I''ve wanted to do a blog for awhile but have been constrained by a combination of technological ineptitude and fear of putting myself out there. I''ll start with the benign and see where this takes me.

I think that it has been easier parenting this second time around. I''m so much more relaxed and don''t take everything as evidence of my ineptitude. For example, I used to freak out about my son''s extreme pickiness about eating. At six years old, he still needs some cajoling to try new foods. In contrast, baby girl eats almost everything. She is a beautiful eater. The great irony of this stark contrast between children: I provided them about the exact same nutritional experiences as young children. Baby girl probably had a fewer jars of baby food just because I was too busy to make separate dinners, but that is about it. Yet their outcomes are so different.

Baby girl has been this great lesson in detachment. Don''t get me wrong, I''m super attached to her, but I realize that sometimes kids just come out with their own preferences, personalities, vulnerabilities, and characteristics without regard to our parenting. This realization has made the entire process more enjoyable for me. I''m simply less stressed.

Still, for awhile I was feeling guilty about her experience in comparison to my son''s. My son had me exclusively for 4.5 years. I had few friends here because of our move for residency and I just spent every waking hour devoted to him. It was him and me 24/7/265. In contrast, baby girl has been schlepped just about everywhere. This dawned on me one night as I "spotted" her climbing up high bleachers located over concrete near a pool while DS took swim lessons. Her early childhood would be far less attended to than my son''s.

I finally made a sort of peace with this when I enrolled her at my son''s montessori school for the toddler program this coming fall. I thought to myself: Are you kidding me? DS only got one year of preschool because I was not ready for him to go. Now DD will get the benefit of preschool from two years on? I didn''t even believe in group daycare for my son just a few years ago! Then I started to feel that DD''s current daycare was suboptimal when a fellow parent advised me to check out the toddler program attached at DS''s school. The caregiver to child ratio is 4 to 1 and the kids were having a blast doing amazing things. After observing the program one morning, I put a deposit down for the 2006-7 school year for her!

I realized that she will have great experiences too, just very different from my son''s. Already she is becoming this laid back, happy, independent little person who is fairly different from my son, who tends to be more intense, more active, and more in tune with the expectations of others.

I think sometimes we parents get tripped up on this desire to give "equally" to our children. Even though we know that "equal" is impossible, our love impels us to try because we don''t want to show favoritism. I''m beginning to make peace with the fact that "fair" actually entails trying to give equitably to our children: giving them what we can to meet their needs. It is hard to swallow this concept sometimes. Other times, it is what it is. Ironically, we think that we teach our kids. In truth, they teach us far more than we could ever hope to impart.