TTC from June 19, what do you wish you'd done before you had your second child?

[civicxx]

We currently have one daughter, aged 8 who is mine from a previous relationship. We're going to start trying for a baby next June/July & want to make the most of our time as a family of 3 before the whirlwind starts all over again!!

What did you/wish you had done while life was a little less hectic? Or before you'd had your first baby? As life is pretty chilled with an 8 year old & she pretty much does everything with us now, including the nice restaurants! Oh how I'll miss these!!

She loves rollacoatsers etc so we're hoping to take her to Disney while we have the money & I can ride the coasters as partner doesn't like them & 100% will not be going with next child untill he/she is current daughters age!! By then now 8 year old won't want to know us haha!! ^
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Thanks!

Possibly not the answer your looking for, but I'd work to get my iron levels up, my BMI down to 25 ish and my body strong through Pilates or similar.

@AnythingNotEverything
Thanks for reply! Open to all advice! But was generally meaning leisure wise with first daughter haha! Stopped taking the pill in January so to let me body get back in normal cycle, stopped smoking last July, BMI currently 19 :) currently having physio on my rubbish knee & hip! :) hadn't thought about iron levels, thankyou!

Euro disney? or Centre parcs? random sounding suggestion but a friend of mine's partner had an older child and when she was pregnant with their first they took the older girl to Euro Disney so she could have some special memories of just the three of them before the new baby arrived. She had a great time, holidays get restricted with a newborn so doing fun before hand I think was a good move otherwise I think you can have a "babies are boring we can't do anything" reaction.

@Baby2018 We went to Euro Disney last New Year so would be Orlando :) boyfriend is keen on centreparcs but I think it's very expensive for what it is so been looking for cheaper alternatives haha! :)

Yes that's my worry, since she was 4 I've worked 50-60 hours a week on shifts so she hasn't had as much quality times & days out etc as I would have liked but I was a single mum for most of it so had no choice but to work a good job to look after us!

I've taken most of the summer holidays off this year so hoping to spend lots of quality time time together! I've previously helped look after a baby for a year & dealt with lots of the 'this is boring we can't do anything' or we'd go somewhere & I wouldn't be able to 'play' on them with her as I had a 4 month old in a pram. Just worried about her feeling left out :(

Travel and have time to myself. I did both of these things and it was great. Before our first, we went backpacking through India (we used to live there together when we were dating so was a nice thing to do together before we settled down a bit). Before we had our second we also had the occasional night or weekend away. Went to Edinburgh and went to Lisbon on our own and I went on a weekend break to Barcelona just me. It was wonderful.

@mindutopia

We're going on holiday on Sunday, hoping to get another family one in, and me away with my cousin & some weekends me & the other half to places like the Lake District! :) would love to be able to go backpacking but not an option for us, oh how lovely! We both work the same shift and the same place at the moment so we don't make enough of an effort to spend quality time on days off as feel like we're never apart but are realising lately that even though we're always together it's working, cleaning, cooking etc not quality time so looking to make a list of things we'd like to before next June! :)

Thankyou for your comment! :)