Who are you!?

It’s been one week since the birth of my daughter.

At first, it seemed like our two-year old son really liked having a sister. He was super cute with her, and really careful in touching her. A real caring brother. Nothing makes a father more proud than seeing a young toddler being so caring towards his newborn sibling.

The situation has changed a bit since.

In the mornings, Rafa is still a very cute little boy. Since last week, he finally decided to sleep through the night, and every morning he wakes up with an overdose of happiness and cuteness. The first thing he does is cuddle with mom, and hold his sister Lara. How lovely. However, Lara is not exactly a great playmate. She’s rather unresponsive to his affection. This of course ignites some curiosity in this little devil. ‘What if I rub her in her face real hard?’ Or, ‘Maybe she likes the taste of Duplo bricks?’ As the day progresses, his interactions with Lara get increasingly harsh. Lara remains deeply unimpressed. At the same time, Rafa of course wants to get old levels of attention from his mother. This is hardly possible, because 1) well, she is recovering from child birth and cannot do too much heavy stuff (or at least I won’t allow her just yet), and 2) she is nursing Lara in between. This does not sit well with our toddler terrorist, this much I can tell you already. I try to do fun stuff with him in the morning, so he has distractions, attention, and gets somewhat exhausted. It sounded like such a great plan to me. We’ve been to the swimming pool, to the forest, to the playground, and we have done a lot of gardening together this week. A lot of father-son time. I enjoyed it a lot, and I think so did he. However, the moment we get back, he realizes that he had no attention from his mother in the time we were gone. Obviously, this must be compensated one way or another, or at least, I think this is what I imagine he’s doing. Since a couple of days he is systematically refusing to take his afternoon naps. I think he does this so he can be with his mother instead. Understandable. However, after trying to get him to sleep, and him throwing tantrums in the bed room for 30-60 minutes, moods do not get better. The result is an overly exhausted and moody toddler that wants to sit next to his mother and only wants to watch ‘Sendung mit dem Elefanten’, a German kid’s show that seems quite harmless. As we don’t want to have him watch television all afternoon, we opt to turn it off after a while and have the tantrums return and swell even further. At the end of the afternoon, he is usually throwing stuff at his sister, and literally trying to hit her any moment we look away. As a cherry on the pie, he is too exhausted to enjoy his dinner (Rafa usually loves eating!). Food is everywhere, except in his mouth. And I cooked a mean curry!

Who are you and what have you done to our son?! Every day, our delightful little charm, evolves into a terrible monster that is trying really hard to make his parents un-love him. Luckily, at the end of the day, he is so depleted that I only have to make him touch the pillow and he’s gone for another night. He’s so lovely (when he sleeps).

In the morning, the cuteness battery is recharged. For as long as it lasts…

(Other than that, we’re doing quite well actually)