When Grammie and Bapa (Anders' parents) said they wanted to take Zuzu to Govin's Lambing Barn a few weeks ago, I thought it would be fun, but I didn't think it would be THIS fun. I pictured a little pen with maybe like 10 lambs. But I began to readjust my expectations when we were approaching the farm and saw parked cars lining the roads for what looked like miles. This place does some serious business at lambing season.
Inside, it was barn heaven for a little kid like Zuzu (and several hundred others). There may have been more animals in one place than I'd ever seen, let alone Zuzu. Some were in pens and some were wandering free. Chickens just roamed around at your feet. There were sheep, and the sheep had lambs, lambs, and more lambs, bleating and suckling from their mothers, some white, some black, all different and extremely cute. There were goats and more goats, and piglets being put in people's laps for photos.
Bapa was on camera duty, which was fabulous, as he took the job seriously and captured some great moments.
My favorite part was the chicks. A toddler-height pen full of the fuzzy
little guys. You could just reach in and grab one and hold it and no one
cared. Everyone was doing this. A million kids were doing this. Govin's
hires the most laidback staff. It was so fun.
And at the end, Grammie took Zuzu for a pony ride!
“How does Zuzu like having a little brother?” That’s the most common question I was asked after Bear was born. It’s a sweet question, people wanting to be inclusive of Zuzu in the midst of the baby excitement. And there’s reason to be curious. I’d heard from a couple sources that two is the hardest age for introducing a sibling. One-year-olds are too young to resent the change, and by age three they can understand what’s going on better than two-year-olds.
So how does Zuzu like having a little brother? It’s more fun to answer that question four months later. At the time, all I could say was: she’s very sweet with him, and thankfully has never lashed out at him, even in the tough moments when she was feeling needy for our attention. She may have been mad that I wasn’t holding her, but she’s never once acted mad at Bear for existing, which is what I’d kinda been preparing for.
From the beginning she liked to take care of him, the way she cared for her dolls. She was anxious to return his pacifier to his mouth after it had been spit out. She would bring him toys and blankets. She asked to hold him, so we’d lay him across her lap.
But still sometimes I’d look at her and wonder if she was ever thinking, “This baby thing was fun for a while, but can’t we send him back to the hospital now?” Did her heart claim him as her brother, or was he just a creature living in the house? I couldn’t tell: does she love him yet?
One evening recently I began to think I could answer that question. I was holding Bear in my lap while Zuzu played, and he was watching her every move. She looked up at him and said “come on!” and took his hand. I held him while she continued holding his hand, and we walked like this through the house to her bedroom. She then invited him into her cardboard fort, so in he went. Zuzu was in raptures that he was in there with her. She laughed every time she looked at him. She showed him toy after toy. And he smiled smile after smile. And my brain was full of dopamine and I almost couldn’t cope with how happy I was, even though I was straining uncomfortably to keep Bear upright in a cardboard box too small for me, and it had otherwise been a tiring, whiny night. That moment erased the tiring whiny part.
Zuzu looks for Bear when she gets up in the mornings. She lies next to him on his blanket when he does tummy time. Twice I’ve entered a room to find Zuzu hugging Bear while he’s in his bouncy seat. He was crying both times because her version of hugging was more like smothering, but hey, that’s what second kids get to deal with.
She enjoys him. Unprompted, she will smile and chuckle at something he does.
Recently I was tucking Zuzu into bed and said, “God made the whole world, did you know that?” She nodded. I said, “He made trees and birds and flowers and water and the sky, and God made you!” she looked up at me. “And God made Bear!” she said.
It’s been over four months since he was born. Has she already forgotten being an only child? Does she remember the newness of Bear, or does she feel like he’s always been around?
Daddy and I were in the living room together a couple nights ago, listening to Zuzu’s happy voice as she played in her bedroom. We both said we were looking forward to hearing the children’s voices together, when Bear is old enough to play.
Sibling love. It was one of the greatest gifts of my childhood, and now it is one of the many delights of motherhood.
