Middles

This is my marvelous middle man, E.W (pronounced E dubya)! The most expressive and soft hearted of my gaggle of children, he and I had a rocky spot a while back. E.W and his younger brother are close in age (no, not Irish twins), but still, too close, in my opinion.

E.W was all of 21 months old when we rocked his world and brought home little A. A baby too small to play with that took up all of his mommy's time and occupied her lap more often than not. It was about this time that our laid back middle child turned into a destructive hellion not so laid back toddler. I would no sooner sit down to nurse the baby and E.W would have emptied the junk drawer, broken some sort of mechanical something or other, and, most certainly, spilled something sticky on my floor. Couple this with post-partum hormones, a jaundiced baby, exhaustion and Mr. Wonderful's busy work time...well, you get the picture. This little man had me at my wits end, and, yet, I knew exactly what the problem was (cue organs, scary music) Middle Child Syndrome! My poor middle was not getting enough attention, but, I had none extra to give!

But, alas, life goes on, babies get bigger and need less of their mother's time (sniff, sniff). When I consciously put my mind to it and focused on my wonderful E.W, life started to change. I'm still not entirely sure if he "out grew a phase" or if it was my, ahem, fabulous mothering and attention giving that prompted the change, but whatever the cause, E.W became less, well...intense! So, to everyone suffering through Middle Child Syndrome, rest easy...this, too, shall pass! I now have a fantastic, fabulous, fearless (kind of) five year old who loves his mama, that darn baby brother and Ford trucks. And I love this little man, who I, seriously, thought was going to need psychiatric help...turns out he just needed his mama's love.