The Transition to Becoming a Big Sister

When you have your second baby one of the most common questions you get asked is how is the older sibling dealing with the new baby.  So, how is Evelyn dealing with the new baby?  Well, it has been a roller coaster of a month.

For the first couple of days Evelyn was interested in this new little person and asked to hold her often.  Now, when Evelyn did hold Vivian, her attention lasted about 5 seconds before she was ready to move on to something better.  She also was more interested in all of the presents that were being thrown at her pretty much every day for a few weeks. 

As to be expected, the desire to hold and be near her baby sister lasted about three days.  She suddenly was a little resentful and every once in a while came out with "Me no like baby sister!"  Of course this was immediately followed by giving the baby her own nickname: Little Cutie.  Also to be noted, Evelyn refers to herself as Big Cutie. 

After resentment and nickname giving, came the desperate need for attention from Mommy and Daddy, resulting in one melt down after another and tons of whining.  We tried to do as much one on one time with one of us as possible.  When we could Steve and I tried to do things like bed time with the three of us.  The constant melt downs and whining lasted a few weeks, but have started to decrease in the past few days. 

The tantrums could also be attributed to the fact that we have had no kind of schedule for the past few weeks as we try to adjust to being a family of four, which has resulted in bed times that change almost nightly and no real morning routines either, both of which we used to have down to a science.  Also, Evelyn went from full time daycare to two mornings a week.  As we begin to settle back into a routine and she gets used to having baby sister around, it seems that Evelyn's general mood is improving.   

 

We have also moved onto the "helper" phase of being a new big sister.  I can't change Vivian's diaper myself anymore, and when Evelyn helps she HAS to be the one to open the new diaper and pull up the tabs for me.  This results in each diaper change taking about 5 minutes, and more times than not Vivian manages to poop again before I can get the new diaper under her because I am waiting for Evelyn to pull up the tabs (and we're back to the posts about poop, how I've missed the posts about poop!)*.  She's also really good at finding a burp cloth to clean up all of the spit up.  This is probably because spit up totally freaks her out, so she wants to get rid of it as quickly as possible.  There was a projectile spit up incident the other day which actually caused Evelyn to start crying.  I tried desperately to control my laughter. 

 

Although she wants to help with everything, she also has become incredibly selfish.  Everything that is Vivian's she considers hers.  She is willing to take turns with everything, but her turns are quite a bit longer than Vivian's.  In particular she loves taking her turn on the Boppy pillow for tummy time. 

Evelyn "sharing" the play mat.

Luckily with each passing day life seems to get a little bit closer to "normal" for Evelyn, and I think she has fully accepted Vivian as a member of our family.  When Nanny asked her if Vivian should stay at their house while she goes home with Mommy and Daddy, Evelyn replied "NO! Vivian goes to our house!"

 

 

 

*Side note: Since becoming a parent, I have made up rules.  One of the newest rules since Vivian was born is "always put a diaper on the baby as soon as she gets out of the tub, even if she is screaming for food like she hasn't eaten in days."  This rule was the result of a lap full of poop immediately following a bath.  I didn't remember this until I was writing about poop.