We really thought we had the parenting game down .We had a four year old who was fairly well adjusted , despite the many moves and changes we put her through over the years. We had a weekday routine and a weekend routine and didn’t mind slight shakeups to these – read impromptu dinners out on weekdays, short weekend trips for fun, work trips for one of us and so on. We both hit the right work life balance spot most days of year and the other parent covered the domestic slack when needed. We had a list of back up nannies to leave Bandar with when illness hit and we had to work. Bandar communicated really well putting our minds to rest about leaving her with someone new.We had overall found our parenting grove. Bandar on her part was an easy sort of child . She genuinely enjoyed learning , she was inquisitive, sensitive and wasnt rebellious for the most part. She was sleeping in her own bed ( it took her four years to go there but she finally did ). Morning chaos for preschool reared its head ever so often but that was really it.
In all of this , when Beetle turned four years old , the idea of Beetle emerged and then nine months later we had our beautiful Beetle baby. And Beetle of course came with her own personality and needs.
Some things that are different this time around :
-We have no family staying with us for long periods of time to help with Beetle. The grandparents all have their own lives in India to lead and really believe we have our shit together this time around. And frankly this is how we want it too. There is a certain comfort in raising your child your way and it may not always be pretty and smooth but I can do without the commentary and opinion and prefer to learn my lessons my way. Simple case in point – Overfeeding Beetle leads to projectile vomiting but I know this now and learnt it from trial and error.
– Beetle is way more active than Bandar ever was . This child doesn’t sit still for a second . Bandar would sit and play and was happy as long as I was near. Beetle doesn’t care to sit or be held. A wriggly baby on a 30 hour journey is really really awful. Again lesson learned – limit travel until Beetle gets to be a comfortable walker.
– Beetle falls sick way more than Bandar and brings on the big guns – ear infections. This alone has led me to read , research allopathic and alternate treatment options and caused a ton of worry. Our nanny at home for year 1 did not help Beetle at all , who seems to have the poorest immunity in the family.
– Bandar would go to Dad as much as Mom and maybe a tad more at some stage of growing up. But Beetle is my little girl and doesn’t leave my side on weekends and weekday evenings . She is usually only comforted by me and though this is a temporary phase probably, it does get tiring to be her sole caregiver some weekends and also eats into my time with Bandar .
– Beetle hates her stroller but loves her carrier. So we do a lot of baby wearing in my Lillie baby carrier which is the best hundred bucks I spent in recent times. At this age we had almost relocated to NYC with Bandar and she was a complete stroller baby.
– Beetle seemed to grow up faster than Bandar . She rebeled against eating baby mush earlier , she crawled relatively lesser than Bandar and started walking a little after her first birthday .
– Dare I say , breastfeeding was a tad tad easier this time ? I still think this is absolutely the worst part of having a baby but it was a teeny bit better and we somehow kept Beetle exclusively breastfed for a full 9.5 months before we added some formula. Now on whole milk, Beetle still breastfeeds to sleep at night and in the early mornings and I am not ready to end this yet. So we will take it month by month for now .
– Beetle has slightly less stranger anxiety than Bandar. Her India trip and exposure to a whole slew of extended family wasn’t terrible , like Bandar’s ordeal at the same age .Both my kids don’t like new people grabbing them as such and maybe it’s something I am doing ..who knows ?
– Daycare transition with Beetle is hugely different than Bandar. Bandar cried a full 6 weeks before she enjoyed daycare, but her crying was for a few minutes. Beetle on the other hand can go hours crying and whimpering which is nothing like we have ever seen and makes us often second guess our decisions .
Anyway, you get the gist. My girls are very different from each other. So apart from being different and really giving us no opportunity to use tried and tested parenting tricks , what really keeps us on our toes is that we now have to cater to two completely different set of needs and age groups. Bandar needs a different kind of attention. She needs me to listen, she needs me to sit down and help her with her reading or math, she needs to watch a show with me occasionally or go on a weekend outting to the beach . But I often can’t do these things when I have the girls alone as Beetle’s need to be fed of held comes above Bandar’s small asks. When there are two parents around we try to divide and conquer but it’s hard all the same. Today morning for instance we both were getting ready for work and changing Beetle too and Bandar was upset she was left downstairs alone to have her breakfast. What does one do? You simply try to give each child time and let then learn that waiting for your turn is life sometimes .
What else is hard ? Ahh yes, our evolution as parents hasn’t been all smooth and easy. Five years later and doing things all over again, we find ourselves a little more short tempered, a little more impatient and critical of each other . Nothing is directed at the kids but makes it’s way out directed at each other .Our spats are short lived and we always make up in a few hours max , but we are sparring more than we did before on the little everyday things though we remain very much in synch on the bigger things .
We would love an evening out. Leaving Beetle in her current state with a nanny for date night scares me ..oh let’s be honest date night is very far away right now. Beetle sleeping in her own crib will be a starting point. That will allow me to get out of bed after she sleeps to do a few things . Right now , I sleep when she sleeps at 9 pm or I work on my laptop on the dark spoiling my eyesight even further. But I am essentially on the bed preventing her falling . She will get up and be awake for hours if we try to move her to the crib. I am absolutely not ready to sleep train with all the health stuff and daycare adjustment stuff going on. She needs the security if being with me at night and I am going to give her that.
If you walk into our house at any point , the chances are you will be greeted with unfolded laundry on the couch , a pile of unopened mail in the foyer , a few unopened Amazon boxes and shoes and socks without pairs everywhere. The kitchen has crumbs , a sink full of dishes, a counter top full of supplements and unwashed bottles and sippy cups galore. There are kids books and toys everywhere – seriously I could donate half and our kids wouldn’t miss them. Oh and you will probably hear one of our girls crying or whining or complaining. Our weekday mornings are busy, our weekday evenings are busy and it is only summer yet. Bandar is in summer camp which we never get to on time and we have the luxury of the husband having a slightly more flexible schedule for the next one or two weeks. Even then we barely get by the day. We still find no time for exercise or TV watching or family walks.
All of this makes me feel we are definitely not on top of our parenting game at all. And the fact that we are that we are disorganized and inefficient with our time use is going to be hit on the head by the force of the Fall schedule. But at the end of the day the kids are kind of happy , more or less fed and clothed and very clean ( we do baths well around here ) and we still are madly in love with each other and the family we have created. So I guess we will all survive and get through and have some fun along the way too.
