People keep asking me how Jonas is different than Axel. Well, obviously, he's smaller. His hair's a little more red. His hand-eye coordination is not so good. It's pretty easy to tell them apart. What they really mean is how's Jonas different than Axel at the same age. And my answer, which I am embarrassed to say as a younger sibling who understands how important it is to take lots of baby pictures of both children, is that I'm not quite sure.
Truthfully, Axel's very recent babyhood is already a fuzzy memory. It's an impressionist painting. When I look to close and try to pull up details, like when exactly he started sitting up or eating solid food or sleeping through the night, I find nothing but a slippery, vague answer that would earn me a big fat F on a Major Baby Milestones Pop Quiz. That's why people have baby books, and why I should really try to fill in the blanks for either of the boys' books before they graduate from high school and I find myself making it all up, swapping between a blue and a black pen so it doesn't look like I've done a last-minute baby book cram session.
I recently offered my sister-in-law finger foods for her not quite seven-month-old daughter, and she looked at me like, "Wait, don't you have two small children?," though she was too polite to say as much. Yeah, I should remember things like when kids start with Cheerios and when they start going to a two-nap-a-day schedule, and I don't, though I was certain I'd remember every single moment and milestone. That's why I now turn to Google and my pediatrician's helpful well check hand-outs for a little developmental info.
As I'm having such a hard time remembering Axel's babyhood, all baby stuff, including the babies themselves, are merging together into one mostly adorable, cuddly lightweight mass of urges and bodily fluids, Baby with a capital B. This is why my father can't always tell baby pictures of my brother and I apart. This is why parents mix up their children's names. If this is happening to me with just two children, how does Michelle Duggar keep her 18, soon to be 19, kids straight? George Foreman's family of Georges doesn't seem so crazy to me anymore.
Back to the boys: there are a few differences that come to mind. Axel had colic. Jonas, while he's got his fussy periods and has reinspired the 5 - 9 pm sway, shush, and shuffle routine, does not have colic. Both boys hate (or hated) tummy time, but Jonas hates it a little less than Axel, the raging on his belly master, hated it. Both moved and thrashed like mad, out of the womb and within, and rolled from tummy to back before they were two months. Neither is or was what you would call a mellow Buddha baby, but Jonas is probably a little more relaxed than Axel. Both of them tell you immediately, with very little build up, that they are starving or tired. We do not have much in the way of early hunger signals in our house; Jonas, especially, will go from sleeping peacefully in my arms to screaming and sobbing with starvation in twenty seconds. Crying is not, as all the literature will tell you, always a late hunger signal, unless sleeping peacefully is Jonas' early hunger signal..
At just two months, Jonas' personality is only starting to emerge. At not quite two years, Axel's, too, is still taking shape, changing and evolving each day. I'm just getting to know Jonas, and I'm learning more and more about Axel. Their differences will become more apparent over the years. I'll learn if Jonas shares his brother's bottomless love of anything with four wheels and a motor, or if he prefers to read and re-read books about butterflies instead of tractors. He'll become more Jonas-y, whatever that means, as he gets past the newborn blob phase and becomes a more interactive little person. While this part has its benefits - I get to hold Jonas as long as I want to, he's pretty portable, and he never tries to do a love throw-down and tackle my legs with a hug like his brother does - I like the next part more, when the kid is moving and talking and learning and becoming whoever he is.
