Beware of baby
This evening, as I played with the kids and the baby, my niece (6 year old Super Boy) beckoned me aside. The expression on his face was serious. He cast a quick glance in Baby Brother’s direction and told me “You need to be careful with this boy or else he’ll lick your face”. Having delivered his warning, he returned to play.
I could appreciate his concern as I’ve had to rescue Darling Angel from Baby Brothers saliva attack a number of times. On one ocassion they were playing together, I thought, until I heard Darling Angel crying. “Baby Brother leave me alone. Please leave me alone”, she cried. There were tears running down her face and she appeared to be highly distressed.
“What’s the matter?”, I asked her.
“Baby Brother is touching me and Katie with mouth hands”, she wailed. Katie is her doll. Baby Brother was pulling up on Darling Angel and trying to grab her doll. And indeed, his hands have been in his mouth and there’s even a trail of saliva hanging off his lips, threatening to drop on his sister’s lap. The boy is teething.
The scene is comical but I try not to laugh. “What are mouth hands”, I inquired.
“He put his hand in his mouth and he’s trying to touch me and Katie. Gross!!”, she continued in an anguished cry.
Baby Brother laughed.
I noticed that there was some communication gap between the two. The more his sister cried, the more Baby Brother giggled and tried to reach for the doll. Does this gap disappear once he begins to understand words, or does it last longer? I wonder.
As amusing as the scene was, I knew that Darling Angel could easily shove her baby brother but chose not to. She tried to reason with him instead, perhaps because some instinct prevented her from shoving a helpless baby. So I removed Baby Brother and his mouth hands from the scene and I commended Darling Angel for enduring his attack.
