on "parenting"
After Zion was born I couldn't help but notice that he had a long way to go to catch up with Harvey in the blog post tag stakes. After nearly five months I'm afraid he's never going to make it. Sure, we've written about him a few times, but we've written about Harvey too; since Zion was born they've been roughly at parity. You're never going to get ahead that way, boy! Another tag, however, has leapt ahead: parenting.
I guess we called what we were doing with Harvey parenting too; I find there are posts with the tag way back when he was the only little one around here. But that was a lie, because with the first one you don't know what you're doing. I suppose we were able to describe what we were trying (or maybe just enduring) but if we thought there was any method to our madness we can now see that we were wrong.
Not, of course, that we're necessarily doing any better with Zion. But at least we've done these things once and can learn from our experiences. We're doing some things the same—holding him a lot, rocking him to sleep, nursing him exclusively (well, that one's not so much me)—and other things differently—not trying to get him into the crib. Also we let him sleep on his stomach sometimes.
Not unrelated to that last point, we're also continuing to not read parenting books... except when we do. I confess to some bewilderment as to how to go about beginning "potty training" for Harvey, and since Leah feels similarly she got a few books out of the library. One of them turns out to be a general book of tips, and it's completely ridiculous. It seems that other parents worry a great deal about many things, things that it never occurred to us might be problems. Leah worries, sure, but mostly just about keeping them alive (which is by the way a priority I wholly share). Whether they're properly dressed walking around the house? Not so much.
Clearly, we are doing very well as parents. Our older son is able to play independently for the better part of an hour at a time (some days), he is kind and generous to both friends and strangers (after we've convinced him to acknowledge their presence), and he's a devoted lover of literature. Seriously, you should hear him reciting books to himself as he plays with his legos. Our younger son can eat with the best of them, and sucks his thumb like a champ. Maybe we should be writing the books! No, we don't have time for that. I guess we'll stick to blog posts.
And they'll mostly be about both boys at the same time. Sorry, Z.