And I Thought Writing a Blog Was Hard – Coming Up With a Title is Downright Impossible!

Oh how a week flies by when you have nothing to write about. To be fair to myself, it hasn’t really been a week; I resurrected my blog last Friday and I write this on Wednesday so the auto-post feature can kick in sometime around 12:01 Thursday morning. So let me begin again . . .

Oh how five days fly by when you have nothing to write about.

While I say nothing, it is not as if my life has been a complete blank, it’s simply that I’m not sure I want to bore the world with my semi-tame, semi-drama-filled life. I could blather on about my current job search or about the general depressiveness I’ve acquired having watched a Chicago White Sox take the first All Star game loss for the American League in over a decade. I could wow the world with the ooh-so-interesting (“Well, I’d hope so, because I’m laying it on pretty thick.” Five bonus points to the person who can name the movie, actor and what he (and I) had been spreading so deliciously thick. If I remember correctly . . . no, I don’t . . . I’ll have to read through my old blogs to see who the current points leader is.) . . . ooh-so-interesting tale of . . . . of . . . shucks, my tangent derailed me. ‘Twold hav ben wurth it if tha last few sen-tan-ces had dun made any cense. (to be re-read aloud with a slow country twang.)

Ahem . . . I mean . . .

When this blog was last in style, my little girl had just been pulled out of the oven, needed 18 more days of baking in the NICU, and had possibly already followed us home. Then news of her ceased; it was, to the outsider, as if she had simply dropped off the face of the Earth. Well, I’m here to tell you, she hasn’t. Gravity has kept her safe and she has been living rather quietly, no, loudly, well, let me put this as delicately as I can . . . my little girl is not her big brother!!

We’ve all heard it, “Oh, my second child wasn’t anything like my first. They had such different personalities right from the start.” I was not sure I believed it, but apparently it is quite often true.

Before I dig myself into too big a hole, not that I intend to stop digging but rather to kind of slope the sides, making my escape a little less perilous, I would like to point out that I have two very amazing and super-good kids. They both do well in public, they enjoy meeting new people and their general personalities are relaxed and happy. But as I had warned myself while raising an infant Andrew, he was such an insanely easy going child that a second child couldn’t help but be seen as a troublemaker!

Now calling Annaliese a troublemaker may be taking it a little too far, but she is definitely different. While Andrew’s biggest (and perhaps only real) challenge was cleaning up all the food that thought the esophagus was open to two way traffic, Annaliese has been . . . the little guy sitting besides me (no, not Andrew, this guy’s invisible) just told me to stop rambling and start giving examples.

Since the day she came home, Annaliese has yet to hold still. If she is awake, she is moving! With ‘The Boy,’ you could wrap your arm around him like a seatbelt and he would settle in for hours on end. Not Anna. Ooh no. She wants to move, to have her own freedom. But contrasting this independent spirit, she all too often requires attention be lavished upon her. She can be sitting in her saucer, queen of the world, when Daddy stands up to walk out of the room. Instantly, she reverts from Queen back to spoiled princess, demanding proper attention be again paid tribute to her. Often, it is quite enough to stand besides her, smiling. Other times the only payment she will accept is to be picked up and held. Of course, the now held child promptly demands the freedom of movement she so deserves.

Despite the minor downside of actually having to work while raising this second child (honestly, infant Andrew really was that easy!), I still find myself fondly attached to ‘The Girl.’ What she denies me in time spent asleep on my chest, she more than makes up for by joyfully climbing and bouncing on me as I attempt to hold her on my lap. She smiles and laughs, she army crawls around the house attempting to sate her infinite curiosity. And I, thanks to the briefly aforementioned job search, have a front row seat as my big-little girl grows up. Not a bad gig if you can get it!

By the by, paragraph three doesn’t really make any sense to me either. And I know the movie I was quoting . . . at least the “Blog Alarm” on my phone worked!