I started my second pregnancy believing I would behave exactly the same way I did with my first pregnancy. A few glasses of wine and a spotty attendance to my prenatal yoga class quickly told me otherwise.

This time around, things would be different. Being a second child myself, I was all too familiar with the fact that second children get the shaft.

It was bad enough that I didn’t treat my body like a temple, nor play soothing music to my in utero daughter, but even worse was I let my then 2.5-year-old son call her Odo. And the name stuck, hatching the common “Poor Odo,” refrain heard around our house.

Despite the fact that it took me four months before I started my prenatal care with a professional, Odo was born healthy, pink, and full of vigor. I breathed a sigh of relief, beamed at my son holding her so gingerly in his arms, and then heard a “thud!” followed by, “I’m all done.”

My son stood up and raced outside, causing my not even day old infant girl to roll on to the floor. Poor Odo.

When Odo turned four-months-old I realized we didn’t have a single picture of her displayed in our house. When I tried to remedy the situation, all I could find were a handful of blurry pictures with some semblance of one of her body parts.

I tried dressing her in a variety of outfits and snapped an entire roll of film, but somehow I think she won’t believe me when I claim she weighed 20 pounds and was able to stand in an exersaucer when she was a newborn.

One look at the huge photo album and dozens of video tapes documenting her brother’s babyhood causes the all to familiar sigh, “Poor Odo.”

Once she could walk and talk, I thought the “Poor Odo” days were behind us. She was no longer sleeping all day long, and therefore being forgotten about. Instead, she was running around the house adamantly stating her opinions and making sure her presence was acknowledged.

Her brother started attending preschool three days a week and it could have been Odo’s glory days. Her chance at being the indulged single child. But instead, I remodeled our house.

While her brother was at preschool having the time of his life, Odo was dragged to tile, paint, and electrical stores. The spiral staircase at Morgan’s and the ramp at Benjamin Moore were her playground.

Paintbrushes and screwdrivers were her favorite toys. And the remodel that was supposed to take four months took over a year.

I tried to tell myself that she seemed happy and at least we were spending time together, but really I kept thinking, “Shouldn’t she be climbing slides and playing in sandboxes rather than learning how to use a drill? Poor Odo.”

I ran out of money, therefore consider the remodel to be complete. I stopped dragging Odo to the paint store every day and I’d like to say I spend my days with her playing in parks and attending toddler gymnastics class, but that would be lying.

We do this occasionally, but what Odo considers “a super fun day” is racing around Greenwood Market with her very own child-sized shopping cart, picking out a mattress pad for her bed, and then drawing pictures, sometimes on paper, sometimes on the wall, while I obsessively check my emails.

When I asked her what she wanted to do today she said, “Go to Fred Meyer!” This time, I didn’t bereave my deprived child. Instead, I smiled and thought her lucky to get so much joy from buying cotton balls and toothpaste.

Corbin Lewars is the author of the memoir "Creating a Life" (Catalyst Book Press, 2009) and the sexy mommy-lit book "Swings" (out for submission). She is the creator of the zine Reality Mom. She lives in Ballard with her two children.