Love is in the air

Texture by Kim Klassen; sunkissed 100% soft light

Kim’s theme for Texture Tuesday is Love, and I knew it would be this capture of Peanut with her new baby sister. Also, Kristy’s theme for Texture Twist is Love Stories…and this one is just beginning.

Born 3 weeks early on Monday, February 3rd, our newest grandbabykin is now home and the challenge of dividing multiplying love and attention begins.

And I say multiplying because as parents we can never really take our attention completely away from any of our other children, can we? When we’re with the newborn, we worry the older one(s) are feeling neglected. When we’re with the older one(s), we constantly anticipate the needs of the baby. And, God forbid, we have some time for ourselves because then we feel guilty about not being with any of them!

But love is endless. Love can multiply like bunnies. We worry we can never love another child as much as we love our first one….but that’s not true. While the logistics of adding children can be a monumental challenge; and we wonder how we’re ever going to finish a sentence, much less the rest of the to-do list; all seems to be right with the world when we stop and gaze into their eyes…preferably while they’re sleeping. 🙂

Time, on the other hand, is a finite resource. We can never get back time spent. So we’re faced with making hard decisions about how we spend our time once we share our lives with those wee ones.

To be completely honest, when The Investigator was young, I found while one child was an adjustment for Entrepreneur and I, in many ways the second was much harder. With the second birth, the reality of being a real,  grown-up family became evident. There were few blissful hours of leisure while this new baby slept. During those hours, there were endless things to do; laundry, dishes, cleaning, bills, phone calls…did I mention laundry? PLUS, taking care of the demands needs of a three-year-old. It seemed like along with multiplying our love for two children came multiplying the expectations and responsibilities that required our attention.

Gone were the days of thinking only about ourselves and what we wanted to do at any point in time. Replacing that was a mindset that focused on making decisions based on what’s best for us as a family, not just us as a couple or individuals.

Because time is a finite resource, love must be multiplied.

And with two grandbabykins now under our roof, we’re learning that lesson all over again.

Linking up with Texture Twist and Texture Tuesday