Friday, November 18, 2011

Adjusting to Life as a Big Brother

Oliver's adjusting fairly well to his new role as Jo's big brother. It's clear he loves his sister. For the most part, she only really cries when she's getting changed or is getting a new diaper. No matter what Oliver is doing, he stops and runs to her when she's crying. He'll even get the other parent (whoever is not doing the diaper change) to help. He loves to kiss her and pet her head gently. On Wednesday, Andrew took Jo over to his mom's for a couple of hours. Oliver kept going to the door and saying, "Dad. Baby Jo." I keep telling Oliver what a good, loving big brother he is.

There's evidence that he's struggling with the change, though. My potty trained boy has peed on the drive home from the grocery store three or four times now. Normally, he goes weeks without an accident. There have been a few moments when he's started throwing his toys around and tipping hampers over, too (that type of behavior isn't normal for him). More often than not, he's been fighting sitting down for dinner time and doesn't want to do his night time routine. I think all of these problems are slowly improving. In fact, so far today, we haven't had any issues (knock on wood).

My heart goes out to Oliver when he's upset. I just keep reminding myself to be consistent and not to change the rules on him. Of course I want to make everything easy on him and let him just do whatever he wants to keep him happy, but I know he'll be happiest when he realizes all the rules and expectations are still the same as they've always been.

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