Happy Halloween!

Second Child Syndrome

It’s a common occurrence: The first child has five photo albums of its first year, each meticulously pasted, in order, into a carefully selected book. The second child has one hastily put together album and a shoebox full of disorganized photos.

One of the reasons for this blog is to try to give Baby O2 a fair shake in this regard. I kept up a weekly blog for Reilly for two full years. Part of the reason was to share Reilly with our friends and family—we were living in New York and thousands of miles from home. The other reason was to document this little baby that was changing every day before our eyes.

People say that your second child is different, that the second child doesn’t get the same attention of its mother and father; gets the hand-me-downs, has to compete with the other sibling.

I can see how that would be true, after all, we’ll have Reilly—our spirited and demanding first child—to take care of in addition to our infant. But Baby O2 will also get to grow up with a sister, and will benefit from the knowledge and experience we’ve gained—sometimes painfully—from raising that same sister.

Of course, it’s happening already. This blog is not just about Baby O2, and in fact, has mostly been about Reilly so far. Baby O2 is learning to share before he or she is even in this world. My hope is that this will be a benefit, and that his or her life will be richer for it.

Changing of the seasons

This afternoon, Reilly was walking across the backyard with me when she stopped, looked at the grass and said, "Look Daddy! It's fall!"

I didn't have the heart to tell her that the grass was brown because I had killed it with Round-up.

I wonder where she got this idea from?

Tonight I put Reilly to bed, sang her "Sweet Chariot" and "Amazing Grace" and closed her door. Moments later, she popped her head out of the door, so I got up from the couch, picked her up, and put her back in bed.

Since this happens nearly every night, I was annoyed, and when she said, "Daddy?" I wanted to tell her to be quiet and go to bed already, but instead I said, "Yes, honey?"

And she said, "Daddy, if I have a baby, I'm going to marry Jordan."

Jordan is a sweet little boy in her preschool class.

"And Daddy, if I have a boy, I'm going to name him Cha-Cha."

Adorable.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

In the bathroom once again (where everything interesting in our house seems to happen), Reilly turns to Shawn, and apropos of nothing says:

"Mommy, what do you call a bear with no socks?"

"I don't know Reilly, what?"

"Bear-foot!"

A moment of quiet ensues, and then Shawn and Reilly share a laugh over the successful delivery of Reilly's first joke.

Conversations from the throne

Today, Reilly said, "Mommy, I have to go poopie. Come with me and tell me a story."

Shawn responded by saying that she didn't know any stories.

Reilly said, "It's okay, Mommy. We can just talk about something: God...Santa...the weather..."

Shawn said, "Okay, let's talk about the weather."