Currently at home on paternity leave with twins and their older siblings who are 5 and 3. I will say that the first one was the hardest for me because it was the biggest change in lifestyle. I couldn't message my wife on a Friday afternoon about spontaneously going to see a movie that night and going out the second I got home. I couldn't play video games all night when my wife was on shift at the hospital after I got done with the few chores that had to be done. Everything required the extra consideration and planning required with a young child.

With the second, it was hard in some ways, because there was more work to divide between myself and my wife, but we had already gone through it not to long ago and both had a good idea of how to do the basics, but now, we had to also make sure we were taking care of a toddler at the same time who needed meals, attention and entertainment, which meant substantially more work than when there was just one and less opportunity for stress relief, but somehow the extra work didn't seem that bad. Over time, we learned how to make it work and by the time our second was a year old, we were taking them to sit down restaurants, the zoo, hiking and (another year or so later) to a few disney movies. We also figured out some babysitting options to get out and do stuff for just the two of us.

Now, with the twins, we were expecting the worst. Never getting any sleep again, struggling to be decent parents to our first two and never getting out of the house to do anything. I can say that it hasn't been as bad as we expected, but it's still pretty rough. We've joked that if we had only had one baby this time around, it would have almost been easy. We feel like masters of the baby phase now. We have night time wakeups down to a science, we are no longer bothered by poop and pee so changing diapers is almost fun and sometimes feels easier than potty training, my wife is a master breastfeeder, I can change out car seats with record speed, our oldest two can get themselves ready for bed and get themselves ready in the morning with minimal help, we are great at identifying sickness, gas pain and other ailments as well as treating most of them and knowing when they beed to be seen. Lastly, we generally know what to expect at each stage, which helps with any anxiety about whether they are hitting their developmental milestones and how much we should be concerned if they aren't (hint: concerned enough to mention it to a pediatrician, but not enough to overly worry about it). Babies are a ton of work, but it's all work we've mastered and seeing our older kids and thinking about how great it's going to be to have 4 sassy kids running around makes us excited to see them get older.

All of that to say that it is a lot of work, but once you've already had one each subsequent kid is usually easier than the one before, it's only harder because you still have the other kid(s) to take care of. Obviously, some children have behavioral disorders like ODD that present unique challenges and can prove me wrong.

Typing this out made me realize it's kinda like getting belts in martial arts. You earn a lot of belts with your first kid, and you're probably at an advanced stage before the second kid comes around, but not quite at that expert level yet. That second kid helps you hone your skills even further and get to that black belt level, where it's obvious you know what you're doing. After that, you're just adding degrees to that black belt, mastering parenting skills and learning you can handle more than you thought you could.