3 + 1 = ?

In the not-too-distant future, a new little Pepper will be joining our clan. The jalapeno will be almost 3 at that point. While in theory my recollections of the early days with him should have faded, I have a stubbornly keen memory and I remember in great detail just how difficult and overwhelming things were with him at first. (And this is despite having a normal/easy delivery and a healthy baby.)

After a full day of work and an evening of toddler wrangling, I often wonder what on earth we’re doing. On a rational level, we’ve always wanted two kids, the timing makes sense, and I think the jalapeno will make a great big brother. It’s just that in the short term, I feel like this is possibly insane.

For those of you expecting your first child (coughSeancough), I don’t mean to scare you! It’s just that before I had a baby of my own, people were telling me at every turn how wonderful babies are. No one mentioned the fact that parenthood is also hard. Not that it isn’t worth it, but some days it’s really hard.

This pregnancy has been far more tiring than my pregnancy with the jalapeno, so Mr. NaCl has already had to pick up the slack when I’ve been too tired or too sick to do things I’d normally handle. And there’s going to have a lot more to handle after the baby arrives. (Not that he’s unwilling, but he deserves a break too.) I have high standards for myself, to say the least, and it’s difficult to find myself falling short.

I am hoping that with all the experience we gained the last time around, the early months will at least be easier in terms of caring for the newborn. (I imagine the sleep deprivation will be just as crushing.) The high-energy jalapeno will continue going to daycare 3 days a week, and I have family in town to help out as well. But I’ve never had an easy time dealing with the unknown, so I guess I’m looking for some thoughts from the many highly experienced fathers here on what the transition from one kid to two was like for you. Should I be scared out of my ever-lovin’ mind, or is it all less of a ginormous adjustment the second time around?

66 thoughts on “3 + 1 = ?”

  1. Whoops--can someone add a jump here or tell me how to do it?

    edit: never mind, I figured it out.

    1. I'm so very tempted to point out that the "Mother Edition" basically consists of asking the dads for help...

      But I won't.

      1. You'd rather I tell you what to do? Because I'm sure I could come up with something. 😉

  2. I have no experience in raising kids, but I am 3 years older than my sister, who is in turn 3 years older than our little brother. For us, three years has been a pretty good spacing out Close enough that we still shared some interests growing up, but not so close that we are kindasorta expected to do everything together.

    1. My brother is slightly less than 2 1/2 years younger than me and there's one in between us. But, we didn't do everything together. By the time I was ready to be potty trained, they had two more in diapers. That's the killer.

      I don't have a second, but I'm thinking a biggie would be to get the first one out of diapers if you can/haven't already. It's a big deal for kids (plus, that feeling of accomplishment might soften the blow of not being the center of attention) and lessens the burden overall.

      We did a pretty lousy job of potty training. My wife was totally into letting it happen when it happens and guess what? My daughter was perfectly willing to crap her pants for an embarrassingly long time. I'm kind of old school and if it had been up to me, we would have done that differently.

      1. Our kids are 2 years apart (almost exactly. 2 years and 10 days.), so we had about a year of 2 in diapers. Once Aquinas was out, that helped a ton. We did push the issue a little - he had shown he was ready, but then developed a fear of having accidents. So we helped him work through that fear, and I couldn't have been more happy. One in diapers >>>>>>>> multiple in diapers.

      2. I was pretty gung ho about potty training, so I started when the jalapeno was 23 months as I thought he seemed ready. He only wears a diaper for sleeping at this point.

        The jalapeno has just recently been really into talking about what "big boys" do and the other day was telling a neighbor that he's "sooo big," so I'm thinking that bodes well.

    2. I'm two years older than the middle brother who is two years older than youngest brother (follow that?). The middle brother ended up spending most of his time with the younger brother and having very few connections with me.

  3. I don't really remember much from the first several months after Aristotle was born. Of course, she also needed a major surgery at < 3 months, so that contributed to the chaos.

    I know that my wife was an absolute rockstar. The sleep part was, I think, equally hard as the first time. I found I was better adjusted to less sleep than I was the first time around, and that I was more comfortable letting the new one cry, etc. I'm sure there was also a lot less time spent doing nothing but cooing and staring at the n00b, then there was the first time around.

