{"id":313,"date":"2015-11-05T15:14:05","date_gmt":"2015-11-05T15:14:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/authorjcnelson.com\/?p=313"},"modified":"2015-11-05T15:14:05","modified_gmt":"2015-11-05T15:14:05","slug":"parental-evolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/authorjcnelson.com\/?p=313","title":{"rendered":"Parental Evolution"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My eldest daughter complained the other day &#8220;You didn&#8217;t raise [her siblings] like you did me.&#8221; My response? &#8220;I sure hope not.&#8221; \u00a0With every child, we learned more about parenting than we knew before. \u00a0Then I got to thinking about just how much we&#8217;ve changed&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h1><strong>When we had our first child:<\/strong><\/h1>\n<ul>\n<li>Bottles of formula were marked with time made and thrown out exactly 45 minutes later.<\/li>\n<li>If she spit up, we grabbed rags and cleaning spray to neutralize the area.<\/li>\n<li>Outfits were color coordinated with accessories<\/li>\n<li>We sterilized everything with bleach and boiling water.<\/li>\n<li>We saved everything for the next baby.<\/li>\n<li>We couldn\u2019t wait for her to talk.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h1>When we had our second child<\/h1>\n<ul>\n<li>Bottles of formula were marked by the day made and thrown out at night.<\/li>\n<li>If she spit up, I called a dog over to clean it up.<\/li>\n<li>Outfits were correct for the gender.<\/li>\n<li>We sterilized things that went in the baby\u2019s mouth.<\/li>\n<li>We salvaged what we could for the next child.<\/li>\n<li>We taught her to talk and smiled as she said her first words.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h1>When we had our third child<\/h1>\n<ul>\n<li>Bottles of formula were occasionally disposed of if we didn\u2019t remember making them.<\/li>\n<li>The dogs followed us around hoping he\u2019d spit up.<\/li>\n<li>Outfits were occasionally the baby\u2019s.<\/li>\n<li>We sterilized nothing.<\/li>\n<li>We realized that nothing we salvaged got used.<\/li>\n<li>We let the older two teach him to talk.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h1>When we had our fourth child<\/h1>\n<ul>\n<li>Bottles of formula found under the couch were considered good unless they had floating bits. If they did, it was a free antibiotic treatment.<\/li>\n<li>If she spit up, we tried to rub it into the fabric when the dog didn\u2019t beat us to it.<\/li>\n<li>Outfits included diaper.<\/li>\n<li>We sterilized ourselves.<\/li>\n<li>It wasn\u2019t like there was anything left to salvage.<\/li>\n<li>And we realized if we taught her to talk, she would never shut up.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>J.C. Nelson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My eldest daughter complained the other day &#8220;You didn&#8217;t raise [her siblings] like you did me.&#8221; My response? &#8220;I sure hope not.&#8221; \u00a0With every child,&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/authorjcnelson.com\/?p=313\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Parental Evolution<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-parenting","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/authorjcnelson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/authorjcnelson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/authorjcnelson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/authorjcnelson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/authorjcnelson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=313"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/authorjcnelson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":315,"href":"https:\/\/authorjcnelson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions\/315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/authorjcnelson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/authorjcnelson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/authorjcnelson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}