Here is an unfinished draft of a blog post I was composing a year and a half ago:
Okay, so the reason I was reminiscing about what it used to be like with Zuzu is because now that she's 9 months old, she's so fun, so fun fun fun, that I can't believe I didn't think the early months were boring. And I really didn't. I have continually been delighted and fascinated by her. At every moment I have wanted her growing-up to slow down, not speed up.
But seriously. She used to just lie there.
Now: she crawls! She stands! She laughs! She claps! She plays!
I wish I'd kept writing, so I could relive more of the 9-month-old version of Zuzu. So here are a very few bits and pieces of what the kids are like right now, more for my sake than anyone else's.
Zuzu is now two and a half. There is a poem that has been written about her:
There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very very good,
But when she was bad she was horrid.
I don’t like the word horrid applied to Zuzu, but it’s all true, even the curly hair, and especially the fact that she’s everything rolled up in one person—the very very good, and the very very naughty.
She likes to do things on her own, and I love letting her do things on her own. It makes life easier for me when she can get a cheese stick by herself, instead of waiting for me to finish nursing Bear so I can open the fridge for her. She can dress herself, and definitely has strong opinions about what to wear, but the results are not always fit for public.
She chatters fluently, and likes to be understood. She will often repeat a statement until we have correctly interpreted it and repeated it back to her. (This can get a little nerve-wracking if we have no idea what she’s saying, but usually we can figure it out quickly.)
Right now it is very interesting to her to categorize things. Wet and dry, bright and dark, girl and boy.
Bear is four months old, and still at the just-lying-there stage, but just-lying-there is obviously a matter of perspective. He:
- kicks his legs like he's trying to break down a door
- stares intently at people and objects. One of his favorite objects to stare at is a two-tone blanket my sister gave me that has words written on it in big capital letters. This blanket, when not in use, is usually folded up and draped over the couch in the place where I sit holding him all the time. Therefore, when he's on my shoulder getting burped or whatever, he's facing the blanket. And when I crane my head to look at his face while he's in this position, I find him in deep, wide-eyed concentration. Besides the blanket, he loves looking at many objects, but I think he likes people best
- coos in the most beautiful sing-songy voice, gentle and sweet and happy
- gives big open-mouthed smiles
- laughs! Not long laughs, short bursts of laughs
- wraps his fingers around anything they touch with a vice-like grip
And much more than this, like drooling and chewing on his hands, etc. He still has some of his newborn hair, but it’s light brown now, and new hair is coming in that seems to be dirty-blondish like Zuzu’s. He’s a big, solid, heavy, sweet, wonderful little baby boy.
Every so often I read a little article or blog about how hard moms work, describing in detail the stains on clothes, Cheerios in couch cushions, LEGOS on the floor, etc. Before I had kids, I think these articles made me subconsciously uneasy at the prospect of motherhood. Since kids, it’s strange to say that I’ve caught myself thinking, “Oh, quit griping—mothers aren’t the only ones who work hard.” In fact, everyone I know works hard, parents or not. It is an understatement to say they work hard.
But I do it too. I chronicle the minutiae of child-rearing—the clothing stains, Cheerios, LEGOS, and so very much more. And I know it sounds like I’m griping, and on one level I am, but that isn’t really the reason for it. And it isn’t even about bragging, although I’m doing a little of that too. It’s that there’s no other way to convey to you what I did all day.
Other jobs have quantifiable tasks associated with them. You’re a student? You can say: “I wrote a 40-page paper.” A sales rep: “I made 30 calls today.” An artist: “Look, I painted that.” And we’re duly impressed. We understand the time-consuming nature of these activities.
The fact is, when I’m home with the kids all day, I feel suspicious that no one will ever know how busy I was. Anders does know, but it’s easy to believe that he won’t unless I tell him, and telling him involves chronicling the minutiae. If I say “today we baked cookies,” that doesn’t come anywhere close to explaining why it took three hours or why he should be so, so impressed that the kitchen at this moment is relatively clean.
Being with kids is about minutiae—minutiae on top of minutiae. It’s putting a pacifier into a baby’s mouth, over, and over, and over. Wiping a runny nose a thousand times, repeating the same phrases, singing the same songs, cleaning the same messes.
