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Opposites

If it's not one thing, it's the other...or so they say.

Evangeline and Elianna are so different from each other! I am having a very different experience not only because Elianna is a healthy full-term ish baby, but because their temperaments are so different!

Evangeline has ALWAYS been very calm and we have very few memories of her crying. When she was a newborn she never really cried at all, and it wasn't until she was older that she cried out of her own volition. She's so content and chill with everything. She actually started crying more after we socialized her at our church nursery (I didn't let her play with any other kids for the first year because I was so paranoid she would catch germs and be re-hospitalized again!) For Evangeline, I was so stressed because I wanted her to stay healthy and I had to be on my A-game with all her medications and appointments. Evangeline has never been needy or clingy. I don't remember her ever crying to be held or comforted.

Elianna, on the other hand, cries the moment she wakes up and always has a look of nervousness or irritation. Kevin and I find this funny until her cries become much more high-pitched, then we end up flustered and rushing to calm her down. Thankfully she's not colicky, and really, she's probably just acting like a normal newborn, but we are so used to Evangeline as a norm that this is so weird for us! The nice thing about Elianna being older is that she sleeps for longer periods of time. I try to make it so that she doesn't sleep for longer than 4 hours without eating bc then she spits up a lot. In the beginning weeks, we were so sleep-deprived feeding her every 1.5-3 hours. She also would just be awake at strange hours like 2-6am and only be calmed down if she was being walked around! Carrying her isn't enough to this day, you HAVE to be walking. She also hates the carseat and needs the car to be moving or else she cries at red lights (again, something we never dealt with for Evangeline!) Elianna hates the stroller, and I always need to use our baby carrier Ergo (I've used it more for Elianna these last 3 weeks when combining the last 3 years of use for Evangeline--I only used it like 3 times for Evangeline! Evangeline was almost always in her stroller!) and when the car is stopped at a red light, she cries. Thankfully if I'm in the back seat, she likes the sound of the rattle toy that hangs on top of her car seat so I just shake that until she falls asleep. For the most part, Elianna is a cuddle bug who needs lots of tender love and affection!

Looks-wise, they are pretty identical from the nose down. They both were born darker-skinned and then became lighter with time (I guess they get that from their daddy!) The main difference is the face shape (Evangeline has a long oval-shaped face, Elianna has a round face...Evangeline's forehead is long like Kevin's, and Elianna's forehead is tiny) and their eyes! Evangeline's eyes are HUGE and she's got long, thick lashes which match her long, thick eyebrows. Elianna's definitely more Asian looking with smaller eyes like mine. Her lashes are long too but not as thick as Evangeline's. And she's got short and thin eyebrows. I don't know if I would see their resemblance as sisters if they weren't my children, but it is a little too early to tell. A lot of people have said she looks a lot like Evangeline so who knows?

Funny thing is, I predicted that our second kid would be loud and the opposite of Evangeline, and I had a feeling she would be more Asian-looking too.

Evangeline is my calm and quiet. Elianna is my loud and crazy.
Evangeline is a lot like her dad.
Elianna is a lot like me.
Evangeline is so shy with other kids her age.
I suspect Elianna will be a social butterfly.







my yin and my yang

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