Mutual Admiration Society
Kai and Eidan are enchanted with each other. If they’re in a room together, Eidan will usually ignore Maria and I – his eyes will follow Kai wherever he goes, even if Kai’s back is turned. And whenever Eidan starts getting fussy, we can say, “Kai, help!” and he’ll happily come over and do some silly song and dance for Eidan, and put a smile back on his face. Kai also doesn’t like going anywhere without Eidan. For example, yesterday I took Kai for a quick trip to the grocery store, and after about 45 seconds in the car he exclaimed in a partially facetious, maudlin voice “I miss Eidan!” He’s also generous with kisses and hugs for his little brother, which is nice to see.
Eidan is thriving – he had a check-up last week, and he came in at about 75th percentile for height and about 45th for weight. We started him on rice cereal a few days ago, and he took to it immediately, although sometimes we have to switch to a bottle because he gets frustrated with the comparatively slow pace of eating vs. drinking. He is a remarkably smiley and talkative baby: he’ll offer up a smile for just about anybody he meets, and he loves to talk. It’s especially cute when he’s just waking up – he’ll talk to himself (or us, if we’re awake enough to pick up him right away) for a good 5-10 minutes. It’s like listening to someone speaking in tongues.
At four years old, Kai is in the peak age range for obsessing over Christmas. I think we wrote our first Christmas list for Santa back in October, and we’ve revised it a few times since. He likes to write the lists himself, and since he knows his letters but doesn’t yet know how to spell, he asks me to help him spell each word.
Watching the old Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer show the other day, Kai expressed his first doubts about Santa. He didn’t have trouble with the notion of a guy in a red suit who lives at the north pole and brings presents to boys and girls all around the world on Christmas Eve, but he wasn’t buying the magic flying reindeer. I propped up the story with the voice of parental assuredness, so he let it go. Then I started to wonder if it makes sense to try to get kids to believe in Santa anymore. It seems that the time frame between when kids can first understand and get excited about Santa, and when they start to perceive the whole thing as a crock, has become so small in the modern world that maybe it’s not worth the confusion it creates when they start to doubt the story. Of course, if we were to tell him Santa’s not real and it’s just a nice story, he’ll tell his friends at pre-school, and we would probably suffer the wrath of all the other parents at the school (we adults don’t like to admit it, but we’re subject to peer pressure just as much as kids).
Anyway, I can’t wait to see how Kai and Eidan’s relationship changes over time. I think the first change will come when Eidan starts to crawl. On the one hand, they’ll be able to actually play together, which they’ll both enjoy. On the other hand, Eidan will start getting into Kai’s stuff, which will probably spark their first real conflicts. But Kai is pretty good about sharing, so maybe it won’t be so bad…we’ll see.
