Thursday 27 June 2013

Fairness

We have a new challenge in our lives with two little ones to look after - keeping everything fair. We're not sure whether the children actually have a sense of "fairness" yet - probably not - but as adults we do. We want to make sure we mix it up so that one child isn't always last, (except in the double buggy - we've chosen the seating arrangement specifically as one child is much more likely to kick the other in the back), and that neither child feels like they're going without - so everything must be offered to both, even though one child would happily eat all day and the other only has a tiny appetite!

Meals now don't end until everyone has finished, which means the youngest (and fastest eating) member of the family who has been used to deciding when dinner is over tends to spend the remainder of his time smooshing his leftovers into the corners of his highchair tray and sweeping them onto the floor whilst wailing at the injustice and being outraged that he's not allowed to grab his favourite foods off someone else's plate.

The more time they spend together, the better they are getting at sitting near each other and playing without Jack-Jack feeling like he absolutely has to grab Andy's nose. They're not yet of an age where they can play together and share, but we had a lovely moment in the swimming pool today where they were throwing a ball back and forth with lots of encouragement from us. They do seem to be starting to enjoy each other's company and are genuinely pleased to see each other when Andy is dropped off, or when they wake up from naps. I think Jack-Jack has been generally relaxed about the whole thing overall - the only exception being when Esmeralda was feeding both boys yoghurt, and Jack-Jack looked absolutely horrified every time the spoon went anywhere near Andy's mouth instead of his!

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