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?