Abbie Versus the Twins
Before the twins came, I was concerned about how Abbie would react. Would she be the greatest big sister in the world, fetching vital items for me like diapers, milk, and my newspaper? Would she transform into a 28-pound ball of jealousy, happy to hurt the twins just to get our attention? Learn to cook some meals? Run away from home?
It turns out the correct answer is none of the above. She mostly ignores us, oblivious to the change in her life. I guess that’s what I should have expected from someone incapable of parallel play, but I was hoping for something more dramatic. I even bought her a doll with a bottle so she could take care of her baby just like we take care of ours, feeding it just like us, changing it just like us, dragging it across the floor in a manner vaguely similar to us. Instead it sits in the bottom of her toy chest which is in no way similar to the way we take care of the twins no matter how badly we want them to quit crying and just go to sleep.
It’s not like she doesn’t acknowledge the twins, though. While we hold the babies, she likes to point to their heads, which is cute. Then she likes to poke them in the forehead hard enough to leave a mark, which is less cute. Then she likes to drag her fingers, and with them her fingernails, across the forehead, which tells us that she needs to recognize that she can do some damage. She’s inadvertently sat and stepped on a baby while attempting to grab something important, like the telephone or her parent’s attention. She learned the sign for baby so she can tell us that she sees a baby, or possibly to tell us that she wants to be treated like a baby.
Beyond that, she doesn’t seem to notice the twins. The twins’ toys and things she does notice, which shouldn’t be a surprise since most of their objects belonged to her. The activity gym does a good job of attracting her. Since the twins can’t do anything more interactive than stare at it right now though, I don’t care what she does with it as long as she doesn’t step on anybody laying underneath it. Abbie seems especially drawn to the swing. That’s annoying since she never liked the thing when she was still small enough to fit in it, but it makes sense seeing that she can finally reach the mobile dangling beguilingly above the seat.
Most infuriating is her love of burp clothes. The twins spit up a lot. Generally whatever comes out of the bottle and doesn’t immediately dribble down their chins eventually comes back up. This is an improvement over Abbie whose stomach when she was that age could manufacture its own milk to spit up along with the bottle’s contents. We need to keep a burp cloth on our shoulders at all times, but Abbie, who still uses her burp clothes for gnawing, is pretty sure that all burp clothes belong to her. If she sees one on a shoulder, she will take it. We tried distracting her with spare burp cloths, hoping she would take them and leave our burp cloth in shoulder-protecting position. She would take the extraneous burp cloth, and continue grabbing the shoulder-mounted burp cloth. Now we keep a stockpile of burp clothes hidden when we feed, or just accept the inevitable milk stains on our shoulders. Maybe in the future I can train her to fetch us a needed burp cloth.
It turns out the correct answer is none of the above. She mostly ignores us, oblivious to the change in her life. I guess that’s what I should have expected from someone incapable of parallel play, but I was hoping for something more dramatic. I even bought her a doll with a bottle so she could take care of her baby just like we take care of ours, feeding it just like us, changing it just like us, dragging it across the floor in a manner vaguely similar to us. Instead it sits in the bottom of her toy chest which is in no way similar to the way we take care of the twins no matter how badly we want them to quit crying and just go to sleep.
It’s not like she doesn’t acknowledge the twins, though. While we hold the babies, she likes to point to their heads, which is cute. Then she likes to poke them in the forehead hard enough to leave a mark, which is less cute. Then she likes to drag her fingers, and with them her fingernails, across the forehead, which tells us that she needs to recognize that she can do some damage. She’s inadvertently sat and stepped on a baby while attempting to grab something important, like the telephone or her parent’s attention. She learned the sign for baby so she can tell us that she sees a baby, or possibly to tell us that she wants to be treated like a baby.
Beyond that, she doesn’t seem to notice the twins. The twins’ toys and things she does notice, which shouldn’t be a surprise since most of their objects belonged to her. The activity gym does a good job of attracting her. Since the twins can’t do anything more interactive than stare at it right now though, I don’t care what she does with it as long as she doesn’t step on anybody laying underneath it. Abbie seems especially drawn to the swing. That’s annoying since she never liked the thing when she was still small enough to fit in it, but it makes sense seeing that she can finally reach the mobile dangling beguilingly above the seat.
Most infuriating is her love of burp clothes. The twins spit up a lot. Generally whatever comes out of the bottle and doesn’t immediately dribble down their chins eventually comes back up. This is an improvement over Abbie whose stomach when she was that age could manufacture its own milk to spit up along with the bottle’s contents. We need to keep a burp cloth on our shoulders at all times, but Abbie, who still uses her burp clothes for gnawing, is pretty sure that all burp clothes belong to her. If she sees one on a shoulder, she will take it. We tried distracting her with spare burp cloths, hoping she would take them and leave our burp cloth in shoulder-protecting position. She would take the extraneous burp cloth, and continue grabbing the shoulder-mounted burp cloth. Now we keep a stockpile of burp clothes hidden when we feed, or just accept the inevitable milk stains on our shoulders. Maybe in the future I can train her to fetch us a needed burp cloth.
posted by Matt at
9:57 PM
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