Happy Birthday little one!

My second baby just turned six.  She is the classic middle child.  She tends to get overlooked and is always striving to catch up to her older sister.  Her birth felt like that as well.  After all the "hoopla" of our first baby I expected more but everyone seemed to have forgotten.  I heard "Oh that's right, you had a baby" more than once.  I didn't have any other friends pregnant this time around and since we had baby girl at Christmas time everyone was busy or out of town.

Being pregnant with a busy toddler is hard so I was really tired by the end of this pregnancy.  I struggled with post partum depression with our first baby and was still dealing with it when baby number two was arriving.  I'm sure those pregnancy hormones didn't help.  I remember being so anxious about leaving our oldest for the hospital stay as I had never left her before.

It all worked out in the end and baby number two was an easy c-section.  A piece of cake after my first one since this time I hadn't been in labor first.  Her arrival was planned, everything went smoothly, and she was precious.  She was born at 38 weeks whereas our oldest was born at 41 weeks.  Those three weeks of growth amazed me and I hadn't expected the difference.  This baby was just younger.  Smaller, thinner, and younger.  She was quiet, content, ate well, and slept well.  All different from our first baby and such a blessing the second time around.

It really was a blessing that she was a good newborn because recovering from a major surgery wasn't easy with a busy toddler and a baby.  AND at the same time we moved into our first house.  Her first year was a hard one for me and I don't remember a lot of it.  I remember being very very tired.  My husband worked a LOT of overtime that year with tax season and audit season and in between those busy seasons he was studying for the CPA exam.  I had one friend I was in email contact with and I know that God put her in my life for a reason that year.  She's not someone I had spent much time in contact with before or after that year.  I needed her and she was there for me every day, giving encouragement and just checking on me.  It's nice looking back on the hard seasons of life and seeing how God helped you through.

I can hardly believe this little girl is turning six now.  She seems so old for her age that I can't believe she's been five all this time.  She's very big for her age and it's often a hard thing.  People treat her differently and expect more of her because she looks older than she is.  And I am very guilty of doing this.  Every year on her birthday I'm sad she's getting older and feel bad that I didn't treat her as young as she really was that previous year.  And then I do it again the next year.  *sigh  At the same time though, she IS mature for her age and expecting more from her has been good in many ways.  She started kindergarten at four and was reading quickly.  She can out-think many kids older than her and has skills and abilities beyond her little years.

When she was a toddler she had the most beautiful curls.  I still think of her that way often.  She loves anything girly - pink, princesses, kitties, getting dressed up.  This girl's middle name is "Joy" and it suits her as she's almost always happy.  She's easy-going and has some wonderful phlegmatic traits.  She is pragmatic, a thinker and is very physical.   She plays well by herself and with others, and is nice to be around because she's undemanding.  She's also our strongest willed child though.  Because she's usually so easy it's harder to remember to train her.  It's easy to get after the kid who yells at you but to just let things go with the kid who is sneaky or who just looks at you and blinks (while not obeying).  Food battles were common when she was a toddler and praise the Lord we all survived that.

Our oldest two kids are sixteen months apart so very close in age.  They have always been together.  This child works SO hard to keep up with her older sister and for the most part she can do it.  It's good for her to be in classes without her older sister though (Awana, co-op, Sunday School).  It's good for her to be the oldest sometimes and not have to deal with that inner stress of "keeping up".  Our oldest two work well together and offset one another perfectly and I'm sure that when they get married they will each choose a spouse like the other.  This child is usually the brave, calm one who holds the older sisters hand and is reassuring.  While she can do her share of emoting, this child internalizes more.  And while a thinker, this child is a busy little doer as well.  If I let her help in the kitchen I have to work hard to stay ahead of her or she'll be using scissors to cut things open and shaking seasonings into the bowl because she thinks she knows what she's doing.    In the kitchen she is usually my "tortilla flipper".  She's also a good shopping partner as she loves going along for the ride.

She can hoola hoop for over two minutes and is good at drawing and singing.  She's competitive and loves to play any kind of sport - swimming, soccer, and gymnastics are her favorites though.  She likes to read and help in the kitchen and school comes very easy to her.  I'm looking forward to seeing this little one grow.  She always surprises me and I can't wait to see what she does this year.