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In my head, I’ve been in my early 20s since 2000.  Even though the mirror tells me otherwise, I still think of myself as being basically the same as I was when I was fresh out of college and super skinny – minus the penchant for barhopping.

But lately I’ve come to realize that maybe I need to move my mental clock up about a decade and stick with the early 30s, because I just don’t think the same way as my younger self.  When I was in my early 20s, I could identify better with teenagers than with older adults, because I was fresh out of the teen years myself. In my first couple of years at my local newspaper, when my friend would tell a story about her teenaged daughters, I almost always took the side of the daughters because I knew where they were coming from.

I don’t think I’m like that anymore.

A couple of weeks ago, I was driving with my kids on a street where the speed limit is 45 mph, but the average car is going 50.  There was a group of kids on the right side of the road, aged 15 or so, watching the road.  And as several cars approached, one of the girls ran across the street.

The thing was, she’d had plenty of time to cross well before the cars got near, but she chose to wait until they were dangerously close to bolt out into traffic, and she caused several cars to slam on their brakes.  One was so close to hitting her that it had to swerve, and there was actual smoke coming from the friction of that car’s tires on the road.  That girl could have died, and I’m not exaggerating at all.

She made it to the median and stood there laughing, while all of her dipshit friends cheered from the side of the road.

There was never an age that I would have condoned that behavior – I would always have considered that girl to be an idiot. But the reasons were different. (Although I may have understood how the presence of her peers made her act that way.)

When I was younger, I would have been angry with that girl for risking her life and her future.  How could she risk giving up the rest of her life?  Didn’t she want to grow up and have a career and a family?  Didn’t she want to see how it all turned out?

Today, while I still think those things, it goes a lot farther.  I’m angry with her for risking her life, but I’m also angry with her for not considering the family and friends who would miss her.   What if she had died?  How could she do that to her family?  HOW COULD SHE DO THAT TO HER MOTHER?

As I drove away from that crowd of cheering teenagers, I was literally shaking with anger at that child.  I wanted so badly to pull over and lecture her, as if the ranting of a 31-year-old stranger would cause her to see how foolish she was.  I was so upset that Kaylee asked me repeatedly from the back seat if I was ok.  I was upset because I wanted that girl to understand that she’s so important in someone’s life, and she shouldn’t be risking that just because her friends think it’s funny.  And I was upset because I knew she was too young to understand that.

I don’t know whether that makes me a mom or an adult, but it definitely makes me feel older.  I guess that’s ok.  My 30s aren’t so bad.

Some of you may remember Sam Winchester, the life-size tiger stuffed animal that Kaylee inherited and then came to love a little over a year ago.

Well, I’m an asshole, and I donated Sam to Goodwill about a month ago.  In our old house, Sam could sit up on a plant shelf in Kaylee’s room, totally out of the way.  He gave the illusion that he was watching over my daughter, and plus, who doesn’t like tigers?  But once we moved, there was no convenient place to put him anymore.  We eventually just dropped him in the middle of Kaylee’s bedroom floor and left him there, free to ambush us when we came to check on her in the middle of the night.  It was not a good spot for a tiger.

So one day in January, I left the kids with my parents and I sorted through Kaylee’s toys looking for things to donate.  Mostly I stuck with toys she doesn’t play with, but Sam was the big exception.  I just knew she was going to throw a fit when she saw that he was gone, but I couldn’t stand having him around anymore either.

But then the weirdest thing happened.  Kaylee came home from Gram and Papa’s house, and she didn’t say a thing when she went into her newly Sam-less room.  And she continued to not notice, to the point that I thought I’d totally gotten away with it.

Until, of course, this morning.

Out of nowhere, Kaylee came into our room first thing this morning and said, “Where’s my big tiger?”

Both Rob and I paused for a long time, not saying anything.  Maybe she’ll just drop the subject, I thought.  But she persisted.

I guess I wasn’t thinking clearly, being that it was the crack of 8:30, but I said, “Your tiger went to live at the zoo.”

Hey, it sounded much better than, “Mommy gave your tiger away when you weren’t looking.”

