Two and Three-Quarters

It's funny, when the moons of young childhood align . . . history catches up to itself . . . some other profound way to describe that time when one child hits the same age another one was at some significant point. (That's a thing, right? Anyone know what I'm talking about?) It's been like that for the last six months with Claire.

We moved back to Nashville, into our current house, when Kate was 2 1/4. Six months later, when Kate was 2 3/4, Claire was born. So that period of time when Kate was 2 1/4 to 2 3/4 is easily bookended in my mind. I remember setting up the playroom, playing on the old swingset in the backyard, and pulling the baby clothes out of the attic, all with my firstborn by my side. My firstborn who felt SO BIG!

Compared to her own baby self, two-year-old Kate seemed totally articulate! She can answer questions and string four or five words together to make a coherent thought! Then Claire comes along and I think, "What? At two, most strangers can't understand what my kid is saying. Heck, I can't understand every word she says!" At two, Kate seemed like a "big kid" to me. Not a squishy little baby like my Clairy still is, right?

Nope. Exhibit A. Squishy two-year-old Kate.

It's all a matter of perspective. Of course Kate seemed big, compared to only herself at a younger age! Of course Claire seems baby-like in the shadow of a big sister who seems SO BIG now, until I see her walking down that kindergarten hallway past a line of fourth-graders! Thinking of this in light of that birth order book I wrote about the other day, it's no wonder kids grow up differently. I expect Kate to be more mature and more responsible because she's the oldest. When Claire is five, eight-year-old Kate will still be more mature and responsible, so I'll expect more from her than I do Claire, who will seem so little at only 5 1/2! (What pressure for a firstborn kid! I better watch that!)

So Claire is now the age Kate was when she became a big sister. Claire became a big sister to BGC almost a year ago, so while we hope BGC can return to her parents one day, Claire already fills what (we hope) will be her ultimate middle-child position. And it suits her. She's not the baby of the house, and she's not the biggest, but she's cool with that and pretty much goes with the flow.

I love seeing how different Kate and Claire are—not just because of their ages and the perception warp that inevitably happens—but simply their natures (and maybe some of that birth order stuff as well). Here's my Clairy at two and three quarters:

• So good-natured. She has typical two-year-old tantrums, of course, when she doesn't get what she wants or we don't understand what she's saying, but her default mood is pretty even-keeled, cheerful, and agreeable. "O-tay!" is a pretty typical response when we ask her to do something.
• Only wants to wear dresses, wants her hair in "Elsa braid, "Anna braids," or "ponytail like Mommy."
• Loves to play Memory and do jigsaw puzzles, and she's really good at both! I say she's my "little scientist," being very precise and perceptive. She either doesn't grasp the idea of competition, or doesn't care, because she will happily point out to other players where the matching Memory cards are on their turn. (Kate encourages this when it's her turn, and scolds Claire when it's mine!)
• Still Kate's little shadow. Those girls are inseparable, and Claire follows Kate's lead to a T. She often repeats Kate's words and actions with barely one second's delay. Can be persuaded to do almost anything if it's "like Kate."
• That said, she is starting to assert herself a little more against Kate's assumption that she can walk all over her doting sister! She'll tell Kate "Stop that right now!" and is quick to play the innocent-baby-sister card, screaming if Kate offends her in some way that may or may not be justified.
• Loves peanut butter, baked beans, and (her latest obsession) buttered bread. "I do it!" she says (compare that to Kate and the rice cake), and we just have to make her promise not to eat the margarine right out of the tub as she's spreading it on her bread. "O-tay..." she replies dejectedly.
• Making good progress on potty training. Won't do #2 on the potty, though. One day I asked her to please put a pull-up on before pooping, if she really couldn't bear to do it on a potty, and she did! 
• One might use the term "hot mess" for Claire. She's prone to looking a bit disheveled or not-perfectly-polished, but it's part of her charm. 

