Life After Baby Number Two

Alright, so last time I posted anything was... a little over four months ago? Shortly before our beautiful new baby Topanga was born. Perhaps you can guess that having a second child is quite a bit more difficult than I had originally anticipated; not so much that the second baby is hard to handle, but suddenly the first becomes more work once there's someone else there to share the attention.

Only recently have I finally been able to begin feeling like I can actually start working on my hobbies like writing and blogging once again, hence why I haven't posted anything prior to now. There's certainly quite a bit of work having to change diapers every couple hours after being used to not needing to do so with a 3-year-old. Gotta get up every few hours no matter what time it is to feed the baby and play a bit and put her back to sleep once she's tired again. So busy so much of the time.

But really the new baby isn't all that much work in my opinion. Like... I've done it before. Or even just helped with it. So I know what I'm doing with the second one rather than learning everything for the first time, and thanks to conveniently being let go from my previous job shortly before Topanga was born, I've had so much time to spend with her to get to know her up until this point. I suppose I'm honestly quite grateful for such opportunity, though it has truly been quite a financial strain which couldn't have been handled up to now without Carley being so awesome and figuring out the situation.

The really hard part of this whole ordeal has been transitioning Isabelle into no longer being an only child. I remember my sister saying that the hardest part about having another baby isn't the new baby... it's the first child that's the hardest part. I absolutely get that now; Isabelle is still teaching us new things each and every day for the first time which we can then use to teach Topanga in a better way down the road in the future.

So here we are, four months later from my last post... just when I think things will finally get back to the way life was before, things change again because she figured out how to roll over; now we've had to learn to sleep without being swaddled at night, and wouldn't you know it, she starts getting red-cheeked and fussy which is messing with her sleep schedule. Oh, children are such a frustrating and yet totally rewarding life adventure of new experiences each day. 

Have a wonderful day! ^_^

~ Kyle Welykholowa

=== Rollin' rollin' rollin' ===

     So recently Isabelle has decided that she understands how to roll from her back to her front and from her front to her back. Lately she's been rollin' rollin' rollin' all the time back and forth. It's kind of adorable that she just does it whenever she pleases, but at the same time it can be a little bit dangerous and occasionally mind boggling when she decides she's too lazy to roll back and then cries about it.

     We used to leave her on the couch at times to hang out in comfort rather than being on the floor, but now we can't really leave her anywhere with some height to it because she might roll right off and hurt herself. This isn't too much of a problem, we just have to be careful to remember to put her somewhere safe before leaving her for a moment to do something else. I can't imagine how awful I would feel if she fell off of anything because I forgot to put her down.

     Then there are times when she wants to roll over a bunch but she's too tired to keep going. Sometimes she will roll from her back to her front then she'll get frustrated that she can't make it back over again. She'll start to cry like a banshee in pain so we'll go help her out and flip her over only to have her do it again and again. Sometimes I absolutely don't understand what could possibly be going through her head. Unless she somehow understands that it gets her the attention that she's looking for.

     I actually watched her one morning after putting her on the bed with Carley roll over onto her tummy... then Carley turned her back and she rolled right over again... so Carley turned her back and she kept doing it again and again until Carley adjusted and picked her up. I'm pretty sure it won't be long now until she starts figuring out how to move and then it'll be all sorts of fun having her wander around the house.

Good luck to us. ^_^

~ Kyle Welykholowa

=== PC Game Review -- Crown and Council - Turn-Based Strategy - 6/10

     Crown and Council is a really simple game made by the maker of Minecraft. The goal of the game is to conquer your enemies by attacking them in a risk-like fashion where a random roll done behind the scenes decides whether or not the money you have spent on attacking is successful.

     Unfortunately there isn't much to say about this game. The levels are randomly generated and range from large maps with lots of land to conquer, to small maps with only a few islands.

     I would say the game is fun to play for a short time, but gets boring quite quickly. The best way I can describe the experience would be to say... imagine playing Risk many times again and again and again in a short time. Sure, Risk is fun, but there isn't much to it. After a while it gets a little stale.

     So I'm giving this game 6/10. It's not really anything new, but it is cute and it's also free, which means if you're looking for something to kill time that doesn't cost anything, I see nothing wrong with recommending this game to you.

~ Kyle