But what I wasn’t considering was this: Kaylee gets to go to the zoo all the time.  We have a family membership, so the zoo is like her second home in the summertime.  Naturally, she thinks we’ll be able to visit Sam whenever we want.

So she said, “Oh, let’s go to the zoo!  We’ll feed the giraffes and get my tiger!”

Advice to other parents in the same situation: The tiger went to live IN THE JUNGLE.

Again, we thought that we could just let it go and she’d forget about it.  She gets all sorts of crazy ideas in her head all the time, so she wouldn’t be too sad if this one didn’t come to pass.  So our strategy for the morning was to make no sudden movements, and make no mention of the tiger.

This worked fairly well for a while.  It seemed to slip her mind, and she happily busied herself eating breakfast and watching Sesame Street.

Every morning before Rob leaves for work, he makes sure to give Kaylee a hug and a kiss, and this morning required him to kneel down in front of the TV, where Kaylee was studying Elmo and Abby’s knight costumes.  By this time, we believed we were in the clear.

Suddenly, with no warning, Jake Jabs appeared on the television screen, sitting next to a real live tiger.  “Tiger!” Kaylee shouted.  Then the screen showed a child sitting next to the same goddamn stuffed tiger that I just gave away.  “It’s my tiger!  We can go to the store and get him!  And we’ll get my bed with the pink ladder!”

Jake Jabs is officially on my shit list.  Especially because I couldn’t figure out how he managed to use his evil powers to infiltrate Sesame Street, which is usually aired without commercials.  (It turns out Kaylee must have hit a button on the cable box and changed the channel.  That, or Jake Jabs did it with his mind.)

I have a long summer ahead of me.

I was about 1,200 words into writing a post about my family’s sleeping habits when I realized that I can pretty much sum up the whole thing in nine words: I am sleepy because I have a newborn baby.

So why don’t you pretend you just read a long and hilarious post detailing the miseries of waking up multiple times every night to be screamed at by a tiny little person who doesn’t even have the decency to turn his head away from your shirt before he throws up.

Done?  Ok.  Let’s concentrate on this post now.

I have recently learned that I’ve been underestimating my daughter.  I keep thinking she’s incapable of remembering anything that happened more than a week or two ago, because nobody remembers the shit that happened when they were two, right?  In short, I still think of her as a baby, even though she’s constantly reminding me that she’s not a baby, she’s a BIG SISTER.  And apparently, BIG SISTERS have exceptional long-term memories.

We’ve been trying to get Kaylee to start falling asleep by herself in her room at night, rather than our old system, which involved one of us sitting at her bedside until she was asleep.  That process could take upwards of an hour every night, and I can think of about 900 other ways I’d rather spend my time than waiting for a toddler to stop talking about her princess flashlight and FOR THE LOVE OF GOD CLOSE HER EYES.  So this week we started leaving her room after a couple of minutes of sitting with her.  Rob was in charge of getting her to bed the first night, so of course she was a total angel.  I took the second night, so of course she had a minor breakdown.

I steeled myself against her sobby little toddler wiles and comforted her without letting her have her way, telling her she was doing a great job and she had to stay in her room.  A few minutes later, I heard her over the monitor, sobbing something that sounded like, “I want the bear with a pink light on it!”  She has no such bear.  I went to her room and asked her to repeat herself, and ultimately I was able to translate: “I want a bed with a pink ladder on it.”

Ah.

More than a month ago, we all went couch shopping at American Furniture Warehouse, and shockingly Kaylee was not interested in sitting on a hundred different sofas and discussing the merits of microfiber versus imitation leather. So Grandma, Uncle Tim and Nonie took her to the juvenile furniture, where Kaylee fell deeply in love.  She found a bunk bed that sported a pink ladder, and she climbed on it over and over and overandoverandover.  Then she talked about it all day long.

But it didn’t really come up again after that, so I thought she’d forgotten about it.  Which was a bit of a relief, because I didn’t want to get suckered into spending hundreds of dollars on a new bed for her, just so she could continue climbing into my bed in the middle of the night and looking for new and creative ways to wedge her elbow into my spine.

