Friday, February 26, 2016

my second baby

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this is my girl, evienne (this is not her birth announcement;). she is really wonderful. i think i may be trying to make up for the fact that i took far far fewer photos of her first year of life than i did of wilder's, by taking a bajillion photos of her now. but i keep thinking about how short this baby stage is. i've been thinking it the entire time she's been alive. with wilder, it felt in the beginning like he'd be a baby forever. i had almost zero experience with children before him. i nanny-ed briefly for a few months in my mid-twenties, and i babysat a few times for my niece and nephew when i was sixteen, but that basically was my extent of experience with children. growing up, i really had zero interest in kids. even my (younger!) brother held more babies than i did. and we had a lot of younger cousins growing up, so it's not like there was a short supply around us. i just never really paid attention to them. my mom even said that i ignored my brother for the first two years of his life! good thing you don't have to hand in a resume to have a baby! (which is weird right? maybe you should...)

but anyways, all during wilder's first year (or two) of life, everything was so big and mysterious to me. j had changed more diapers than i had! i had no idea about things like that some babies have to be trained to nap — they won't just fall asleep on their own, anywhere, whenever they are tired. or how to feed him. oh gosh, feeding wilder solids was just about the most stressful thing ever. i just couldn't comprehend which foods were liable to make him choke and which were okay, so i probably overdid it on the purees. i was so busy (and exhausted) with trying to get him to sleep and eat well, that i didn't realize how quickly he was growing. and believe me, i took photos of him every single day.

i didn't even really know the difference between a baby and a toddler. like, how much their little personalities develop and grow. or how much more you will worry about them when they are mobile and can get into anything. or the stress of suddenly realizing i should be teaching him to talk (i shouldn't have stressed. he talked early just fine.). and then the stress of realizing that he was not going to be as content with just rolling around in a blanket on the floor, haha! every new hurdle felt like it came moments after the last, so that there never seemed to be a chance for me to catch my breath. and in between all that, he grew up into a walking, talking, negotiating toddler!

i'm not saying i missed it. i was there for it. i documented him obsessively. i was one hundred percent savoring it (most of the time;). but still, i didn't realize how fast that baby stage would go. when evie came along, i constantly felt my attention divided between my two babies, unlike the first time when i could just dote on wilder all day long. that was hard. but, the anxiety i had with wilder was less, and i have also been more aware of just how short the baby stage is. and how precious. it might sound horrible to say but once you have a toddler, you realize how much easier babies actually are. once they are not your first baby;). maybe evie is actually the easiest baby i will ever have!

this is also going to sound insane but i've been doing this thing where i pretend that i have three kids, but maybe for the day or whatever, i only have to deal with two of them (i guess the other is in school?). basically i psyche myself out so that suddenly two seems really easy! a breeze! take two kids to the mall across town? sure! take two kids to Costco? anytime! take two kids to the park even though it's kinda cold and maybe a little muddy out? no problem! two kids? i can do this! (side note: don't try this at home until you've made it past the first year, or for at least the first three months. until then, two kids is not less than three, it's TWO. and it's just plain hard.) okay, yeah, that does sound a little insane, but anyways, it works! try it! because i don't know if i will have more kids, but if i do, i know i will look back on this time and be like it was so much easier! i should have done...when i only had two! i remember when my cousin had her second baby and i had just had wilder and she told me "go shopping and do fun things now while you only have one." i didn't take her advice because one felt really monumental to me, but now i totally get what she was saying. and i'm sure now that she has three, she'd tell me the same thing again. ;)

anyways, back to my point.

my point is, i'm soaking up these baby stages. and i want to take as many pictures as i can before she starts walking all the time or talking. we are so close to those stages, i can tell. but not yet. not yet.

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1 comment:

  1. Beautiful pictures of you and your baby girl! I love seeing you in the pictures. It's fun to read and get insight to your experiences! Love to you!

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