Listmania: How to Survive Two Kids - Life with a Newborn and a Toddler

When I was pregnant with my second child, I spent a lot of time trying to wrap my head around the logistics of parenting two children at two very different stages of life. It's amazing how much a couple years between kids can mean a world of variation in needs, schedules, meals, preferences, abilities...the list goes on and on. I searched the internet trying to find advice from moms who had been there, but found there really was a shortage of practical information that I could put to use. I am starting this post 7 months into my life with two kids, and though I'm sure it is different for everyone, I think I have a perspective that can hopefully help others out there who are wondering how the heck they will get through this part of parenting. Maybe this will help...

Surviving Two Kids - Life with a Newborn and a Toddler

1. If you still have time before your second child arrives, do some preparation. I'm not talking about setting up the crib - I'm talking about sanity preparation. Start talking to your toddler about the new baby, and include terms like, "patience" and "fragile". 
2. Get your hands on as many big sibling books that you can find - we found "I'm a Big Sister" (brother version also available), as well as "Waiting For Baby" and "You and Me". These all show what life with a new baby will be like and should help immensely once the baby comes home.
3. Start stockpiling quiet toys that can be kept in special bins throughout your house. These can be used by your toddler during baby naptimes, nursing sessions, or when Mom just needs 15 minutes of silence (or almost silence anyway). Include items like books to read, crayons and coloring books, or quiet books (here's my version). To make the boxes even more exciting, only let your toddler use them when you need the quiet time.
4. Keep emergency items all over the place. I have a gallon-size ziploc in my car, my husband's car, and in my way-too-big-to-be-trendy purse. In these bags I have a will-not-be-missed change of clothes for each kid, a diaper for each kid, wipes, a disposable changing pad and a disposable diaper trash bag. At this point I do still use a diaper bag, but it stays in the car and I just pull things from it when I need too.
5. I always keep the following in my purse: A toddler-applicable snack. Stickers and crayons. An old (hopefully charged) smartphone loaded with whatever is the latest and greatest area of interest. I promise you will get caught somewhere, or need to buy some extra toddler happiness when the baby needs attention while you are running errands. A box of raisins always makes my older daughter happy when I need an extra 20 minutes to get everyone through a doctor appointment.
6. Solicit your toddler for help with the baby. This has been huge for us, and Bugga loves to feel important. Even at 2.5 she is able to bring me things like a baby blanket, a clean outfit for the baby, etc. if I just ask her. 
7. Grocery shopping with one kid was a breeze compared to two. In case you didn't learn this the first time around, your baby's car seat DOES NOT go on top of the shopping cart. Ever. And unless you are at Costco, the car seat will likely not fit inside the cart either, especially if you plan on actually shopping for anything, and definitely if your toddler is sitting in the kid seat. This is where the sling/baby carrier serves its purpose. Oh, and don't forget to park right next to the cart return.
8. Speaking of the baby carrier...that thing will come in handy a lot. I wore it all over the house. So did my husband, as for awhile that was the only place Bella would nap. (We do not miss those days AT. ALL.) I also wore it a lot outside of the house - besides shopping, it allowed me to still keep Bugga enrolled in her gymnastics class. She isn't quite old enough for a non-parented class, but I can't have the baby in the infant seat while Bugga is in class. But the sling was no big deal. And Bugga really needs that gymnastics class for a myriad of reasons, so I am so glad I did not have to suspend that from our schedule.
9. If your toddler doesn't use a sound machine, I would consider it at this point. My kids both have sound machines which are priceless tools when both at home and traveling. And now that you will have a new baby potentially screaming at all hours, a sound machine can muffle that sound so at least SOMEONE in your house can get some sleep.
10. Know that this chaotic mess of a life will not last forever. There will be tears of happiness and frustration several times over as you learn to adjust to everything. That first year of your child's life is HARD on a mom. And add a second (or third, or fourth) kid to it, and everything escalates. But your family will evolve into something that works for everyone.

*Note: For some reason I wrote this post and never published it, and I just found it now that my second child is 14 months old. I am happy to say we survived the first year (as you will) and things are definitely easier nowadays that we all know each other much better and have adjusted to life outside the womb. Hang in there!

And just like that...

We are moving back to Texas! After what has been one of the longest winters on record (at least according to all the Calgarians I keep talking to) we are leaving just as it finally stops snowing...and then just in time for the sticky triple-digits of Houston.