Then, out of the blue, while playing with Play-Doh the other day, she announced to me that she wants a bed with a pink ladder on it. She mentioned it casually, the way a child might casually suggest that a Red Rider BB Gun could make a nice Christmas gift.  Then she dropped it, only to casually say the same thing a couple of days later.  But I guess the trauma of being left to sleep on her own brought her true desires to the fore, because suddenly she was letting it slip that this bed was the one thing that could make her happy in all the world.

So we had a little talk about how maybe she could have the bed with the pink ladder if she starts sleeping in her own bed all the time, because I can’t get her such an wonderful bed if she’s not going to sleep in it.  She reluctantly agreed.

I mentally patted myself on the back for my awesome parenting skills.  I had defused a touchy situation, and gained a bargaining chip for getting my kid to sleep in her own room.  Go me.

The next night, as I tucked Kaylee in, kissed her good night and reminded her that she was going to stay in her room and go to sleep by herself like a BIG SISTER, she turned to me with a grin on her face. “I’m going to say, ‘I want a bed with a pink ladder on it!’” she said, and then giggled.

Wait, what?

This thing that had been her heart’s desire the night before was going to be a punchline tonight?  Could it be that she was just trying to get sympathy the previous night?  My precious baby had been trying to manipulate me?

Sure enough, a few seconds after I left her room, I heard Kaylee over the monitor yelling, “I want a bed with a pink ladder on it!  I want a bed with a pink ladder on it!  I want a bed with a pink ladder on it!”  I guessed that my role was to come in and discuss it with her again – I often find myself guessing at my role in Kaylee’s plans, and often incorrectly – so I gave her the same spiel about needing to show us that she can sleep in her own bed first.

I went downstairs to relax and watch the Olympics for a while, and I listened over the monitor as Kaylee carried on a conversation with herself.  After a couple of minutes, I noticed that her voice was getting faint, possibly because she was leaving her room. As I rounded the corner at the bottom of the stairs to check on her, I saw her about three steps down from the top, turning tail and sprinting back up and into her room.  By the time I caught up with her – which took a little longer than strictly necessary because I had to pause and compose myself so she wouldn’t see I’d been laughing at her antics – she was lying in bed, pretending to be asleep.

“Kaylee, you have to stay in your room,” I told her.

“I was in my room,” she said. “I’m sleeping.”

So now she lies, too.

Now that I’m coming to realize all some of the ways my daughter manipulates me every day, I’m trying to avoid giving in as often as I had been. No longer will she be able to guilt me into letting her have a fourth popsicle.  No longer will I agree to multiple episodes of Blue’s Clues before naptime.  No longer will I –

…sorry, I have to go.  Kaylee needs me to bring her another toy.

Dear Kaylee,

This month has been a roller coaster for you.  On the day you hit 32 months, Daddy and I dropped you off at Grandma’s house and went to the hospital to get your baby brother.  Shortly after that, you suddenly had to wrap your little head around not being the center of the universe anymore.  The first week and a half were all right, because Daddy stayed home from work and we made a point to give you lots of attention.  But once he went back to work and it was just you, me and Robbie at home together all the time, it became clear to you that Mommy didn’t have enough arms to give you and your brother all the attention you both wanted, and you freaked out on me for a few days – a few hellish, awful days.  I seriously briefly considered selling you to the gypsies. Just as I began to worry that your personality shift was permanent and I became certain you were going to be the death of my sanity, you started returning to your old self.   I was so relieved I could have cried.  (That may have been post-pregnancy hormones.)  Since then, things have been much better.

We’ve made a big change regarding your sleeping habits this month: We kicked you out of our room.  You’d been sleeping in our bed right up until your brother was born, and we couldn’t bear to kick you out immediately after we brought him home.  And so all four of us slept in the same bed together, and never have I been more grateful to have a king-sized bed.  But eventually there came a point where I couldn’t take being punched in the face at 3 a.m. anymore, because I was also getting up every other hour to tend to your brother.  It took some convincing, but we now have you going to bed in your own room every night, with the understanding that if you wake up during the night and call us to come get you, you are allowed to spend the rest of the night with us.  Some nights you join us kind of early, and sometimes you stay in your own room all night.  Either way, I’m spending less time as a punching bag.  Beginning this week, you’re also napping in your own room, and it wasn’t even my suggestion.  The other day you noticed a set of Backyardigans sheets in the linen closet and asked me to put them on your bed.  And like magic, you’ve wanted to sleep in there every naptime since.  Suddenly your room is more than just a storage space for your clothes and toys, and I actually get a little time to myself every day.  And while I may just be spending that time on Facebook, it’s just enough to rejuvenate my spirit for the rest of the day.

