Yes, it's been [just barely] two weeks and neither of us can speak with any sort of proficience on the subject, but I think we've handled the controversies that arise from having two children with moderate aplomb and relative surety.
Let's get one thing straight: Yuula has been, to date, a miraculous big sister. She shows adequate concern for his well-being, even when his well is being just fine, and displays patience for those moments when parental consolation for a newborn is just not doing the trick. She's more curious than anything, asking why he can't walk yet?, why does he always sleep?, why he doesn't just talk to us instead of just cry?, if he can have some of my macaroni and cheese, why does he pee on Mommy?, all the adorable inanities we've paraded her for the past 3.5 years, which now barely get their fair share of 'aww'.
But she doesn't need the encouragement for her investigations. She manages to incorporate the brand new and highly demanding component into her world (let's not pretend this isn't her world) with her own form of grace and style. It's definitely not all about him, but everything is of him, around him, unto him, if you will.
The daily act, nay bi-hourly act of wildly jumping on the bed has become a thing of delicacy and slightly prudent, which may conflict with the intent of the act itself but somewhere she's struck a balance. The promise of piggy back rides from a mother who no longer carries one in the front as well, causes bloodshed each morning, but we can usually cut it off at the pass and prepare accordingly.
She'll inject herself in his everyday activities, feeding ("I used to eat from Mommy's boobies"), or pooping ("I used to wear diapers when I was a baby"), and I think that's all natural evolution. And when we were spending so much time at the doctors for routine newborn procedures and dragging her along as a extra appendage, we pulled from Parenting 101 and let her run feral thru a toy store and pick her poison, a routine we've never relied on, and not so much as an awardance, but felt that this was the type of event that would quash any inkling of potential insignificance that we detected when we traveled to Exton to have Aesop's tongue clipped, during which Yuula, unprovoked, composed and arranged and performed a lullaby to soothe her ailing little brother while Mom and Dad were busy with the adults (don't worry we caught the final verse on video). We went to lunch right after in a Cosi that could well have had the fire brigade phoned on them for surpassing the maximum occupancy. We shared a table with a lovely couple and their infant daughter. Of course the conversation wore heavily on comparisons of breastfeeding habits and infant eccentricities, but nothing about our 3 year old, and almost on cue she injected that "I'm the big sister and that's my little brother", with emphasis on the BIG and little. It was enough to change the subject to everyone's flatbread choices.
So don't get me wrong, very few tears have been shed, some over acts of sheer exhaustion on our part, and others, hard lessons she'll learn over the next lifetime or two, but when all is said and done and she allows for her fundamental instincts to hang out exposed, she is going to be tremendous as a big sister and that's all that matters these days.
Only one other time did we detect a note of jealousy, a few days after coming home from hospital, when Yuula asked the innocent, "So, when does he go back in Mommy's belly?".
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