One of the hardest part about having a new baby and introducing a totally new person into the family, is the guilt that you feel for the existing children. It's hard enough that you are getting very little sleep, are a human pacifier and are covered with spit up on a regular basis, on top of that you are spreading your attention among way too many people. Charlie always says that love is a pie, and after awhile you max out. He's just joking, of course, but I do think that time and attention are a pie, and you only have so much to give.
Sarah has been particularly challenging the last several months. Part of it is because of her age, part is because she is a very dramatic girl, and part is because we truly aren't giving her as much attention as she needs. Andy is handling it better, but he is older and doesn't want as much of our attention, plus we spend more time reading and talking about his day with him. We've needed Sarah to be a little more independent and mature than she's willing to be at this point, so it's been hard.
Just about every day for the last two years she has cried when I drop her off at school. At first I felt sad, now I'm just really annoyed. She goes through phases where she's fine and walks right in, but the last few weeks she's been crying pretty hard with big alligator tears, telling me she "wants to be with me". It makes me feel bad, but I know she loves school and she's always happy when I show up to get her. The teachers tell me it's only for a couple of minutes and then she's fine. I don't know that she really wants to be with me as much as she doesn't want me to be alone with Amanda having a great time, but I'm not really sure what the problem is. All I know is that I feel like I have to work a little harder to spend time with her, to make sure she knows that she is loved.
This weekend Charlie was supposed to take any on a Cub Scout camping trip. They were going to be gone for about 24 hours. So all week, to try to prevent Sarah from crying when I dropped her off at school, I told her we would do something very special on Saturday, just the girls. I felt bad that Amanda was going to come too, but there wasn't much I could do about that. I would still make it a great day and make her feel special. Due to several circumstances, the camping trip didn't end up happening. As a result, Amanda was able to stay at home with Charlie and Sarah and I went by ourselves to do something fun.
I took her to one of those paint your own pottery places. She loves art and is all about coloring and painting, so I thought she would love it. She was pretty excited when we got there and had a great time painting a Volkswagen beetle car. That's pretty much all we talk about while driving, so she was very happy to be able to take one home. When we were done, we went to lunch. The whole way to lunch she kept talking about how she wanted to go home and spend time with Daddy. Just Daddy. She never gets to be with Daddy. It was the same thing all through lunch and all the way home.
Wow. Here is the kid that cries all the time about how she wants to be with me, and now that she's with me she couldn't care less. It's nice to be with you and all, but I'd rather be with Daddy. That's the case most of the time. Daddy is the fun one, I'm the boring one they have to be with until Daddy gets home from work. Daddy likes to play (they are upstairs wrestling as I write this), I do boring things like go to the grocery store, do laundry and cook dinner (I won't say clean the house because that's not really happening around here). The babies always like me better, but that's because I feed them and diaper them and take care of them more. As soon as they get a little older and don't need me as much they go to his side. Not that there are sides or anything, but you know how it plays out in Star Wars, right?
I should be upset, but I'm not. I'm more annoyed, and feel played. All this guilt I've felt, that Sarah needs more attention from me, more time with me, was kind of wasted. It's not that she doesn't need more attention, she just doesn't need as much as I worried she did, and she doesn't need it from me. We're doing just fine. Now I know that when I drop her off for school, it's just a big show, and I can let go of some of that guilt I've been carrying around.
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