The only ship on that entire vast sea is barely a white fleck on the horizon.
Well, after all that gift discussion (after which I begrudgingly admit that even though my husband has The Exact Opposite Feelings on the topic to me, he is not the only one and maybe I should give him a break), my family visited my in-laws for spring break and I brought lots of wearable gifts my mother-in-law has bought us over the years, and she noticed and commented on ALL of it, in an affirming I’m-so-happy-you-actually-wear-that! sort of way. And I was glad.
We had SUCH a nice time over spring break, and I think the nicest part of all was that Carla was SO EASY.
She is a happy, affectionate, inquisitive child who tends toward the super-high-energy end of the energetic spectrum. Which, in the hands of her introvert, prefers-to-lie-on-the-couch-quietly-and-read-a-book-by-herself mother, can translate into exhausting. We have kept past vacations to an X-day limit because she gets bored and then the energy cranks up to 7,000 and she begins bouncing off the walls and furniture. But this year, mainly because of an incompatibility between airline ticket prices and reasonable flight times (I am NOT boarding a plane for home with my gets-more-energized-the-more-tired-she-gets toddler at eight p.m. thank you very much), we ended up staying a full week. And it was GREAT. Everything was great.
Carla was a peach of a traveler, both ways. She happily walked around the airport (with us, obviously) before our flight, looking at all the glorious toys in the many gift shops and newsstands, asking us to add a variety of items to her birthday list. She was excited about everything: the airplanes lined up outside the airport, going through security, people traveling with dogs, wearing her little penguin backpack, getting on the plane, having her own seat, plane snacks, seeing the clouds, seeing the ocean from the windows, watching Sofia appisodes over and over (she has an Amazon Fire tablet for kids that keeps her busy and happy for hours), landing, waving at friendly strangers, running full-steam to hug her grandmother when we left the concourse.
While we were in Florida, she was GREAT. She ate well, she was happy and charming. She was enthusiastic about every one of the seven million projects her grandmother had set up for her. She was happy vegging in front of the TV whenever the grown ups needed a minute. She loved the pool, the beach, the boat we took to a little island, the ocean, shells, lizards, local dogs, collecting rocks, watering the plants, pretending to drive her grandfather’s car, going to restaurants, eating ice cream. All of it. She went to bed late pretty much every night we were there, and napped maybe twice, and yet she was good natured and happy to play by herself or happy to play with a grown up, just happy in general.
Great. She was great.
So of course all of this has me thinking – maybe more concretely than usual – about babies, and how great they are, and how yes they are challenging sometimes but look! it all turns out so GREAT!
Listen: DON’T GET YOUR HOPES UP. I’m just musing here. I’m just thinking idly, happily, about a topic (babies) that interests me to no end. It doesn’t mean anything.
My husband and I are 95% certain that Carla is IT. There are many many wonderful, valid, reasonable reasons to have more than one child; there are – despite those who may disagree – an equal number of wonderful, valid, reasonable reasons to have just the one. (Or none! If that’s your choice!) So we are very comfortable with that near-decision.
But it is a near-decision, not a final one. We haven’t taken any measures. We haven’t donated the large pile of baby stuff in our basement. We haven’t stopped talking about it.
It’s just that the conversations always turn to, We love having just Carla. We feel complete. We feel happy.
But…
I still think about Another Baby, every day. Carla was such a great baby, and watching her grow and learn and develop her personality has been such a complete wondrous delight; part of me feels so sad that I won’t get to experience that with another baby.
Following nearly two weeks of Carla At Her Best, it’s easy to imagine that another baby might be doable. I’m not saying I WANT another baby. I’m just saying that, before, I couldn’t picture at ALL how a tiny, needy infant would work into our family. Because Carla is a hands-on, all-hands-on-deck kid. Now, I have this glimpse of what a more mature Carla might be like: (slightly) more serene, more independent, more able to channel that immense energy into activities that don’t put her in immediate danger and leave me whirling.
Anyway, it has me thinking, five years wouldn’t be such a bad distance between two siblings.
