we snuggle on the couch for 5 minutes while she wakes up. This is my favorite part of my day. Then it’s time to bundle into winter coats, snowsuits, boots, hats, mitts, poured coffee, bags by the door, haul it all up to the car, stuff all the bits into the carseat, start the car, warm it up, drive to daycare, drop her off (unbundle), then until very recently I would have to make two or three separate stops on the way to work to pick up carpoolers. I then drive to work – enjoyable. I listen to the radio and drink coffee. This now represents my only real alone time of the day and this subtle change in my routine makes me feel free as a bird, sadly. Then I park in my new spot and briskly walk the 1km to work. Thus begins my second shift.

After the second shift is over (and it is a quiet shift, full of adult conversations and decent food), I bundle up, walk back to my parking spot, and start shift #3. Sometimes I have to run a quick errand on the way home to pick up something for dinner. I then pick up Nora at daycare at 5 – bundle her up, ask about the day, what was for lunch, did she eat her breakfast, light chat with the other parents, wait while she crawls to the car through the deep snow. Pick up the mail, drive home. We get home, unbundle, and I let the dog outside, feed the pets, get Nora a wee snack (especially if it was soup day at daycare), and try to re-light the fire in the woodstove. I have about 30 minutes of play time before I have to break to make dinner, which is usually a difficult break with Miss Nora. She hates it when I go make dinner. While I am making dinner (usually a full dinner, and I’m not afraid to brag here: my family is LUCKY), hubby gets home and takes over the playing-with. This is a real skill of his; he can dress and undress and redress stuffed animals until the cows come home. Then I call them to dinner and we eat together. Sometimes this is easy and great fun and Nora eats like a horse, and other nights she’s not into it. Sometimes she sits with her back to us and I get tense. We finish dinner and if it’s Monday (or Tuesday if I gave up and fed her Cheerios for breakfast on Tuesday morning), I usually have to bake something for the week’s daycare breakfasts – a loaf of some sort, usually banana bread or blueberry-oatmeal loaf (cut down the sugar, add flax and chia and other sneaky mom stuff). I can now almost do this in my sleep. Hubby cleans the kitchen. I lay on the couch and ‘play’ or just sort of lie nearby like a beached whale while Nora creates scenarios where various toy penguins have blended families and have pet cats and like to eat sparkly pompoms.

We do this, unless it is bath night, where I (or hubby if I can trick him) have to sit in the bathroom and watch Nora pour water over the heads of various toy animals for an hour. It’s tough to sit crunched up on the bathroom floor when you are 5 months pregnant and have just eaten dinner. So that’s why Nora only has two baths a week. Plus our water supply is kind of low and her skin dries out easily. She plays, she plays with me, she plays with daddy, until it’s time to brush teeth and go upstairs, where we put on jammies and she plays a bit more in bed. Sometimes we draw pictures, sometimes we read stories. Then I say “it’s time to turn out the light”, she goes pee one more time, has a little cup of water, and scampers back to bed where she snuggles next to me and falls asleep within 2 minutes. I love this time. Sometimes I am asleep before she is. If it’s before 10 p.m. it’s a good night, but sometimes it’s a bit past 10 p.m. and I’ve learned that that’s ok too. Everyone is different.

Hubby comes to bed at 12:30 or 1:00, and moves Nora to her own bed. Sometimes we have small conversations and I have to try to get to sleep again. And so ends my third shift.

So childless people might think that that all sounds horrible or bland. I remember when I was pregnant the first time, I had no idea how I would fit it all in. But you do. Somehow it works out. Things happen gradually. And you have no way of telling your childless coworkers that you didn’t really do anything of note last night, but man you laughed so hard when your daughter informed you that her baby dolly’s name is “Jeff,” and that you woke up this morning to her looming over you whispering “Mama. Mama. Rosie’s licking her butt.”  You can’t really explain how wonderful it is that the three-and-a-half-year-old ate more salmon at dinner than you did. How you and your 42-year-old husband and your daughter played the recorder, the keyboards, and a broken guitar for 2 hours the other night without going insane. How wonderful and creative and meaningful Pingu is even after seeing them all 48 times. How something as simple as Nora’s new haircut has made me feel like I have fallen in love all over again.

And so I nod and smile and ask about the movie and the dinner and the weekend away. And I know that while I am somewhat freaking out about having two kids, it will also all work out, as it does, and there’s just more adventure ahead, and that I wouldn’t trade places with anyone for anything in the world.

But I am totally taking tomorrow off and blaming it on lack of sleep.

*for the record, the last time I travelled for work, I was away for two nights and because of it, Nora peed the bed for two weeks. I am having a hard time seeing the value in it.