3.04.2011

it begins

layla is big enough to play in the baby office now. in fact, she never needed extra weight on top nor a booster step under her feet to be ready like judah did. girl is solid. she rocked it. doesn't really bounce like a crazy person yet, but loves the frog and mirror and bead on a wire thing. also, being upright and among the action.

inaugural froggie staredown

so naturally, who has to go and immediately get in it as soon as she's out of it? actually he was scaling the frame while she still inside it the first time, but we plucked prince kong (like the baby version of king kong, get it?) off the side of that skyscraper before calamity descended upon our household.

when she went down for a nap, we jacked that thing up to its highest setting and put big baby inside (he's like 2 lbs. over the weight limit, but whatever). he got bored super fast when it wasn't as exciting to mommy and daddy as layla's time inside the office had been.

doing a little light math on the 4-bead abacus

i was a first child myself. moreso, i was the consummate obnoxious, "DONT FORGET ME!!!!" first child. so i get it. my mom said i was potty trained at 18 months, but when my brother was born when i was 3, i started peeing my pants again for attention. the class, charm, and ever-so-subtle social graces that you see in me today began early. you can't teach them. they're inbred.

so i have many first-person memories as a young child of seeing my brother do simple baby things and being completely and utterly overcome by the boiling hot urge to outdo him that creeped slowly up my throat and came exploding of my tongue going, "look how well/fast/much I can do it too, mommy!!! look, look, look!" sheesh.

and i never got why my parents were so excited about tripp's toddling steps but would only sort of go through the motions of congratulating me for showing off my stellar well-balanced walking. i get it now. showboating is not cute. one-upsmanship is yucky. jealously doesn't even look good on an adorable toddler.

zoinks. we make him feel so special and praised in pretty much everything on earth that he does well or correctly or sweetly, but the things that should be JUST for layla right now are tinged, because there's this little attention monkey who wants thatexactspeck of her tiny glory for himself. thanks a lot, adam. hope the apple was tasty.

what's a mom to do?

2 comments:

  1. Sad day!

    (That's all I got... if I ever have children and figure it all out (slim chances on one or both of those things) I'll come back to this post.)

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  2. Love your description of the angst, Keight, and how things that were so utterly important as a child take on a whole new perspective as a parent. Even when you know how it feels and see what they're doing, it's really hard to get to the bottom of it.
    One of the things we tried to teach (not very well in a chaotic household) was to 'weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice' and to give them the words to share the joy and attention of the younger ones achievements, and speak for the younger one in enjoying the older ones accomplishments (I can't wait to tell Layla what you did, she'll be so excited to hear...or Layla, did you see Judah, didn't he do a good job with those quadratic equations...Judah, isn't Layla amazing at holding her head up...tell her how amazing she is!!!) Again, wish we'd done much more of this, but we'll sure join you in encouraging they're love and excitement for each other when they're with us.

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