What It's Like Being the Single Sister

The one great thing about living in NYC is that it's full of single people.

Oh, you're single and have been an adult for many years?! I'm single and i'm a new adult! 

And so it's great living in NYC because you get all this 'single power'. That's when you feel even more energized and powerful and independent because you're a single female.

BUT there's nothing like spending a week with family to reel you back to life outside single-full-NYC and remind you what it's like to be THE ONLY single person in your family. AND now that sister #2 has a baby of her own, I'm starting to notice subtle changes in the way life used to work:

What Being a Third Child is Like

This past weekend I babysat my niece who had a complete meltdown and scared me half to death with weird sobbing and twitching-like spasms. So obviously I consulted the higher power of the internets to see whether or not this was normal, to which I found a thread that basically read like this "my first kid did it, freaked out and went to the ER. My second kid does it too. Nothing to worry about."

Which got me thinking to how differently parents raise their kids as they become more comfortable at being parents and immune to "firsts" (love the commercial above).

Below is a snapshot of how my parents responded by the time they became pros at parenting and my two older sisters had allllllll been-there-and-done-that:

Doula / Dude-la

Since my sister is having a baby, naturally almost every conversation during dinner leads to a topic about babies. My sister is thinking of having a natural, no-epidural birth. Jokingly, her husband told her he didn't think she could do it! and so my sister countered back, "FINE. I NEED SOMEONE WHO BELIEVES IN ME. IM GOING TO GET A DOULA!"everyone stopped talking and stared at her. A what???

What's In a Baby's Name?

Sister #1 is having a baby girl very very soon! Coming from a very opinionated family of mostly girls, my sister is having trouble deciding a baby's name. She has about a month left before the arrival of my niece, and she's still struggling with the whole thing! So i asked her to write about what she looks for in a baby's name.