when nana comes to town

Our sudden return to the States a couple of months ago set off a fierce family debate about visitation in the midst of the pandemic.

round the Cape of Good Hope

The very first thing we did during our first trip to South Africa was go to see the penguins at Simon’s Town. It was our “baby moon” – a long weekend escape to Cape Town tacked onto S’s antenatal screening in Pretoria. We drove straight from the airport to Simon’s Town, arriving just as storm clouds gathered overhead. We spent enough time on the boardwalks observing the breeding penguin colony to feel that the visit had been worthwhile. Leaving as the first raindrops fell, however, we knew we would have to come back to do the Cape Peninsula justice.

read the fine print!

After being involved in a dispute, it’s advisable to let the dust settle and one’s emotions cool before mentally revisiting it to identify lessons learned. Having thus allowed some time to elapse since our months-long dispute with the State Department, we thought it might be instructive – as much for ourselves as for other FSOs who read this blog – to dissect the incident.

what about Junebug?

By the time Munchkin was a couple months old, we had already spilled a considerable amount of digital ink chronicling his every squirm, coo, and nascent personality quirk in the pages of this blog. As Junebug’s due date approached, we talked about the need to ensure that she does not get second billing – that we devote at least as much attention to her as to him so that she does not feel like she is growing up in his shadow.

1 + 1 ≠ 2

“Zero to one was tough, and two to three was challenging, but going from one child to two wasn’t that bad,” several friends told us with the benefit of hindsight, and perhaps a dose of selective amnesia. Intuitively, this makes sense. First-time parenthood is tough because there is so much to learn. And going from two to three is hard because sometimes you find that you have more little humans who need attention than arms at your disposal. Still, adding a new baby into the mix is bound to make life more complicated, and we’ve found that having two small children frequently feels much more than twice as difficult as just having one.

the memories remain

S’s sister recently sent us a New Yorker article that chronicled one French/American couple’s travails in choosing a name for their son. Charmingly witty, humorous, and filled with all sorts of quirky name trivia, the article also hit a nerve, for despite the fact that S had compiled a list of girl names she liked long before she was even pregnant with our firstborn (who turned out to be a boy), we had a hard time choosing a name for Junebug.

sibling introduction

So here’s the game plan: We’ll tell Munchkin that he can come visit S in the hospital and we’ll take the baby out of the room. Then, after he is comfortable, we’ll bring Junebug in and introduce the siblings. We’ll also give Munchkin a small present and tell him that baby sister brought it. This way he won’t resent her for stealing S’s love and attention. The more plans S makes to frame events over which we have little control, the more apt the expression “Man makes plans and God laughs” grows. When Munchkin burst into the room for his first visit, S was breastfeeding while D snoozed in the corner, wholly unprepared to intercept the little man as he made a beeline for the bed.

fickle memories

For all the fond memories we have of Munchkin’s earliest days, there are a lot of little details that we happily consigned to the time cracks of history, and which we are now relearning with Junebug.

right on time

Say hello to our little Junebug…

king for another day

When Munchkin drums on S’s belly and enjoins his baby sister to come out, he is no doubt genuine – the little man does not like being kept waiting for anything that’s been promised to him. Of course, he is also wholly ignorant of the changes her arrival will wreak on his privileged only child status. For our part, we are slightly nervous not just about how he will react to the change but also about the regression we’ve been warned to expect in his development.