sisters

That’s My Little Sister!

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Claire loves to show off her cute little sister, Molly, to her friends at school.  When I pick Claire up from school in the afternoon, she usually says, “Can you go get Molly first?”  When I produce Molly a few minutes later, a group of Claire’s friends enthusiastically gather around her.  They love to get Molly to repeat their names.  Molly quietly works through the crowd, taking a crack at Charlotte, Ivan, Ella, Elke, and all the rest.  The girls love when Molly says their name, or even gets close.  At this point, Molly remembers some of their names and will say them without prompting, especially Ella and Elke.  They also love to hug Molly, and sometimes they want to pick her up, although usually I draw the line there.  Eventually Molly wears down from all the attention and has to withdraw to my arms, with her face in my shoulder.  Sometimes this affection can be too much all at once.

Claire seems to enjoy this outpouring of affection more than Molly does.  Claire is so proud to have Molly as her little sister, and she never tires of showing her off around school.

Hugs All Around

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When Claire’s class comes in from the playground at school, they pass through the “activity room”, which is a shared, open space that different classes use throughout the day for things like gymnastics or just some indoor play time.  Apparently today, as Claire and her friends came through the activity room, they discovered Molly in there with her class.  Claire ran over and gave Molly a big hug.  Several of Claire’s friends also thought that looked like a good idea, and maybe they should give Molly a hug too.  Eventually,  Molly’s teacher had to seal off an area around Molly to protect her from the horde of hugging friends.

“No more hugs, people!  Nothing to see here!” I imagine the teaching saying.

Molly does have many fans among Claire’s friends, but she usually doesn’t have to deal with them all at once.

Walking Practice

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Molly can walk, a little bit. But she seems unsure about this whole two-legged balancing thing, and she still prefers to crawl. To encourage her to stand and walk, we have even been having “walking practice” every night after dinner. This was Kit’s idea. It is a fun event. It starts with us chanting over and over, “Walking practice! Walking practice! Walking practice!” Molly gets real excited, as does Claire. Kit sits on the floor holding Molly out in front of her in a standing position, and I sit a few feet away with Claire in my lap. (There is a continual debate about exactly how far I should be from Kit, ie how far Molly should walk. I want to let Molly stretch it out a bit, while Kit wants to avoid a discouraging fall, depending on how you look at it.) Nonetheless, Claire and I wave our hands and yell, “Come on, Molly! Come on!” Molly slowly plods over in our direction, slowly planting one foot in front of the other, sometimes falling before she gets to us, but usually making it far enough to tumble over into Claire’s and my arms, where we pick her up and shout “Yeah Molly!”. Molly and Claire are all grins. They love the cheering and seeing Molly walk. We repeat this event a few more times and then put the typically exhausted Molly to sleep.


Roomates

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We had been tossing around the idea of Claire and Molly sharing a room since we moved into the new house. Claire had been unexpectedly excited about the idea. She seemed to love the idea of sharing a room so she and Molly could “keep an eye on each other” during the night. And she liked the idea of being “roommates” with Molly. We liked the idea of opening up a guest room for all the hardworking grandparents.

Today we finally took the plunge. Kit is off this week for an all too rare vacation, today the kids’ school is closed for a teachers’ work day, and Claire is still gung ho about sharing rooms. So today was dedicated to merging all of Claire’s stuff into what had been Molly’s much larger, poorly appointed room.

Among other activities, Kit worked with Claire on a special new sign for the new shared bedroom door. “Claire and Molly’s room” it said, featuring a photo of the sisters together and the letters E and G, their middle initials, included at Claire’s insistence.


We did have some friction over where to place Claire’s bed. Kit had a very sensible arrangement picked out, with Claire’s bed and Molly’s crib on opposite walls. Claire really really wanted to stick her bed in the middle of the room right next to Molly’s crib! It was a ridiculous arrangement by any normal standard, but I talked Kit into going along with it temporarily to ensure that this little experiment started off on the right foot. I did not want Claire to sour of sharing a room with Molly before they even started.


We put Molly to sleep first, an hour or so before Claire. As we got Claire ready for bed, she proudly explained how she would look out for Molly during the night. She explained to us that she would be the closest one to Molly if she had any trouble (crying, etc). “Who do you think is closer? Someone here in the room with Molly?” she said using her fingers to illustrate her position in the house near Molly. “Or someone way over here in your bedroom?” she said, holding one finger a couple of inches away. We agreed that Claire would be closer. “Yep”, she said proudly. She also explained that Molly would be in better hands now since three people would be looking out for her at night. “What is a bigger number: two or three?” she beamed.

Kit read Claire her bedtime story in our bedroom and then took her into the darkened room where little Molly was sleeping. It was quiet at first, but after a while, Molly started crying, as she has been doing a lot lately, apparently due to some new teeth coming in. I gave Molly a few minutes, but the noise got worse, and then it turned into talking and giggling. I went to check out the scene, standing semi-hidden in the doorway. Claire was patting Molly on the back, sweetly saying “it’s okay, little baby”. Molly, who must have been surprised and delighted to suddenly have her sister there talking to her, sat up and started talking and giggling back at her big sister. Claire ate this up, and leaned in for giggles and hugs. That was it, I had to step in and end all the sweetness. It was time to sleep! I gave Molly some teething gel and told Claire her job was to help Molly get back to sleep by laying down and showing her how a big girl goes to sleep. Claire took her duty very seriously and did as suggested. Kit would check on the girls later from the doorway and exchange hand signals with Claire indicating they loved each other and everything was going okay. After another period of giggling and flirting, mostly on Molly’s part, the girls were asleep.

When I checked on them I before going to bed myself, they were both asleep in exactly the same position, both laying on their right side at the same angle with their little arms sticking out the same way. What a pair!

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Helping Hand

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Claire offered to feed Molly her solids this morning. Claire did not want to simply “help” feed Molly. She wanted to just do it herself. Claire has been on a real helping kick lately, wanting to help fix dinner, wanting our help to clean up her room, etc. Claire had been pretty good with some limited Molly feeding in the past, and frankly I could use an extra hand with things, so I decided to turn Claire loose to feed Molly. She poured Molly’s pureed carrots into a little bowl, got a baby spoon, a set up shop in front of Molly, who I had already sat down in her feeding chair wearing a bid.
It went really well. Claire did a careful and thorough job feeding Molly, even cleaning up the food mess as she went, and Molly got lots of carrots. See for yourself. (The sound seems to be missing for some reason. I think my camera phone is messed up. It’s not big deal, though, since everyone was mostly quiet anyways.)

http://www.youtube.com/get_player

Sing-Song Sister

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This morning, Molly was having an especially fun time watching her big sister Claire. She as just laughing and grinning at Claire. So Claire decided to put on sort of a show for Molly to get some extra grins. She got up on a step stool next to Molly’s changing table and started hopping and dancing and singing a silly sort of song without any real words, like “La la la la, fa la la dee dee da!” Molly went hysteric with giggles! They kept this up for a while, with Claire dancing and singing and Molly laughing. Finally, Claire tired out a bit and decided to take the music down a notch. She sang her favorite song, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, all the way through to Molly. It was a really nice rendition of the Christmas classic. Molly liked the song too, but she did not giggle and grin as much as before. I think she wanted more hopping and senseless singing.