Loyette, who knows all of her letters, has officially made her first letter-to-word connection: “D, Daddy. D, Daddy. D, Daddy.” Awww.
Loyette, who knows all of her letters, has officially made her first letter-to-word connection: “D, Daddy. D, Daddy. D, Daddy.” Awww.
She’s what? Three months shy of 2? That’s pretty impressive. You and Becky must be very proud. You have a regular Baby Einstein on your hands.
(Without all the merchandising tie-ins. As far as we know).
Heh. The merchandising comes later. 🙂
Anyway, thanks. Yeah, Loyette loves her letters. And she’s a very good communicator — she now routinely strings together 3 or 4 words into basic “sentences,” like “mommy-baby-cry” (mommy, the baby is crying) or “baby-cry-hungy” (the baby is crying, I think she’s hungry) or “daddy-nana-pate” (daddy, please give me a plate with banana pieces on it). This morning she said to me, “daddy-mommy-baba-piece,” which was her way of telling me (i.e., Daddy) that Mommy had given her a piece of Mommy’s bagel (baba).
She can also count to six. Although she doesn’t really “count” so much as point at things and say 1 through 6 in sequence. She’ll always count to whatever is the highest number she knows — used to be 3, then 4, then 5, now 6 — regardless of how many “things” are in front of her. She’ll skip things or count them twice as needed. And she’s always really enthusiastic when she says the last number, like she’s super proud of herself. Heh. So cute.
Interesting you note that the toddler calls your attention to the baby being hungry. Our toddler does the same thing. Interesting because we were told by several folks that the older child would have negative, or at best ambivalent, feelings toward the baby.
Our older child is competitive sometimes, like when the baby is getting attention from a parent and the toddler needs something urgently. Could be I am drinking the Kool-Aid, but it does seem like the older child more or less likes the baby. This makes us very happy, but it was not what we were led to believe. Do you find the same thing?
Yes.
And, in this particular instance, I don’t have any doubt that my perception is right — i.e., I’m quite convinced I’m not “drinking the Kool-Aid.” Loyette is clearly very fond of Loyacita. Almost from the day we brought her home from the hospital, Loyette has been fascinated by her little sister, and very empathetic: she’ll become distressed if the baby cries too much, she’ll bring the baby a toy to try and calm her down, or just bring her a toy regardless, because she figures she’d like one. She also LOVES lying next to her sister in the baby play gym and “playing with her.” She’ll sometimes lie down there, point to the spot next to her, and say “Baby! Baby!”
Now, whether this camaraderie will last as they get older, I have no idea. But for the moment, any negative feelings toward her sister are strictly limited to, as you say, occasional situations where she wants attention and isn’t getting it. (Recently she’s taking to sometimes saying “Poppy! Poppy!” — i.e., claiming, falsely, that she’s poopy — in order to get our attention in such situations. Which is funny, because she hates having her diaper changed.) But even then, it’s more that she’s demanding love from Mommy & Daddy than that she’s taking it out on Loyacita. And anyway, we try very hard to prevent that from happening, by paying attention to both kids whenever humanly possible. For instance, if I’m walking around with Loyacita and singing to her because she’s fussy, I’ll make a point of looking directly at Loyette while singing, indicating to her that I’m really singing to her, too. We talk to Loyette about what we’re doing with baby, try to include her in everything, etc. This seems to work wonders.
(It’s so hard to remember to use “Loyette” and “Loyacita” in an extended discussion like this — heh. We, of course, never call them that in real life, so it sounds unnatural to my mind’s ear.)
The only real concern with Loyette-Loyacita relations is that Loyette, not knowing her own strength, will sometimes be too rough when she gets overexcited, and, if we aren’t watching like hawks, whack or poke the baby’s face or head. So we have to very careful about that, when they’re in close proximity to one another. I’ve developed what I call a “baby missile defense system” — if Loyette is within arm’s reach of Loyacita’s face, I’ve got a hand between them, ready to block any incoming blows. But in such cases, there’s obviously no malice or ill intent on Loyette’s part — she’s happy and smiley and trying to play with her sister. She just doesn’t understand (obviously) that she could accidentally hurt her in the process of doing the sort of things she might harmlessly do to herself (like pointing at her own eye and saying “eye,” for instance).
How far apart are your kids in age? I’m no expert, but it’s my impression that the crucial factors in terms of sibling relations at this age, in no particular order, are: 1) how far apart they are (the closer the better); 2) the toddler’s inherent temperament (we’re incredibly lucky in this regard – Loyette is just a very sweet kid); and 3) the parents’ efforts to make sure the toddler doesn’t feel neglected.
Our daughters are a little over two years apart – our older daughter exhibits many of the traits you mention above (e.g. unintentional physical play). I think the three criteria you mention are probably about right as well, and who knows, maybe this will all change with time, particularly as the younger daughter becomes old enough to pilfer toys or otherwise disrupt the intentions of the older one.
To the issue of the parents’ efforts: one thing we do that may be a little different from some families is that my wife and I work pretty hard to develop a culture, within our house of, “if you’re in this family, you’re pretty cool.” We don’t express this directly, indeed we emphasize graciousness with our older daughter – and are at least publicly mildly self-effacing regarding their merits.
We’ll probably try to hold onto that meme as long as we can. When they’re tweens, the parents will definitionally be uncool, so it may get more difficult. Until then, the family is definitely a context within which the kids can feel good about themselves – but that comes with expectations about how they behave and how they treat each other.
I don’t know – we’ll see if it works!
“Baby missile defense system”? Do the Russians/Iranians know about this, and if so, what deterrent are they planning?