on having a second...

Yep, we're talking child once again. Now if you have been with me from the beginning you will remember our first two chapters on having a second...

when I was considering it found here 

and when I was surprised by finding out that I was pregnant found here

Well... here we are on the other side.

I have two children. Crazy! and yet not as ridiculous as I had imagined.

When I was pregnant and freaking out at the idea of having two children a friend of mine told me not to worry that in her experience (she just had her second last April) things just sort of work themselves out. And amazingly enough I have found that is exactly what happens. That is not to say that life around here is easy or that our first is just fine sharing his parents attention but it is not at all how I thought it would be. Sure we still have temper tantrums and the terrible twos are still in full swing around here. There are many times when our first little boy will see me feeding the baby, pick up his glass which is filled to the brim with apple juice (note to self- stop filling his cup so full) and while looking right at me with a slightly defiant expression turn the glass over causing a rather spectacular wave of juice across our kitchen floor.

Jealous... um yes.

But then again there are those times when he is so sweet and you can see how much he already loves his little brother. He loves to kiss him and try and hold his hand. He is very concerned when the baby cries and runs to him to see what's wrong. When I tell him that the baby is hungry he goes and gets him a box of crackers which is sweet and funny at the same time. As observant as our little man is (ex. my hubby was playing with him one day and suddenly he started getting nervous and was pointing to his dad's hand saying Oh No. We looked down expecting to see a cut or bump... nothing. Finally on VERY close inspection we found the source of our child's worry was a tiny piece of dry skin by daddy's nail. Seriously the kid is a little ridiculous.) he still has not picked up on the rather obvious way that the baby eats, which is most certainly not out of a box.

And so we go on. Tackling one day and a time. In a strange way it is almost easier with two kids then with one. I think our little boy now has to be a little more independant because he now can't have our undivided attention anymore. Going out of the house is now a novelty so he is A LOT better. SO I think my friend was right there is no planning for another kid, but when the baby comes things just work out because they have to.

on nesting...

Last time around I did not nest. There was no need I had the baby's room ready like 3 months in advance our bags were packed early since my OB told us a month before my due date that it would be any day now since i was already dialating (to 1/2 an inch, I mean really I didn't know any better but she should have) so for the next month and a week at every appointment when she would say " I can't believe that your still here!" I felt completely justified in scowling at her and thinking mean thoughts. We were prepared for our first because I had nothing else to do all day long but sit around and prepare. Also i am not a cleaner, I never went into panic mode about the toilets not being cleaned when I brought my newborn baby home. He sure wasn't going to use the toilet so why did that matter? So I figured I would be a non-nester. Which was fine by me I didn't need to be scrambling around last minute vacumming the sofa cushions. I was happy to not have to freak out before having a baby.

But the other day I was at my OB's office and the week before she had checked me and nothing was happening, the nurse forgot that fact and got me ready to be checked again so my doctor did just for the heck of it and in a week's time I have dialated to a 2. With my first I entered the hospital when my water broke dialated to a 3.  This means that in all likelyhood this child will come sooner rather than later.

I went to target afterwards to grab some essentials before going to get my child from my mom's and suddenly it hit me, the need to nest. It was a little different thatn I expected, I still had no need to rush home and clean every surface in my house (much to my husband's dismay). But rather I had the need to grab every baby item in site and buy it. I stiffled the urge to empty the diaper isle of all of it's contents and instead circled aimlessly through the baby isles making a mental list of everything I needed to buy and do immediately to prepare for this child.

I thought of the clothes and blankets that had yet to be washed, where was I going to change the child, the changing pad is still in my first child's room, why did I have another child before the first was potty trained, should I buy another changing table?, does any home really need two changing tables? do I have enough diapers for baby #2 and 1, when was I going to be able to get to the store again? Should I stalk up on all diaper sizes just in case? And back to the diaper isle I went to contemplate this question and again resist the urge to purchase every diaper available as I did not know where I would put them all in our house. I needed to know how many outfits in each size I have for this little guy. What if he doesn't have enough clothes? Should I buy more? What sizes does he need? Should I buy them all just in case? We never got him a coming home outfit! How sad is that?! We have nothing special that is just his to bring him home in! And thus my mental and emotional breakdown began in the middle of target.