    I think the biggest recommendation I can make is to include the jalepeno in whatever you can - we ended up finding little things (I don't even remember what), and so his routine changed right along with ours, and that helped. Turn "caring for the new one" into a "parenting the old one" activity. And now that I write that, it seems obvious and trite, and... mostly you'll just be tired. So... good luck.

    1. No, this is helpful to hear about some concrete things you did that worked well. I like the idea of involving the jalapeno in what we're doing with the baby--makes more sense than trying to convince him to play independently for long stretches, because I don't see that happening!

  4. The Boy was somewhat curious about That Thing Growing in Mommy's Tummy That We Called His Sister. But when the Girl popped, he studiously refused any acknowledgment of her for several days. It was both hilarious and distressing to see him struggle with the concept of I Am Not Alone Anymore.

  5. It is busier but there is less of the irrational worry involved with the first one. You have already figured out what it sounds like when they are actually hurt instead of just crying for attention.

    We had 2 years between the first two and 3 years before #3. We had a little break in there where we didn't have diapers. Otherwise, we had them for a 6+ year stretch. We were paying for daycare for 10 years.

    Having kids just focuses you on priorities. Food, shelter, clothing, sleep, love. A clean house doesn't make the cut. We can get nice stuff in another 20 years.

    1. And I think we are coming up on 10 years in diapers. We might have had a little break in there, but basically a decade. Sheesh...

      1. My brother has, count 'em, seven kids, one born every odd year between 1995 and 2007. About 15 years of changing diapers for him.

    1. Yeah, I'm in awe of the fact that you and UncleWalt still have any shreds of sanity remaining at this point.

      edit: Ha! I just figured out that's not even what you were saying. You were just solving my super complex equation for me.

  6. Wife and I have one kernel now (21 mos this Sunday) and will be trying to add a second within the next year or so. For us, the timing has more to do with careers/finances and our ages and less to do with age differential between kernel and kernel(s). I'd like to get through potty training and the terrible twos (which are starting in earnest) before adding new diapers to the mix. However, we'll take whatever we get.

    I am exactly 2 years older than my sister. She was born on my 2nd birthday (which sucked growing up but is kinda cool now). She in turn is a little more than 2.5 years older then our younger brothers...yeah, that's right - twins! 4 children under the age of 5, 3 in diapers. I don't know how my folks did it.

    I've always been really close with my sister. Even with her living in CA for the past 10 years, when we're together, it feels like we hung out last week. I can talk to her on the phone for hours, though she has 2 little ones so we rarely have that luxary. Now that I have a kid, I call her for advice all the time - hers are three and five.

    I get along well with the brothers. However, I'm not as close with them mostly (I think) because I wasn't in school with them for very long. 2 years during grade school and then never again. Then I moved out at 18, joined the Navy at 22, and didn't move back to MN until 5 years ago. By then, I had missed most of their "formative" years, right on through HS and college graduations.

    My wife is the youngest of 5 children: 1.5 years younger than the next oldest, 2.5 younger than the middle sister/child, 5 (or 6) years younger than her oldest sister and 8 or 9 years younger than the oldest brother. She despised her closest siblings growing up (they were bullies), but there was a lot of strife in general due to a nasty divorce when she was in the 2nd grade, so I'm not sure how much the age difference played into her feelings towards them. She probably gets along best with her sisters now but still doesn't care to spend too much time with her next oldest brother.

  7. By the way Pepper, I was sorry to hear about your husband...

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      1. Secondy second on the

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  8. Well, on the macro level, you have at least two things going for you. Lots of families have more than one. And nobody really knows what they are doing when it comes to parenting. You make it up as you go along moment to moment and day by day. If you have a bad moment/day, you try not to do that again.

    As for the concrete, when my second was born, my almost three-year-old son had a favorite stuffed animal that he liked to sleep with. So, we made it his "job" to choose the stuffed animal that the new baby would get to sleep with. That tradition has continued with oldest siblings picking out the stuffed animal to give to the newest. Now, we have four kids and a duck, a monkey, a penguin and a giraffe. And those animials are still the fav of each of the kids.

