Thalia just turned six months old. We are in one of those situations where it seems like no time at all and yet forever.

I’ve told several people that I’m getting a very warped sense of time, or at least how my days are filled by the time available. In something of an inversion of Parkinson’s Law, in the end there has been just enough time in the day to do what needs doing, at least at a very macro level.

Before Siena was born, we understood that our lives would become radically different, but naturally we couldn’t comprehend the manner or structure of the change. After a year, I would look back and think that given how much time taking care of Siena consumed, we must have had so much free time in our lives. But it had never felt that way. We weren’t exactly sitting around the house wondering what to do with all this extra time.

Then, with Thalia on the way, I wondered, how do people have two kids. We can barely manage one, and with both parents working and not having any time to ourselves, where would we find time for another kid? I looked at a bunch of other parents with two (or more) kids, and marveled at how they did the impossible. Even the prospect of mundane activities like getting both kids food or ready for school or ready for bed seemed overwhelming. (And to be frank, the prospect of getting them both ready for bed at the same time, which we don’t yet do, seems a frightening step to do by myself, so I’m not exactly looking forward to it.) When one kid occupies you fully from the time you get home until they go to bed, how do you make time for another?

Those four days in the hospital after Thalia was born, when Siena was at home and we could hand Thalia off to the nurses at night, felt like the last opportunity to catch our breaths before jumping into the even deeper end of the pool this time.

Now, six months later, I look at how we are getting by with both, Siena and Thalia generally seem happy and are doing well, and I think back at when it was just us and Siena, before we had the new huge time sink with the round cheeks and big smile, and I think, wow, we must have had so much free time when it was just the three of us.