Taking time to breathe

Time has been quite paradoxical these past weeks. I can't believe that my newborn will be a month old in just one more week, and yet it feels like it has been an entire lifetime since I was wheeled into the delivery room.

The difference between the brothers is remarkable.

At this same age, we could barely leave Llew down in the stroller but here I am now, blogging, while Kian sleeps soundly in the stroller. Our feeding schedule is the farthest thing from clockwork precision: thankfully I am all for feeding on demand so it doesn't bother me so much. Of course, it's another matter entirely when my body demands that the baby remove some of the milk that has
already been produced and he is still fast asleep and absolutely refusing to latch.

In a sense I feel better-prepared but in many ways, I know this is another ball game entirely. These are tiny humans after all and being human, they have their own personalities. There is much that we learned from our firstborn and there is much that our second has to teach us.

One thing that I've been quite happy about is that there's been a minimum of things that we needed to purchase for our newborn. I don't regret giving away our eldest's newborn clothes as soon as he outgrew them: whites turn yellow easily when they're stored and I'd rather have someone else use the heck out of them rather than keep them packed away. But we've got loads of blankets, flat diapers, and while our eldest is still working on his potty training, they are sharing our cloth diaper stash of about fifty or so, in addition to Llew's personal stash of nine training pants. We've got a stroller to which we attached a new, though sadly not matching, convertible carrier/car seat, a play pen waiting to be used, and a bath tub that will last us until Kian decides he's too old to sit in the kiddie tub.

Oh and my sister-in-law has passed on some more of her son's clothes, hahaha.

I'm pleased with how Llew has taken to his role as an older brother. Of course he still throws the occasional fit when he doesn't get his way. He's only a toddler after all and I can't expect him to act more mature than that. But in general, he has been very caring and mindful of the little one, making sure Kian is nice and bundled up when it's cold, helping bathe him, even helping with diaper changes. Oh. And he does offer to share his snacks with Kian which, we have to explain to him, are not yet fit for his age.

It all sounds so ideal but honestly, I consciously choose to remember more of the good than the bad as I've been quite easily exhausted by these two plus other concerns as of late. I shan't go into details but I've lost my temper, had horribly low days, ranted to friends, and broken down and cried all in the past week alone. But I'm taking it a day at a time as I always have with most things. It's only about to approach a month after all, and we are all still adjusting.