Month 2 with 2 kids: ✔️
It’s chaotic, but it’s good!
Z at 2 Months
Z has a pretty solid rhythm to his days, even if the exact times aren’t consistent. He naps well and mostly pretty easily, and when he wakes up, he’s more than ready to eat and stretch and smile at you. And occasionally yell about his tummyaches.
Z loves looking around, especially at lights, windows, your face, and high-contrast things. Usually he likes tummy time or makes himself comfy and falls asleep, but it occasionally makes him mad. Generally, this is when he was already a little fussy. He has enough momentum to roll (flop) onto his back, but he’s not really close to going from back to belly. Which is good, because I’m not ready for that.
Riding in the car can go either way. Sometimes he’s completely chill, and others he screams the entire ride. He reeeally likes milk and eats a lot. Much like his sister did, he puts all that milk into getting longer; he’s long and lean. He likes the bath, but doesn’t like when you take him out and get him dressed.
He’s definitely a bit fussier than C was and he really loves to be held, especially by me (and other women). A few times a day, he loves to stretch out on the floor or sit up in the bouncy seat and watch what you’re doing for a while. But usually, setting him down for long, especially in the evenings, is a very good way to get yelled at. I hold him as much as I can, but I’m also trying to be sure to give C the attention she needs.
Sleep
I think we’re pretty lucky here, so far. Z sleeps pretty well at night. I feed him every hour from 5pm to 8pm. And then he passes out and pretty much sleeps till somewhere between 1am and 3am. He eats and goes back down within 20-30 minutes, but then he usually sleeps till whenever I get up or later. Around 5am, Jack and I get up and go downstairs. Sometimes Z comes and I feed him then, and others he keeps sleeping for a while before he wants to eat.
He usually naps for the first time between 8:30 and 9:30, depending on when he wakes up. If we’re home and don’t have anywhere we have to be, that nap is usually 2 hours. Most subsequent naps are an hour if we’re home and shorter/broken up if we’re out and about. I usually put him in the bassinet for naps at home and that mostly goes well. But if C isn’t home or is napping, I’m more likely to let him nap on me.
I’m definitely tired, but not miserably so most of the time.
The Sibling Thing
C adores Z. She gives him a thousand hugs and kisses and leans in and says, “awww,” about a hundred times a day, and she has a lot of opinions about what Z should be doing at any given time. When she’s about to fall asleep, he’s one of the people she asks about. She hates when I take him upstairs to nap (and her desire to touch him is a large part of the reason he has to go upstairs to nap).
We hit a bit of sibling jealousy when Z was about 5.5 weeks old, and we feel pretty good about managing it. If she wants the attention of whoever is holding Z, we try to pass him off or set him down and respond to her. We try to give her 1×1 time with each of us. And we try to give her lots of time on her own and with her friends rather than including Z in every single outing. She has feelings about the amount of attention he getes, and we try to help her name them and handle them as well as she can.
Schedule
Right now, Z eats about every 1-3 hours during the day and is awake for 1-2 hours between naps. He naps for 1-2 hours at a clip most of the time, and usually that totals to 5-6 hours of naps a day. He doesn’t fight sleep as much at this age as his sister did, but we’ll see if that continues. As far as I remember, C nursed to sleep pretty much until she was 16+ months old. Z nurses to sleep about half the time, but if I get the timing right, he usually dozes off with a little snuggling shortly after I turn on his sound machine and music.
We try to leave the house in some capacity every day, often for a walk or some time outside, but he runs errands with us and tags along to C’s social events, too.
He’s often rather crabby in the evenings, generally because all he wants to do is nurse. I’m hoping this calms down in the next month or so. And then sometime between 8 and 9 (closer to 9 at the moment), he calms down and passes out.
Things We Use and Love
- Everything from last month.
- BabyBjorn Bouncer Bliss. Z likes this even more than C did. I can usually put him down for a little bit as long as he’s in this and I’m actively bouncing it. I make a lot of meals, do my hair, and fold laundry while standing on one foot and bouncing this with the other.
