No two children are alike. If you have just given birth to your second child, if you are pregnant with your second child, or if you are just vaguely contemplating having another child in the distant future, people will start telling you this. Everyone will start telling you this; mothers, fathers, grandparents, teachers, daycare workers, and even people whose nearest experience with a child was the time that they substituted for the school crossing guard. They will repeat it so often that you may find yourself muttering it like a sort of mantra.
Now, to most people (parents or not) this seems an obvious truth. However, until you are confronted with the day-to-day reality of juggling the wants and needs of more than one child, you will only know it intellectually.
My two children are so different I’m pretty sure that it’s cosmic comeuppance for the relative ease with which my first child passed through babyhood. No, my second son is not a difficult baby. However, aside from the fact that my children are both male, they have nothing else in common except DNA. They don’t even look alike.
Canaan, my older child (known around here as “His Highness”) breastfed voraciously from the moment he was born. He turned up his nose at every type of bottle with expressed milk in it-consequently he went everywhere with me until he ate enough solid food for me to be gone for more than fifteen minutes.
His brother is a bottle baby and drinks everything from formula to apple juice with equal enjoyment-he is also a devotee of the pacifier.
Until he was over a year old, Canaan would not go to sleep without a ritualistic combination of patting, rocking, singing and not one but TWO fans providing a wall of white noise. If a person happened to sneeze in the same room, he would bounce awake.
Ezra is placed in a crib with a pacifier and drifts off without so much as a peep.
Ezra has even managed to defeat my “no disposable diapers EVER” gospel by peeing so copiously that no cloth diaper can possibly be used for more than 45 minutes.
So, there you have it-no two children are alike. That’s probably why childcare books continue to be published and will on into infinity. However, as challenging as two can be, the constant chaos is a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

A mystery for the ages!

So, I just found a rotten kiwi fruit hidden behind an end table in my house. It is full of toddler-sized finger holes, almost as if someone had poked the kiwi fruit repeatedly before hiding it. Who would do such a thing??

The Evidence

Apparently Monday is "Play-with-your-food" day at my house: Canaan dumped out a bottle of red sugar crystals so he could scoop them with his toy skidsteer, and then Ezra finger-painted my floor with goat cheese that he stole from the fridge.

Apparently they're dangerous

Yesterday I was making a quilt for Squishy. Big was evidently very affected by my repeated admonishments against touching my sewing machine. When he saw me pressing the pedal with my foot he came over and lifted my foot up, placed it firmly on the floor, and said "No, no Mommy, not to play with!"

Wants and Needs

Canaan has recently earned the privilege of accompanying me on foot through the grocery store rather than riding in the cart. He is actually quite well-behaved and I like the fact that it tires him out quite a bit. Yesterday, we were concluding our grocery-purchasing activities through the diaper aisle when the following scenario occured:
Setting: Price Chopper grocery aisle.
Players: Mommy, super-loaded grocery cart, fat baby, toddler.

Canaan is barreling along when...
(Picture a small child stopping so fast that his shoes almost come off).
"MOMMY! MOMMY!"
"What?"
"Mommy, that is a MONSTER TRUCK. I want that MONSTER TRUCK. I NEED THAT MONSTER TRUCK. I get it!"
(This was not a tantrum; he was so fascinated with it that he crouched down and rested his nose gently on the molded plastic frame).
We are now the proud owners of one overpriced Monster Jam monster truck. It is SUPER NEAT!

The celebrity!

Here is Canaan in "Lightning McQueen" mode.


And here is dear little Squishy-in cow mode!

Why name him at all??

My dear beloved Big has decided that the name his father and I so lovingly picked out for him just WILL NOT DO. He would much prefer that we refer to him as Lightning McQueen, the famous racecar, who is "fast so fast so speedy quick!" Yes, this is his full title. You may not shorten it to "Lightning". He has also decided to rename Little Squishy. His choice? Monarch, after his beloved stuffed pony (who is named after Grammy's real-life pony). Squishy doesn't seem to mind so far, although he's not a big fan of carrots.