Be My Little Baby

Being a baby isn’t all wonderful. Sure, you get to sleep and eat whenever you want while everybody makes a fuss, but you are dependent on other people for absolutely everything. No, thanks! Adding to our family ten years after I thought it was done got me thinking about what babies mean to a family dynamic. And considering pregnancy at forty takes an eternity, I had a lot of time to do that thinking. Since I am the oldest child by only fourteen months, I do not remember getting a sibling for the first time. I do remember the birth of my other brothers and, once I got over the fact that they weren’t girls, remember really loving that they arrived. I grew up in a religious tradition teeming with babies, and I feel fortunate to have spent so much time with new humans. So, babies are a part of my story, but I didn’t know how one would factor into my childrens’ stories. After all, I already had one child living on her own, one child almost driving, and one child who had spent a decade being the baby herself. Who throws a new baby into the mix?! But throw we did--and she has been our world ever since. As a tiny person, she gravitated to Gyo Fujikawa’s Babies, and still loves it. I think Scarlett’s favorite part is the illustration of the big brother holding the little baby. She has a “bruver” and he loves his baby, too.

http://www.amazon.com/Babies-So-Tall-Board-Books/dp/0448030845

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyo_Fujikawa

The Big Brother Conundrum

When I was nine, my parents decided to give us the good life in the suburbs. Which meant I was going to have my own room. Which meant I wouldn’t share with my brothers anymore. Which meant I spent the entire first night in my expensive new bed crying. My life was and has been largely defined by being the sister of my brothers. I desperately wanted a little sister until I became familiar with some of my friends’ sisters and realized that being the only girl isn’t so bad. So, I understood the dynamics when I made my oldest a big sister by giving her a brother, but was more at a loss when I made him a big brother by bringing home a baby girl. He seemed perfectly at home with his role as older brother--for about a month. He then came and said it was “time for her to go home now,” and I realized he had just been playing the good host. When I explained that she was ours forever, he gave me one of those preschool looks that projects horror. Thinking back now, he may have had a premonition. In Niki Daly’s Monsters Are Like That, Leo doesn’t want Fran to play with his toys, but Fran is resourceful and gets into his stuff anyway. She paints her face, finds monster hands and lies in wait. The joke is on her, though, because it turns out that Leo likes his sisters on the scary side.

http://www.childlit.org.za/ndaly.html

http://www.amazon.com/Monsters-Are-Like-That-Storytime/dp/0744509823/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265785241&sr=1-1