In the past 24 hours…
- As I took both Claire and Comang for a short stroll, some neighborhood dogs noticed our shy shih tzu and started barking at him. Claire seemed to want to defend him, because she started barking back! (Or at least tried her best to mimic barking sounds.)
- When I “attacked” her with a stuffed animal, she grabbed another nearby stuffed animal and used it to fight back.
- J was getting ready to leave for work and bent down by the front door to tie his shoes. Claire zoomed on over to him in her walker and started to wave “bye” to him without any prompting from either one of us.
- After following me into the bathroom in her walker (I always leave the door open when I’m home alone and need to use the facilities so that Claire doesn’t freak out), she grabbed ahold of the toilet paper and gleefully zipped on out. Of course, by the time I was done peeing and was able to finally catch up to her, toilet paper was everywhere.
Seriously. She is becoming so fun now. The other night I looked down at my growing belly and let out a woeful sigh. “We’re going to have to wait an entire 10 months after this one is born for her to be where Claire is now,” I whined to J. “Can’t we just fast-forward?”
Styling’ it up with daddy’s sunglasses
With all this being said, I am starting to get a wee bit concerned about how Claire will handle BebeDeux. Over the weekend, we visited J’s cousin who had had a baby just two weeks ago. When Claire saw me holding the baby in my arms, she freaked out. Luckily, J was able to calm her down without much of a problem, but I had never seen her lash out in jealousy before.
Everyone tells me that having two girls so close in age will be beneficial to them, that they will be the best of friends. However, my sister and I are less than 2 years apart and we used to fight all the time. Our relationship did not improve until we were both in our 20s.
I can already picture Claire and BebeDeux arguing and bickering. Especially when I am holding Claire and she kicks me in the stomach. Or when I am reading to Claire as she is leaned up against my belly, and BebeDeux kicks up at her older sister, startling and confusing her.
I am now 29 weeks pregnant with BebeDeux. I remember how when I was at this stage with Claire, I couldn’t wait for her to come out. But this time around, despite my ever-increasing physical discomfort, I find myself whispering to my belly, “You stay in there for as loooong as you want, okay?”
