Balancing Act

Let me start by saying that Hannah is an incredibly talented, intellectual, well-behaved girl. She is so very different than Jake in many ways. Not that Jake isn't talented and smart but he certainly isn't well-behaved most of the time.

It is such an experience raising two children who could not be more different. From a very early age Hannah was into letters and numbers and learning. She learned to read when she was barely 4 years old and she went from not reading at all to reading a complete book in about 24 hours. It was amazing. She loves to learn and she is constantly looking things up in the dictionary or telling me about interesting scientific facts that she has learned. She even does stuff like this for fun and she rarely gets into trouble but when she does she is easy to discipline because she so badly hates to disappoint Lincoln and me.

Jake on the other hand could seem to care less about learning his letters and his numbers. He can't count as well as Hannah could at this age and he certainly isn't anywhere near reading yet. I don't even think he can do the alphabet perfectly 100% of the time yet. But he's smart in different ways. He's smart in how he looks at the world and tries to figure out how things work. He is constantly asking questions about why something is the way it is. Even more so than Hannah did at the same age. As for behavior....well I just keep telling myself that his personality will make a great CEO of a company someday. He goes after what he wants and doesn't let anything get in his way. Even if that means he wants to walk across the room in a straight line and has to kick his sister in the head on his way because she's in his path.

But I digress....

Jake is so different from Hannah but they are both wonderful in their own ways. Hannah has a head start on him because she is almost 3 1/2 years older than him so she gets to do a lot of things that he doesn't. And she is lavished with praise because she is in school and brings home spelling tests with perfect scores and performs in summer theater programs and dance recitals. Jake doesn't have any of that yet. And typically when they get into a fight we side with Hannah because usually it's something Jake has done (as evidenced by the story above). It's hard to find that balance. We don't want to blame Hannah for something that she didn't do but we also don't want Jake to always feel like we're siding with her. Even writing my Christmas letter this year I struggled to make it even because so much of it was about how well Hannah was doing in school and most of what I have to write about Jake has to do with him being a daredevil or getting into trouble one way or the other.

Believe it or not all of this rambling is to make a point and to tell a story about how even though Hannah is incredibly smart, talented and well-behaved, she can still be incredibly insecure. I spend so much time worrying that Jake is going to feel under-appreciated in this family that I don't always notice how Hannah feels about something.

As many of you know, Jake has an imaginary friend named Papa. He talks about him all the time. As another little side note about how our children are so different, Hannah has never clung to one thing as a "security blanket" in her entire life. She was never hooked on a pacifier. She goes through a rotation of favorite stuffed animals and blankets but there has never been one item that she needs to have in order to feel comfortable. Jake is the complete opposite. While he has a rotation of additional items that he sleeps with, like his stuffed elephant named Elephanty, he cannot survive without Howie, his stuffed duck, and his "birds", a musical crib toy that is still in his bed even though he has long outgrown his crib. He finds comfort in things staying the same and Papa is one of his favorite friends. Because he talks about Papa so much Lincoln and I will have long conversations with him about Papa. A few months ago Hannah started bringing up Sara, her imaginary sister. Sara only ever makes an appearance when Jake talks about Papa. She never brings up Sara on her own.

Yesterday I told the story about how Jake came up with the recipe for the peanut butter/pretzel/marshmallow concoction and how we actually mixed it up and baked it and it was edible. It was actually even good. I was joking with Jake that if he continues to keep coming up with all these edible delights we'd have to publish a children's cookbook called "Jake's Messipes" and he'd be famous. Not long after we made the stuff again last night I was talking on the phone to my Mom and telling her the story about Jake's recipe. I didn't think anything of it at the time but Hannah chose that moment to start pulling all sorts of cookbooks out of the cabinet and she sat down to "look up items that are in recipes" and put together her own "Hannah's special tacos" recipe. Off the top of my head I don't remember what's in it other than flour tortilla shells, popcorn, pretzels, sprinkles and food coloring. Not terribly appetizing.

Lincoln and I were talking about it this morning and that is when it occurred to me just how insecure she is. There I was telling Mom a story about what Jake did and was a success at and Hannah decided she needed to try and succeed at that as well. Lincoln was the one to point out that it was the exact time when I was telling Mom about Jake's recipe that Hannah decided to get out the cookbooks. We don't push Hannah to be perfect at everything but I wonder if that's how she feels some times. God, I hope not.

Having two children is such a balancing act. You want both of your children to develop their own personalities and their own likes and dislikes. Hannah has always been such an "easy" child that I think sometimes I forget that she's not perfect. That she doesn't always know what Lincoln and I are thinking or that no matter what she does in life we will love her and accept her and that she doesn't have to perfect at everything. I worry so much about Jacob but I guess I need to spend more time worrying about Hannah as well. I don't want to screw up the person my child is meant to be because I've just assumed that she has everything she needs to continue being that person. She seems so grown-up sometimes and I really need to remember that she is, in fact, only 7 years old.

And that is the end of my long story. To all of my friends out there that seem to be under the impression that I know what I'm doing as a parent, guess what, I don't. It's a daily learning experience and one I just hope I can make it through.