No disposable babies here

I am amazed daily by how wonderful Will is with Owen – so accepting, so happy to be a big brother, so playful, so unbothered when I nurse him, so in love with the smell of his hair, so frequently declaring, “I love little Owen.”

Until nap wake-up time arrives. I don’t take naps even when I need them because I wake up in such a funk afterward. And Will must have my genes because his foulest mood is almost always immediately post-nap, when he tends to wake up, crying and calling “Mommy” pathetically from his bed. This is prime tantrum time and it’s the one time when he’s just not too happy to see me come waltzing into his room with Owen in arms.

When I came with Owen to answer the sobbing “mommy” wake-up call after yesterday’s nap, Will took one look at Owen and said:

“I don’t want little Owen!… Throw him down.… Throw him away.… Throw him in the trash!”

The ellipses are my little protests to each variation on the Owen-throwing proposal (I can’t remember quite what I said, but I know the lamest comment was the obvious, generic and oh-so parental, “We don’t throw babies away.”)

But good brother Will quickly fought off his evil alter-ego and within minutes we were seated on the couch reading together. “Hey there little Owen,” Will said as he tickled his brother.

“Good thing we didn’t throw him away, huh?” I said to Will. He squinted at me, and with an almost imperceptible nod of the head, he grudgingly agreed.

Owen update: Little guy is getting bigger all the time, by the way. He is now grasping a rattle and shaking it too, lifting his head up a full 90 degrees during little stints of tummy time, and he’s begun working on figuring out how to turn himself over. (Will likes to help with that one until poor seasick Owen spits up from all the motion.) And he tolerates many a smothering hug and kiss from Will with smiles instead of tears.