I caved

I think Jason was about 5 hours old when Allie first started to ask if she could hold him.  I tried giving her limitations from the start.  I told her she had to sit on the couch with him, but she reminded me that she held Nate while standing up when she was only 5.  It's like it was her life's ambition to be able to stand and hold the baby.

The first words out of her mouth most days when she gets home from school is "can I hold Jason!?!"  She is utterly disappointed when he is sleeping or eating.  

Nate picked up on her "holding" excitement.  Now he says "ah hold im?" when Jason is in sight.  He's so demanding that it's almost as if you have to drop what ever you are doing and let him hold the baby, or he'll just get louder and louder with his demands.

Back to Allie, I shouldn't really complain that she wants to hold her baby brother all the time.  She does pretty well with him.

But she's always pushing the limits.  She sees me squeeze his cheeks and talk jibberish to him and does the same.  But she doesn't have the soft touch...so Jason cries.

She sees Mike help him stand on his lap and she wants to do that too...so Jason flops all around and comes perilously close to falling on the wood floor...and then he cries.

So when she started asking 10 days into Jason's life, if she could put him in the toy stroller, I always said no. To appease her, I agreed that she could do it some day.  Well, she decided that now is the time.

I still cringe when I hear the stroller wheels zoom across the wood floor at break neck speed, but so far we have come through it all unscathed.  (fingers crossed, knock on wood, whatever we gotta do to keep bad things from happening.)  I am a broken record with "slow down Allie" playing all the time.

You ask why I allow it in the first place, and I answer that Jason seems to like it.  Allie takes him for rides around the house as I am getting dinner ready and there aren't squawks of complaints coming from either one of them.  In fact, they spend quite a lot of time together.

 Jason endures wardrobe changes with a smile.

He really does look at her with complete trust and love.  They are good pals.  So, we'll let this little game continue for as long as they are both happy with it.  It's pretty cute if you ask me.