The Perfectionist Child

I was busy doing laundry, cleaning up the latest mess (or a much older one), and trying to tune out the screams of a deaf baby who, incidentally, wins the prize for the world's most offensive-to-the-ears cry. Kate wanted a snack. A rice cake with peanut butter. With my free hand, I got the peanut butter jar and bag of rice cakes out of the pantry and set them on the counter in front of her. I handed her a table knife and said, with as much confidence-boosting cheerfulness as I could muster, "Here you go! You can make it yourself!"

"I can't!" she wailed!

"Sure you can," I encouraged, as I went on into the laundry room to start another load.

I reemerged to see her smearing the peanut butter quite satisfactorily on the rice cake, all the while crying over and over, "I can't!"

"Sweetie, you're doing it. Look, you're doing it."

"No, I can't!" she cried, throwing the snack and knife down on the counter and running to bury herself in the couch cushions.

I let her be for a minute, while I fixed myself a rice cake and sat down at the kitchen table, just over a short wall from where Kate sat, barely visible behind the pile of cushions.

"It doesn't have to be perfect, Sweetie."

"Yes it does!"

"My peanut butter isn't perfectly smooth either, but it still tastes good."

"No! Everything you do is perfect, and everything I do is dumb!"

Whoa. How did this happen? I'd seen her get frustrated before, when struggling to hit a badminton birdie or having trouble writing a certain letter or number she has trouble with. I sensed that this was a byproduct of being a very smart, capable child, so easily taking to some things that she doesn't even want to try something she's not immediately good at. She's an emotional kid, struck with melancholy over things we don't even notice, and often can't explain. We've always tried to praise effort, not ability (though, as many proud parents know, that is a tough thing to do sometimes) and let her know we love her unconditionally, but this incident was like a lightning bolt to me as a mom.

A few months later, as I read a book I'd been wanting to check out for a while, it all started to make more sense. The book was The Birth Order Book, by psychologist Kevin Leman. I enjoyed seeing how I was a classic only child (with firstborn characteristics to the extreme), and it was fun seeing how various family members fit their birth order categories (fluid as they are, affected by things like spacing of kids, parenting style, gender of siblings, etc.) but the big payoff was the light this book shed on my family's maternal chain of functional firstborns—my mom (younger than her brother by ten years), me (only child), and Kate (actual firstborn). 

Leman's big emphasis for firstborns and onlies is their perfectionism. Apparently, this is because, while younger siblings have the example of older siblings to follow, firstborns have only their parents and other adults to look up to. So, rather than comparing their three-year-old abilities to six-year-old abilities, for example, they are comparing three-year-old or five-year-old or seven-year-old abilities to those of a twenty- or thirty-something. By comparison, they feel uncoordinated, less intelligent, less capable, and altogether imperfect. The rice cake incident was textbook.

"But my firstborn is so messy! You should see her room!" My mom would say this about me, and I could certainly say it about Kate. Leman makes clear that a child's (or adult's) perfectionism does not always manifest itself in neatness or cleanliness. The "discouraged perfectionist," I think he called it, is what results when the perfection we seek is not attainable (and for whom is it really attainable?).

I've put my priorities in order enough to say that family fun, a career, and time for scrapbooking and party-planning are much more important than housekeeping, but if I feel stressed out in the slightest, the first thing to set me off is the sea of stuff all over the floor! I can't find my keys and suddenly the dishtowel on the floor is symbolic of everything I can't control! I remember having terrible anxiety as a young teenager over not knowing how to pay taxes, buy a car, take out a mortgage, things that my parents obviously knew how to do with no trouble. I can identify with this "discouraged perfectionism," and I can see it in my own mom (who Dad and I used to say was "practically perfect in every way!") and I can see it in Kate. Difficulty with a task makes Kate feel like a total failure, and the slightest correction is a grievous offense.

