baby pool - the votes are in!

Thanks to all of you who entered our baby guessing pool! It makes the anticipation and wait for our new baby girl more exciting - and it was so much fun for us to read your name ideas (you're awfully good at pinpointing names we love!).

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Here's the calendar of guesses as to date/time - and below you'll find a list of the names you submitted (in no particular order). Will any of them be the name of Lorelei's little sister? You'll have to wait and see...


NAME GUESS LIST
Eleanor
Alexis
Charlotte
Scout
Trixie Elizabeth Bennet
Camille
Flannery
Adelaide
Penelope
Winifred
Marin
Josephine
Violet
Elizabeth
Hadley
Pearl
Cersei
Sophie
Piper
Willow
Maggie
Madelyn
Phoebe
Amalia
Amelia
Iris
Philomel Terpsichore
Lillian
Torpal*

*This is Jason's "guess" - can you name that show?

guess that baby! [ENTRIES CLOSED]

All the anticipation about Baby George is finally dying down, and there's just about one month until my official due date - which means it's time to play "guess that baby" here at (she always loved) larking on a much less royal scale!

You all already know that Baby #2 is on team pink - which was confirmed (again) by my 35-week ultrasound - so no need for guessing in that department. But two big questions remain: when is she coming, and what will her name be?

that's me at 35 weeks - and the basketball under that dress will be born on...???

From now through July 31st, I'll be taking your predictions in either/both categories to be entered to win a fabulous prize sent to you once I can manage to get to the post office post-birth (not looking anything remotely as pulled-together as this, I'm sure).

Details you might want to know: my "official" due date is August 23rd, though my ultrasounds have indicated that an earlier date of August 18th might be more accurate. Lorelei came 8 days early. We've had a name picked out for quite a while now - one that was somewhat of a compromise for both of us but that we're both really thrilled about (to even things out and help you with your guessing, here's my husband's top five "not in contention" list to match my own top five from that link: Brooke, Mallory, Alice, Claire, Miriam).

Other info: for the "when" pool, the person who guesses closest to the correct date/time (NOT "Price is Right" rules; for example, if the baby is born August 1st at 3:43pm, a person who guessed 5pm on that day could still win) will be declared the winner. For the "name" pool, you need only guess the first name - and only the person(s) who guess it correctly will win (no "closest" prizes here). One entry per category only, please!

If you'd like to post a comment here (or on my Facebook page - scroll down for my post about this!) with your guess(es), feel free. If you want to keep them secret so as not to influence other people's entries, send me an email to larkingshop at gmail. On August 1st, I'll publish a calendar and master list of name guesses so you can see your competition! Good luck!

it's a...

GIRL!

So many of you guessed right - I don't know how you knew when I didn't! We're so excited to have two sweet little sisters to raise together. :)

Happy weekend!

is my family complete? // deciding when to have another child

Once we decided that we felt two kids was the right number for us, the next big question we had to face was when. There are so many different schools of thought out there and since I am an inveterate pro/con list maker this proved to be a stumbling block for me/us for a while. Here's how we figured things out:

The first several months of Lorelei's infancy were extremely trying for us physically and emotionally. I know that there are other parents out there who put off - sometimes permanently - having another child because they are still recovering from the difficulty of the first. We decided we had two options: wait until Lorelei was pretty self-sufficient (relatively speaking) until we dealt with babyhood again to try to make it easier on ourselves, or go with the rip-the-bandaid-off method of getting two infancies out of the way sooner rather than later. That would mean a gap of 4-5 years between pregnancies or, based on the timing of our decision-making, getting pregnant again immediately.

Courtney and Lorelei, about two weeks old

On the one hand, waiting a while seemed nice. It would give us time to really enjoy Lorelei's early years, Jason could get through the tenure process at his university so we could breathe a little easier, and it would give us time to settle into our decision to have another child in the first place. Plus, I was a little scared off by the looks on the faces of moms I saw in the grocery store and at library story time who were attempting to wrangle two children under the age of two or three.

On the other hand, we knew that research seems to indicate children who are two or three years apart have a stronger chance of developing a childhood friendship (though siblings with a bigger age gap seem to be just as likely to be friends as adults). Even though things are much easier with Lorelei now than they were in the first few months, we are still "in the trenches" and the thought of sleepless nights again doesn't seem as bad as it might if we were a few years removed from them. Both Jason and I are close in age to our siblings (20 months for him, almost exactly two years for me), and we both liked that growing up.

But it took an offhand comment from someone to make us realize what our decision had to be. In the middle of a conversation about having more than one child, a woman I know said, "If you're planning to go back to work after your children go off to school, you'll be a stay-at-home mom for a pretty long time if you don't space them close together." Lightbulb moment. In that instant, I realized that, while I'm certainly glad to be at home for now, SAHM-hood is not my ultimate destiny, and I needed to keep that as a crucial factor in our decision-making. I don't know why it had never occurred to me before, but both Jason and I agreed that we needed to get the ball rolling for my own sanity - even if it meant temporary insanity with having two kiddos in diapers.

Of course, it's not always possible to control how you space out your children, and we're lucky that both times we tried to get pregnant we were successful relatively quickly. Two to two-and-a-half years apart felt right to us, and I'm looking forward to sharing some of our experiences raising two kids relatively close in age with you. But I also know that, just like with the decision whether or not to have more than one (or any at all!), it's totally a personal decision based on your own lifestyle and preferences. If you're in the middle of making the decision, don't forget to try that visualization technique I mentioned in my other post on this topic; it's been a huge help to us in finally stepping away from the pro/con lists!

