The Second Time Around

Being born second means that everything you do has been done before and you need to pull out all the stops to impress your parents, because they've seen it all before. As a second child I have spent my most of my life blaming my parents for this and for failing to remember many of my precious moments like they had most of Wes's. His first steps, first words and many other firsts are all accurately recorded, either on film and paper or simply tucked neatly into my mother's memory. There are pictures of Wes in all stages of childhood. To be fair there are pictures of me doing the same things, but Wes is in most of them too. I have been somewhat bitter about this, swearing that I wouldn't do the same thing when I had kids.
So, when Lilly was born I took pictures, waited patiently for milestones so I could record them and then wrote about most of them in this very blog. I was determined to do the same with my second baby. Then, that second baby was actually born and we became extremely busy. Too busy to take pictures, too busy to make notes, and too busy to record everything. But, I wasn't too busy to notice. And, I'll throw this out there...I wasn't too busy to acknowledge that my mom was right, it is really hard to be involved with my kids and take pictures at the same time.
Jack is flying through milestones. He smiled for the first time right on cue and then recently he added laughing to his resume. We did get some really cute video of that, but we didn't need to because he'll laugh almost on command. (Its a deep raspy little laugh, but its happy and cute). Then, just yesterday he rolled over. And yes, I missed it. I put him on his back on his blanket with a mirrored toy. Then, I went to help Lilly in the potty. When I got back Jack was on his tummy, up on his elbows and grinning from ear to ear. He obviously knew he had done something special and was very proud of himself.