My older two boys have become accustomed to trashing our house by now. I’m either changing, nursing, or napping the baby and haven’t been very present to intervene, you see. Every surface is sprinkled with coins, Lego bricks, pebbles, and shredded bits of paper they use with their toy construction vehicles.
The major problem here? My youngest baby has started to crawl! Despite our attempts to explain how important it is to keep their “tiny piece toys” away from the baby, they haven’t seen their brother make his way over to their treasures and so the message hasn’t stuck. I guess our oldest forgot about this from the first time he became a big brother.
Our littlest dude has also started dabbling at eating some solid foods, which presents a related problem. This morning, something happened that might be a tipping point in getting the boys to contain their toys a bit better.
Baby Oren crawled over to Felix, who was eating a bowl of Cheerios on the rug while playing with his little vehicles. Oren tipped the Cheerio bowl, started eating them, and tried playing with the vehicles. Trifecta of disaster from Felix’s perspective!
He became so upset that his brother was taking his stuff. I wish I could tell you I remained calm, and gently explained that this is why I keep telling them to keep everything contained and away from the baby. Instead, I just mopped up milk and growled “See?? I told you this would happen.”
I’m sure I’ll have plenty of other opportunities to do better.
When the baby is contained in his high chair, he’s still not free from choking danger. His brothers keep trying to feed him stuff from their plates–the only time they seem to want to share! I can’t look away for a millisecond or else they’ll be offering chunks of meat or popcorn to Oren, who eagerly reaches for everything and tries to gobble it down.
If history repeats itself, I think Oren will have to trash a few books, eat a few unsupervised cookies, and gnaw on a few Lego creations before the bid kids really get the message that this guy will put everything in his mouth. In the mean time, I am on hyper-aware patrol every time I set my little guy on the ground to work on his crawling skills.
Did you succeed in getting older siblings to pick up their tiny pieces around the baby? Leave us a comment to share your experience!
