Back in October 2008, our family welcomed our second baby girl with great joy and excitement. Since that time, I have striven for – and struggled to provide – a simple, happy home, a place where my family feels safe and at peace, a place where order and calm are the norm, a place where creativity and imagination are nurtured, a place where relationships flourish.
Truth is, I’ve had a heck of time with it. I’ve not met my goal to my satisfaction at all. Post-partum emotions, the usual winter blahs, and the huge transition from one child to two have kind of messed with me. These last few months have been great, wonderful, fulfilling – and sometimes very, very difficult. But the goal is too important to give up. So I continue to try.
And I decided to write about it.
i really hope you will keep us all posted on how things are going with the addition of another child. my hubbie wants #2 and i am still trying to get my life back in order from #1…and she is 17 months old.
Christine – I certainly will. I will say that going from one child to two was a bigger adjustment for us than going from no children to one child. Every family is different, though, and I know some people who seem to have had little trouble with the one to two transition. Our second child is also more challenging as an infant than our first was – she’s louder, doesn’t sleep as well, and just isn’t as easy-going. At the same time, it’s amazing and beautiful to see her personality emerging, and to see how different she is from her sister, even as they are raised in the same home with the same parents. What I’m really looking forward to is the time when they will really be able to play together.
As an aside: our oldest was about 17 months when we started seriously planning for #2, and they ended up being 38 months apart in age, which made for a totally different dynamic than we were imagining when we first started planning for #2.
October what? Elspeth was born on 10/9.
My daughter was born 10/8 – how fun, birthdays just a day apart! (+ one year, it sounds like. Elspeth was born in 2007, right?)