So what's a parent to do? The key, it seems, is to let things go. For parents with their own perfectionist tendencies to deal with, this can be difficult. When a child dresses himself in red plaid with purple polka dots, the instinct (perhaps even for non-perfectionist parents) is to tell the child how mismatched he is and go redress him. Or maybe to even say "Awesome!" and then switch the little girl's hairbow to one that matches when she's not paying attention (not that I've ever done that). But affirming what the child can do without pointing out what he can't do will give him the confidence to try things he may not be perfect at right away.

And, as Leman instructs, "flaunt your imperfections." Show the child that, even as an adult, you don't do everything perfectly, and that that's okay. Who doesn't occasionally use a tablespoon of something when the recipe calls for just a teaspoon? Who doesn't accidentally stumble over the words in her kids' bedtime story (especially when she's exhausted and just wants to go to bed herself!)? Rather than just moving on, call attention to what you've done. Show them mistakes are just part of life, and nothing to be ashamed of.

So, as Kate prepares to head off to kindergarten next week, with a whole new set of expectations and assignments, here's what I'm doing to help empower my perfectionist child:

1. Not doing (or re-doing) everything myself. When she does her own hair in a ponytail, with visible tangles and bumps, I will not insist on pulling it out and doing it myself. This is hard for me, because I suffer from the constant assumption that people are judging me. (I kid you not.) So, if my child goes off to school looking messy, I fear that her teacher will think I'm a terrible mother. I have to get over that. Kate knows I will do her hair if she asks, but if she doesn't, I will let it be.

2. Setting her up for success. She'll be wearing uniform clothes to school, so I've put all the school-approved clothes in one drawer. She can dress herself in the morning without any input from me. I got her an alarm clock and showed her how to turn the alarm on and off. I wrote (and illustrated, for easy understanding) a list of the things she needs to do to get ready in the morning and for bed. She's already started following it, and feels proud to take care of herself without prodding from Mommy to do each little thing.

3. Affirming questions and "not knowing." As we prepare for kindergarten, Kate is concerned about not doing her schoolwork perfectly. Among the typical "what-ifs" about finding her classroom and getting lost in the school building, I'm seeing an emphasis on academic concerns already. "What if I don't understand the worksheet and everybody else does?" (Nevermind that in pre-K, she's been the worksheet queen. Nevermind, or  because of?) Seeing her fear of embarrassment over asking questions, I vow to affirm her in asking questions and admitting what she doesn't know. I read that Elie Wiesel's mother always asked him after school, "What questions did you ask today?" I'll have to try that. And let her know about my own questions and things I don't understand or need help with.

4. Letting her struggle. Kate was early in learning her letters, loves to write down words she knows (and words she doesn't know, transcribing pages of a book just for fun), and loves to identify words that she knows if she spots them on a sign. But as she gets closer to actual reading, I notice her anxiety about trying to read things she doesn't already know pretty well. She'll decline to read at bedtime, or to attempt the little poems and things in her Highlights "High Five" magazine. When she's reading, I need to wait as long as she needs, wait until she asks me, before jumping in with the correct word. When she's doing her homework, I need to offer only the help she asks for, refusing to do it for her or handhold her on every task.

In all these things, I will affirm her efforts and her enthusiasm. And I will affirm her kindness and compassion even more than I affirm her homework and hairdressing efforts. It's tough to parent a driven, strong-willed, perfectionist firstborn, but by being aware of my own perfectionism, I can empower her to do (and be happy with) her best.

Holly Jolly Sister Torture

Last night, I suggested to Kate that we put on our Christmas jammies and go out for a drive to look at Christmas lights. I admit, I had an ulterior motive in that I was a church widow last night (i.e. Matt had a couple meetings, so I was on my own for the whole evening) and hoped that the drive would lull Kate to sleep and make for an easy bedtime.

No such luck, but we did have fun. I built it up for Kate, saying "We're going to wear our jammies in the car. Isn't that CRAZY??!!" And she kept saying "it's CRAZY!" throughout the whole experience. I drove until long after the thrill had worn off, still hoping she would fall asleep, so we saw quite a few neighborhoods in our area. We found the Griswolds of south Davidson county, who must save all year just to pay their December electric bill. Man, that was a lot of lights.

