One thing about having kids really young – younger than I was (my husband’s mother was 17 when she had him…) – is that when you do realize what you want from life and stuff, it often doesn’t balance well with the child you already have. You could ask my husband about this.

i’ve only started making a few mommy friends since the pnut was a toddler. really, just one friend, and she is solid gold. my no kids friends have faded, mostly, my friends who now have kids too all live far from here, and i miss them. and like a pp mentioned other potential friend mommies you meet don’t end up being friends when you realize that all you really have in common was gestating in 2005.

ps- hooray for poop! what a relief when it finally kicks in and starts to happen. sweet jesus.

I just remember feeling like a momblob and being convinced that I would be so much better at all this if only I had money or knew what I was doing. And it has helped in some ways. But in other ways? I’m still exhausted and I’m still barely able to think about other subjects besides poop and breastfeeding.

This time, I’ve made a huge effort to be more interested in other things for my own sanity.

Funny you mention which age is harder. I think that baby and toddler hood is much harder physically, and the first baby is a shock for sure. But now I’m doing the teen/pre-teen years at the same time as a baby, and teens are bloody hard on an intellectual level. A baby is exhausting, but if you feed them, rock them, burp them and change them, or just bribe them with cookies–you can make it through most crisis. But a teen is different in that you have to keep up the mental gymnastics and deal with the socio-emotional weirdness. The hormonal insanity is over the top.

I would never say one is harder than the other either way–because they are just so hard to compare to each other.

Good news–the middle years are breeze so far. It’s like we get a nice rest. Yours is coming!!