Full disclosure, I’m an only child. I’ve seen the pendulum of sibling relationships only as a tourist, never a passenger. I’ve watched little sisters holding hands in the store and two twin brothers beating the crap out of each other in their front lawn. So the dynamic of Connor and Josephine has been pretty fascinating to experience.
I got some advice from a few other parents who said, the second one always makes the first one a bit nuts and there is usually some regression. This is primarily due to the attention split. Looking at it through Connor’s eyes: You start off, you get all the attention, everyone loves and holds you…and all of a sudden bam! Someone brings a “thing” into the house and wammo! Just like that half your attention is gone. What’s even worse, is they can’t even do anything. They can’t walk, talk, feed themselves, or spin around in a circle until they get dizzy and fall. They can’t sing the itsy bitsy spider, recite their ABCs, or hook two trains together. Really they are quite useless. Why on earth would you even waste your time feeding her, I mean "it." And the crying? Seriously? I’m losing my mommy and daddy time for that? Okay, so that’s how it’s going to be?! I’m going to start crying too, and acting up! Negative attention is still attention after all.
Actually, it hasn’t been bad at all. Connor has been pretty sweet. One of the nicest parts of marrying and having children a little later than most is we have the benefit of someone else’s experience. Since we did get all the advice on the potential above scenario, we spent a lot of time with Connor and did a lot of 1 on 1 time split with each of us. We also encouraged Connor to participate in Josie’s development with “Connor, can you show Josie how to XXXX, you are the big brother, you need to help her sweet boy.” And he is at the age where he loves to please. So he usually and excitedly complies and of course we give him treats for obedience and good brothering.
This last week, Josie caught some stomach bug and was on full reverse throttle on the food. EVERYthing she ate or drank came out way faster than it went in and usually at a way longer distance. Nita’s philosophy is “everything is washable.” But some things you just have to see. It really is amazing to watch a baby puke for distance, and coverage. You’d think a little baby couldn’t cover every square inch of a shirt and a onesie…but they really can. Another thing I remember from the hospital is they say an infant’s stomach is the size of their clenched fist. BUT, I’d like to state for the record that they can puke at least two adult fists worth of volume. So I’m not sure how the math works, but I was a witness. In any case, poor Josephine couldn’t keep anything down for two days. It actually got to the point that we took her to the emergency room.
Short version is she was given an anti-nausea medicine and from that point on everything stayed down. We eased her back into solids with a healthy dose of pedialyte and even mixing formula and pedialyte. She’s fine and luckily her chunkiness provided a healthy cushion for the drastic weight loss. See that’s why I carry the extra weight, to stave off any harmful effects of dehydration. Now who’s the fat idiot? Hmmmm?
The cutest part was Connor’s reaction. Every time Josie was crying or screaming, Connor would walk up and pet her like she was a cat and say, “It’s okay Josie.” He even walked down the stairs Friday morning (because when daddy went to get Josephine at 4:30AM he forgot to close the baby gate). I discovered this when I’d finished showering and dressing and opened the bathroom door and there stood Connor with three pedialyte Popsicles. “Connor, did you walk downstairs by yourself?” “Yes daddy, I got one for Josie and I got you a blue one.” And when she finally started eating again, Connor was right there to hold the bottle for her and smile at her. He even tried being silly to make her laugh.
And Josephine LOVES her some Connor. She wants to be everywhere he is, play with every toy he’s playing with, and stand up like a “big boy”does. She smiles her 2 bottom tooth grin (with two poking through the top) every time she sees him. She laughs when he laughs and crawls to him at every opportunity. The funny thing is at Josie’s age, Connor was not even interested in parallel play, much less collaborative play. And honestly Connor at first wasn’t too cool with his new playmate. She’d reach for one of his trains and he’d grab it back and yell, “No Josie No!” But we found gummy bears and jelly beans make wonderful positive reinforcement tools. Every time he was nice to her or let her play with something, he got some positive feedback or a gummy bear. Jelly beans were mostly for going potty like a big boy. 1 for number one and 2 for a deuce. I wonder what Nita would do if I yelled from the bathroom to bring me two jelly beans in the morning. I mean besides hit me with a flyswatter for waking her up. I digress.
So Connor has gotten more and more generous and giving of his time to Josie. He shows genuine concern, or at least curiosity, when Josie’s upset. He involves her in a few things and he rarely asks us to put her down so we can hold him instead. He’s not overly selfish, for a 2 ½ year old I mean. So hoping I don’t jinx it, I think they are going to have a really sweet relationship. That or they’ll be beating the crap out of each other in the front yard someday soon
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