Second child syndrome. . . .

Everyone talks about the second child not having as many baby photos as the first child. No one talks about the second child not having time on the parenting blog.

This weekend, I found myself looking through old blog posts to see at what age the little monkey hit milestones (like rolling over, smiling, and most importantly sleeping through the night). Just to get a gauge of when events might be coming for our little Sweet Pea.

It made me realize that this space is really sort of a baby book for the kid(s). . . I partly blame this lack of posting on Facebook. It's so much easier to post a quick note there than to write a post here. But Facebook isn't so easy to get that info back out in a meaningful format.

I need to be better about posting. Even if it's just for me.

Baby girl. . .

We were sitting on the couch a couple nights ago and my wife was having contractions. That wasn't anything new, she's been having a steady stream of Braxton Hicks contractions for weeks. She's also been dilated go 3 cm for several weeks. So we take all contractions seriously.

These were different, these were starting to get uncomfortable for her and seemed to be a little more regular than the others.

So we loaded up the car, dropped off our sick preschooler at his grandparents, and went to the hospital.

We arrived at the hospital and we escorted to a maternity triage room. My wife was hooked up to the monitors, we got started asking questions, and the contractions stopped. Not stopped so much, but changed to 20 minutes apart. This was first pointed out by the on-call OBGYN who told us he had just sent home 6 women that night we were not in labor.

Then he examined her. . . "oh, you're a keeper," he said. Not many contractions but she was in labor.

So we were landed in a delivery room and moved through the process: IV, blood draw, questions, monitoring, and suddenly regular contractions. . . painful ones. Another examination showed my wife was at 6 cm and it's about 1 a.m., if she's going to get an epideral now is the time. So she elected to have it. Nothing is really felt by my wife from this point on.

And then we (or mainly I) slept—off and on—until 6 a.m. when it's announced that it's time to call the doctor.

The doctor arrives at 6:50 a.m. prepares everything she might need to work and at 6:58 my wife is informed to push during the current contraction (which she can't feel). She pushed 3 times and the head is half way out. It's decided that she'll stop and push again on the next contraction. . .

Only our daughter doesn't want to wait that long. So she wiggles a little and pulls herself out at 7:01 a.m.

And just like that our newest family member is here. Now the real hard part starts.

Worst timing ever. . .

Our son is sick. He's 3, it happens. He's got a fever of one hundred and three. . . four actually on one night. It's now lasted 4 days, and he's got a bad cough (so bad it made him throw up one day). According to his doctor, it's a croup related thing that is going around. It lasts a long time too.

Why is it the worst timing ever? Because this morning his baby sister was born. I don't want to detract from the miracle of her birth (more on that soon) and let him steal her spotlight, but as I'm sitting her in this hospital room watching my beautiful wife hold our adorable new baby girl I feel like we're all incomplete.

Whatever he's got isn't worth risking the health of a 1-day-old. But knowing that one quarter of our family isn't able to participate in this moment is breaking my heart. It's all I can think about. He's with his doting grandparents and they are taking good care of him, but he shouldn't be with them, he should be with us.

It really sucks.

Off my game. . .

I pride myself on two personality attributes. I learned the hard way to be modest. . . not modest in the prudish meaning but modest about my accomplishments. I know that goes against saying "I prime myself on" but still I do. So I always try to be humble.

The other thing I always strive for is calmness. I try to never get stressed. Being stressed (aside from the many health problem it can caused) often forces people to make foolish mistakes. They get rushed and frantic and don't work to the best of their ability. So I decided a long time ago to not get stressed out about things.

Sure a project disaster (a plumbing one jumps to mind at the moment) or a looming deadline might get me worked up now and then, but once the initial panic wears off I calm down and get the job done.

Which is why the prediction of an early baby has me so flustered. With our son it was 7-10 days which somehow seemed doable. Being given to the end of the weekend was a bit more urgent. So for at least 3 days of work and a weekend which produced no baby, I was stressed, which as I said isn't normal for me. Since then the panic has died down and I'm able to work quickly and efficiently without stress.

And still we have no baby. I'm going to have to talk to the doctor about that today.

Impatient children. . .

When there was a month left until our son was born we went to my wife's doctor's appointment and was told we had 7-10 days left until her arrived. He was born 11 days later.

So this time around we were sort of expecting a similar situation.

What we weren't expecting was a much more worrying "I doubt you'll make it past the weekend." Especially when that's on a Wednesday. So now we're both in hyper active mode at our respective work places and are a little stressed that she'll be coming soon. Thankfully she's only 4 weeks early, she should be fully formed and ready to face the world.

Finally potty trained. . .

Almost a year ago we successfully pee trained our toddler. It took one time of having to hold him on his little potty chair, but since then he's matured to the point of being able to take care of it all himself. He'll stop playing or pause the TiVO, run into the bathroom, and come out just like he went in. It's a nice thing to not have to deal with that end of diaper changing anymore. . .

But then there is pooping. He refused to even try. We tried everything: bribing, taking away toys, rewards, punishments. Nothing was working. We recently convinced him to sit on the toilet with a pull-up on and that was a little better and we felt a large step in the right direction, but still he refused without a pull-up.

Then two weekends ago I tried something I had read about online and thought would never work. . . I cut a hole in his pull-up. He didn't notice while he was going. After he finished I went in to help him clean up and talk to him.

"Buddy, I have to tell you something."

"What, daddy?"

"I tricked you, I cut a hole in your pull-up."

He saw what had happened and agreed that it was great the clean-up no longer consisted of a whole diaper change, but still he thought he needed the pull-up. For two weeks he was pooping through a hole in a pull-up.

So yesterday I decided it was enough. I cut a bigger hole in his pull-up. One so big that it was less diaper and more belt. . . ok that gives it too much credit, it was a belt. And he knew it and suddenly realized that it was cool that he could poop and then pee without having to be changed out of a pull-up in between.

Today he was still trying to insist that he needed it but I told him it was silly and refused. . . and an hour later we were having a potty party at Chuck E Cheese's.

And just like that the last chain of babyhood was broken. Just in time for the next baby to arrive.

Are you ready for some cartoons?!

"Listen buddy, daddy isn't like a lot of other daddies," I explained to my son on Sunday. "Daddy only watches one football game a year. It's called the Superbowl."

He laughed, "duperbow? That's funny."

"Yeah I know, but you see football is on every Sunday and on some other days too and lots of daddies watch it all the time, AND they watch other sports too. You're pretty lucky because the Superbowl is the only football game, heck the only sporting event, that daddy watches all year long. . . and I only really watch it for the commercials. So tonight, daddy is going to watch his show which means you are going to have to play with your trains and not have cartoons on the TV that you ignore while you do it. OK?"

"But I wanna watch Thomas."

"I know but not tonight there is no Thomas. Tonight we watch football."

More overheard in our house. . .

Parker: Where you going mommy?
Mom: I have to pee.
Parker: I'm coming with you, let me get my binoculars.