Brotherly love

I love how much Jack loves his little sister. Of course, sometimes he shows his love a little too roughly. Like when he pulls her legs and jumps up and down while I'm holding her or grabs her arm and starts yanking it up and down. I am constantly admonishing him to be gentle, but he always responds, "But she's laughing!" Because she is. I feel like writing a letter to Future Violet: "If one day your brother yanks your arm out of your socket, it's partially your fault for laughing right before he did it."

Sometimes, though, he is a little too rough even for her. Probably every other day, I'll hear them playing while I'm trying to get something done in another room and then all of a sudden she'll start crying and I'll hear him say, "I'm sorry, Violet! I'm so sorry!" About half the time, he'll have done something to her that he's apologizing for. But the other half of the time, she'll have started crying on her own, and he's telling her that he feels bad that she's upset.

Obviously, in some ways having two is more work than having one. But I have to say that it's a whole lot easier to leave Violet for a couple minutes here and there because I have Jack to watch her. He can be pretty lackadaisical about entertaining her if he's busy doing his own thing, but sometimes he takes his duties very seriously. One time, I was getting dressed and he was playing with her. Then I heard him calling me. "Mommy! I have to go to the bathroom! Will you keep an eye on my sister?"

The other day, Violet fell asleep in the car on our way home. Like Jack, she doesn't transfer well. So, as I do with Jack when he falls asleep in the car, I just left her in the car in our garage. That particular day, though, I told Jack he had to take a nap. Right before he went into his bed, he tried to get me to bring Violet inside. He said to me, "Don't leave her alone in her car seat all by herself. When she wakes up, she will be scared. She will cry because she wants you." I assured him she would be fine. (She was.)

Not that ignorance of the law is an excuse for breaking it, but Jack can't even plead that, because he is constantly telling Violet what the rules are. When he asks us, "Please may I have some orange juice" and we say, "Yes, you may," he frequently follows it up with, "But Violet may NOT! Because she's only zero!"

He's very interested in how old she is and how old he is relative to her. She's "zero years old" right now, while he's four (something he LOVES to remind us about on a nearly hourly basis). When she was first born, he would constantly ask us, "How old will I be when she's one? two? three? 77? 200?" and the reverse: "How old will she be when I'm 21? 5? 101?" He knows that right now she is 7 1/2 months old and that he is 48 1/2 months old.

Of course, Jack being Jack, he has some definite opinions about the care and feeding of his sister. He frequently comments on what she wears. Yesterday, he told us she was wearing a "cute dress" for church. When I put her in it again this morning, because she had only worn it for an hour the day before, he noticed right away: "That's the dress she was wearing yesterday!"

I've started crocheting her a hat, and it's white. He asked me, "Why didn't you make a purple hat? That's an ugly color." Don't worry, buddy, at the rate I'm going, she won't fit it by the time it's finished anyway.

He is very picky about the songs I sing to her. This is often a hassle, because either he doesn't like a song so I can't sing it, or he likes it and I can't sing it because it's "his." There is one song in particular that he always complains about. It's the title song to Disney's "Cinderella," where the lyrics are, "Cinderella, you're as lovely as your name. Cinderella, you're a sunset in a frame." I substitute "Violet Clara" for "Cinderella," and he complains every single time. He tells me, "She is not as lovely as her name! She's lovelier!"

He still hates the name Clara. He told me the other name that her name is "Violet John," not "Violet Clara." *sigh*

If he wakes before she does in the morning, he'll run into the room if he hears her stirring. He wants to be the one to get her out of her sleep sack. He is jealous if any of his friends pays her too much attention. Last week, I was trying to get him excited him to see M, usually one of his favorite friends. Jack was being a little curmudgeon about seeing him, and I asked him what the problem was.

"Why does he always play with Violet?" he complained.

"You don't like it when M plays with Violet?" I asked, trying to figure out if he was jealous that his friend was playing with Violet and not him or if it was something else.

"No, she's MY sister. She's only my special sister."

Something else. I had to assure Jack that he is Violet's favorite person, that she won't like his friends more than she likes him, that he's her only brother, and that she loves him best.

He regularly stops what he's doing just to tell her, "I love you, Violet!"

I hope that they stay good friends throughout their lives. Right now, it is so fun to see how much they love each other.