There was zero predictability with how Carter would react to bringing Gavin home from the hospital. Most of the time, the thought of baby brother was greeted by his typical two year old attitude of “NO BABY BROTHER.” We weren’t super encouraged that this was going to go over well.
We were pleasantly surprised when Carter showed total curiosity the first time they met. Carter wanted to hold him, so we sat on the couch with Gavin stretched between the two of us. Carter helped soothe Gavin by putting his finger into the middle of the Soothie pacifier, to keep Gavin from crying and thought that was really cool.
It wasn’t long before Carter hopped down and moved on to other things, but minutes later, he came rushing at me with his arms outstretched. I headed him off, stopping him just short of grabbing at Gavin, making Carter frustrated. He kept trying to get to Gavin and I finally asked what he wanted to do and he said, “Put finger in pacifier for baby brother.” Jeremy and I looked at one another smiling and talked to Carter about how that is such a sweet thing to do, but he needs to let us know what he wants to do first. This is definitely going to be a learning experience for all of us.
Carter has proved to be a great big brother so far. Granted we are still at week one and Gavin can’t play with Carter’s toys yet, Carter hasn’t had any sort of episodes where he has tried to do anything to Gavin. The funniest thing is that we taught Carter to say, “Shhhh. It’s okay” if he heard a baby cry prior to Gavin’s arrival. That has quickly changed to yelling, “STOP CRYING!!” And the fun begins… my favorite situation was when I picked up Carter from Grandma and Grandpa’s and Carter had a total melt down and Gavin was crying and I was stuck in a car. Good times.
While Carter has left Gavin pretty much alone, it’s a WHOLE other story with us. I am not sure if it is because Gavin is here or if it is just a function of his age, but he spent probably a good 30 minutes in time out on and off yesterday for Jeremy (clearly they aren’t working and I need to research an alternative way to course correct him). He is going through a hitting phase right now – he doesn’t hit hard, but he hits and he knows he isn’t supposed to. But putting it in perspective, it has been a crazy week – we have had visitors pretty much every night, Carter had his birthday which is now going on day three of celebrating, so to say he is being over-stimulated with a big change mixed in is probably an understatement.
Overall though, it has been much smoother than I thought it would be for Carter and I am really proud of how he is handling all of it!