On Having Two Under Two

Zoey celebrated her first birthday last week.  Her transition into toddlerhood has made me think about a few things, so I'm writing a short series of parenting posts over the next few weeks.  The first one is my thoughts on raising two kids under age two.

People say the first year of having two (or more) young kids is hard, but the year is really more of an ebb and flow.  Here's the timeline as I experienced it:

• First 4 months:  Off the hook crazy.  Parents and kids are both getting used to the new family dynamic, baby is waking several times in the night to eat, baby wants to be held throughout the day, and toddler is still young enough to need help and attention constantly.  The basic goal during these months is survival.  
• Months 5-7:  Blissful reprieve!  The baby is (sometimes) sleeping through the night and (sometimes) content to just sit and play. Toddler is more used to baby and parents are more used to parenting multiple kids.  The baby can't move, so you can leave them in a room for a minute to go do something else and not worry about them tearing the place apart or falling down the stairs.  
• Months 8-12:  Return to crazy, but much less so than the newborn months.  Baby starts moving and getting into everything, so baby needs to be monitored constantly.  Also, baby moving means that toddler and baby have to learn to start sharing toys, which is a tough lesson for both of them. 

Here are some pros and cons of closely spacing children:

Pros of Having Closely Spaced Children:

• If you want to stay home with young kids and then get back to work when the kids are in school, it maximizes your working years to space them close together.  
• You get through the baby phase quickly.  I've been very pleasantly surprised how much I love having my own babies (as you may have seen by my frequent posts on Facebook), but I'm really not a baby person.  I loved both of my kids from the moment they were born, but I enjoy them more as they get older and have some ability to interact.  
• It makes life easier to have kids in the same stage of life.  So right now, our stage is diapers and naps.  Later, it will be shuttling kids around to after school activities.  
• Along the same lines, closely spaced kids are natural playmates.  As Zoey is starting to say a few words, she and Joshua are good role models for each other with speech development.  They enjoy the same kinds of toys (which leads to fights, but also teaches sharing).  They get excited when the other one is around.  
• You become a PRO at multi-tasking and hustling through chores when you have a spare moment.  Also, it makes a trip to the grocery store by yourself feel like a trip to the spa.  

Cons:

• At this young age, both the older kid and the younger kid are very needy.  Sometimes, they both urgently need things at the same time, and it's impossible to help them both instantly.
• Both kids are exhausting:  infants are physically exhausting; toddlers are more mentally exhausting.
• You very rarely have time for just yourself or your spouse (this is not so much a spacing issue).

One really good lesson I learned from having two kids;

• When you just have one kid, it's easy to feel like it's your credit if they do something well and your fault if they do something poorly.  Once you've raised two kids with essentially the same parenting style, you see how it's very much not about you.  If your kid is a great sleeper, or a picky eater, or shy, or never sits still, it's probably just because they were born that way.  Of course kids need some things (love, discipline, provision of basic needs) -- but it's kind of a relief to know that, for better or for worse, my kids' strengths and weaknesses are largely not about me.  

In conclusion, I will say that we would definitely do this spacing again.  Things have already calmed down now that we are rolling into the second year, and the pros of close spacing definitely outweigh the cons for our family.  I would be interested to hear your thoughts on spacing kids!