Meeting Milestones

It's really interesting to me how much your parenting style changes when you go from having one baby to two.  With the first, its all about getting the baby to have all of their "firsts" as fast as possible. You can't wait to give them rice cereal at 4 months, try your hardest to get them walking by 8 months, speaking in complete sentences by 18 months.  It's crazy really, you read all the books about when babies should reach these milestones and your determined to make sure they get hit on time or earlier. But then, before you know it all your teaching, coaching and insisting has resulted in a fairly self sufficient three year old that really only needs you to pay for their toys and take the wrapper off their gum.  So much time is spent making the baby grow up that you lose track of the time and she grows up way too fast.

With baby number two, you already know the sleepless nights won't last forever, you know they will be feeding themselves and bathing themselves and pretty much doing everything for themselves in the blink of an eye. With baby number two you make the decision not to push anything, not to strive for beating those "milestones" and just try and keep your baby a baby as long as possible. Yes, most 12 month kids are walking and Piper is not.  Does that bother me?  Absolutely NOT, because I know that once the walking starts, the independance, lack of need for mommy hugs, and big girl attitude is right around the corner.  I want to hold onto my last baby as long as possible and she can reach all these milestones on her own schedule. Now I know that whatever that schedule is, it will be here too fast!

Avrie - 5 Days Old

Piper - One Day Old