Before we left, I wanted to take pics of the girls in their Christmas jammies. Kate loves to hold Claire (and hug and kiss her in aggressive, smothering fashion) but it always makes me nervous. Here's how last night's shoot went down:

"Hi Clairy-Beary! Let me hold you!"

"Look at the camera!"

 "Mommy! Claire's crying!"

"What do you mean, hold our bears in their Christmas jammies? Now I can't squeeze my sister within an inch of her life!"

"Okay, I guess this works. Whaddayaknow? She stopped crying!"

"Well that didn't last long. Don't cry, Claire!"

And since Kate's jammies were obscured by Claire, here's Santa Monkey in all its glory.

And since I know you were dying to see it, here's that crazy house! There's a street that goes right behind their house too, and the back was just as covered in lights and electric flotsam as the front! Maybe I'll take a pic of the back when I take Matt to see this phenomenon.

Big Sister

Claire is four days old, and we've been home since mid-afternoon Thursday, learning to navigate life as a family of four. I'm feeling good (very little pain/discomfort), and Claire is nursing well. This has been such a relief, as our first few days with Kate were extremely stressful due to her eating troubles. Claire still sleeps a vast majority of the time, and has made me nervous the couple times she's really resisted waking to eat, but I think her hunger sense really kicked in today, and she wakes on her own, eager to feed.

By far, the hardest part of our adjustment this time around has been helping Kate feel secure and loved.

She really seems to love her baby sister, though, so let me start with the excitement of their first meeting, when Matt's parents brought Kate to the hospital the day after Claire's birth.
Here's the video:

Kate, of course, wanted to hold the baby (after getting situated, this often lasts only a few seconds before Kate's ready to move on!)

 And she loves the Sister Bears, always trying to give Claire Claire's bear.

Since we've been home, Kate is often excited to see Claire, whom she refers to as "my sister," (much sweeter than "the baby," I think) and will try to hug and kiss her, which often seems to involve putting all her weight on Claire! She enjoys looking at her, touching her hand, and helping me by handing me a diaper, etc. She has been pretty understanding when I need to feed Claire, too.

So, there's no jealousy or animosity against the baby herself, but Kate still seems to fear losing my attention. From the moment we came home, she was very clingy with me (which I thought was interesting, since Matt had been away from her for a few days too, and she hadn't yet seen that the baby would require more of my time and attention than Matt's). She's wanted to be held a lot, hold my hand, cuddle, etc. She almost always fusses at bedtime when we end the chain of "one more book... I need water... lay down with me" requests, and we know we just have to let her scream, but it nearly killed me Thursday night to hear her crying specifically for me when I'd gone on to feed Claire.

The clinginess has gotten progressively better over the last couple days, though she's definitely still more emotional than usual: more likely to get upset, and getting sullen and crying real tears when upset (as opposed to getting whiny or mad, per usual). I imagine this will get better over time, and probably pretty quickly, too. At least she's not taking it out on the baby, and really does seem happy to have her sister here. See the difference between the above photo, where Kate is visibly anxious, and the one below, where she's beaming with pride? We asked her to hold Claire's hand. 

It was definitely good advice I've heard, to not worry about neglecting the baby and focus more on Kate. While it's tempting to hold and snuggle the teeny, sweet little bundle all day long, Claire doesn't care who's holding her at this point, or if she's snoozing on her own in the bouncer or pack and play, while Kate really needs extra care during this adjustment. So, I try to say "yes" as much as I can when she wants me to come play with her, or to help me cook, or whatnot. Kate and I went to the grocery together today, just the two of us, as we typically do on weekends, and it was good to have that time. ("Just us girls?" she asked, when we told her the plan for the day. She's in a big phase of declaring who's a boy and who's a girl, but I guess Claire doesn't count yet, even though Kate knows she's a girl.)

