As achow101 noted, you need to wait for the first node to sync.  I run a two-node setup myself where the first node is an internet hub (around 95 connections at any given time) and does not have a wallet and the second node which has a wallet connects just to the first node.  I use a 'connect' statement so the second node connects to just the first node and specify 'listen=0' so the second node doesn't try to accept incoming connections.  But I don't do this for security but for convenience since the first node is on a VPS and the second node is on my desktop.  I compile Bitcoin Core from the source, so I'm not concerned about malware.  I suppose a node could be hacked by a malformed peer message but I don't consider it very likely.