I'd love to hear about your own decisions about sibling spacing - whether it's your own siblings, your kids, or your thought process as you plan for the future!

adventures in motherhood: how do you know if you're ready for a second child?

A scary little scenario, using Lorelei's age as a guidepost: if I were my mother-in-law, I'd be pregnant right now with my second baby. If I were my own mother, I'd be two months away from conceiving #2.

meeting my baby brother at the hospital (I'm just under 2 years old; my Dad is not yet 29)

Yikes.

How do you know if you're ready to have another baby? Or if you even want another baby? I've been feeling the weight of this question a lot lately, and not only because Lorelei just turned one. It suddenly seems like everyone I know is pregnant, both in the blogosphere and in the real world, and I've been seeing lots of posts about having two from people like Kristin, Nicole via Taza, and Teresa. There are a million opinions out there about how to time your pregnancies so your children are spaced apart perfectly -- whether that's 2.5 years or 5 -- but it seems like the primary suggestion from everyone is this: you'll know you're ready when you start having baby fever again.

But what if you never had baby fever in the first place?

My pregnancy with Lorelei was largely the result of methodical, logical family planning on our part. Jason and I wanted to be married for five years and with grad school completely behind us before we started thinking about having children. Once that milestone was reached, we had several months of conversations about timing based on his tenure clock, some health issues I have, and our ages. We also weighed the pros and cons of a childless life versus one with kids and tried to imagine our futures with both outcomes.

We finally decided that, even though neither of us felt totally ready to have a baby right now, we always imagined ourselves as a family rather than just a couple, and it'd be better to start sooner rather than later so that, if we had fertility issues, we'd have plenty of time to sort them out. I spent three months charting my cycles, taking prenatals, cutting out caffeine and alcohol, exercising religiously, and meeting with my doctor before we decided to take the plunge. One month later, I was pregnant. And we were completely terrified.

I love Lorelei to pieces and I'm so glad that we had her. But I never had that feeling of "I desperately want a baby," so I have no idea if I'll ever feel that way. I never pictured myself having just one child -- but after the turmoil and agony of Lorelei's newborn days (not to mention childbirth!), I just don't know how I feel about going through that again. Plus, our life is so wonderful now -- would I ruin that if we added another baby into the mix? How will my heart be able to fit in love for another child, when this one takes up so much of the room?

What are your thoughts on having baby #2...or 3 (or more!)? What makes you so sure you do or don't want another one? And if you've already had that second child, what made you feel ready?

first birthday week: letter to my pregnant self on May 22nd, 2011

Dear One-Year-Ago Self,

You can do this.

(picture by our doula, Kim Wheaton)

Having a baby turns out to be the most difficult thing you will ever do, but I promise you that you will make it through this first year relatively unscathed -- though of course changed forever in uncountable ways. Some days, it will feel like you can't do it and won't make it through the next hour, let alone the whole day or week or month. And then it will suddenly be May 22nd, 2012 and you won't be able to believe that a whole year has passed by since you were last blissfully ignorant of the journey ahead of you (by the way, your water is going to break tomorrow -- just warning you!).

One year in, I still don't know what I'm doing. But I've learned a few things that I wish I had known a year ago today, so I'm telling you now:

There's no shame in making mistakes. In fact, don't even consider them to be mistakes -- you're learning how to be a mom, and it's really hard! There's no perfect way to parent, and soon enough you'll get into a rhythm. But until then, stop feeling guilty. Stop worrying that people are judging your every move. Mostly, stop judging yourself against a pre-baby vision of yourself as a mother. It's not what you pictured. And that's okay.

Take a shower. Wear something cute. Demand that you have time every day to do your hair and put on makeup. Get outside. Make time to read (don't wait two months to discover you can use your Nook or listen to audiobooks while nursing). If you do not do these things, you will suffocate. Remember your high school English teacher's policy of "dress right, test right"? It totally applies here -- you will be a better "you" if you feel good about yourself.

Feeling overwhelmed is normal. Crying in the shower is normal. Thinking you are a horrible mother is normal. It is also normal and good to see a counselor. Don't wait until month four -- go now.

Make connections to other moms. They are just as frazzled and nervous and overwhelmed as you about disrupting their babies' nap schedules to meet up -- so bring a pack-and-play and your Boppy with you or invite them to come over even though your house is a mess. You cannot do this alone.

Get a better camera than that point-and-shoot you're using. Believe me, you'll be thankful when you realize you took at least 5000 pictures during the first year.

Breastfeeding is difficult. And no matter what they tell you, it's definitely possible to be allergic to lanolin. Get help. Get a prescription for APNO. Don't be afraid to pump -- it's going to make life a lot easier, even though it seems weird and scary at first. And later, when you think it's under control, she'll start teething or get really squirmy or go on strike. There will always be challenges to nursing. Just like with everything else, let go of "perfect" and be okay with "this is what works for us."

(picture by my friend Beth)

This is the longest shortest time. It will feel interminable. It is. It's okay to be angry with people who say "Enjoy these moments while you can." Motherhood will not feel natural at first. You are just not one of those women. You will feel as if you've been thrown off a cliff. I promise you won't hit bottom -- just reach out for a handhold, because there are more hands to hold than you might think. You will survive, and your daughter will do just fine. Better than fine. She will become a beautiful, happy, sweet, funny, curious, affectionate little girl who is a pure delight to be around and you won't be able to imagine your life without her. And you will love being her mom.

love, Courtney

p.s. Lorelei is a terrible sleeper. Just warning you.