She also might be getting away with a little more than usual :0)

It's a dream come true to me to have two daughters. Two sisters. It blows my mind every time I look at a photo of us as a family of four. Wow. New and different, but oh so exciting.

Yes, She's Excited

Probably the number one question we get (after the obvious, "when are you due?") is "So, is Kate excited about getting a little sister?" And our usual response is, "kind of, to the extent she understands."

Though I've read that you really shouldn't bother telling a young child about a new baby until a month or so before it's born (since long periods of time are essentially meaningless to them), we told Kate right away and have seen the various stages of her understanding, or lack thereof.

• For a long time, she insisted she had a baby in her belly too. 
• After we got her a Big Sister book, she started to get the big/little, me/baby concept. 
• She went through a time of seeming frustrated when we would talk about Baby too much (watching my belly for movement, or even looking at an album of her baby pictures). 
• A nicer development was naming her baby doll "Sister" and involving the doll in reading stories and such.
• Only in the last month or so has she used Claire's name regularly, praying for "Baby Taire" and using "Baby Sister" and "Baby Claire" interchangeably. 

And now that the time is drawing near, just when I really worried that this long build-up would make the whole thing seem imaginary, like a real baby was never going to actually show up (pregnancy can sometimes feel that way to adults, too, I think!) she actually does seem interested and excited about what's coming.

She'll comment on how big my belly is, and is more willing to kiss or talk to the baby when I suggest it. She seems clear on the fact that Baby won't do much at first, but that, as the big sister, she can talk to Claire and teach her about things, and that Claire will love to watch her and think she's the coolest. Kate seems to understand that Baby is coming out of my belly soon and that then we can see her and hold her. I've explained that when Claire comes out, my boobies will make milk for her, just like they did for her. I even briefly mentioned the difference between nursing and pumping, but figured, "eh, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it." Tonight in the bathtub, we looked at my big belly and together urged Claire to come out. We told her how much fun it is out here and about all the fun things we'll do together once she's out, like take baths and go to the zoo.

Eager to get this party started, I ate spicy nachos tonight for dinner (the same ones we used to "smoke Kate out" when she was four days overdue) and we took a long walk. Kate played on her swingset when we got home and I walked brisk laps around the swingset, which seemed to annoy Kate.

"Stop, Mommy!" she said.
"I'm trying to get Baby Sister to come out," I said.
"Baby Claire's not coming out," she replied.
"She's not? When is she coming out?" I asked.
"Soon," Kate said.
"Soon like . . . before Trunk or Treat tomorrow night?"
"Yes."

So there you have it. Kate's official prediction is that Claire will be born sometime Wednesday. Good to know. And even better to know that, even if it's not Wednesday, she will be out "soon," whether that's tomorrow or next week sometime.

Sibling Gifts

It's technically Day 19 of the "31 Days of..." series, and I've managed to do 11 baby-related posts in that time. (This is #12.) You can see them all here.

Today I thought I'd share about the "sister gifts" I have planned. A lot of people arrange for big siblings to bring a gift for the new baby to the hospital, and—surprise!—the new baby has a gift there for the big sib. So, I'd been thinking about what my girls should give each other, and thought it would be nice if they were kind of a set that goes together.

We've never done the whole "Build-a-Bear" thing, and that seemed like a fun way for Kate to be more involved in the selection/creation of her gift for Baby Sister (whom she has finally started calling Baby Claire, by the way, or "Baby Tare," since her Cs often come out as Ts—Tookie Monster, etc.) So, my plan was for Kate to go make a bear for Claire, and then I would go back on my own and make one for Kate from Claire. I was nervous that Kate wouldn't "get" that it wasn't for her but for the baby and try to possess it, but I asked her several times in advance "do you want to go make a present for Baby Sister?" and she seemed enthusiastic, so off we went.

