How A Second Child Is Different from the First Child

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It has been about six weeks since my wife and I welcomed our beautiful little daughter into the world and so far the dire predictions from friends and family about wanting to sell off my kids to the circus have not come true. My four-year-old son is taking his little sister in stride and his little sister is excelling at everything except, of course, sleeping for more than three hours at a time.

The nine months leading up to our daughter’s birth was filled with prophecies of doom and gloom about the hardships of adding a second child to our family. We were told in no uncertain terms that having two children was “like having three children”, that everything would be 1,000 times more difficult and that we would, essentially, cease to be human beings and instead be reduced to simple beasts of burden who served the needs and wants of our children like automatons.

But instead of being weighed down with grief and despair my wife and I have actually been enjoying the whole process of having a newborn in the house much more than we did the first time around. We’re more experienced, more laid back and a bit older now. Here are some differences we’ve noticed in our parenting experience between our first and second child:

	First Baby (Son)	Second Baby (Daughter)
Hair	Nope.	Yep.
On Crying	“Stop, stop, stop, please stop! Here’s some food, diaper, distraction, pacifier! Oh, God, please stop!”	“Stop, stop, stop, ehhh… whatever. I have Netflix, a full pot of coffee and an iPhone. I’m cool if you are.”
Pacifier on Floor	Immediate pick up followed by a five-minute scrubbing under hot water. Pacifier would not be returned until it was run through the bottle sterilizer.	Three second rule applies…to when you see it, not when it falls. A rinse with hot water and and it’s back in baby’s mouth.
Mixing Formula	Each and every bottle is measured out and weighed with the sort of precision that would make a heroin dealer proud.	Approximate amounts are okay – similar to what a blind bartender might pour.
Penis	Yes.	No.
Projectile Peeing	Yes.	Much less likely. See above.
Projectile Pooping	Yes.	Yes.
Going Out	“We can’t go anywhere, we have a BABY!”	“Think we could do a three week safari in Africa if we just throw her in the car carrier and tie the boy to the roof of the car?”
On Not Sleeping	Please sleep, please sleep, please sleep! Oh, dear god! Please sleep!	Please sleep, please sleep, ehhh… whatever. I have Netflix, a full pot of coffee and an iPhone. I’m cool if you are.
Going To The Doctor	“He didn’t burp? We need to got to the ER NOW!”	“Are all her arms and legs still there? Okay, she’s fine.”

Our daughter is generally proving to have a much less dramatic childhood that her brother. It’s almost as if our daughter actually read a bunch of parenting books before she was born and decided to precisely follow the baby examples in the book. Our son spent most of his first year proving that every baby book author on the planet had no idea what a real baby did.

That being said, our son is now proving to be a pretty good “Big Brother” and willing helper when he’s not trying to lovingly smother his little sister with kisses, hugs or Transformers.

I don’t like to make guesses about the future too often, but based on the way things are going I’m pretty sure my son and daughter are never going to fight or give us any trouble of any kind at all. I’m looking forward to a calm and relaxing time for the next several decades.

I mean, with two kids everything should be pretty easy now, right?

This entry was posted on August 28, 2010 at 8:06 am and is filed under Daddy Stuff, Humor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.