We have a little old man

There are moments when I think I'm getting a glimpse of the person Sir O is becoming.  Luckily I usually like him. He's going through a bossy streak and is obviously having a perpetual inner dialogue about the implications of growing up and being the big kid about the house.  There's a barrage of testing his own physical limits to see what he can and cannot do.  I'm usually ok with this, except when he decides he can haul the baby around the house.  I watch him jump from high places, ride banisters down the stairs, and get twinkles in his eyes when he thinks about losing his training wheels.  I tell him he makes me nervous, but I try not to throw fits.  We all need to save our emotional energy for battles that matter more than these.



My favorite thing about the current ebb and flow of the evolution of Sir O is his engaging use of a burgeoning imagination.  His eyes start seeing possibilities all over the place and suddenly the old milk carton caps are being saved for stoplights and he's building fire engines and car carriers out of blocks.  He's "writing" music instead of drawing the same car 37 times on one page.  He's tracing his hand and turning it into a tree.  He's using his drawings to wrap "presents" for me to open.  It would be the perfect age to introduce "real" legos if there weren't also a crawling baby about the house.  (tips from the seasoned moms on that conundrum?)



He's also, occasionally, thinking outside the box of self.  Maybe I'm just noticing and jumping on it because I so badly want to train empathy into my kids, but once or twice a day I watch Sir O battle inside of himself about whether to do what he wants or to do what will make the Captain stop crying.  It's progress and it delights the spectator in me.



There's unfortunately also a lot of whining in this stage, as Sir O has to deal quite regularly with not being an only child and not having my attention to himself.  There's that minimal "how little can I get away with" level of sharing that siblings figure out early on, and most moments Sir O isn't particularly interested in raising the bar on that one.  Oh, and watch out that boy is bossy!  It will be good for everybody once our Captain can articulate well enough to argue his own heart's desires against his brother.  Baby steps.

It's early to tell, but I am always encouraged at the prospect of my kids turning into responsible, pleasant adults.