I thought my brain was going to explode from the mass of emotions and thoughts that flooded in in that instant. So I did what any women would do. I swung by the half off Christmas candy and picked up a bag of assorted chocolate candy that I proceeded to devore on my way home. Chocolate had an amazing power to soothe in a moment of crisis. I went home laundered every article of clothing in sight, counted diapers, made lists, and organized my life. I have become a mommy possesed with the need to clean and organize, but only baby items (again much to my husbands dismay.)

And so begins my time as a nester.

on things you should know about me....

My friend Ashley is having a link party all about the random things you didn't know about your friends. SO here we go...

 I LOVE coloring with crayons and playing with play dough, I am really 3 years old at heart. In fact to this day every time I see one of those boxes of 120 crayons I want to buy one for myself.

I had gallbladder surgery when my baby was 2 months old and it was the most physically painful experience of my life and yes, worse than birthing a baby a mere 2 months before.

 I like eating corn with my pasta, and not just when I am pregnant, this is something that my husband finds disgusting.

 I am the only girl in my immediate family so I one of my favorite things is getting together with my cousins. We all cram into the kitchen and it's loud and crazy and we usually get very silly.

I can't open my eyes under water, it creeps me out.

I love running around barefoot, and if it were up to me I would never wear shoes again.

 I do dumb things and accidentally hurt myself. I have sprained my thumb by telling a story and pretending to punch someone and actually accidentally punching a door. I broke my wrist jumping out of a tree. I have sprained my wrist jumping through a window between our living room and den the day we closed on our new house because I was so excited ( and yeah I was 25 at the time). And I sprained my ankle by standing on a chair to kill a spider and accidentally stepping off the edge.

Growing up I was scared to death of all the big rides at Disneyland. My mom would promise me anything in the park if I would go on Splash Mountain once and I refused. I didn't get over my fear of fast rides until I was like 14 and my cousins took me to Magic Mountain, my first roller coaster ever was Goliath, I thought I was going to die on that ride but in the end it cured me.

When I was younger I wanted dark brown, thick curly hair. Luckily I never went through with that plan and to this day I have never colored my hair.

My husband was my first kiss, in fact he is the only guy I have ever kissed.

When I was pregnant with my first child I kicked a whole in our apartment wall with my barefoot because I got mad at my mixer. Now lest you think I am also a ridiculously strong pregnant women you should know that that apartment was built when the earth was created so the walls were pretty thin, but still. There have not been any casualties so far this pregnancy.

I am directionally challenged. I can't tell you which way is North or South and I need a play by play of directions to get any where new.

I have only had one very best friend, she was more of a sister than a best friend really. Her name was Allie, and I rarely talk about her.

I love when my child naps but I often get very bored and find myself refreshing my facebook home page over and over hoping that someone will post something interesting that they are doing so I can live through them for a moment.

on loving it...

So last night my husband and I went out on a date. We are both sick but seriously needed some alone time after a long holiday week in which our child freaked out at both of the family parties that we attended. As in full blown temper tantrums every few minutes for a solid hour.

 My cousin suggested that he might be overstimulated and just not able to handle it. Which I think is exactly right. There were A LOT of people at both parties, like 25-30 and a lot of kids running around. So I do think it was just too much for my very active child who wants to be a part of everything to handle. But it's the holidays and families get together in large groups, there is really nothing that we can do about that so all in all my husband and I were very frustrated by our child's behavior and extremely embarrassed that the other parents could keep there 2-4 children under control and while our one child was melting into a pile of mush everytime someone said hello to him.

Especially since as soon as we got him home he turned into this totally different child. He was suddenly all loving and wanted to be held and sit quietly or play by himself and all traces of the flailing, screaming, hysterical child were gone. So while we understand that he has issues with large groups of people, what are we supposed to do about it? Especially since this is only the beginning of the holidays and there are MANY more parties that we will be attending, which frankly makes us wish that Christmas was over.

Plus the night before we had attempted the mall with the child and finally gave up after the boy protested LOUDLY to our every attempt at shopping. We even tried to bribe him with a chocolate chip cookie (and yes I am THAT mother who has resorted to bribes to get some peace in the store, dum dum lollipops are my best friend at the moment), but instead he decided to chew the cookie until it was the consistancy of glue and then smear all over his father's khaki sweatshirt (it should be fun getting that stain out). What child won't sit nicely in a stroller and eat a cookie? I will tell you... it's my kid.

