I can only imagine how it must feel to be the second child. I suppose it is better than being the third child which is what I was, although being the baby certainly had its benefits. Like your parents don't watch over you nearly as much as they did your older sisters because they are just so damn tired. Or you get your first pair of Levi's five years before they did and even then, they were still wearing Wranglers or Dungarees. Despite the perk of getting things earlier and having tired parents, sometimes it might be fun to be the oldest.
Lily always gets Belle's cast off's, whether it be outgrown clothes, shoes, toys, or cleats. Whatever it may be, if Belle has outgrown it chances are she will get a brand spanking new one and Lily naturally will get the cast off.
Since I only have two children, I do try to limit the hand-me-downs. There are many things that I will buy for Lily even though I already have a few of them at home. Every child is entitled to have some nice, new shiny things and birth order shouldn't dictate that.
On the flip side of all the hand-me-downs, lies the upside of being the second born. The second child gets to learn from all of the mistakes that the first child makes. The second gets to learn the alphabet two years before the first. Or maybe its learning the multiplication tables at five, or riding their bike two years earlier than their older sibling did.
Do you see where I am going with this? Lily has been listening in and benefitting from her sisters learning and taking notes for almost six years now. There have been countless times when I have been working with Belle and Lily will shout out the answers from another room. Lily is slick and she is ALWAYS listening even when you think she is just sitting quietly playing her Nintendo.
Like the time Lily basically toilet trained herself because we were at the Hersey Hotel in Pennsylvania and the girls wanted to go swimming with their cousin. I had run out of swim diapers and told Lily that if she wanted to go swimming she would have to go to the bathroom on the potty. So we tried it and she did it that day and every day thereafter.
I think that was the first time that Drew and I saw Lily's sheer determination. Lily sets her mind to things and she does it. She never looks back and she doesn't question herself. She just moves forward and does exactly what she intended.
Lily does things like this alot. She played soccer this past season for the first time ever and scored three goals in her first game. All the while, just standing there looking all adorable on the field and not thinking anything of it.
So blah blah blah you might say, and to that I say this "ok, I will get to the point of my post now." One day a few weeks ago Lily picked up a book and started sounding out the words. She started sounding out the words and that turned into reading the words. It started in small ways here and there and then like TWO days later, she picks up this book that she had just bought at a school book fair and full on starts to read it.
Lily just has that thing, that thing that sets her apart from anyone else, be it big or small. She just gets it in a way that even I aspire to.
