2 Children is not 2x the Work

Eva and I are trying to take parenting to the 'next level', and I definitely understand the statement from other parents that say that folks with only one child are not 'real' parents. Not to bash those with one child, but the 'work' curve can become exponential with 2 kiddos, not linear - especially when the newborn (and parents) are sick.

Unfortunately, we hit a milestone with Emily 2 years earlier than with Quinn: Emily was running a fever two days ago, and we had to start giving her antibiotics. Illnesses with newborns can be tricky and dangerous.

Fortunately, Emily is doing fine, but Eva is now full on sick...less sleep for the Gould family.
On the good news side, the weather has been nice, and I've spent the time off of work...outside with Quinn. The pic above is typical Quinn: the stick in his hand is one of my 'tools' and he is fixing the brakes on his trike. He uses his imagination a lot more these days, and then role-plays. A stick can be any number of my tools: weedeater, drill, wrenches...super sweet.

Emily bundled up on one of our walks.

Emily getting weighed...she's putting on weight well, and everything seems fine (outside of the recent fever, of course).

Eva's parents shortly before leaving a week ago.

Quinn loves grocery shopping. First of all, there are two rides for him: the tractor and a moped. I don't put any money in...and he is happy just sitting on them for a while. Oh, if he ever found out that they would move if you put money in them. Second of all, we usually get a pretzel from the bakery, and when we get fresh lunch meat, the butcher gives him a slice of lunch meat (Gelbwurst).

The odd thing is that he always has to ride them in the same order: first the tractor then the moped. If a kid is on the tractor, he patiently waits instead of going to the moped first. I don't know where he got this patience from (Eva) and I don't know where he got the ideosyncracy to always do things in the same order (probably from my dad ;-).

I think he looks super cute in his Timberland lumberjack jacket when he is on the tractor.

Quinn helping out with Emily. He is still very caring and mostly gentle with Emily. He mostly leaves her alone when she's sleeping...but when her eyes are open, he is all over petting her.

Last night was especially cute, touching, and funny for me: Emily was screaming (this was about midnight), which woke Quinn up. Quinn sat next to me in the chair, so I was sitting there with both my kids in my arms. Quinn started petting Emily to try to calm her down as well.

I later got up to try to walk / rock Emily to sleep - or at least to get her to quit screaming. Quinn followed me, but ran into the glass door with his head. Ouch. Now I had two screaming kids. This is what I mean by exponential work. When they play together, all is OK...but two screaming / hurt kids is definitely a challenge.

A few weeks ago, Quinn went to the dentist for the first time. He didn't like it, but the dentist left an impression, because now Quinn plays 'dentist' all the time. The thing on his face are a pair of plastic tongs from his 'kitchen'. When he plays dentist, he opens the tongs and puts them around his face. Strange (I guess he's imitating the dentist and his mask ?!?), but super cute.

At the playground.

It freaked me out when Quinn started climbing this ladder without my help, but he did just fine, and he's getting a better feel for these sorts of things - climbing, jumping, sliding, and of course, running.