So basically we needed a break.

As we were driving we started talking about the new baby and our hopes that he will be calm and easy going. I have hopes that he will be as he it is a lot easier to share my body with him than with our first. I am now 6 weeks away from my due date (Crazy I know!) and I can probably count on one hand the number of times that he has kicked me hard. This child is more into floating and wiggling he doesn't attempt to break free from the confinds of my stomache like my first did. So I was telling my husband that I am taking this as a good sign that he will be a calm little boy. To which my husband replied "Come what may."  It was his way of telling me not to get my hopes up and that we would deal with whatever came our way.

This reminded me of a talk from conference that I loved but the title was not just "Come what may" it was "Come what may and love it." And that's something that I need to work on. I sometimes get so caught up in how difficult my little boy is and I find myself wishing for him to grow out of it or getting frusturated and upset when he makes shopping trips, parties or my day hard. And I am not very good at loving it.  I think we all do this, we think "well... come what may." Like it's a bad thing, and we are annoyed at what life hands us. And we forget to love it. We concentrate so much on the negative side of any situation, and we focus on enduring it and not enjoying it.

I have a very active child. This is not something new. He is not one to sit quietly and watch life go by. He wants to get out and experience it, and enjoy it. And I need to be more like him. I need to just enjoy it. To not get worried when things don't go how I would like, or hung up on all the things that I have to do. I also need to remember that my little boy is 2, and shopping is not at all interesting when you are 2 but unraveling an entire roll of toilet paper apparently is. He is such a smart little guy and he understands so much that I often think that he is older than he is and expect him to act older too. Which isn't fair to him at all. He's just a little boy and I need to take more time let him be a little boy and enjoy that fact.

on getting to know my baby...

Being pregnant is an amazing thing. Sure your hormones are out of control at times and you feel like an 80 year old women complaining about your aches and pains. But seriously the downsides do not even compare to the amazing experience of having a child grow inside of you. And it's something that I think I have been taking for granted.

 My husband will ask me all the time about the baby and if he is moving or what he's doing or how this pregnancy compares to the last one. It made me think that it must be very odd to be a father. You must feel so left out during those 9 months. As a mother you get to know what your baby likes and does not like right from the start, you get to feel them move and be assured that they are ok, you know where the like to sleep and when, you get little hints into their personality everyday which helps you "get to know" your baby, and most of all you get to carry the baby around everywhere you go to protect them and keep them safe.

I think I am noticing all these things even more with this pregnancy than with the last. With the first you have nothing else to compare it to so you figure that being pregnant is kind of standard. But I am noticing how my first little guy's personality was defined when I was pregnant and is already so much different than this one. 

With the first... well he was CRAZY right from the start. i remember telling a friend when I was almost 5 months pregnant that at any point in the day if I stopped what I was doing and concentrated I could feel the baby move. Now I am starting to realize that that was very unusual. You usually have just started feeling the baby kick around that time and the kicks are very soft and fairly rare. But my little guy was VERY active a trait that has definately stuck with him. By the time I was this far along last time (8 months) I was being kicked to death all day and night. Something that if you know my little boy now is not so surprising.

 He was also a burrower (is that even a word?) from the start. He liked to see how much of his little body he could wiggle underneath my rib cage, which was a fairly painful experience for me. I would often wake up gasping for breath, unable to bend my body because I had this little ball of child wedged into my ribs. His favorite way to sleep was with his head in my ribs and his little bum sticking up. I would get up in the morning and have this lump sticking up right below my ribs where his little bum was. And now when he sleeps he lays on his belly in a little ball with his bum sticking up in the air.

This second little guy is much more mellow, which gives me hope that he will be a calm baby too. Where as my first seemed to always be testing the limits of his confined space this one is more content to just float. He kicks often enough so that I am assured that he is doing ok but certainly not at the same rate or intensity as his brother. He kicks more actively after I eat like his brother but I also notice that he kicks me when he is hungry too. Which is probably the result of being a second child, when I was pregnant with the first I didn't have someone else to take care of so eating regularly was easier. Now it' almost like he is saying "hey mom remember me? I'm hungry too!"

