Yesterday was one of those days.

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There was endless fussing from the baby, and demands paired with meltdowns from the toddler. There was two solid hours of suckage that felt like at least eight, the cliche “hand-off-the-baby-to-dad” move as soon as he walked in the door, and the questioning of whether or not it was acceptable to have a glass of wine at 4 p.m.

Yesterday was a rough one, but later on, our little family of four headed down to the beach before dinner, and as I watched Michael and Owen jumping in the waves and kissed Ryan’s silky head sticking out of the top of the Bjorn, I realized that despite it all, we’re finding our groove.

Ryan will be a month old tomorrow. There’s some saying about the days being long but the years being short, and I totally get that. Aside from a really rough second week where he was having a growth spurt, but I was convinced he was going to be colicky like Owen was (I was thisclose to calling up my friend who works on a psych unit and booking a long weekend), he’s been a fairly easy kid. I mean, relatively. He’s an infant, after all, so he cries and spits up and doesn’t sleep nearly as long at night as I would like, but compared to the first month with Owen, he’s been a cake walk. I’ll take the two 3-hour stretches at night (I bring him in bed with me after that because…yawn…) over the maybe hour and half at a time we got the first time around.

I know a big part of it is I’m more relaxed this time and thankfully am not experiencing the baby blues again, but it does fascinate me how different kids can be.

So, yes. This two kid thing. It takes a lot of multitasking and patience and some tears too.

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(Morning multitasking: chai, nursing, emailing, and tiny feet.)

It’s going with the flow and trying not to take things too seriously. It’s showering when I can (that fear I had came true. Showering with two kids is…difficult) and making a point to lie down with Ryan and take a nap as soon as Owen goes down for his. It’s a little extra TV (I both love and loath you, Fresh Beat Band.) It’s doing the laundry, but maybe not folding it right away, running the dishwasher but being physically unable to unload it for 24 hours, and needing to set an alarm to remind myself to put dinner in the Crock Pot.

But our groove, we’re finding it. Little by little.

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