SECOND KID

My wife and I chat with our daughter all the time about her little brother, who is soon to arrive.  She has the unrealistic expectation that he will be ready to play the moment he leaves the womb with the toy he’s bringing her from the hospital.  Explaining to her that he will be a blob for about a year doesn’t really compute.  She calls him her baby and can’t wait to help out with his care.  She wants to push the stroller, feed him, change his diapers.  She’s just mastered pulling up her own underwear, so we’ll see how that works out.

My thoughts have already leapt ahead to having conversations with a male child in the age of #metoo …almost as frightening as the thought of my girl discovering boys and abandoning my wish that she would live with daddy until he dies and then go to work for Jesus.  I am trying to imagine the difference two children will make.  Much like before my first kid arrived, everything was hypothetical.  There’s the thought of extra work, of course, the greater likelihood of pee in the face, too, but I’m also really curious about how unalike my two kids will be from one another.  Other parents tell me they were amazed at how different the personality of the second child ended up being from the first.  My daughter is a loving bully, so she’s likely to whip the little guy into the family routine pretty quickly.  But, what if his personality is even stronger?  God help us.

I’ve always thought there are two kinds of people in the world… those who live for the weekend and those who live for the week.  It’s the difference between live to work and work to live.  I’m definitely a vocation sort of person… I live to work.  My own sibling is definitely a work to live sort of individual, as is most of my family.  It’s likely a healthier way to go about things.  Not as much stress, so I’ve heard.  Good thing I have plenty of life insurance.  It’ll be interesting to see how I will deal with one kid wanting to follow a vocation early on and the other being one of those youngsters who says, “I don’t really know what I want to do.”  I always thought the prospect of not knowing had to be the most terrifying way to start a life.  Maybe it’s freeing.  I guess I’ll find out.

One thing is certain: for the first handful of years of their lives, whatever the people they grow into, my children will exhibit all the traits of narcissistic sociopaths.  I view making sure they outgrow that to be my main job as a parent.  Mind you, they are daddy’s adorable little narcissists, and I can’t get enough of them.