Seriously - I JUST posted my toddler's room reveal and WHAM I have to take it all down. And I haven't even shown you what I did with my newborn's nursery yet! I'm planning to just recreate the same designs in the new house so I will do an update post as well. I will need to reorder a lot of the decals since they weren't reusable (ugh, what a waste!) but they are so much easier than painting. I say they were a waste because I know for a fact there are reusable decals available (I found some for the girls' bathroom) even though they look great, but they are hard to find.

Anyway, so we are currently trying to survive between homes. We had a disastrous week last week in a hotel in Calgary as our house was packed and cleaned, and now we are in corporate housing until our furniture gets to town. I say disastrous because as much as we were SO very fortunate to stay in a two-bedroom suite with a toddler and a baby, NOBODY slept all week, naps, nights, whatever. The baby was up every 2 hours, the toddler decided she couldn't stay in her bed even though we set everything up PERFECTLY...and I was a ZOMBIE!

The crazy thing is I had been dreading our four-hour flight down (Bella's first flight) and made massive preparations as far as entertainment for Bugga, packing perfectly, etc. and it ended up being the easiest flight in the history of parenting. At least for this family.

And things have only improved since we landed. Our corporate housing apartment complex has three bedrooms (win), a playground (win), and a splash pad (super win). And Bella is just coming out of a growth spurt which means she's slept 8 plus hours the past few nights, allowing me to gain a little of my sanity back.

I think the spurt's over though so tonight could be back to 2 feeds a night which isn't awesome but tolerable...and soon we get to start solids so that might improve things as well.

Anyway, time to get back into the swing of things here - YEE-HAW! Yeah.

Baby Data

It's probably no surprise that I am motivated by statistics (the core of my undergraduate degree in Industrial Engineering). I really find data fascinating and eye-opening...and baby data is no different.

A lot of people will tell new moms not to "watch the clock" when feeding a newborn, stressing over naps, or counting the minutes of what seems like endless crying. Well that doesn't work for me. I NEED the data. I need to see trending to find some hope of optimism in what is a very challenging period in my life with a newborn.

There are a lot of methods out there, but I think the easiest way to track the baby data is through an app (I use Total Baby), since nowadays your phone is always within arm's reach. Most programs will keep track of when and how long your baby eats, sleeps, and needs a diaper change, along with doctor visits, milestones, and even pictures.

Here's where I've noticed the big advantage of tracking: when you use it for more than one kid. I used the app with Bugga, and I'm now using it with Bella. As I go through the daily and weekly challenges with Bella, I am finding that I very much forget exactly how things went down with Bugga. Did Bugga wake up this many times at this age? When did we move Bugga to the crib compared to Bella? And I can just look it up in seconds. There's nothing like an instant point of reference when going through all these stressful moments where you feel like you will NEVER come out the other side because this moment is just the WORST...only to see that your first child acted the same way at this age and you lived to tell the tale...or at least the data did.

Ummm

So colic is fun...

Second Kid Stress

So here I am, trucking along into my 25th week of pregnancy with Baby #2. That puts us into viability range, which of course, is a nice relief of a milestone. In only a few short weeks I will be pushed over into the Third Trimester. I am starting to feel the stress of having two children creeping up on me.

I'm sure all toddler and newborn moments
 look like this, right? RIGHT?!?!

I know very well I won't be the first to do it, but I am spending more and more time lately trying to wrap my preggo-brain around the logistics of the first few days/weeks/months of my newborn's life while intermingled with my toddler's day-to-day needs. Looking back on my experiences with my first born, I think about how easy it was from my perspective now (go back and read some old posts and see how much I am rewriting history here) and if I was going to be a first-time mom again (which is impossible), I'd be SO. READY.

But that's not really the case here. As much as I know all to well how it works to have a baby, I know NOTHING about what it is like to have a baby AND A TODDLER. And my freakouts are getting a little bigger by the day.

Of course, we must plan for the hospital stay, and my toddler will not likely enjoy or understand that experience and is best left at home until the baby has arrived. This requires planning, especially since we have no family nearby, are new to our new country and therefore have a limited social network, and well, Bugga has never been away from both her parents at once for longer than an hour in her life. And though I "lucked out" last time by only being in labor during daylight hours, there's always that chance that I will need to call SOMEONE to high tail it over to the house at 2AM to watch my daughter as we go speeding off to Labor & Delivery.

