When you are the second child you can get away with doing lots of things that your older sibling would certainly not have been allowed to do. Whether it’s the fact that with experience comes the knowledge that a little dirt won’t hurt or the more likely fact that we just haven’t got eyes in the back of our head.
Also when your big sis is diving off large items of furniture we may sometimes be distracted… And ahem maybe sometimes we just want an easier life.
So Chloe here are a list of things that you can do just because you are child number two:
Take control of the TV remote. The actual one. It doesn’t matter how many toy ones we buy you. You. Only.Want.The.Real.One. And you delight in pressing pause continuously as you realise it makes a noise. To be honest on certain days I may pass it to you for five minutes of quiet and to stop you climbing on and off my lap every ten seconds.
Eat food off the floor – By this I do just mean in our home, typically the lounge carpet. Child one had squeakly clean food, sterilised utensils and we even used bibs. Now I’m just happy if we get some food into your belly. Well..until I used a carpet washer today and saw the colour of the water it sucked up out of the carpet. Maybe not so germ free.
Walk around in your pjs…all day long – by the time we get you up and fed it’s not far off time for your nap so is there any actual point in getting you out of them? Yes with baby 1 we may have delighted in the many hours of look at how cute her outfit is but now I spend most of my days jealous that you can roam around carefree in your onesie and nobody thinks it’s a bad thing. Heck we can even take you to the supermarket in it. You are still a baby after all.. Kinda.
Watch TV for extended periods of time – so when I was pregnant with Izzy I had all these grand ideas about how my child would only ever watch 20 minutes of television a week BUT then I had a second child. And the loss of my pregnant bump disappeared about the same time as my sanity and Iggle Piggle makes you far happier than I do. Typically you are far less interested in the TV than your big sis was but I’m willing to help try to change that 😉
Sleep in our bed – HAHAHAHA. With Izzy I was quite firm in always returning her to her cot and then bed because I didn’t want it to become a habit. With Chloe I would lie on a bed of brambles if it meant she would lie on my chest and just SLEEP. The girl doesn’t sleep. If she would sleep in our bed I would let her sleep there forever. Or anywhere really. In the car. On my head. Anywhere. If you are reading this in years to come Chloe I really hope you mastered sleeping … It’s a good thing you are so cute.
Steal food off our plates – I HATED when Izzy stole food off our plates and always tried to stop her but these days I’m half asleep in my plate anyway and constantly worried that she isn’t eating enough so if she wants to sneak a bit of my chicken I’m just glad she’s eating.
What about you? Do you find your parenting ways have changed somewhat with the arrival of baby two?