Different, But The Same

In less than three weeks I'll have two boys. If I could have chosen my family I would have picked to have 2 boys and then a girl. So things are looking good from where I stand!

It was an exciting day when I realized that having two boys close in age means that dressing them alike is not only possible, but totally doable! I mean, look how cute these outfits look-- and there's not even any cute blonde boys in them yet!



But Terry and I have realized that thinking of Micah and Caleb as two of the same can only lead to bad things.

When I was pregnant with Micah I got some very good advice. A woman I hardly knew told me that if I listened too much to what other people told me I should do, that it would interfere with really learning what my own child needed. She said listening to stories of what friends' children went through could be dangerous if it made me stop really paying attention to my own child.

That's hard to get across in writing. Let's see if I can elaborate...

For example, trying what other parents say worked for their kids might just make your own parenting experience harder. After all, we aren't all parenting the same child. We shouldn't all use the same techniques.

This worked for Terry and I. We knew what to expect from our baby developmentally because we both stayed a month ahead in our What To Expect The First Year Book. So when a problem arose with Micah that wasn't already explained in the book as a developmental milestone, we set about playing detective to discover what Micah was really trying to tell us.

We both know, though, that this is going to be extremely hard to do with Caleb. It's going to be difficult to see him as a whole new person whose needs are in many ways very different from Micah's. I can foresee us settling into a routine of "when Micah had that problem, we solved it by doing such and such. So Caleb must need the same thing."

We're in toddler mode full force right now. It's going to be difficult to adapt to a new baby with a whole new personality and new demands while keeping up with what Micah needs.

I'm a firm believer that what's fair to one kid isn't fair to another. What's expected of one kid, shouldn't be expected of another. Different children have different love languages just like us adults (Do you know your love language? Mine is split equally between Words of Affirmation and Acts of Service. Terry's is Acts of Service. And both of us rank gifts as our low. I've heard there's a new book on children's love languages. Gonna have to look into that...)

If I've learned anything from pregnancy brain it's that forming complete sentences in the third trimester can be a doozy! So forgive me if none of what I've written makes any sense. I wanted to get my thoughts out before Caleb was born so I could read this later and check myself to make sure I'm not trying to fit Caleb into a "Micah mold."

It's all these reasons I've listed that make me more nervous about having a second baby than I was with the first. (Which goes hand in hand with subsequent pregnancys also being more difficult! I just learned that women's muscles are weaker with each pregnancy making it harder to carry your 7 pounder around. Who knew? I figured it get easier!)