Big brother

It seems that our little guy has recently discovered that he has a little sister. Yes, he is a big brother! He is very excited about this. And, we are newly appreciative of the smallish age gap between the two of them.

For the first several months of baby Talia's life, Teo tolerated her pretty well, but wasn't all that interested in her for the most part. He was much more excited about his toys and going to the park and that sort of thing. This was a good thing, because his sister was a newborn baby and much more able to nurse and sleep than she was to play with him.

In the past couple of weeks, just as baby Talia has mastered sitting and grabbing and has begun to catch the toy fever that has gripped her brother, said brother has begun to relish his role as such. I don't know if it was a coincidence or if he just got more interested in her as she became more interesting, but we're going with it regardless.

He keeps wanting to hold her and hug her and give her pats when she's feeling unhappy. He brings her toys to play with sometimes (and then yanks them away when he realizes she's playing with them and HE actually wants them). Sometimes, he talks to her from his booster seat at the table and she just laughs and laughs.

Then, tonight, Teo was eating dinner and we started telling baby Talia, while he was conveniently right next to us, that her big brother was showing her how to eat like a big kid. We said, look how he's eating soup with a spoon and chewing up his food before swallowing it, and even drinking from his water cup. Look at Mateo, we told her, and you'll learn how to eat food for when you get a little bigger.

You have never seen a prouder kid. His little chest practically puffed up as he carefully ate his soup and pasta and drank from his cup. He was just so excited and proud to be showing her something very important. He wanted to stay at the table until there was nothing left for him to eat and he was just getting the remnants of his soup out of the bowl.

I know they'll have sibling rivalry. They've already had plenty of moments where one of them accidentally bonks the other or Mateo just can't handle seeing little sister play with his toys. But, it was pretty awesome to see how much he cared about teaching her something. And, how she's been responding to him lately. Hopefully it's the beginning of a beautiful friendship!