The Rivalry

This post has nothing to do with Utah/BYU football. Or Max Hall. This post is about good, old-fashioned brotherly love, or a lack thereof. Basically it's a plea for advice from anyone, anywhere who has any idea of how to deal with a jealous older sibling.

After Davie was born people always asked me if Ben was having trouble adjusting to having a sibling. I always told them not really because Ben basically ignored Davie most of the time and just did his own thing. Recently though, Ben has started paying more attention to Davie, and the attention is generally not welcome.

Poor Davie spends a good chunk of his day being pushed over, stepped on, hit, shoved down stairs, slammed in doors, and on and on. I spend most of my day trying to referee--and it's not a fair fight. I can't leave the room without Davie ending up in tears. I've put Ben in time out countless times. He's said he's sorry and given a bagillion hugs. I tried talking to him about being kind to little brother. I may have even doled out a spanking or two (I swore I never would, but you know). Nothing seems to work. Ben just keeps beating on his little bro. I know little boys are inclined to get rough, but this is too much. Now what?

Ben-isms

I wanted to record some of the funny things my funny kid has been saying recently. I know everyone thinks their toddler is the funniest and most adorable, but honestly, Ben cracks me up.

* We've been concerned that Ben might be color blind since he's not done very well in distinguishing red from green. Last week our fears were abated after Laura discovered that he can identify colors perfectly well; he simply prefers to think of them as Sesame Street characters.

Last week as Ben was playing with fun noodles (which are basically over-sized, furry pipe cleaners) at Laura's house, Laura started to quiz him on the colors of the noodles. When she got to the red noodle, Ben paused and said, "Um, is Elmo." Blue was Grover. Yellow was Big Bird. Green? Oscar the Grouch. Color blindness is apparently not an issue. We may be watching too much TV though.

* Ben crawls in bed with me when he wakes up in the morning so he can snuggle. Yesterday I commented that he was too big to be using a binky. He responded, "No. I NOT big! I NOT!" x 50. Then he said, "Mommy, I go look in da mirror to see if I really big." He jumped down and walked over to the full length mirror in our room and examined himself. Apparently he was convinced by what he saw since he then said, "Oh, I ARE big. Here you go mommy," and handed me his binky. (For the record, he wanted the binky back about 5 minutes later.)

* Today at IKEA Ben picked up one of the strange stuffed animals in the kids section. I think it was supposed to be a ferret. After messing around with it for a couple of minutes, he walked over to the railing and threw it down to the shopping section below as he yelled, "GO SAVE THE DAY!" (I'm thinking his comment was inspired by wonder pets)