Big Sister

Even though she has her moments, Claire is typically a good big sister. In fact, she takes her role so seriously that I have had to get on her case about the fact that she's "not the mommy". I know Jillian gets on her nerves sometimes - the two of them have such different personalities that it must be hard to get along. Claire is precise and perfectionistic and practical and Jillian is silly and exuberant and silly (yeah, I said it twice. It bore repeating). However, lately, I've been finding Claire spending a lot more time doing nice things with, for or to Jillian.

On Sunday morning I woke up as I normally do, listening to the sounds of the girls going to the bathroom. I prepped myself for one or both of them to come in and ask us for breakfast or to just plain get up. It didn't happen. Things got reallllllllllly quiet. This freaked me out and I got up in a bit of a panic to see what the heck they were up to. When I went into the room, I found this:


You could have knocked me over with a feather. There they both were, in Claire's bed and Claire was happily reading Dora stories (Spanish and all) to her sister. I've been trying to teach them that if they are awake and I am not, that it would be considerate of them to stay in their rooms and read books or play quietly till I get up. It appears that on Sunday, Claire's brain finally processed that talk and went out of her way to keep Jillian occupied. Good stuff.

I thought they needed more company, so a few minutes later the scene looked like this:

He loves paper. We have to wrestle paper out of his grasp on a nearly daily basis. He tries to eat it and that just isn't cool.

This has nothing to do with the kids but when I was taking those pictures, Phineas stood at my feet and made cat love to a stack of books. It was almost like he felt like he should be included in storytime:

You should have heard the purring.

When it comes to Daniel, Claire is absolutely head-over-heels in love. Jillian likes him too but Claire loooooooves him. I came down with a nasty case of stomach flu earlier this week and got so dehydrated that I couldn't make enough milk to keep the poor boy happy. We supplemented him with a bit of formula while I was sick and he loved it. I'm not too impressed that he prefers bottles but I will consent to giving him a bit of formula before bed in an attempt to get him to sleep through the night again. He was doing it for months but gave it up in the last couple of weeks. Hunger is one of the only explanations I can come up with so...bring on the formula. Last night I gave his sister the job of feeding him. She was in heaven:

She's a good girl. I hope she still loves him when he gets mobile and starts eating all her books.