The biggest problem with your new napping habits is that your naps are much shorter now that I’m not lying down with you.  We used to sleep half the day away together, but now you wake up from your nap and we still have the vast expanse of the afternoon to get through.  That’s not a big deal when we have a play group or a trip to Costco to look forward to, but on days when we have nothing planned, I panic a little about how to keep you entertained.  There are only so many Dora The Explorer marathons one can take.  Fortunately, you’ve come through for me on this front, too.  I’m not sure when it happened exactly, but lately you’ve ratcheted up your ability to pretend.  For the past couple of weeks, you’ve been inventing new games and demanding my participation, making me “drive” you to the store in my office chair, go shopping for groceries in your toy box, and searching imaginary shopping malls for Santa Claus so we can sit in his lap and ask for toys.  You tell us tales every day, ranging anywhere from “Santa loves grapes” to “Look, a giant!  He’s going to squish us!” You make us dinner in your play kitchen.  You hold conversations with your stuffed animals.  I love this new phase in your childhood, because every day I get to see your imagination at work.  As long as you don’t develop an imaginary friend that turns out to be an evil ghost, I hope this part lasts a while.

Now that you’ve accepted your brother’s presence in the household, you’ve also started wanting to help take care of him.  Mostly, you like to hold him in your lap, and he seems to like it too.  He gazes up at you with only the teensiest bit of concern, and quite a bit of interest.  Sometimes you talk about all the things you plan to teach him, like how to slide, how to swing, and how to jump off of the coffee table and give your mother a heart attack.  I have a feeling he’ll be following you around like a puppy, and I hope you’ll look after him a little.

Like I said, sweetheart, this month has had its ups and downs.  We’ve both yelled a little more and cried a little more, but we’re figuring it out together.  We’ll have to see what I say in another month, but right now I think we’re going to be all right.

Love,
Mommy

Dear Sir Grunts-A-Lot,

I think that’s going to be my new nickname for you, because while Robbie-Bear is cute, Sir Grunts-A-Lot is more accurate, and last night you kept me awake for a long, long time with all the grunting you did in your sleep.  Maybe I shouldn’t be writing your first letter while I’m still tired and bitter, but I get precious few opportunities to sit down at my computer by myself, so you’ll have to take what you can get.

I can’t believe you’ve been in our lives for a month already, but at the same time it’s hard to believe you’ve only been here for a month.  You still seem so brand-new, but you’ve become so ingrained in the daily routine that I can no longer imagine life without you in it.  And in it, you are.  I’d almost forgotten what it’s like to have a newborn in the house – all the crying and diaper changes and dirty bottles littering the counter tops.  But somehow, in my head, I was expecting much worse.  When your sister was your age, I didn’t understand how people ever survived raising newborns because good god little kids are needy.  But I guess it’s kind of like going to see “Twilight: New Moon” after everyone tells you it’s the worst movie ever – when you’re expecting a truly awful experience, you’re pleasantly surprised when it’s just mediocre.  Um, maybe I should change that, because I believe I’ve just implied that your infancy has been mediocre.  What I meant to say is that you’re not driving your mother crazy, and I’m really happy about that.  Yay for you!

I can’t wait for the days when your personality really starts to show, because I’m desperately curious to know what kind of person you will be.  For now I just have some guesses, based on the little things you do (or don’t) from day to day.  I suspect that you won’t be as dramatic as your big sister.  About two weeks after you were born, I had to take you to an outpatient lab to have blood drawn from your heel for a test, and I was so, so, so not looking forward to it. I remembered taking Kaylee in for the same test, and it was a truly traumatic experience for me as a new mom.  The moment the nurse jabbed Kaylee’s heel, she reacted like her foot was being forcibly removed.  I was in tears by the time we left.  So when I took you in for the test, I had to steel myself for the inevitable horror.  I laid you down on a table in the torture chamber, I held your little hands and I waited for the screaming to begin.  And then … then … nothing happened.  The nurse jabbed you in the foot, and you stared off into space.  She worked enough blood out of you to fill all the little spots on the test paper, and you concentrated on pooping.  You didn’t even whimper.

