Recognize any of these?
After Kate was born in '07, Jaime and several others in her family insisted that Kate looked just like me. So I located and posted a picture of me as a baby (above left) alongside the photo of Kate (above middle). Several people have commented that they think Davis (above right) looks a lot like Kate, so here are all three of us, side by side. Something tells me that we're all indeed related.
The much anticipated meeting of Kate and Davis was, as I expected, less than a joyful family moment. On Tuesday afternoon I brought Kate to the hospital to see her new brother. For months we'd been talking to her about babies, having her play with dolls and practice being gentle with the baby. Her interaction with the dolls got better over time, as the the gentle head pats and kisses increased while the body slams decreased. Our expectations for the actual brother-sister meeting were relatively low: I was simply hoping she'd neither (1) try to attack Davis or (2) go into hysterical sobs. As you can see from this footage, she did neither:
While she didn't sob, the sight of her quivering lower lip and tears welling up in her eyes was tough for me to take. I debated whether to post the video here, given that it suggests that I was far more focused on capturing the experience on video than I was on minimizing the trauma to our little Kate. In fact, I could probably post that video on YouTube with the keywords "Baby Torture" -- I'm not sure we did anything right here. In retrospect, we should have had Kate spend a few minutes with Jaime (who she hadn't seen for more than a full day) and me first, then while one of us was holding her we could have had Davis brought into the room for her to see. Instead, we let Kate come into the room all by herself, and after running to see her mom, who she'd missed terribly, she encountered her mom holding someone else! I'm pretty sure we haven't ruined our daughter's life, but I do think we mismanaged this meeting. I'm sure some child psychology author out there could use this as a case study of how not to handle this process. As a wise man once said, no one is completely worthless because he can always serve as a bad example.
Things got better when we started firing questions at her:
We've learned that Kate really enjoys helping Davis. She gets his diapers out and puts them into his bassinet, she finds his blankets and puts them into his bassinet, she finds his pacifier and puts that into his bassinet (or tries to cram it directly into his mouth). Of course, she still gets a bit teary and whimpers "baby!" over and over while she does it, and I'm not convinced that her assistance isn't really a strategic plot to bury Davis under a mountain of stuff. As for us, we're more thoughtful now about making sure that one of us holds her when we're playing with Davis and that we spend plenty of time alone with her. I think she's going to quickly become a very helpful and protective older sister.
But we're not leaving the two of them alone together just yet . . .
Things got better when we started firing questions at her:
We've learned that Kate really enjoys helping Davis. She gets his diapers out and puts them into his bassinet, she finds his blankets and puts them into his bassinet, she finds his pacifier and puts that into his bassinet (or tries to cram it directly into his mouth). Of course, she still gets a bit teary and whimpers "baby!" over and over while she does it, and I'm not convinced that her assistance isn't really a strategic plot to bury Davis under a mountain of stuff. As for us, we're more thoughtful now about making sure that one of us holds her when we're playing with Davis and that we spend plenty of time alone with her. I think she's going to quickly become a very helpful and protective older sister.
But we're not leaving the two of them alone together just yet . . .
5 comments:
Too funny...even though many many people told me not to be holding the baby when Campbell came in, I still forgot and made the exact same mistake with a very similar reaction. Luckily, she won't remember it when she's 20. ;-)
Good to know. Keep the advice coming so we don't tramatize Max.
When my second child was born, I read all these parenting books about how to handle it and all. When I knew Tracy was coming to the hospital with Ryan, I sent Rusty down to the nursery so I could be with Ryan alone for a few minutes. Well, I forgot to tell Tracy the plan. When Ryan got to the hospital, he came running into my room shouting, "Mom! I saw my brother!" It's one of my favorite memories.
That footage tramatized me..jk. So cute and I love the side by side baby pictures. Congratulations to your darling family.
so I am the oldest and I have no idea how my parents introduced me to my little brother and we turned out ok : ) That little Kate is just so darn cute.
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