Sisterhood

The first couple months of sisterhood have been full of ups and downs for Aven. She is clearly in love with this little baby but that doesn't mean she's always ready to share Mom and Dad's attention. If I ask her to be patient for a minute sometimes she's patient for a minute, sometimes she slumps her whole body and whines and cries. I never know what I'm going to get, it's a surprise every time. Luckily these fits are usually short-lived. As soon as she recovers she's ready to shower Etta in hugs and kisses. When Etta was born our pediatrician told us "the problem with older siblings usually isn't that they don't love the baby enough, it's that they love them too much." As I watch Aven mob Etta, get in her face, and overwhelm her with affection I now know the full meaning of that statement. I spend a fair amount of my time trying to protect Etta from Aven's overenthusiastic love.

Aven has been suffering from a few regressions which is totally normal and totally frustrating. She all of the sudden wants help with things she's known how to do by herself for a long time. Sometimes she'll snap right out of regression mode if I ask her to show Etta how great she is at doing whatever it is she's claiming she can't do. Etta is super interested in watching Aven give herself a bite at dinner, seeing how good Aven is at putting on her own pants, and watching Aven wash her hands at the sink- or so Aven thinks, anyway.

On the baby front Etta has reached the point in her development where she is aware of all the cool things that are going on around her. This can make it very difficult to feed her as she gets VERY distracted. So, in order to get Etta fed I need to be alone with her in a quiet room. This is making it hard to do things like be gone from the house at a time I know she's going to be hungry. I call this "living my life 2-3 hours at a time". It's lots of fun. I really can't complain, though, I have been enjoying my time with my sweet girls very much and am sad that I have to go back to work in only two weeks. Hopefully we'll have a few more fun adventures before going back to the grind.

Sweet sisters!