1m2aSandbox

With a slightly-less-than-two-year span between Madeleine and Cora, Brian and I felt pretty confident that we wouldn’t need to double up on a lot of gear. All the toys Cora would want, Maddie has already grown out of. Ditto for clothing and gear like bouncy seats and swings. Sure, we’d need to solve the stroller dilemma, but we’re basically covered.

Our one big problem is the crib. Madeleine wasn’t quite old enough to move out of it before Cora was born, and obviously bringing in a newborn while simultaneously kicking a kid out of her crib and giving it to the usurper wasn’t quite the most sensitive thing to do. We also knew that even if we did push Madeleine to move out of her crib right before Cora was born, chances were high that she’d regress and want to go right back to the crib after a baby showed up: all our friends warned of regression in the early days and encouraged us to not waste our time pushing anything new like sleeping arrangements or potty training.

One of Maddie’s favorite books is You Can’t Take A Balloon Into the Metropolitan Museum. It follows, among other things, a girl through her visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. We’ve been to the museum before but hadn’t gone for a while, so one day last week Maddie and I decided to make a spontaneous day of it and headed into the city, with the clear goal of following in the character’s footsteps. And in case you’re worrying about my newborn, she was safely at home with Daddy. Unemployment has its advantages.

Since Maddie’s over two and
definitely developing a will of her own, we’re working on
consistent discipline with Maddie and sometimes it seems the
“punishment” is harder on the parent than on the
kiddo.

Cora’s almost two months now, and for the first time since she was born, Madeleine’s having to compete for my attention.

Sure, I’ve been taking care of Cora and lovingly tending to her needs this whole time. But there’s been a bit of “housekeeper-ness” to the whole thing: play with Maddie while holding a sleeping baby. Feed and talk to Madeleine while keeping Cora’s pacifier in her mouth. Read Maddie a book while nursing Cora. Cora’s been in the potted plant stage thus far – carry it around and water it and it’ll live. Not a lot of interaction needed. Some of it’s been simply the way it is, and some of it’s been deliberate – trying to ease Cora into the household with the minimum of hurt feelings and abandonment issues.

Keeping breastfeeding in the national eye,
a Maine woman just received a settlement from Fossil Inc. after
they banned her from breastfeeding on their New York showroom
floor. They offered the woman $3,600 to avoid a lawsuit they would
most certainly have lost, since New York laws protect a
woman’s right to breastfeed “in any location, public or
private, where the mother is otherwise authorized to be."
Apparently they’d removed her from the showroom where she was
meeting with a salesperson when she began to nurse, refused to
allow her to return to the showroom, and cautioned her when she
scheduled a later return trip that breastfeeding was forbidden.

What’s that, you say? You mean
there’s more to simply praying to God that the screaming
beast falls asleep, or waiting her out for four hours until she
falls into an exhausted doze?


Well, yes and no.

If there’s any benefit to having a
husband who’s unemployed and a new baby at the same time,
it’s that I’ve been able to ease into the job of having
two kids instead of one. Brian’s almost always around and
it’s rare that I’ve been the sole caregiver for both
girls at once; he’s usually there to lend a hand or to play
tag team, with both of us taking one kid. Sure he’s had
interviews and meetings, but in general it’s been a
two-parent baby-raising experience.