In August, my youngest boy will turn two. I’ve been privileged to watch him grow this year, and it’s amazing to watch the transformation at this age.
When children have their first birthday, they are still babies. During the year, they turn into toddlers, and by the end of the year, they are little boys or girls. Their personalities have flared like a sun that has risen fully over the horizon. Their world is bright, and it’s all theirs for the taking.
It’s been fun to watch how my youngest boy has transformed in the eyes of his older brother too. As an infant, he was something to be reckoned with. My eldest found him insufferable and something that took Mama away. He was not very compassionate toward him.
Now, however, this younger sibling is bigger and laughs at older brother! Remarkably, he finds the same things to be funny and even likes toys too! At play dates, my older son sees how his friends has siblings, and he’s happy that he, too, has a companion who knows all the inside jokes.
I’m thrilled to see that my boys are fast friends. My youngest boy usually wakes up first in the morning, and when he hears the four-year-old calling, he stops what he is doing and comes to me, gesturing with urgency that we have to go to his brother. As soon as he enters his brother’s room, he wants to hop onto the bed where a morning ritual of laughing and jumping takes place.
Sometimes my eldest has started to call his younger brother’s name in the morning instead of “mama” or “dada.” This didn’t make my husband or I sad. Indeed, we are starting to see a dim light at the end of the tunnel – when these kids will play more by themselves and not need our constant attention!
Being the youngest is quite different from being mama and dada’s first born. He has the advantage of having parents who are more experienced, but that can be viewed as good or bad. For example, we don’t take twenty minutes to change his diaper and coo at him. We don’t change his diaper nearly as often either. It’s something we both try to avoid.
He doesn’t get special food made just for him. With my first child, I was certain that I would feed him only the best foods and foster a child who liked healthy meals. That was all for naught. With the second one, I feed him whatever I can put together and top it off with chocolate chip cookies.
The camera isn’t always in his face, and though he might appreciate that now, I’m not sure he’ll like it when he has children of his own and they want to see his baby photos.
I really need to pull out the video camera more too.
Unlike the slow, leisure days of just having one child, my second boy has to keep up with his family who are busy going to kid-friendly activities and play dates. He competes for mama’s attention, and he has to fight for his right to play with the toys.
When mama and daddy are out of the room and younger brother starts screaming, we go to him. “What happened?” we ask his older brother. “I don’t know,” he says, as if we didn’t notice that he was scampering quickly to the other side of the room, making his little getaway. Being the younger brother will always mean having to endure the pokes and jolts from a big brother.
It’s meant to be, however. This second-born child came out of the womb with a more spirited and energetic personality, seemingly ready to take on his big brother and the fast pulse of this house. In some ways he is the heartbeat of the house because at 22 months, his needs usually come first. We have to work around his naptime and make sure he has enough to eat. In addition, mama and dada are too tired to deal with potential temper tantrums, so we do all we can to avoid them.
Except, of course, when older brother needs us.
Shelli Bond Pabis is a Winder resident and columnist for the Barrow Journal. You can reach her at writetospabis@gmail.com.
