Am I Making Mistakes or Getting It Right?

The beauty of "spacing" children many years apart lies in the fact that parents have time to learn the mistakes that were made with the older ones - which permits them to make exactly the opposite mistakes with the younger ones.  ~Sydney J. Harris

Oh how true that is at my house! 

With Grace, I was very aware of every thing I did --- sleep training, timed feedings, perfectly bundled as soon as the slightest breeze came in the fall.  


Poor Will is lucky if I remember his hat AND his coat; normally he gets whatever is in the diaper bag from the last trip out of the house.   Cause you know I never remember to restock the diaper bag!  


Now, at 6 months old (can you believe he is 6 months old already!?), I am seeing the opposite traits from Grace. Could it be because of the stark differences in how I managed them as newborns?! 


Will was held all the time as a newborn - Grace was held a lot but I was very conscious of wanting to make sure we put her down so that she could learn to hang by herself without being in our arms 24/7.  She loved to play by herself on the floor. Will lasts all of 5 minutes, if we are lucky. 


Grace had all new coordinating outfits; seriously I could have dressed her in a totally new outfit every single day and never repeat the clothes.  Will spends 95% of his time in hand me downs from friends; the things I do by him are cause I have a great coupon or I found them at the baby consignment store.  


Grace struggles with frustaration - when things dont go right the very first time she loses it and gives up.  But I liked to fix everything for her as a baby right away; did I teach that to her? With Will, I wait for him to try to work it out --- roll the other way to get to the pacifer, hold his bottle with a little help from a toy propping it up so he can figure out how the bottle thing works.  Later in life, will he be better equipped to get through things that are a little hard?  


Guess we will have to wait and see. 

But either way, my kids are awesome just the way they are.