Letters to our Children - March

Last Month's Letter

Link to the next in the circle.

March 12, 2015

Where did the month go? Last month I said I was sure Liora would be walking. Guess what, she's not. But now she takes about 5 steps, then starts laughing and plops down.

I thought my topic for this letter would be "The same, but different."

I think it's natural that when you have a 2nd child, you often play the compare & contrast game. I think having the 2nd is an eye-opener that not all children are the same as your 1st. The 2 kids have the same parents, live in the same environment, yet you can already see at their young ages differences.

The game started with the pregnancy. The first one I got pregnant the first month, so I expected that with the 2nd. It was the 2nd month. What was the same was that I never threw up, but had about a month of a continuous naseated feeling.

I gained twice as much the first time around and needed to visit the bathroom ALL THE TIME, but with the 2nd I kept waiting for that phase and it never came. Yay! I had a hard time sleeping with the first, but the 2nd time around, I slept great, however, everything seemed to take much more effort. Was it having a toddler running around zapping all the energy? Could be.

With Mateo I went to the hospital the day after my due date. With Liora I had to be induced at what the doctor figured was 9 days overdue. If it based on an online calculator, I was 42 weeks. That was a big lesson for me! I know this will sound silly, but I always thought when people went that far overdue, they had just miscalculated...now I know, babies come (or don't ?!) when they want.

My recovery was much better with my daughter, but the homelife adjustment was much harder. I actually still feel like I'm not totally adjusted. Hard to know which ones' needs are the more important ones at a given moment.

Both babies nursed like pros already in the hospital and I don't think every dropped beneath their birth weight, but Mateo started taking a bottle (pumped milk) at 6 weeks and Liora NEVER did. Both loved eating real food, but one ate earlier than another.

Liora slept through the night a few months earlier, but needed to drink much more in the day.

Some differences I attribute to the boy/girl discussion. Mateo crawled and walked earlier, but Liora seems to be speaking earlier and copying lots of sounds and actions earlier.

BOTH kids love attention and try to get it in their own ways and both are easier for other people than for mommy and behave nicely for others.

One area I am hoping for a difference is that Liora is potty trained earlier! She never had a pacifier like her brother, so dealing with her thumb sucking may be something we have to address in a few years.

Differences and similarities...always paying attention to them.