Transitioning

Most peoples first question when they see me is "How is Johnny transitioning to being part of your family?". The answer to this is wonderfully! When we received information about his personality he was described as laid back and lovable. I would say that he is exactly that. He is happy unless hungry or ready to go to sleep. He loves to snuggle and be played with. He laughs at Emma while she dances, grabs everything he can get his hands on so that he can shove it in his mouth and is already soooo close to crawling.

The only real challenge we have had with him is sleep. We were told that babies process grief in their sleep so it would take a while for him to feel comfortable sleeping for long periods of time. This has proven to be very true for him. When we first brought him home he would wake up every hour and many times he would wake up screaming. It was a different type of cry than the typical half asleep, slightly hungry, dazed cry. It was more of a "where am I and what am I doing here?" cry. He will still wake up every once and a while with this cry but he is instantly calmed when he see our faces over his crib. He is finding comfort in us. He is trusting that we will be there when he wakes up (still sometimes every hour). It is amazing to us how quickly he has learned to put his trust in us. We are so thankful for this.

Though he is doing so well it has not been an easy transition for John and I. We have found that going from one to two children is quite the challenge. We were warned by larger families that the step from one to two was the hardest so were prepared somewhat for this. Emma was a very easy baby and for whatever reason, the transition from no kids to one was pretty smooth for us. We never had that month or two where we were just trying to keep our heads above water. I have asked a lot of mom's with two children how it went for them and the trend seems to be if they had a hard time with the first, the second was easy. But if the first was easy, the second was a bigger challenge. I can't really put my finger on why it is so much more challenging but I think it has something to do with being pulled in just one more direction and having to respond to the immediate needs of two instead of one. I am getting better and better at it without getting frazzled so hopefully this trend will continue.

We are beginning to feel a new "norm" come over our family and are coming out of survival mode. Now we just need to get him to sleep through the night....hmmmmm.......don't think that will happen anytime soon.