The Helpful Brother

Have I said how much I love my boys lately? If not, let me say it now: I LOVE MY BOYS! They are amazing, and I am so blessed to be their mommy!

Gabriel has moved from being the jealous/possessive toddler to being 'the helpful brother'. Thus the name of this post.

There are several stories I could tell you about Gabriel and Graham, this is one of my favorites:

Graham and I were doing 'tummy time' on the floor in his room when Gabriel came in from playing with his cars. "Come on, Greb (the closest spelling to how he says 'Graham') "let's play 'gets you' (tag)" and off he goes. A minute of silence, punctuated by Graham's grunts as he kicks on the floor, and then Gabriel returns, exasperated. "Greb... come on. Play gets you with Gabriel." Off again, only to return. "GREB!" (this is the point where I intervened.) "Gabriel, Graham is too small to play gets you - he can't walk, he's trying to crawl." "Oh, Ok. Here Greb - Gabriel shows you how." Gabriel gets down on all fours and crawls a step or two. "OK, now let's go, Greb!" and he goes crawling out the room.

Another time: Graham is playing with one of those baby pianos on the floor. Gabriel wanted to play with it, and I told him that was fine, but they had to play together and share the piano. After a few minutes, I heard the random plunkings that can only be Graham's compositions turn into something more planned and intentional - signalling that Graham was no longer in control of the piano. When I came into the room Gabriel had turned the piano around so that the keys were facing him, and Graham had to be satisfied with the boring back of the piano. "Gabriel..." I started, when he interrupted with "I'm just showing him how it works. See, Greb?" Plunk, plunk plunk.

The cutest has to be when Gabriel reads to Graham, though. Graham has a book called "Baby Plays Pat-Pat" where it has pictures of different things, and encourages the baby to 'pat-pat the penguin' etc. After the first time reading it to both of the boys, Gabriel grabs the book and reads it again like this: "oooh! What do we see? We see a swan! Pat-pat the swan! Good job, Greb! Oooh! what do we see? We see a snowman! Pat-pat the snowman!" Now Gabriel has taken to reading all of his books to his brother. I've included pictures of them doing this to the slideshow.

Enjoy!