I was looking at some early crayon drawings that Isaiah and I did together in the summer before Ezra was born. It was difficult to get him interested in coloring then, and I was thinking about how Ezra will probably take to it quickly because he'll be able to watch his big brother color.
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| Buddies! |
Then the thought hit me: We will never again have our
first child.
That thought kind of makes me happy.
The first child is great. I mean, really, really incredible. You learn you can love a human being waaaay more than you ever thought possible. You learn what it means to actually live selflessly. You learn you don't actually need 7-8 hours of sleep a night to function. You learn baby poop really isn't that scary....
But it's also hard. Really, really hard. You forget what it's like to eat your supper warm. You drag through more days than you care to on 3-4 hours of sleep. You're left to learn how to take care of a helpless human being that is solely dependent on your care for survival. You also learn you have no CLUE what to do with your first child in like ten zillion different situations. I remember
desperately wishing these babies came with a personalized manual for operation.
For instance: During Isaiah's 'witching hour', which was actually intense crying from 5-9 pm for 2-3 weeks (oh, how we would have been glad for just one hour!), Andrew and I would take turns pouring over baby books, Google search, and baby blogs while the other one held our crying child, trying to figure out some way --
any way--to help him stop crying. Those days felt like an eternity. BUT, with our second child, we had the sweet assurance that YES, it is a phase, YES, it will pass, and YES, we will survive. Combine that knowledge along with our hard-won parenting experience, and we somehow managed to skirt around Ezra's short-lived 'witching hour' with a whole lot more grace and finesse.
For instance #2: Feeding Isaiah solids was incredibly intimidating to me. As in, paralyzed-into-inactivity intimidating. (That was alot of 'in's in one sentence, by the way.) It's a small miracle he even got to eat some solids before he was like 10 months old.
Ezra? Meh...bake some fruit or veggies in my super toaster oven, whip them up in the blender, and presto! Give that kid some food! One day I decided to start with Ezra's first food and just did it. No agonizing over what food should be first, or how much to give, or what consistency to make it, etc. etc. It was quick and--dare I say it?--
easy. And even kind of fun.
Isaiah's first food--instant baby brown rice cereal. Ezra's first food - avocado. I actually don't think that sweet son #2 is going to ever see a bowl of rice cereal in front of him, and that's just fine with me. I have learned enough with my first child that we will simply forge ahead into the exciting world of whole foods and flavorful combinations with my second child. I can relax because I now have confidence that there is not one 'right' way to start solid foods--just as there is never one 'right' way in a host of other child-rearing decisions that parents must make.
Many of the decisions I poured over with Isaiah now come semi-easily with Ezra. A surprising amount of information got lost in the sleep-deprived newborn months of Isaiah, but usually a little refresher is all it takes to make some kind of decision. And without so much stress of
"What if I get it wrong?". Because though we definitely screw it up sometimes, these babies of ours are resilient. :)
Resilient, wonderful, incredibly precious, and so totally worth it.
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| a full lap! |
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| Check out my two bottom teeth! |
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| Ezra rocking a cap |
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| Isaiah and Andrew making Saturday morning pancakes |
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| Snowman building |
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| Tummy time on Daddy's legs |
Our friend Emilee took a few shots of our family for Easter. They were great!
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| Brotherly love |
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| I love Ezra's expression here! "mischievous little brother" |
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| The Dusing family, Easter 2014 |
