12 Days of Blog Posts: Two-Kid Life

Adjusting to life with two kids has been no joke. Trying again, to find a balance between parenting, working, reading, and writing has left me beyond exhausted. Gabe is an earlier riser than Kiara, so one of us is up early
every
single
day.

Increased coaching duties + an added prep for journalism + an increasingly anti-teacher, anti-public-ed, anti-labor climate + teaching about the refugee crisis = a teacher in tears (more than usual). The pile of books to read in 2015 has grown, yet the year is almost over and I've only finished a dozen of them. NaNoWriMo got me back to the page with one more draft to add to the back-log of manuscripts I need to revise.

But despite so much being all out of balance, I'm going to end the year attempting to make some sense of it all. Maybe twelve blog posts before Christmas will help bring some order to the chaos.

I'm counting yesterday's blog about my brother's punt return as number one, so here is number two and I'll keep posting up until Christmas and hope you'll read along with me. I'd love some company in my crazy.

Two Kid-Life: Living the Dream

Early on in our courtship, when David and I started having conversations about where we saw our relationship heading, we told one another we wanted two kids. Preferably a boy and a girl, but any two kids would make us happy. We would consider adoption, but wanted to try for kids of our own first.

After we got married, I thought I wanted kids right away, but there was grad school, and then there were travel plans, and then we had a new home. It never seemed to be the right time. It took an unplanned pregnancy and miscarriage for us to realize there would never be a right time, and we were ready to start our family.

It took a while, but after four long years, baby #1 came along, and then two years later a miracle conception brought us baby #2. Our little Nakada-Gantt family has been a long time coming, so how were we so ill-prepared for it to be so stupid hard?

After we brought Gabe home, in the chaos of both kids crying as we tried to get out the door we had to remind ourselves: this is what we wanted. This was our dream.

And we feel incredibly lucky. We know not every family gets the chance to fulfill their dream so when Gabe poops all over himself, the carseat, and me before we head off to LegoLand, we try to remember. When Kiara pukes in our bed and then in her bed in the middle of the night, we try to remember. When other parents glance at our chaos and nod knowingly, we try to remember. And when older parents tell us how much they miss that age and to enjoy it because it goes so fast, we try to remember. Within the chaos of our two-kid life, we try to remember just how incredibly lucky we are.