I’m not sure if it’s because you still have some of those little newborn wrinkles that make you look a bit like a little old man, but sometimes I think you might be wise beyond your weeks.  Once in a while, Kaylee will be throwing a tantrum about something completely random, and I’ll look down to see you watching me with your eyebrows raised, a knowing look in your eyes.  In my head, you’re saying, “Well, this is slightly ridiculous, don’t you think?” and I feel like, in that moment, you’re my ally.  But then there are times when you choose one of your sister’s meltdown moments to throw your own little fit, and I know you’re not on my side at all.  When your uncle Jamie and I were younger, we used to torment our mom on purpose by speaking in a nonsensical code around her, just to piss her off.  And a decade from now, I have a feeling your Gram will be laughing her ass off when I complain to her about you and your sister ganging up on me.  But you know what?  I can’t wait for you and Kaylee to build your alliance.  I can’t wait to see what amusing things you’ll find to do together to get on my nerves.  Just remember this, kiddo: I will have the authority to take away your video games, so make sure to choose your adventures carefully.

Welcome to the family, little man.  We’re going to have so much fun.

Love,

Mommy

Ok, so, my new kid’s about 19 days old, according to the tally on Facebook, so I guess it’s time I post an update about life in the McDonnell household.  I may or may not be motivated by the fact that I have a new computer and wanted to try typing something on it, but whatever.  I’m still updating my blog, so let’s not analyze the reasons too closely.

Things are going … ok.  For the first week and a half, Rob stayed home with us and everything was pretty much blissful.  When Kaylee was brand new, we were pretty panicky about the new parent thing, and every little whimper stressed us out.  This time around, we’ve been a lot less worried about doing everything perfectly and we’ve been willing to settle for just being good enough.  The kid’s still breathing and doesn’t have any serious skin rashes brought on by the condition of our home or anything, so we figure we’re doing all right.

By the end of that first week and a half, I was feeling pretty confident.  Cocky, even.  “I’ve got this in the bag,” I thought.  The crying and the mood swings and the not-eating that I went through with Kaylee were pretty much absent, and I thought maybe I could get through this newborn stage without ever feeling like I’d need to be committed to a mental institution.

Cue the ominous music.

So.

Then Rob went back to work.  And I had to take care of both of them.  By myself.

Dude.

Did you guys know that watching a newborn and a toddler at THE SAME TIME can be really hard?  I had guessed that might be the case, but I always thought it would be the baby that would be making me crazy.  Little did I know that the baby would be the easy one.

Kaylee really seems to like her little brother, as long as he’s sitting in a swing or something and not requiring any attention from me.  But the moment I have the baby in one arm and am holding his bottle in the other hand, she decides she suddenly, desperately needs to be picked up and carried into the other room.  She’s gotten whinier.  She’s gotten meaner.  She’s gotten me to yell more in the past week than in the previous year combined.

And so there have been a few times this week that I’ve been right back where I was two and a half years ago, crying for no reason and trying to figure out how in the hell other mothers manage to survive having ANY children, much less more than one.  (And the Duggars?  Holy shit.  You know they’ve got to be batshit crazy by now.)

But then there are other moments when it all makes perfect sense.  Kaylee will randomly decide to give her brother a kiss, or the two of them will practice their fist bumps.  (That’s mostly Kaylee saying, “Give me knucks, little brother!” while holding out her fist and waiting for his flailing hand to bump into hers.)  And sometimes Kaylee will climb in my lap while I’m giving Robbie a bottle, and she’ll cuddle with me on one side while he snuggles in on the other.  And sometimes, like Friday, Kaylee stops worrying altogether about whether she’s getting less attention from me, and she just acts like a joyful little kid again, running and playing and laughing and speaking in a normal voice rather than a grating whine.

