Bowflys & Ell-foos

Just some memories...

The first few days after Baby Brother's was born, when J put BB to bed BB would want to pray for Daddy and Mama and BB, and J would ask BB if he wanted to pray for his brother and he would say "Nooo....". And then one night BB wanted to pray for Daddy and Mama and BB and Baby Boy (using his name) and we knew that BB knew that Baby Boy was a part of our family.

BB has been an amazing big brother so far - he wakes up in the morning asking where his brother is, and gently pats or kisses his baby's brother's head without prompting from J or I, and has tried to help put his pacifier back in his mouth. He hasn't shown any aggression towards the baby at all (which for some reason I am surprised by). BB doesn't completely understand how fragile the baby is , but does a great job of being gentle with him. The biggest change we've seen in BB's behavior is that he is throwing more fits, and screaming a lot more. Apparently becoming a big brother encouraged him to explore his vocal range - since Baby Boy was born we've heard octaves that we didn't know existed in his register.

Counting Baby Brother's toes

While J was on his 2-week long paternity leave we were able to take BB to library story time a few times and made a trip to the zoo, and last weekend we took BB to the movies, or as he calls it, the "big TV", to see the Winnie the Pooh movie. (He used to call movies "moo-moos".) At the zoo we saw an "ell-foo" (that's how BB says elephant) that relieved herself, and of course, that's the part of the zoo trip that he talked about the whole ride home.

The elephant was splashing herself with mud, using her trunk, and was really active.

When we walked up to the zoo entrance, BB listed off all the animals we were going to see, remembering them from our zoo trip from about a month before that (we have annual passes).

I feel remiss that it's taken me this long to show you something that has been such a huge part of our daily life with BB...Behold, the fuzzhead:

Ever since he was a baby, BB has had an area on the back of his head that gets super fuzzy when he sleeps. I figured he would grow out of it once he was able to move in his sleep and wasn't just sleeping on his back. Then I thought it would go away after his first haircut. But here it is, two years later, and the fuzzhead has only become bigger and better.

One more BB story:

While J and I were staying at the hospital getting to know our precious new baby, GG stayed at our house and took care of BB. Turns out our oldest son is quite the opportunist. When GG offered him breakfast, she offered him cereal and milk, which he doesn't usually eat (because I don't want to clean up that mess!) but loves to take bites of. Even though J is not a big breakfast eater, he does like to have the occasional bowl of Captain Crunch with Crunchberries as a treat - we don't think BB has ever even seen J eat this cereal though, because usually J treats himself during naptime or for dessert, when BB is already tucked into bed. Well, I had some (generic) cinnamon Life in the pantry as well, and my mom, seeing that was clearly the healthiest of the two options, offered him the Life. But BB told her "No, yellow cereal, yellow cereal", so my mom figured that if he knows the box, we must give him that kind, and that's how BB ended up getting Captain Crunch for breakfast the whole time we were in the hospital!! What a hustler! We don't even know how he knew what it was! But he knew...oh, he knew.