As far as sleeping habits, this one has so far blessedly stayed away from my rib cage! He prefers something that I have begun to refer to as his bowling ball impression. He will go completely limp and his whole body weight will lay at the bottom of my stomache making it feel like I have a bowling ball strapped to my stomache. It is really an interesting sensation because one minute he's peacefully floating along and then the next I feel like he might drop right out onto the floor.

It is pretty cool be able to tell already how different my little boys will be.

on leaving comments...

First off I would like to say that I LOVE comments!

I love to hear from you and to find out that you can relate to my crazy life. I am more than happy to have you link this blog on your own or share a story that I have written.

 I do ask however that you not use my family's or my name.

I know this sound a little obsessive but I have run into my fair share of wierdos on the internet and I would rather that they not know who I am.

I know that it's hard, I slip ALL the time when I am writting but if you could just double check before you press post I would be very grateful!

on how things are...

( I wrote this post a back in March, and forgot about it until I looked through my drafts, funny how motherhood makes you sentimental at the oddest of times)

We went to Disneyland this last Saturday as a family. I realized that was our first little "vacation" with just the three of us, usually my parent's or my husbands parents take us places, but this time it was just us. And it was an amazingly stress free and fun day. This was my little guy's 3rd trip to Disneyland in less than a year, but this time was different. Since it was only us we didn't have to worry about holding up the group while we changed a diaper, or let our little guy run off some energy. We went at our own pace, went on only kid friendly rides and had a nice relaxing day. And throughout the day I kept on thinking "Wow, this really feels like a family trip." Not like before when you were just hauling around a baby, trying to enjoy a trip, while attempting to fit your day around his normal schedule. But now he is older and I have mellowed out a lot and so we just went with it and if he napped, he napped and if not he was fine to run around and explore.

At the end of the night we went on Pirates of the Caribbean. My little man does not fall sleep on me any more, he has in fact vehemently refused to do so for the last 9 months. It is because he is a fighter he has never in his entire 18 months of life just drifted peacefully off to sleep in my arms. He always has put up fight squirming and protesting until he finally just collapsed from exhaustion. And now that he is older it is beneath him to be rocked or cuddled to sleep. He is far too independent for that and insists upon doing it himself.

Well it had been a long day, he had taken a nap in the stroller but he was quickly running out of steam. At this point he was either going to be very grumpy or become completely delirious. We went on the ride expecting to make it the last one and then have him fall sleep in the stroller on the way to the car. However, the ride made him a little nervous so he hung onto me and buried his face in my chest and the next thing I knew he was out cold. I think he is normally just so high strung that he doesn't sit still long enough to relax and drop off but since he was scared his eyes were already closed and he just fell asleep. It was so funny.

I didn't have the heart to put him back in his stroller because 1. he NEVER lets me hold him while he sleeps and 2. he was still clinging to me for comfort. So I carried him all the way out of the park and to my car. When we reached main street I was pretty sure that my back was about to snap right in half from the strain being placed on it but I ignored it.

That march to my car cradling my baby made me reflective of the years of mothering that I have ahead of me. The whole process is hard and many times extremely painful. You spend your life attempting to navigate your child through this crazy world, trying to hold and protect them and make them feel safe. Many times you feel like you wont make it, like the burdens placed on you are too hard. But then you look down at your little boy with his hands still clinging to your shirt seeking comfort and you give it, even though you feel that you have nothing left to give. And you do it because you love them more than anything.

The sad thing is that at the end of my journey I got to tuck my baby safely into his bed, but at the end of mothering we have to let them leave. You spend 18+ years giving them your entire life and then your expected to just let go. Especially boys. They become men. There will come a time when they wont want to be held and kissed and sheltered. They will want to move on and it's our job to let them. I thought of this as I walked through the park my arms screaming in protest.

 And then there was no way I was going to put him down. I was going to cuddle him to my chest and enjoy the fact that I could make him feel safe, that I could still protect him and take care of him and all I had to do was smile and pretend that it wasn't killing me. Because someday soon, sooner than I expect I will have to let him go, I will have to let someone else take care of him and all I will be able to do is smile and pretend that it's not killing me.