The Best Big Brother

In spite of some troubles sleeping, Max has started of life as a big brother with great success.  I was concerned that he would  be jealous of Darwyn, but he has always treated her with interest and compassion.  A couple of cute stories and pictures:

   Max has taken to explaining the world to Darwyn.  He rushes into the living room in the morning and starts telling Darwyn about its contents.  "That's a barn, Darwyn,"  he declares, while pointing to his toy barn.  He picks up a toy sheep from the barn and brings it over to her.  "That's a sheep," he informs her.  Darwyn tried to take it all in...but she had trouble focusing her eyes.

Max tells Darwyn toy names

Max kisses Darwyn....she seems unimpressed

Darwyn stares at the new toys

  When Darwyn was first born she was having trouble nursing.  We would try to get her to latch on to the breast and she would just sit there and stare at you with her pursed lips and wide eyes (which is, incidentally, the same expression she gave us when she refused to breath at birth).  If you were really lucky she would latch, but stayed on for only long enough to get the milk started.  Then she would pull off and lick it off my nipple as it squirted all over the place.  All of this would have been only annoying, except she wasn't getting enough food and this lead to a number of frustrating episodes involving much crying on Darwyn's part and near tears on my part.   Max watched these episodes with concern.  He asked why I kept trying to get her to suck on my breast.  We explained that babies eat breast milk and she needed to suck to get it out.  He asked why Darwyn was crying and said "should Darwyn stop crying?" We explained that it was normal for babies to cry and it didn't mean the same thing as when he cried.  And then we tried repeatedly in front of him to get Darwyn to eat while she screamed.  Max observed the whole process and finally decided on the problem.  "Mommy," he said, "Darwyn doesn't like breast milk."  Problem solved.


   Darwyn likes the car seat much better than Max ever did, but all babies must at some point be stuck in a car seat screaming.  It didn't take Darwyn long to find such an opportunity.  Max had the misfortune of being stuck in his car seat next to her.  Again, he regarded her display with concern, continually repeating "Should you (by "you" he means himself) rock Darwyn?"

Max names parts of Darwyn's body... "she has little tiny hands!"

 

Max and Darwyn passed out on our bed after a walk with the dogs.