Big Brother

We've spent a quiet couple of days adjusting to the new addition to our family circle. (I'd forgotten how exhausting newborns can be--no matter how charming! I don't think humans are physically meant to wake up after only an hour or two of sleep at a time.) Andrew seems to be doing surprisingly well--no jealous tantrums yet--but perhaps that's because Evelyn spends most of her time sleeping, when she's not eating. And Andrew doesn't seem to mind the time it takes me to feed her, probably because he has free reign in the room and is beginning to realize that, while I tell him to shut the refrigerator or put something back, there's really nothing I can do about that immediately. His only real sign of trauma was a big meltdown yesterday, where he told me rather tearfully (and somewhat incoherently) that he wanted to go stay at the Bean Museum (which he calls the "buseum"). I think he might have been influenced by a rather funny little book we have where the prospective older brother announces to his mother that he's going to run away when the baby comes. At any rate, when he finally stopped sobbing, he seemed more reconciled to staying with us. And for the most part he seems to like being a big brother, although I live in mortal terror of Andrew deciding he needs to pick Evelyn up out of her crib on his own, or, alternately, deciding he's done holding her and dumping her off his lap (which has nearly happened on more than one occasion) before I'm ready to retrieve her.

For your delectation, some pictures and a video. The pictures of Evelyn aren't too good, and she hardly seems to move in the video (she could almost be a doll except that her eyes move), but I thought Andrew was pretty funny.