ABC magic

During my pregnancy with Claire I spent a lot of time being scared of the idea of caring for two children. I was super excited too, but the excitement was mixed with a moderate amount of terror. Luckily, as it turns out, it really isn't all that bad. Oh sometimes two is 16 times harder than 1, particularly and when you're down one parent and both kids are angry. But in general, having two kids has been at least as much fun as it has been hard (and usually more).

Part of the reason for this is that the older child can entertain the younger child. Landon adores his baby sister and JP and I are not above using that love to make our lives easier. Landon is our baby entertainment system. If we're making dinner and Claire starts to fuss from the play room, Landon knows to run over to her and sing to make her smile. If we're in the car and she wants to eat but we're not home yet, Landon immediately pulls out the songs. It's awesome.

Her favorite is the alphabet song. I have no idea why she loves it so much, but we sing that song a lot around here. Because Landon spends so much time around the infant room, often instructing Claire's teachers how best to care for his sister, they've started using the ABC trick too. One day a few weeks ago they said Claire woke up from her nap crying so they started singing the alphabet and by the time they got to "F" she was smiling through her tear-filled eyes. It works every time.

I'm terrible about remembering to video things, and usually JP is even worse, but when I was in Denver last month, JP caught an ABC moment on film. He was cleaning up after dinner and Landon was on "keep Claire happy" duty. When I got home from the airport around midnight that night, I found the video camera on the counter with a note to watch the last clip. I was so tired, and had missed the kids so much after 2 nights away, I started crying. I just watched it again today and realized that I must have really been wrung-out because there is nothing emotional about this video (and Landon totally devolves by the end), but it is cute. I'm traveling again, this time in Houston for the night, and my Biscuit videos are keeping me company.

One more ABC memory. On Saturday when I was lying on the bathroom floor wanting to die while JP was still coaching, Claire started to cry from her jumperoo. I couldn't get up to get her, and I didn't want to get her sick anyway, so I begged Landon to go sing to her. Though I felt awful from the virus, and now horribly guilty for forcing my son to be the parent, I couldn't help but smile against the tile floor when I heard his little voice coming from the play room between Claire's screams, singing, "A, B, C, D..."