A Little Extra Love

Meredith has struggled a bit with the transition to big sisterhood. Sometimes she's great. Sometimes not. I googled older sibling adjustment, and one theme that came up continually was this: your "older" child is still so very, very young. And that's easy to forget, especially when the older child, as in Mer's case, has a pretty strong vocabulary and is good at expressing her emotions. I guess part of me expects her to say, "wow, I'm feeling jealous and left out right now," rather than to express that emotion by screeching in an ear-drum damaging way, or worse, squeezing Madeline's arm until she starts to cry.


But then there are times when she sits in the back seat between her cousin Hadley and her sister and sings "these are my girls and I take care of my girls and I love my girls" with a serious, sweet voice.


So I invited Keddi and Papa to come visit this weekend. I figured a little more love in the house wouldn't hurt anyone. And the extra attention did help Mer--they knew just when to pick her up, when to shift the focus to her...and I got a little break, too.


Mer was noticably more peaceful with more hands on deck. So now I'll just try to keep this good thing going...