Natalie thinks that the sun rises and sets with Liam. She also thinks he is the funniest person she has ever met. He came home from preschool with a Sock Puppet the other day, and had her in complete hysterics just by sticking the sock up over the edge of the table. He didn't even have to make Mr. Sock say much more than "Hello, I'm a sock" and she was laughing so hard she nearly fell off her chair. Such total joy, for just a simple sock.
She misses him so much when he goes to Preschool, too. The other day after we dropped Liam off, Natalie was raiding a bag of suckers and found a blue one. She knows that blue is Liam's favorite sucker color, so she held onto that one and kept telling me "Liam sucker. Blue. Liam sucker." She held onto that sucker for an hour until it was time to pick up Liam. Before getting in the car, she wanted to unwrap it for him (I don't suppose I can call myself psychic because I knew this was a bad idea). Still, for the whole trip to the school she was saying "Liam sucker. Liam sucker." Then, right as we pulled into the pickup lane at school, I heard slurp, slurp, from the back seat. I looked back at Natalie and asked "Are you licking Liam's sucker"? The look of shame and surprise on her face was priceless. It was obvious she hadn't meant to lick it, but had done it out of the common toddler Automatic Sucker Reflex. When Liam got in the car, she thrust the sticky sucker out to him proudly and said "Liam sucker! Blue!" He just looked at it with disdain, and said "Did she LICK it?? Yuck." It was definitely the thought that counted this time.
On another day, both kids had suckers, and about halfway through the licking process, Natalie realized that Liam had a PINK one (her favorite). She marched right over and snatched it from his hand, and gave him her sucker instead. Liam didn't seem too bothered, but I decided that I was not going to let Natalie steal things from him like that (again...). I gave him the pink sucker back and told Natalie she had to keep the other one. She was devastated, of course, and went into very dramatic wailing, with tears streaming down her face. I looked over at Liam, and he was staring, transfixed, at Natalie. As I watched, his big blue eyes welled up with tears of sympathy, and then he turned and laid his head on my shoulder and said in a very trembly voice, "She's going to make me cryyyyyy." His sympathy was so touching. Not that every situation is a virtual share-fest around here. But I think we are very lucky that there are quite a few sweet stories like these.
Siblings at their best. And for any dentists out there, or others concerned about the kids dental health, I swear they don't have suckers all day, every day!
No comments:
Post a Comment