These words seem like complaining, but they’re not. At the end of the day, my ears are full of the sound of my children’s voices; I close my eyes and see their pink plump cheeks; I smell the fragrance of my baby’s wonderful milky breath, and I feel as rich and blessed as any woman that ever walked the earth.
I’m just telling you that sometimes the house is messy, and the art project we started two weeks ago is still sitting on the table, and there’s so much that hasn’t been done, that it may look like nothing was done at all. So let me chronicle the minutiae now and then. It adds up to a very full day.
I realized as I was washing and folding Bear’s preppy little Easter outfit that I should have bought two Easter outfits at minimum. The chances of a diaper blowout are pretty high, and I don’t have a backup. So here at least is a picture of the outfit, and if I have time before church on Sunday, which I won’t, I’ll take a picture of him in it, since I might be changing him out of it again immediately. Maybe I’ll put him in a onesie, and then saran-wrap the onesie, and then put the Easter outfit over that. (I'm joking. There must be a reason they don't sell plastic onesies, right? Overheating issues or something?)
I got it secondhand at Once Upon a Child—the best savings there are on dressy clothes.
Zuzu’s dress was a gift from my Aunt Ofelia, so of course it is perfect and classy. I’m picturing braiding Zuzu’s hair and putting flowers in it. Wouldn’t that be darling? Aww … that won’t happen. I’m sure I’ll yank her curls up into a ponytail with two minutes to go before the service begins like usual.
Our trip to the Good Friday service was sort of a drill. Anders was planning to go, but he got called to work, and when Zuzu & Bear & I left our house we were already 15 minutes late. We found out when we arrived that there was no childcare provided, so we went to the empty nursery and just hung out until the service ended. I wouldn’t have bothered to go because of how late we were, except I thought it would be confusing for Zuzu to not go to church after I had told her like 19 times that we were going to church, as I rushed her around the house getting ready. It was probably still confusing for her to play in the quiet nursery for a few minutes and then go home again. As we pulled into the church parking lot, I prayed, “God, please let this somehow not be embarrassing.” And I guess He answered my prayer. It was a tenebrae service which means it was dark and solemn, and there was no way I was going to walk into the sanctuary 20+ minutes late with a chatty toddler and a very awake infant, find a seat and strip off our coats and shush the kids and finally get settled in about the time the service ended. As it was, we came in unnoticed, as far as I know, and walking out no one knew the difference. The audio from the service comes into the nursery, so I still got to hear a lot of it.
I feel like even excursions like this pay off somehow. It’s practice. It warmed us up for the Easter service, maybe.
We talk to Zuzu about God a lot, but I haven’t talked about Jesus dying on the cross much. In honor of Good Friday I thought it was time to start explaining it to her. It’s such a familiar story to me that it was strange to try to find the right words for a two-year-old. She listened sweetly and then brightly exclaimed that her lion didn’t want to drink any tea, and that was the end of it.
But I’m pretty sure even conversations like this pay off, too. It’s amazing what she hears and remembers when you don’t think she’s paying attention.
Going from one to two kids was way easier than going from none to one. I don’t remember exactly how I was picturing maternity leave while I was pregnant with Zuzu, but I’m sure I thought I would do things, like cook and bake and exercise and maybe even get to know the neighbors or volunteer somewhere. Then the baby came, and my only personal goal was to take a shower every day. That’s it—just make sure I shower. If I did a load of laundry, I was triumphant. If I did a load of laundry and took Zuzu out for a walk, I bragged about it to Anders. If I did anything at all before noon, I felt like superwoman.
That was when Anders started cooking. My lunches were consisting of peanut M’n’Ms and Cheez-Its, because it seemed like every time I pulled out turkey for a sandwich or starting slicing an apple, Zuzu was crying. And I was hungry. So I reached for whatever would get calories into my body the fastest. And dinner, if left to me, was going to be more of the same. So Anders quietly began reading food blogs and experimenting in the kitchen, and then suddenly he was a gourmet, and now he’s serving things like turkey milanese and crab legs and paella and I am not complaining.
