Poot and Cubby

A lot of people have been asking how Elliot has adjusted to life with Arlo. As you can probably tell by the pictures in my last post, she adores him. When I was in the hospital, Elliot stayed at her Grandma’s. She told Grandma that “Mommy and daddy went to pick up baby brudder.” I’m sure she envisioned us entering a baby store and returning shortly afterwards. That’s fine with me. Even if I thought her two-year-old brain was capable of grasping where he came from, I shudder at the thought of explaining it to her now.

After he was born, we enlisted my mom to call family members.  Elliot was so excited she kept saying to her Grandma, “Let’s call somebody. Baby brudder’s here.”

When Elliot came home the next day, we watched through the window as she barreled up the sidewalk (my poor girl inherited my total lack of athletic grace) wearing a huge smile. She burst through the door and looked at her baby brother. You could tell by the look on her face that Arlo was not quite what she was expecting. I’m sure she thought he was going to walk up to her, hug her, and introduce himself. Instead, she found this helpless, boring, doll-like creature incapable of anything but sleep interrupted only by brief periods of wakefulness in which he is almost always attached to one of my breasts. Despite her surprise, she remained excited, telling all visitors that walked through the door, “Look who’s here! My baby brudder, Arlo!”

We spent the first few days explaining to her what Arlo was and wasn’t capable of. We had to tell her that he could not be stood up to be changed. That he couldn’t play hide-and-seek with her in the closet. That she couldn’t, as she said, hold his hand and take him for a walk where he was going to “walk like dis” (she imitated a wobbly child walking like a penguin). And gently explaining that he is a real person and that she needed to be gentle. Because her affection was sometimes so strong she would kiss him with such force I worried he would be bruised.

I wondered how odd the act of breastfeeding would be to her, but she seemed fine with it. So fine, in fact, that on the second day, she lifted up her shirt and said, “I’m gonna feed him.” Then she had a meltdown when I told her that only mommies could make milk for babies. Given the force of the tantrum that ensued, it was clear that she believed the brutal power of her stubborn will and determination would enable her to feed him soon.

We continue to negotiate “ownership” of our new little mister. Elliot argues with us that the baby is hers and depending on her mood, sometimes won’t let visitors hold him. She told her aunt that she was going to hold him first. And when asked if she could share the baby and if her aunt could be next, she insisted that she was next. So she was both first and next when holding the baby. Good to see her understanding of logic has remained unchanged with the life-altering experience of gaining a sibling.

Overall, Elliot has adjusted much better than I could have imagined possible. She wakes up everyday asking to go downstairs to see her baby and continues to hold, cuddle, and kiss him all day long. She also loves to help us with everything from changing to bathing him. When he cries, she tries to comfort him. She imitates things we say like, “Shh. It’s okay, little buddy.”

One of the unexpected side effects of Arlo coming into our lives has been Elliot’s increased independence. She hasn’t told us once since he’s arrived that her “legs are not working” as she seems to understand that we need to carry the baby now and that she can walk like a big girl. She has displayed an enormous amount of patience when I tell her she has to wait to do something until Arlo is finished eating. And, this is the most shocking, she is perfectly capable of going to the washroom and even playing by herself for extended periods of time. I am in complete awe of how grown-up Elliot suddenly seems, as I knew she would love the baby, but I feared her still being largely dependent on me. I guess I should have given my amazing girl a little more credit.