My little girl is turning three this year. How is this possible? How have three years passed so quickly? I love this little girl more than I knew I could love anyone or anything. As we come up to three years of parenting, we are of course getting the never ending question. "Are you having another?"
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| Today in Microfashion... |
The short answer is: we have no idea.
The long answer is: we have thought about it and gone back and forth about whether we should or not and haven't been able to decide. If I'm being truly honest, I would say I would love to have another child for Alexia's sake. My relationship with my sister is something that I hope Alexia will someday get to experience. There is nothing like having someone who can fully appreciate the idiosyncrasies of your parents, the memories of your childhood, and the jokes that you created back when you were a kid. My heart breaks to think that Alexia may never have that.
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| Directing traffic at the local baseball game |
On the other hand, we have gotten into a groove with Alexia. The first 2 years of her life were really hard for us. She was the perfect little baby with a great attitude and she was very adaptable, but LoLo and I had a hard time defining our roles as parents and finding ourselves on the same page as to what it meant to each of us to be a parent. We fought over who slept more, who washed more dishes, who cooked more food, who changed more diapers, and basically everything. LoLo worked every other weekend which left me alone with her a lot and I started to feel overwhelmed. I felt like I had lost my sense of who I was as a person outside of being Alexia's mom. I traveled a lot and it was difficult for LoLo who suddenly had to take care of a tiny human alone while I seemingly was living it up in other countries (for the record, I really wasn't... my work is not easy when I am abroad and it was especially not easy when I was pumping and traveling everywhere!). We found ourselves thinking of Alexia's needs first, our own needs second, and the other's needs barely at all. I wasn't taking care of LoLo and he wasn't taking care of me.
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| Me and LoLo on a much needed trip to Miami |
LoLo has since gotten a new job that is more fulfilling to him and is much more manageable for our family. He has weekends and holidays off and I no longer feel that burden of being solely responsible for Alexia on the two days off I have after working a long week. We've worked really hard together to start thinking of how to take care of each other so that we could better take care of Alexia. LoLo has recognized my need for sleep and alone time and I have recognized his need to have his video game time. He's gotten so good at anticipating when I might need a little something extra. Just a few weeks ago, LoLo knew I was going to be leading a really intense training for two straight days. The night of the first day of training, I came home to dinner ready and him handing me a drink as soon as I walked in the door. Two years ago, that never would have happened.
With my crazy work schedule and all of the travel I do, it just seems more realistic to have only one. Imagining LoLo having to handle two small children while I am far away, seems like such a challenge. Tonight though, I read an article about how you end up settling into your new routine with two children the same way you settled into a routine with one child. I have no doubt that we could do it, but do we want to? Should we? Who knows. We change our minds every day and maybe at some point we will finally make up our minds. In the meantime though, we are enjoying our time with Alexia and focusing on being the best parents we can to her.
