Stop Mauling the Baby!

Before Jack was born, I told the girls, "It's going to be SO GREAT to have a baby brother!  He'll be so cute and cuddly and so much fun, you're going to love him to bits!"

I think I oversold it.
I worry every single day that someone is going to hurt him.  They wouldn't mean to, of course, but they just don't understand that he's little and fragile.  Nearly seven months of saying, "Be careful!"  "Get off him!"  "Don't do that!"  "Watch his head!" etc. has had absolutely no impact on their behavior. 

As I sit here writing this, Claire and Jack are rolling around on the floor like puppies.  And I've corrected her 100 times already this morning, at least.  And she's still touching his face.  I must tell that child 4,000 times a day, "Keep your hands off of his face!"  But she insists that he has "cozy cheeks," and she just can't stop feeling them. 

It's driving me mad.

More than once I've thought, "I can't wait until he's big enough to defend himself!"

I try to remember that Claire survived Mary Grace, and that Mary Grace was much littler when Claire was a baby.  I try to be grateful that they love him so much.  I just wish it was a less smothering sort of love.  The kind of love that would let him breathe, and not squash him.

"You are going to flatten him, and then he'll be a pancake, and he won't be any fun anymore!  We'll have to put syrup on him and he'll be all sticky!"

Mary Grace thinks she's big enough to carry him around (she's so not - the child can hardly walk through a room without getting hurt, herself, there's no way she's going to carry the baby around!  It was very cruel of us to give someone who takes after my clumsy self the name "Grace.")  Any minute now she's going to just pick him up and start carrying him.  And while it would be nice to have the help, especially since he likes to keep moving at all times, I'd probably go broke buying Bandaids for the two of them.

I thought it would help when he started pulling hair.  Nope.  They think it's funny.  "Look, Mommy!  Jack's giving me a hair cut!" 

I can't really blame the girls.  I want to squash all three of them.  Pass the syrup.