If the cold weather lately has shown me anything it’s that the adjustment phase of becoming a family of 4 is over.  For the majority of my maternity leave, Enzo was having some difficulty with the arrival of our little girl, and during that time it was so great that he had day care to go to during the day because there were A LOT of tantrums during those weeks.  While he was never angry at his sister, he would often act aggressively towards us and some of his tantrums were so intense they scared me. Being a toddler is hard and when you can’t communicate what you’re feeling… I can imagine the frustration.  He went from being our one and only to suddenly having our attention (especially mine) split and more focused on baby girl.

I can’t even tell you how many nights Josh ended up on the floor of Enzo’s room because he just wasn’t sleeping and would cry and cry if Josh didn’t stay in his room.  While things started calming down the closer I got to going back to work, I noticed a major change in him when I left Phoebe with Josh and went to pick Enzo up from day care – the first time in weeks.  He was beyond excited to see me when I got there, and I that really signaled to me that I wasn’t spending enough time with my kiddo.  We also really started to pay attention to how much sleep he was getting and make sure he gets to bed earlier on nights when a naps are short, but also try and focus on paying more attention to him.  Not just in play, but in learning how to better communicate with him and allow him to help out, and in turn avoid tantrums which can happen so easily as we enter the Terrible Twos.

Anyhoo, back to the cold weather – we kept the kids home on Monday and normally 3-day weekends can be tricky because Enzo is ready to go back to day care and stick to his routine, but this past Monday went great.  He was in a fantastic mood (we saw the return of Baby No-Pants) and is also slowly learning that sometimes Phoebe needs a bit extra attention, and has been playing by himself more often rather than constantly needing one of us to play with at all times.  This girl loves her big brother, though, and as you can see, he adores his baby sister.

I’m looking forward to seeing how these two continue to interact in the future, but in the meantime love to watch them now. Phoebe smiles when she hears Enzo in the room and Enzo gets just as excited about his BeeBee.  At day care they sometimes let him go say ‘Hi’ to her (they’re in separate rooms) and he likes to give her a big kiss good-bye most mornings, and usually before he goes to bed.  He may not give mama a kiss good-night, but you can almost guarantee that he’ll give one to Phoebe.  Parenting may be hard, but it’s the moments like this that make it all worthwhile.