As much as we might want it to exist, there just isn’t a magical list or routine we can implement to make it an easy transition to have a second or third kid. And once they are here, it can quickly become overwhelming and seem impossible. Today I share some tips and advice to help make parenting more than one kid a little easier    In this episode I discuss:  Prepping your first-born for a new introduction in the family Some of my own tips and ideas, as a mother of three Managing sibling dynamics and conflict Lessons from the Playroom: Sibling Rivalry My commentary on some crowd-sourced advice   All the fun links you might enjoy  Emotional Intelligence (and improving relationships with your kids through emotion coaching) What moms of toddlers need to hear How to deal with the emotional struggles of being a mom of babies and toddlers Real-life advice on having two kids under two years old (blog post) Planning the day (reactive vs proactive) Four steps to manage overwhelm in motherhood When motherhood can change you but you can’t change motherhood Settling in motherhood Is a third baby harder than the second? Enneagram + Motherhood Series 11 things that make my mom life simpler More posts on motherhood   Sign up for Simple Saturdays email (a fun email, twice a month)     FULL TRANSCRIPT 0:00 Hey friends, it's Shawna, your Nerdy Girlfriend and counselor from simpleonpurpose.ca. Welcome to another episode of The Simple on Purpose podcast. 0:18 If you are following me on Instagram, you know that this past week I went away for a work retreat. Do you remember back in the day, if you've been around for a while I used to go on work retreats quite often, I used to also go on work retreats with a community that I had started with one of my besties called a little late. And we used to do them with a great group of women, we'd rent an Airbnb, we'd get food brought in. And we would just all hunker down and do work and kind of brainstorm together. Some of my favorite memories are those work retreats. And then in this, since then I've gone on my own, I've gone with a bestie. And I haven't done it for a few years. So I thought, I have this big deadline coming up to move my email service. So I'm just going to send myself away for a couple of nights, you might have read about it in the sublime purpose, or the simple Saturday's email. 1:04 So I went away to work on my email, my email service, and then sent out that week's simple Saturday's and the email was broken, the email program is not working. So I'm still working with tech support to get that back up and running. And either way, I spent a lot of my time prepping for this, you know, this email to be moved over. 1:26 So whew, all right, the work retreat was still a really valuable experience. Because I could just be selfish with my time, which I think it's a bad thing. I think we need to do that sometimes, if I'm working from home, which I always do, and the kids come home from school, and even though I say I'm gonna keep working till like maybe four or five, they're coming in, they're asking questions, I can hear everybody out there in the hall, talking about things and I'm like, oh, I should go like, tell them this or tell them that. And it's just it doesn't work, right. And then I don't feel like I can ever come back into work once I've gone out and you know, been with the fam. But when I'm alone in this hotel room, and I go from my computer, to the bathtub, back to my computer, again, to a snack platter of cheese and crackers, back to my computer. It's just a time where I don't have to be accountable to anyone but me. And I can just be all in on whatever I need to get done. So it was a really like, I didn't just hang out and watch Netflix the whole time. I was getting my work done. And then watching some Netflix for fun. I'm all caught up on love is blind if anyone wants to tal...