We’ve got two boys and they literally couldn’t be further from each other in terms of personality. It’s incredible that you can bring your kids up in the same way, in the same environment with the same toys and stimulus...and they are totally different.
From day one, we knew our second was totally the opposite of our first. From those first cries and the first nights, you know things are going to be different and since then, the rollercoaster has been completely different to the one we rode the first time through.
There are some positives to that, I mean, the first time around was pretty rock and roll. Our eldest boy is a bit more (massively more) intense than the younger boy. When he was little, I felt like he was hard work. It was almost like anything that he could do to make life difficult, he did. We were cool with it as we didn’t know any different the time, but since having our second, we are really noticing how difficult it was at times.
When you have a chilled baby, you just hope they stay chilled. If you have a whirlwind baby, you live in hope of having a time in which they calm down. It’s so hard to say which personality is best to have the first time round...one who helps you cut your parenting teeth and gives you hell or one who eases you into parenthood. Either way, you kind of run the risk of then changing or not changing - I get why they say not to work with animals and kids on stage, too unpredictable.
You just don’t know where they are going next. As each of them grows up, they change day by day. Their language changes, their appearance changes and their attitudes change. I almost want to bottle these things up and look back in a few years and compare what they were like when they were little and what they have become.
What I have really come to terms with is that as a parent, you can’t always do the same things twice. It might work with one kid, but rest assured, it won’t always work with the other. That’s one of the great tests of being a parent - even when you think you know, you don’t know anything.
The boys’ personalities are growing and it’s incredible to see them develop - I just don’t get how they are so different already!