Let us forget the fact that we were on vacation and so we were removed from our normal pattern of life… and that we were much more relaxed and less time pressured than on a normal day… and that Carla had not her normal one-most-of-the-time, sometimes-two adults but four to attend to her every whim… and that prior to spring break, I had a week-long stomach bug, which was horrendous, and Carla was just off, complaining of a tummy ache and not eating anything much at all, so by comparison OF COURSE everything is easier… and FOUR ADULTS. Let’s not take ANY of those factors into consideration when we look at how easy it has become to parent my nearly-four-year-old. Instead, let us jump headlong into LET’S THINK ABOUT MORE BABIES.
Clearly, I have become infected with some sort of tropical brain-altering disease. So let’s turn this discussion away from ME (and, as much as it may hurt to clamp your hand over your mouth, away from Why We Need Another Baby) and toward YOU and the infinitely interesting topic of baby spacing.
What, for you, is the ideal spacing between siblings? Has your opinion changed – perhaps after you experienced the spacing in real time? What is your own experience with any siblings you have – are you a good distance apart? What are the plusses and minuses?
My brother and I are six years apart. That’s a big gap in many ways; when I went off to college he was still in middle school. Six years represents a huge difference in interests and pursuits and abilities. I wouldn’t say we’ve ever been close, although we certainly love (and like) each other. As adults, we don’t talk particularly often, but we have a good time when we’re together. For (possibly false) reference, I read or heard somewhere that a six-year age difference is like having two only children, which has plusses and minuses.
A former colleague of mine has two boys five years apart. She maintains that five years is the PERFECT distance. The older child is old enough to be helpful and self-entertaining when the baby is born. You’re far enough out of the nursing/no-sleeping infant stage that it doesn’t seem as daunting anymore. The older child is in school part of the day. There won’t be two children in college at the same time. Other reasons that I didn’t pay close enough attention to at the time, because I was DONE. Am done.
Someone my husband works with said that four years is the perfect distance. That happens to be the same spacing between my husband and his sister, who have a slightly-closer-but-not-by-much relationship than I do with my brother. I don’t particularly want to ask their mother what the plusses and minuses of that spacing are(, considering her opinion is that we are HARMING Carla by not giving her a sibling; if that is your opinion as well, I kindly ask that you refrain from sharing it here). I would guess that many of the same reasons as the five-year spacing apply.
In any event, the four-year-spacing ship has sailed for us.
A woman from my long-defunct book club had three boys, one right after another. I’m sure they weren’t exactly a year apart, but it seemed that way. And she swore by that method: you get the baby stage over with all at once. It’s not super while you’re in it, but then it’s OVER. The same goes for all the rest of life’s experiences, I suppose. And all your kids are close-knit, or at least have a good chance of it.
Most of my friends are in the eighteen-months-apart to three-years-apart club. Again, for me, all that’s left of that particular ship is a tired crest of wake finally breaking against the shore.
I think, for my particular personality, and my own brand of I Am Not Cut Out to Be a Mother at All, Let Alone to Two Children, a bigger space would be better. This may be obvious, considering that I have a nearly-four-year-old and am just now getting around to moving the dial from 95% sure we are done to 93% sure. But the idea of breathing space between the stages seems attractive. (Ignoring, of course, that all kids are in stages all the time, so there would really be NO breathing room.) It’s really too bad I didn’t start much younger; an eighteen-year-old and a newborn has its appeal.
See? I must have some sort of Only In Florida parasite munching away at the reasoning centers of my brain.
I’m 95% sure Nora is our only. I never thought I’d be in the one and done club, but as of right now, I don’t know that I’d survive another infant/baby phase, which maybe sounds dramatic but it was life-altering hard for me and my marriage. Maybe as she grows up a bit more and becomes more independent? I always thought I’d have two 2 years apart, but unless we get on the baby making train ASAP, that ship will have sailed too. 🙂
We only had one. We wanted another but it didn’t happen when we wanted it so we decided one was enough. He was and is a self-entertaining person. He loves to read, do computer things and always says he is happy with being the only one. I sometimes feel bad that he has no siblings but he never seems to mind. He is a grown man now with a wife who had children from a previous marriage so it all worked out.
