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Boys are great starter babies! Mine was soooo easy. I was just feeling really confident that I had great parenting skills, and then I had Olivia
. Man, was she high maintenance, and I'm not talking about the pregnancy here. Heck, she still is!!! Pediatrician said it is often the case when the first is a boy that first babies make you cocky and the second one makes you humble.
Great--so if the first one is a girl--I'm really in trouble?
You'll just learn quicker
A friend of mine had a perfect pregnancy, and her DD was such a screamer she wanted to push her back inside until she turned 4! Olivia was a screamer too, but since she was premature, it took a good 6 weeks for her to get loud. She wouldn't sleep more than 4 hrs in a row until she was almost 4. A few times she slept through the night before, and I recorded each time in her baby book, hoping it would be the start of a trend. She also threw temper tantrums when she was a toddler. (Not as bad as my poor friends DD). Alex was nearly 10 years old before he had a temper tantrum; and at that age, it is much easier to get it across that it is not acceptable behavior.
The good news is my friends DD is now 12 and got straight A's all through her first year of middle school. She's a great kid, raises chickens, goats and sheep at the family farm near Sultan. I lost contact with them between 5 and 10 years, so I don't know at what age she made the switch from absolute handful to model child.
Alex had straight A's once, though he is not doing bad. I was not expecting as much from Olivia because I got the impression she's not that bright, but I just got all the state/national test scores back and she's in the 95th+ percentile for math and 85th on language arts/reading. That means her grades are not so good because she's lazy/disorganized, and I think both of those problems are parenting failures.
I better work harder with her.