Despite my subtle urgings toward a more classic-looking brown or white bear, she chose the pink one—and as you'll see in the end, topped it off with a sparkly pink t-shirt. A little too girly-girl tweeny-bopper for my taste, but hey, she's two, and it's what she liked.

She picked out a heart for it, and we all pushed the pedal for the stuffing machine (even Claire got in the act, as you see!)

We all kissed the heart and Kate put it inside, then she picked out the little t-shirt for it. Here we are with our finished "ClaireBear," which is all boxed up and waiting to be brought to the hospital when Kate comes to meet her sister!

This was about ten days ago, and I still haven't gone back to make the "K-Bear" for Kate! I've been busy, but am definitely nervous about going into labor before I have a chance to do it! Also, I'm trying to decide how much to coordinate them. Should Kate's be pink with a different outfit, or maybe the matching blue bear with a pink dress? The brown and white bears weren't quite the same style, so now that Kate has set the tone, I feel like I need to follow it. Leave it to me to obsess over a stuffed bear!

Loving Two

It's definitely starting to sink in that Kate won't be our only child soon, and while I'm very excited about Claire's arrival, of course, it's making me a little sad. I feel like I want to hug Kate and never let go. I love laying next to her as she's going to bed and looking at each other face to face. She'll talk to me about things we did "yesterday" or about how she and I both have brown hair and eyes but Daddy's eyes are blue, and I'll sing our special lullaby or run my finger in a circle around her face like my dad did to me when I was little, and I'll have this irrational feeling wondering if we'll get to have moments like that once we've got two children.

Of course we will, I know. We'll take time to focus on each child and nurture those relationships separately, but there's still some strange feeling of loss as we gain something new and different. I remember in the first few days after bringing Kate home when she wasn't eating well and I was crying a lot, laying in bed by myself and seeing Charlotte, our cat, on the floor next to the bed. I suddenly felt like I hadn't seen her in days and like she'd been forgotten. I picked her up and cried, saying, "I miss you!" Though hormonal postpartum despondency is no reliable baseline for understanding or predicting emotions, I wonder if I'll have moments like that with Kate when I'm in a similar frame of mind a few weeks from now.

Matt has long teased me about being an only child, saying I don't understand how parents can love more than one child. Of course, once he became a parent, he shared that feeling that it seems all parents do--regardless of how many siblings they themselves have--that feeling of "how on earth could I love anyone else as much as I love this child?" I guess parents whose first children are multiples get it right away, but for most of us, I think the feeling is very common. The love one feels for one's child so far surpasses anything one has felt before that it seems impossible for that feeling to be replicated.

But I know it will. I just pray that when that feeling of "missing" Kate (or missing the one-on-one time we had) washes over me, I can channel it into some positive mommy-daughter time rather than a hormonal crying jag that causes her to stare at me uneasily (as happened the other day). Just like all those crazy-in-love parents before me, I have confidence that the love will grow and expand to include this newest member of our family.

Sibling Adjustment

This is the first of several "hmm... what's two kids gonna be like?" questions I want to toss out there.

How did your first child adjust to the birth of your second?

At first, I wasn't sure how much of this "baby" stuff Kate understood, beyond knowing the baby was in my belly and (according to her) also in her belly, since whatever Mommy does, she wants to do too.

Lately, I think she's starting to "get it" more and be appropriately concerned. She's kind of tired of hearing about it, and sometimes says "no baby!" when I'm talking about it with someone else. The I'm a Big Sister book she used to enjoy, she hasn't wanted to read lately. With the big changes lately of new house and new school, she's been kind of clingy lately, and I wonder how she'll adjust when another little person is getting a lot of my attention.

She's a pretty adaptable kid, and I imagine she'll be a loving big sister (though a very bossy one) once she gets used to it, but I don't want her to be traumatized in the short term!

So what are your tips for easing adjustment for the older child when baby comes on board? If you don't have firsthand experience with this, what did your mama always tell you about when you or your siblings were born?