Brothers and Sisters

For the first two weeks of M's arrival, C was good with M though somewhat indifferent to her prescence. His meltdowns and accidents were much more frequent than usual, indicating that he was adjusting to his loss of status as unchallenged center of the universe. T's trip to the hospital surely didn't help him either as it gave him a second trauma to deal with in a short period of time.

The last two weeks, however, C has been back to his happy boy self. He is very affectionate and protective of M and shows the skills we saw him use with the babies in the care center in Vinh Long. When M gets restless or upset, he steps in to get her attention and she immediately calms down. (Of course, he likes the attention she gives him too. Her adoring stare would encourage anyone to hang out with her and provide entertainment.) In church this past Sunday, M was starting to get restless. C had been lying on the floor (presumably mediatating, right Opa?). When M started to fuss, he got up and put his forehead gently against her forehead and looked into her eyes. Problem solved! On Tuesday, the weather was gorgeous, so we were getting ready to go outside to play. I told him I needed to go upstairs to get a blanket for M to keep her warm. He said, "Use my green blanket, with the animals." That one is HIS blanket and no one else has EVER been allowed to use it. It was a WOW moment.



Having her in the bathroom during his bathtime also has done wonders for his bathroom demeanor. Taking a bath, getting on PJs and brushing teeth was usually the most trying part of the day. Now, with M to watch him and giggle at him, he has been on his best behavior and has become remarkably cooperative. Tonight, M was sitting in her baby tub while C was in the bath bub and was getting fusy. I asked C to wash himself while I held M. I was sitting on a stool next to the bathtub, so she could now see C playing in the tub from my lap. C was doing one of the nonsense games that preschoolers do but M's fusiness was over! She laughed and laughed. After bath, I set M back in her baby tub to help C dry off and get dressed. I put a pacifer in her mouth. C objected: "She can't hear me!" E: "She hears with her ears, not her mouth." C: "I can't hear her! Her baby talk." Indeed!



That said, C got his first time outs in preschool this morning. One was for running in the classroom and then laughing at the teacher when she told him to walk. The next was for tackling two other boys. When he got home and T and I had the talk with him, he was quite defensive and wasn't going to say that there was anything wrong with what he did. He was definitely not happy to be told that he would have to apologize to the teacher and the other boys (with Ba supervising) on Monday morning. But the rest of the day, he behaved very well and during prayers tonight he added unsolicited apologies to his teacher and to me for random other misdeeds that didn't occur today. I still had to coax an apology for the tackling incident.

That's life...ya get the good with the bad sometimes within minutes of one another. If only it were just an issue with preschoolers...