9.08.2009

A tiny bit of brotherly love...


Until today I've used Hannah's bouncy seat only as a place to put her when I'm not holding her. But now that she's actually focusing on things, I thought I'd see how she liked the little entertainment feature that can either be added or remain unattached to her bouncy seat. She was mesmerized for about 5 minutes. Then she took her focus off the lights, imitation waterfall and moving plastic animals and started watching TV until she was soothed to sleep by the combination of one of Gabe's favorite shows, Word World, and the gentle vibration feature of the seat.



She took a short nap, and then later on in the morning, Gabe decided he really liked this new toy. He flipped the parrot around on it's swing and hit the monkey next to it. He kept trying to catch the animals that move anamatronically or at least stop them and push them down. Of course the button obsessed kid tried to turn the sounds on and off. And here he is teething on the waterfall.



I kept telling him to stop playing with Hannah's seat, that it was her toy, and as usual to just leave her alone. He'd walk away and do something else, but he kept returning to try and play with her toy. Then he took it to the next step and tried to play with her by touching her feet. Lately, he thinks it's a novelty to just touch her. Since she arrived he's not been allowed to touch her because he doesn't understand yet how to be gentle. However, his curiosity often gets the best of him and he will hold her hand or foot and look at me as he does whenever he's testing me to see what will happen if he does something he knows he's not supposed to do. But after today, I think he might be ready to start learning that he won't get in trouble for touching Hannah as long as he is gentle. I think he's figured out that she's not just some inanimate object or a pet or something. He sees how Jasen and I take care of her, and I think he's starting to get that she's a just a little person who doesn't do much yet besides cry and make other noises and demand a lot of mommy and daddy's attention.
So back to the play by play, I think he took what I said to heart, that it was her toy and he couldn't play with it. So in response he showed her how to play with it since she was just looking at it.
The one handed approach:


Even though it looks like she's in pain, he was actually being very gentle. She just wanted to be left alone and to actually go back to sleep. She just doesn't stay asleep very long in the bouncy seat because she prefers to be in a more reclined position. So I put her back to sleep and tucked her in her bed for a longer late morning/early afternoon nap.
Now he uses two hands to move her hand:


Here's Gabe just being goofy. Sorry it's a fuzzy pic; the flash didn't go off.



He makes me laugh. He likes for me to put this on him, then he'll walk around for a while, take it off and then want me to put it back on him to repeat the process. I think he's just trying to learn how to put it on himself, like when he used to have me put baseball caps on his head for him and then he'd take it off and so on until he learned to put it on his head by himself.



And finally, a couple of shots of my children's adorable chubby bellies. Chubby bellies are very cute on kids, not so much on their mom from whom they inherited the chubby belly gene.




1 comment:

Unknown said...

Someone stole a picture of your son, photo shopped it and posted it on deviant art.

http://eatingandbreeding.deviantart.com/art/Head-Start-on-Obesity-501203064?q=gallery%3AEatingAndBreeding&qo=0

I reported the image already but I thought you would want to know.