      1. No one respects the first president Roosevelt anymore. Times are too partisan.

        My four have a dog, a fox, an owl and a duck, and a manatee as their faves.
        Bears are commodity.

            1. The Boy imprinted on a Simba. For some reason, I have no recollection of any remotely similar attachment by The Girl.

              1. My second and fourth cannot sleep without their "guy". The first and third could go to bed and completely forget to grab theirs.

                1. Skim has an affinity for her "guy" (a puppy called "Puppy") that I've never seen before. I once took Puppy away from her for a day because of her failure to listen and she ended up spending the rest of the day drawing pictures of Puppy. She got him on the day she was born.

                  Now that she's 8, Puppy isn't the crutch he long was, but she still sleeps with him and she and her friends will throw him birthday parties. I myself probably love Puppy almost as much as I would a living pet, to be honest.

                  1. I was very attached to a plush cat named "Kitty" for much of my childhood. (Are kids creative with names or what?) My mother had to make many repairs to her over the years.

                    The jalapeno has a very strong attachment to his burp cloth (weird, I know, but fortunately they're washable and interchangeable). He also sleeps with a whole menagerie of animals as well as two trucks. What a goof.

                    1. like pacifiers, Pete hasn't shown any interest in attachment to stuffed animals or blankets, and also like pacifiers, we haven't felt the need to push such things.

                    2. Neither one of my kids ever used a pacifier. We were occasionally given them as gifts but the girls never cried to the point that we were willing to risk nipple confusion for the sake of shutting them up for a few minutes.

                    3. Our kids are moderately attached to their animals (it comes and goes), and never got attached to pacifiers, though we didn't avoid them entirely. I've had some nieces and nephews get extremely attached to stuffed animals and/or pacifiers... seeing it up close makes me relieved that wasn't our experience. I know there have been multiple times when hours were spent driving just to pick up a stuffed animal left behind...

                    4. One of mine hung on to that darn nuker until she was nearly in Kindergarten, but the other three were pretty much uninterested.

  9. It's also worth saying that when the n00b gets a little older, and your kids start playing together... well, that's my favorite part of being a parent so far.

    1. It's probably mine, too.

      My daughters are almost three years apart and it's worked out well, particularly as the elder prefers being a kid and the younger prefers being a little more grown up.

      I'm two years older than my brother, who's twelve years older than our other brother, who's two years older than our sister. The younger two are half-siblings, since you had to have been wondering if you didn't already know.

      It was a lot of fun and helped me a lot for when I was preparing to have kids. It was tough as hell to leave my 6- and 4-year-old siblings when I went to college, though.

      1. My last sibling was born in MN while I was in my first year of law school in D.C. We are nearly 23 years apart in age.

        1. !!! step-mom, or was your mother being held hostage??!!!

          [joaking!! but...wow]

          1. Oldest of 13. All pretty well spaced at about 1.5 years, though some deviations from that in both directions. No multiple births, no half or step siblings, etc. Just the same two people making 13 babies, one at a time.

    2. As awesome as I've become at "playing trucks," I'm really looking forward to reaching this moment!

      1. Trucks? What are they, now?

        I can name every major and minor character on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and I have several of the songs memorized.

        1. so, your position on the nature/nurture thing is...??? 😉

          The Girl had a lengthy girly-girl phase (dance lessons, frilly clothes, various soul-and-wallet-sucking dolls, PINK, etc.). Then she started chopping the hair off her barbies and allowing The Boy to occasionally behead them. Aaaand, here we are. Boys are stupid. YOU are stupid. Everyone is stupid. Stop telling me what to do! Stop interfering in MY life! Yadda yadda. Something incredibly insightful and smart; something adorable or lovey-dovey. JESUS [redacted] in hell! Split pea soup projectile vomiting!! YAAAAAH!!! Something incredibly insightful and smart; something adorable or lovey-dovey. Rinse, repeat.

          1. Snort! I have three teenage girls coming down the pike. Terrified of those years.

          1. I'm not gonna lie to you - that show is really quite good. I've never turned it on without the girls around, but let's just say I hint at it when they're discussing viewing choices.

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