This is 35.

At 35, I now have two children: a four-year old daughter and 14-month old son. I’m still navigating how to best protect and shepherd the two in in conjunction with one another, and how to enable them to play with some degree of supervised autonomy, but also keep them safe. And by “them,” I primarily mean the 1-year old, as he is enraptured with his sister’s daring-do and acrobatic antics and wants to mimic her a good part of the time; something she is happy to encourage. For example, as she is showing him how to stand at the top of and then jump off our little indoor orange slide, how to both encourage her leadership and inclination to provide a little…bump, and how to protect his autonomy and physical safety. It’s a balance that I’m learning: how to protect and look after different people at different ages and stages with different needs.