Hello to all. I'm Marc and my partner Jeff and I have a 2 year old son by adoption. He is the love of our lives and as far as we can tell, the reason that the sun rises each morning and sets each night. We live in Manhattan where both of us work in non-profit executive roles. This fall, we look forward to expanding our family with the arrival of twin girls by surrogacy. If anyone has any advice on raising daughters, twins, helping a first child adjust to new sibs, etc., I am an eager listener!

Best,

Marc

Sorry so late in my reply, Marc! A lot going on here lately, but life is calming down a bit and I'm trying to catch up.

Congratulations on the twins upcoming! I never had daughters, but Smokey and many others here could give you good advice on that front. I also have not dealt with all the many issues that you must be facing.

When it comes to helping a child welcome a new sibling, well that I remember. We thought a lot about that when our second son was coming into the world. For us it helped just to make sure that we approached it not as two of us having a new baby, but all THREE of us were having a child, to let him know that he was as important to the whole process as anything else. I guess modern psycho-bable would say it was giving him "ownership" of the event as well.

I don't think we ever had any problems with competition between siblings, not until they were older, because having children was always a whole family event, each member with his important roles to play. I like to dig out some footage now and then of Josiah at age three holding his baby brother in his arms and singing the Barney song ("I love you, you love me..."), and I can't wait to embarass him with it when he brings home an important date someday. lol

Anyway, this is a topic that could easily start a whole discussion under parenting. Thanks for joining and introducing yourself, and again, welcome to GF!

Yours,
David