It was the best of times,
it was the worst of times.
It may be that she’ll forget he wasn’t always in our lives, sooner than it’ll take for us to make it through the last of the copious Post-Partum Dinner Brigade leftovers. But it’s heart-tugging to see all the feelings pass through her.
It’ll take me a lot longer than the last of the leftovers to forget the look on her face when she saw me dancing with him in the living room to Edith Piaf. “Et tu, Baba?”
When we first brought our daughter home, our son (who was 3 1/2 at the time) was all smiles. A couple weeks in, he decided that he wasn’t that hip on me sitting around nursing a baby. Time has passed and here we are with a 5 year old and an almost 2 year old and they adore each other most of the time. The baby pats the big boy on the chest and says with a smile, “Dis is my brudder”. You will all find your way.
I’ll stop now because I feel a little naked leaving a long comment on a post with not other comments 🙂
Here! I’ll clothe us both with a heartfelt thanks. It’s still so very close to the time when I only had her interests to consider, and they were solo interests. It’s very consoling to get the long view, and the message that we all will find our way.
I have no personal experience in this, but read something interesting awhile back.
The advice was that if you are in a situation where you have a *choice* about which child to address immediately — ie, the situation does not involve anyone having an immediate need, other than the desire for attention — you should attend to the oldest child. The theory was that the younger child has never known life without that balance, and is more accepting of it, where the oldest child does remember having you all to herself.
That probably doesn’t make it any less heartbreaking in the moment.
That advice sure makes sense as a bridge. As a younger sibling myself, I have always known a world in which there was another with whom I shared my parents’ attention. And this is decidedly a period of transition in which we all — or at least the three of us here, who already have a relationship as a trio — are learning how to be a quartet.
So sweet — but Bossy never noticed that Edith Piaf inhaled helium before recording her vocal track.
Oh yeah. An old trick of the trade. Same vocal technique as these folks.