So when I’m asked how it’s going, the answer is that it really depends on the day.  This Wednesday, I almost wrote a long and sobby post about how depressed I was, because I’d had a really awful day.  And then I would have deleted it on Friday, because we had a wonderful day in which everyone was happy, and I would have been embarrassed by the self-indulgent crybaby crap that would have composed that post.

We’re surviving.  Sometimes life’s good, sometimes bad, sometimes ugly, and often slightly damp from all the getting-peed-on.  But I think we’re going to make it.

A note: I just went back and re-read this, and I feel like I’ve made Kaylee sound kind of evil.  She’s still a pretty good kid.  When I say she’s mean, I’m saying it in the hyperbolic way I tend to say things on my blog.  She’s just kind of jealous, I think, and it makes her more likely to cry at nothing and whine about how badly she needs a bag of Cheetos.  Kind of like her mother.

I don’t think I ever recounted the story of Kaylee’s birth on this blog, mostly because I was so overwhelmed after she was born that, by the time I emerged from the fog of new motherhood the birth story was kind of old news. But now that I’ve been through childbirth a second time, it suddenly seems relevant again. Because, dude, the difference between the two was night and day.  (Literally, actually, since Kaylee was born at 4 a.m. and Robbie was born at 4 p.m.)

In both cases, I had an epidural once the pain of the contractions got bad enough that I had to practice my breathing exercises to cope with them. And in both cases, the drugs helped quite a bit – to a point.

With Kaylee, I fell asleep shortly after being given the drugs and I woke up a few hours later to the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life.  But only on the right half of my body.  The epidural was still working perfectly on the left side, but not at all on the right side.  I called the nurse, of course, to beg for more drugs, but by then it was already time to push and I just had to go ahead and deal with the pain.

I wonder sometimes whether I really have the right to complain, since I only experienced half the pain of childbirth.  But at the same time, it really fucking hurt.  Telling me not to complain about it is a little like chopping off someone’s hand and then telling them they aren’t allowed to whine because at least you didn’t chop off both.

This second time around, the epidural worked like a charm.  Throughout the whole experience, I never felt anything but a bit of tightness here or there. And after it was over, just like the first time, I ended up with a beautiful, healthy baby in my arms.

I know a lot of women highly recommend the natural route when it comes to childbirth. It’s empowering and natural and blah, blah, blah.  And I get that.  Making it through that kind of pain and walking away unscathed surely makes you feel proud of yourself.

But having experienced a painful childbirth and a pain-free childbirth, I have to say something: Those women are crazy.  If I ever have another baby, there will be copious amounts of drugs coursing through my body.  Because when I’m awaiting the arrival of a precious new family member, I would much rather be able to relax and watch a “Glee” marathon than spend my time shaking and sobbing from the pain.  (That’s how I handle extreme pain, which I learned with Kaylee’s birth.)

The only real advantage I see to giving birth the drug-free way is that you get to hold it over your child for the rest of his or her life.  You don’t like that Mommy won’t give you ice cream for dinner?  Well Mommy gave birth to you WITHOUT ANY DRUGS.  If I can deal with that, you can deal with eating your damn broccoli.

Then again, maybe that’s a good enough reason right there.

I don’t have time to give a detailed account of the arrival of our newest family member — imagine that! I’m busier now!  Who’d have thought? — so I’m just going to provide a couple of quick photos before I go check on my new kid to see why he’s grunting in the other room.

Internet, meet Robert James McDonnell, born at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, January 13, weighing 7 pounds, 3 ounces.

Sorry for the blurry phone picture.  Better ones will be uploaded once I figure out how to accomplish things with two kids to take care of.  Updating the blog is third on the list after: 1. Find time to shower, and 2. Brush my hair.

And one more photo of Kaylee shortly after meeting her brother for the first time.  I will let it speak for itself.  (Also, a note to local moms who are preggo — the hospital just lifted its visiting restrictions, so now our toddlers can go to the hospital to meet their new siblings.  Yay!)

