so it begins

It's inevitable, really. No matter how hard you try to give the second child/pregnancy the same amount of attention as the first, it's just different. Even though I have to double check online to remember how far along I am and I'm not nearly as careful about not eating foods on the "no-when-you're-pregnant" list, I hadn't really thought much about how very differently we're preparing for our second child as opposed to our first. That is, until we registered this weekend.

My sweet friends Jenn and Patrice informed me that they're throwing us a baby shower in July! I was surprised, but felt very blessed that they would go through all that work on Baby Deuce's behalf. Because I'm OCD and having lists makes me feel like I can control things I actually have little control over (can you tell I was a Counseling/Psychology major in college?), I had been compiling an exhaustive list of all the things we needed for this baby. I think I may have started this list within a week of finding out we were pregnant and I get immense satisfaction from crossing things off. I've been scouring yard sales, craigslist,consignment shops, and a local Mommy board to find good deals on things on the list, but as my due date grew closer I was starting to become a little concerned about all the little things we still needed.

So before we went to register on Friday, I added a few last minute things to the list and separated our items by which store would be most likely to have it/have the best deal. And off we went.

When we registered for Jude, I did hours of research. I checked out online reviews, talked to other Moms, and went into the store with only a vague idea of what we wanted to register for. We spent - literally - hours debating, agonizing, and then finally selecting each thing we were told we needed. I remember the Babies R Us lady commenting on how few things we ended up with on our registry, but I'm pretty sure we had at least 150 items.

Registering was a much, much different experience this time. In we went with list in hand and an ample supply of snacks for Jude. We spent half an hour in Babies R Us and probably the same in Target, and we were both quick and decisive. Don't mistake our speed for lack of caring or even excitement, we just knew what we needed and what would only clutter the house. We knew our preferences, and we knew what was actually important and useful to us in that first year. I will say that because we'll have two kids in cribs, two kids (most likely) in diapers, two kids in car seats, and two kids with a ridiculous amount of plastic toys, I was surprised by how much we ended up needing to prepare for another little one, but our motto quickly became, "only what we actually need." (Of course, I found out after I checked the Target registry online that Shawn apparently thinks we need the movie Where the Wild Things Are, and I got very excited about Babies R Us now carrying nursing bras and vitamin supplements.)

I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw that we only registered for 32 items at Babies R Us and 15 items at Target. I know it stands to reason that your list of needs is drastically cut with subsequent children, but part of me felt like those numbers were representative of lack of care or excitement in some way.

Many people have told us how difficult having two children so close together can be, and I keep hearing, "It's way harder to go from one to two than it was to go from none to one." My heart sinks every time I'm told that because truthfully, it was REALLY hard for us to go from none to one. I wonder what tantrums (Jude's), screaming fits (baby's), and meltdowns (mine) await us, and my heart drops to think about how we're going to do this. Shawn recently told me about a random call he got from a youth minister friend who had moved out of the area awhile ago. We last saw his family about a year ago, and talked to them about working towards me staying home. He was super excited and encouraging about that being a reality, and was excited when Shawn told him we were expecting again. They also have several kids who are very close in age, and he told Shawn, "The second is so much easier. That first one - they get the worst of you. You're a much better parent the second time around."

I've had no lack of Mommy guilt in knowing that this child won't receive the same attention Jude did. We probably won't have as many pictures, and I may miss documenting some of his milestones. I can try to not be that way, but in order to care well for both children, that's just the way it has to be. It's so freeing to realize though, that while he may miss out on a few of those things, he gets the benefit of Shawn and I being better parents. He gets to reap the rewards of having parents who are more confident, more stable, more relaxed, more knowledgeable, and hopefully less selfish. I mean sure, this baby might have to fuss a few more minutes before being picked up, but you can bet I'll remember to lower the crib mattress before he's old enough to jump out (not that I made that mistake with Jude or anything).

I don't know, maybe I'm naive. But that seems like a pretty fair trade off to me.