We have two, 3.5 years apart. It’s got plusses and minuses, of course. Our baby boy (the firstborn) had to grow up REAL fast when his sister was born and I felt sad about that, but he managed it just fine (learning to put himself to bed, for instance), and was adorable with her when she was a newborn, and loves her still, teaches her things. As our 2nd-born daughter has gotten older, she resents that he’s JUST that much older than her, that he gets some privileges that she doesn’t yet (riding without a car booster seat – he’s 12.5 now – for example). They are close, I think, and play together well, although I think the differences in their personalities, and that they’re a boy and a girl, makes that harder than if they were both girls or both boys.
My general opinion, though, is that it works out, whatever the spacing ends up being. And when 8-y-o Carla has a 3-y-o sibling, all her friends will also love that sibling and think he/she is so CUTE, and that’s a win. When they’re 10 and 5, there’s definitely some looking-after the younger one that can happen.
My kids are 4 years apart, almost exactly. I can’t imagine it being any closer-we needed that amount of time to decide if we wanted to do it all again. Our oldest is a smart, easygoing happy kid and would have done fine as an only child. We would have done fine. But I kept coming back to what Swistle said all those years ago: when you sit down for dinner at your dining room table and look around, do you feel like you’re missing someone? Is everyone there? And I just kept feeling like we were missing somebody. And now she’s almost 2 and is the most energetic, bossy, adorable queen of all our lives.
We have a 7 and a half year old and a 4 year old. So my oldest was 3 and a half when the youngest was born. They are both girls. They are and were both extremely easy as babies into toddler into little kids. So there are some outliers there.
But, in my opinion, it is the best spacing I’ve encountered. My sister is nine years older than me and hated me until I hit adulthood. Now we re best friends. So that’s my 2¢ .
We have a bunch of spacings at my house: 2 years, 4 years, 6 years, 8 years, 1 minute. I like them all in different ways. I think it is the sort of thing where there are pros and cons to all of them, and they all end up being pretty even, good/bad-wise. I did really love having bigger kids when I had a baby around, though. A big kid can refill your water! Bring you a book! Bring you the dropped diaper cream! Etc.! They can also make their own food—and/or BRING YOU A SANDWICH WHILE YOU ARE NURSING. Pretty good stuff.
I am a LITTLE bit getting my hopes up. Just a LITTLE bit.
We definitely were shooting for that normal 18 month-3 year gap, but didn’t end up catching that train. Ours ended up being 3.5 years apart, and man, I’m so glad with how it worked out. I do think that all spacing ends up being the “perfect spacing” for your family, but for Charley, I feel like she got her full baby/toddler-hood to herself, if that makes sense. She’s a sensitive child, and I think she would have acted out more had she had to share some of the toddler/baby stages with a sibling close in age. By the time we had Laney, she was pretty much done with the baby stages so we were easily able to focus on different big kid things with her and she still felt special.
I feel like there are pros/cons regardless. I have 3. The 5 and 3 year-old are 1.5 years apart. The 3 year-old and 6 month-old are almost exactly 3 years apart.
Whenever I spend one-on-one time with any of them, I kind of regret that they couldn’t each be only children in a way (though of course I don’t mean this) just because they are so enjoyable and unique on their own. I know they will benefit from having siblings in other ways, but there are certainly also benefits to having the undivided attention of your parents. This is to say, you certainly aren’t harming Carla by not giving her a sibling (good grief).
For us, the three year gap seemed a little more challenging. My middle kid is pretty devoted to mommy, super stubborn, and 3 (an age I seem to find particularly challenging). It was a big adjustment for him, but maybe it would have been regardless? That said, the oldest (4.5) while not really at the age to help out much, can dress himself, use the potty, and has other basic life skills that certainly make things easier. If it were just the oldest and youngest, things would really be pretty easy comparatively, and I say this as a fairly type A, high anxiety, considered whether parenthood was really for me, kind of person.