Dear Kaylee,

You’re not technically 32 months old yet, but I’m writing your letter early this time because I’m pretty sure I’ll be busy on the 13th.  What will I be busy doing, you wonder?  Why, I’ll be getting you a 32-month birthday present!  To be honest, I’m not sure you’ll like it much at first, but once you get used to having this gift around, I hope you’ll learn to love it.  Oh, the gift?  Well, I don’t suppose I’ll ruin the surprise by writing it here, since you don’t know how to read.  We’ll be getting you a baby brother.  And while we’re doing that, you’ll be spending a couple of days with Grandma, who is sure to spoil the hell out of you.  Hopefully that’ll make up for your homecoming, when you’ll suddenly find that you have to share your parents’ attention from then on.

I had my last doctor’s appointment on Friday, when we scheduled an induction for this coming Wednesday.  And as relieved as I felt to know that your baby brother WILL come out in the near future, I also suddenly felt very guilty.  When I picked you up from Gram and Papa’s house later that day, I just wanted to snuggle you and make you understand that you’re still – and always will be – my beautiful baby girl, no matter how many siblings you end up with.  Because that’s probably the thing I worry about the most, that by deciding to give you a baby brother, we’re going to make you feel cheated.  Now you’ll have to share our time and attention and love with this wiggly little interloper who cries all the time, and Mommy and Daddy will no longer be able to drop everything the moment you need us, every time.  Of course, logically, that is one of the reasons we want you to have a sibling.  To be a good person, you have to understand that the world actually does not revolve around you and you alone.  But it still seems like a harsh lesson for a two-year-old.

This month has been pretty good, packed with holidays and a ridiculous number of new toys for you.  Daddy took a bunch of time off work, and we’re only just now getting back into the old routines and getting used to seeing him off every morning again.  (Good time to add a baby to the mix, huh?)  This was the first year we really talked to you about Santa Claus, and by Christmas Eve, we had you so excited about him that you were simply dying to meet him when he stopped by that night.  … Oops.  We’d forgotten that a critical part of the Santa explanation is that you have to be in bed, sleeping, when he stops by on Christmas.  You were disappointed when we made you go to bed that night without getting to sit on Santa’s lap again, but it helped that you got to make cookies for him first.  I guess that’s one thing we’ve learned lately – we can make a lot of things up to you by plying you with sugar.  Maybe I should stock up on cookies for the day we bring home your brother.

One of the big lessons we’ve been learning lately about parenting you is that we have to be careful how we explain things.  We often tell you something thinking you’ll interpret our words exactly as we mean them, only to find that you’ve got a completely different idea in your head.  When we took you to Denver to go shopping several weeks ago, I told you that we had to drive for a very long time to get there.  I completely forgot that the last time I told you we had to drive a long way, we were headed for Texas.  So when we got to the mall and you said sadly, “I want to see Nanny,” I was caught completely off guard.  I had no idea you were expecting to see your great-grandmother, and all I was prepared to offer was the holiday crowds at a shopping mall.  Gram and Papa got a glimpse of this last week when Gram decided to make you a cape out of some shiny red fabric that you discovered.  A cape sounds like such a silly, fun little dress-up toy that no one saw the meltdown coming, because no one realized that you thought a cape would allow you to actually fly.  When Papa refused to allow you to jump down the stairs, you were very upset at his cruelty.

You’ve also gotten very good at explaining things to us – and very elaborate, I should add.  Lately you’ve been slipping into your storytelling mode more and more often, usually when we’re trying to get you to go to bed or something equally unappealing to you.  You’ll have spent a good 20 minutes telling us an involved tale about Dora the Explorer, ice cream and rabbits, and then when we try to tell you it’s time to wrap up this adventure and go to bed you’ll say, “Just a second, I’m talking,” and then continue as if we hadn’t said anything.  There will be arm gestures, sentences punctuated with a chuckle, little questions to involve the audience, etc.  It works extremely well as a stalling tactic, because it’s just so cute that we can’t bear to make you stop talking and go to bed.

Well, kiddo, I don’t know what else to say right now, so I guess I’ll call this letter finished.  I know I keep saying this, but I love you, I love you, I love you.  This letter really will be the last one I write to you as an only child, and I hope the next one isn’t filled with tales about how mad you are that we ruined your life with a sibling.  It’s going to be an adventure, and I’m so glad I get to share it with you.

Love,

Mommy

Dear Baby,

Get out. Get out get out get out get out get out get out get out getoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetout.

Love,
Mommy