Once we get home, then at least we will have a couple weeks of man-on-man coverage with both kids since my husband will be home (thanking my uterus for birthing babies during end-of-the-year holidays once again). But once I am left to my own parenting when he goes back to the office, I am trying to wrap my brain around how I will juggle two severely different nap schedules, nursing, and toddler entertainment and activities that will likely require getting out of the house. Did I mention I'll be doing this in the wintertime? In Canada? Yeah, think snow - lots and lots of snow. I'm not even going to entertain my husband's jokes about nursing outside.

What tiny advice I have obtained here and there is that baby #2 (and any baby after that, should we be crazy enough to go for more...uh....forget I typed that) will be required to be much more flexible then we ever gave baby #1 credit for. Gone will be the eerily quiet household when the baby is sleeping. Gone will be the peaceful nursing sessions in the dark in the glider. And a myriad of other things too, I'm sure.

I'm trying to collect more information on how to plan for the changes, but I'm still coming up short for my own comfort. I found an e-book (The ABC's of Baby #2) last night and devoured it at the gym today - helpful but brief. If anyone out there in internet land has any tips, or resources, I am ready!!!

Officially an Ex-Pat

Well, we made it to Canada - and so did almost most of our things. I have to say that Bugga was a champ through all the changes, far more so then we expected. We lived in a hotel for a few days in Texas as they packed up our house. Then we had a day of travel that included a 4 hour flight and an hour in Canadian Immigration to get our residency. Then we headed to another hotel until our new home was ready.

A fun little wrench in our plans: a few weeks prior to our arrival into Canada, Calgary was inundated with flooding throughout the downtown areas and many other places along their main rivers. Downtown also happens to be where most of their hotels are, like any other city. Oh, and Stampede (Calgary's annual 2-week rodeo event) was also in full swing once we arrived so the city's population was abnormally inflated. So of course, we pull up to our hotel at 8pm at night (already past my daughter's bedtime in OUR time zone) and it is completely closed. No phone call, no rebooking to another hotel - nothing. Awesome.

Apparently their computers were in their flooded basement and therefore they had no way to know who had reservations to contact for rebooking. So, oh well for us! I'm still not sure how this International Hotel (literally their name) had the only electronic records in their specific building, but hey, what do I know.

So we scrambled, and drove down to the Westin and checked into their only (and smallest) available room for one million dollars a night (well it was a lot). Oh and no bathtub - which is great for a toddler. This was going to be a long 10 days.

Fortunately my husband's relocation contacts felt horrible enough about their mistake (not checking on our reservation before our arrival) that they found us a corner suite at our preferred hotel and we happily moved over there the next day.

And there we lived for 10 days. It was fortunately near a few parks, playgrounds, and even a splash pad (which Canadian kids will still play in during much colder weather than us!) and the little routine we established worked for us. I also brought along several of Bugga's favorite toys, a couple colors of homemade play dough (post coming soon), and even a basic plastic cup and spoon would be treasured at times (especially near water!).

So we have now moved into our new house and are getting used to the Canadian life. The house is still a hot mess, but we'll get there!

*Our dilemma from the floods is absolutely nothing compared to what many Calgarians have gone through, and are still going through. If you would like to donate to the Alberta Flood Fund through the Red Cross, please click here.

Things People Say

When you are pregnant, you get the full gamut of surprisingly inappropriate comments from strangers, let alone people you work with, are friends with, and are even related to. Especially when you TELL them you are pregnant. I have heard the most infamous from other people, the ever-cringe-worthy "Was this planned?"...I mean really! My response to that would be, "Nope, can I borrow some money for diapers?" or something along those lines. I'll let you know if I hear that one.

My personal winner for what I hate to hear once I announce my pregnancy at the 3 month mark? "Oh, I KNEW IT!" You did? Really? Then I'm so glad I was stressing out for the past few months trying to keep this on the D.L. just in case we had a miscarriage and wouldn't have to tell you the bad news. I'm SO GLAD you watch the little details of my life so closely that every little movement I make is potential gossip fodder for you and your manicurist.

Yes, I have someone in my life who did this to me this time around. And it bothered me to no end because I knew this was going to be the first thing they said way before I even announced, primarily because of the gossip going around behind my back with other mutual acquaintances. So now I'm not thrilled about this person being a part of my good news, when they otherwise should have been. Grr. Yes, this deserves a growl.

What annoying things have you heard from others while pregnant?