The space between

When Sebastian was two years old, he still slept in his crib. We gently laid him down after his bedtime routine, and lifted him out into a hug in the morning.
He wore diapers full time.
He used a pacifier to help him sleep.
He needed our help to get dressed and put on shoes.
He tried to climb into the car seat on his own, but sometimes needed a boost.
He was afraid of everyone outside of his immediate family, requiring at least two days to warm up to new arrivals.
He had never been left in the care of anyone except family since he was a year old.

Now, at almost three, he sleeps in a toddler bed and has to be reminded not to jump out of it as he gets up by himself.
The diapers are gone, even at night.
The Easter bunny vanished all the pacifiers and he goes to sleep with just his friends Toby and Edward.
He picks out and puts on his own clothes, asking for help only with getting the shirt over his head.
When we get home, he takes off his own shoes and puts them away.
He would freak if I tried to lift him into the car seat, as he is big enough to do it himself. He can even click the buckle correctly most of the time.
He’s still shy, but the warm up time is far, far less (unless you have a beard, in which case you are obviously suspicious indefinitely).
He goes to a drop-off preschool one morning a week and starts his official preschool in less than a month.
He sits and “reads” his books by himself for long periods of time.

Why do I tell you all of this? So you can see why for almost a full year I told people that a spacing of three years seemed to me to make a LOT more sense than two years. It felt like we had to conquer almost all of the toddler transitions while also dealing with a newborn. And they did not always go smoothly, people. Sometimes we all cried.

(On the plus side, at least he was taking an afternoon nap at age two. He is giving them up now. Sob.)

But now that I’m on the other side of this first year, I have to confess how thrilled I am to have them so close in age. They can take their baths together now. They go to bed at the same time. They like a lot of the same toys. {Yes, ok, I’m already a little tired of playing referee over who gets to push or ride the big rig truck, but in general, I’m thinking the more they enjoy the same stuff, the less stuff I have to keep around, right? No, no, I’m not buying two of everything. Except car seats.} They play together. And when they get bigger, perhaps they’ll like the same movies, have some of the same pals, and be each other’s best friends. A mom can hope, anyway.

Some people tell me that three-year-olds are harder than twos, so they wouldn’t want to add a newborn to that mix. All I have to say to that is that it better not be true here at chez Rasler. Perhaps whichever year you have the baby is the crazy year regardless, so no matter what you cannot escape the moment in which you are nursing the baby while the firstborn has a tantrum that threatens to bring the roof down.

For me, the decision was made in part because we didn’t know how long it would take us to get pregnant the second time around, but also because I didn’t want to give up my tenure. Having the boys two years apart meant that I could hang onto the promise of a job for two extra years without going back full-time in between.

In short, sometimes things just happen, sometimes it goes according to plan, sometimes you think your plan was moronic and you wish someone had pointed that out to you ahead of time, and sometimes you end up thinking you were right all along.

Especially when you’ve got this almost-one-year-old that you can’t imagine life without:

Theo and the disputed big rig truck

Postscript:  It is also worth mentioning that having the boys close in age means fewer years overall of having little ones and all that entails:  fewer years of changing and washing diapers, cutting food up into non-chokable sizes, baby gates that impede everyone’s movement, picking up all the little bits of everything that tiny tots put into their mouths… just to name a few.  I suppose that also means fewer years of having a snuggle bug in my lap reading stories, doesn’t it?  You win some, you lose some, I guess.