The house got gradually messier. Specifically, the two catch-all places in the house, our bedroom and the workshop in the basement, became close-the-door-and-pretend-it-doesn’t-exist zones. We were stacking up mess faster than I was putting it away. I didn’t understand when I was supposed to be doing things like cleaning.
Slowly we figured out how to do life with a kid. It was different, messier (the basement has never recovered), but it was a natural, us-plus-baby rhythm.
Then Bear came along, and life pretty much continued like normal. There was the brief physical recovery after his birth, and my family was here for that, first my sister, then my parents, cooking dinner, washing all the dishes, doing all the laundry, putting away the Christmas decorations. When they left, I resumed doing three loads of laundry in a day without needing to shout this fact from the rooftops.
It helps that Bear is such a good baby. Know what also helps? A bouncy seat. I didn’t have a bouncy seat with Zuzu. I plop Bear in there all the time and he stares at the frog that dangles down from the handle, and I can pump it up and down with my foot while doing dishes or whatever.
And to be honest, I’m also much more lackadaisical about letting Baby #2 cry while I finish slicing that apple than I was with Baby #1.
But mostly I think it’s because the mental adjustment has already been made. My daily plans are kid-oriented now anyway. They’ve been kid-oriented for two years. And I love it. I go to bed at night thinking about play dough recipes. I have no idea what I thought about before kids, but play dough is better. Life with kids is great.
I don’t know if it would work this way if I kept having kids, but I do know that Bear entered a family with a mom and dad, whereas Zuzu entered a family with just a girl and guy—an untrained, untried girl and guy whom she transformed into parents. I don’t mean we aren’t still naive and learning as we go, I just mean that pre-parenthood and parenthood are different worlds, and I live in the messier, wonderful world of parenthood now.
I wrote last week about the wonderful new family dynamic we have with a second child. But there’s a flip side.
One of the things I wasn’t prepared for when Bear was born was the nostalgia I’d feel for the days when Zuzu was the center of our universe. I was alarmed by this nostalgia, because it seemed akin to regret at having another baby, which I was absolutely not willing to allow. My heart was brimming with love for Bear, so I tried to banish the nostalgia. After all—when Zuzu was born, I never wanted to go back to the time before she was born. It should be the same with Bear.
One night when Bear was about a week old, I was putting Zuzu to bed and was about to sing the bedtime lullaby I had made up for her, and started crying instead. The nostalgic feeling finally washed over me. I’d made up that bedtime lullaby when Zuzu was a small baby, while I held her, swaying back and forth, the child who had opened up that deep place in my heart and let the mommy love gush forth. And I’d sung it to her almost every night since then, my only child, the most special child on the planet. It used to be just us, and now it wasn’t, and never would be again.
Because Bear fits in so well to our family, the nostalgia faded quickly. It is still there, but it is sweet and gentle now, and it only comes when I reminisce. So I wish I had let myself feel the stronger version before that night. It was both legitimate and short-lived.
I’ve always known I wanted more than one child, because I grew up with a big sister and it was great. She was my best friend. So I knew that siblings are good. Before and during my pregnancy with Bear, I would look at Ginny playing by herself and think how glad I was going to be when she had a companion.
It didn’t occur to me that the addition of that companion would mean the loss of something else. Zuzu’s days of being our only child had ended, and I had to say goodbye to them, with a heartache I didn’t anticipate.
When Zuzu grows up she probably won’t remember the pre-Bear days of her life. But I will remember the joy and wonder of those two years, Anders and me looking at each other and saying “What did we do with ourselves before Zuzu came along?” and shaking our heads, because before Zuzu came along we didn’t understand how much richer our lives would be when she did, and now we couldn’t imagine life without her, our happy, chatty, curly-haired little girl bouncing as she runs through the house, and me singing to her at bedtime: “There’s a mommy and a daddy who love you very much …”
Siblings are good. So we welcomed Bear with thankfulness and joy, and said goodbye to the Zuzu-only days. But I think it’s okay if we miss them a little bit.
