Pincushions and Pacifiers

I'm not sure that anything is as rewarding to a parent as the moments in which you get the validation that you did a good thing by giving your child a sibling. This is especially true because when your kids are still small, when most of the interaction you witness between them involves the younger one's head being sat on/stomach sucker-punched/hair pulled/body covered in blue marker and used as pincushion. Maybe it doesn't matter if your kids are small, actually - maybe that's always true.

So in those fleeting instances in which your kids show genuine love for each other (and let's be honest, we'd settle for like), it's just about the warmest and fuzziest thing for us. It temporarily puts to rest the guilt you typically feel for having born a child into a world of ongoing torture, and nobody likes to feel guilty ALL the time.

From the get-go, Elan was into Ariel. The little one's birth tapped into this very nurturing and protective side of Elan's nature, and we never had to guess when he might be feeling jealous or slighted because he knew how to articulate it: "Mommy, you need to stop hugging Baby Ariel now and hug me." Or: "Do you love Baby Ariel and do you NOT LOVE ME AT ALL?!" I think this ability of his to put his feelings into words, and mine, therefore, to respond them immediately, prevented any long-term resentment forming between them.

More than that, though, Elan's always seemed to feel ownership over Ariel, an ingrained sense of responsibility for him, and to about the same extent that Y and I do. He is constantly telling us how he plans to "bite the ears off" and "kick the face in" of any "bad guys" that might try to harm his younger brother, and we choose to look at the positive in those statements, rather than stress over his disturbing choice of violent behaviors.

It's not all talk, either: Elan can't stand to see Ariel hurt, or upset. When I put Ariel in a time-out, and he begins to cry, Elan just breaks down, gets close to tears himself. He'll beg me to let Ariel out, claiming he just "can't stand it" to listen to the boy cry. When I refuse to yield, Elan runs to Ariel and tells him, "You can come out, you're free!" and helps him to his feet.

Then I have to put both of them in a time-out. Granted, it doesn't end well and messages are mixed. But I'm still secretly proud.

And when Ariel gets injured, Elan is the first to his side, stroking his hair, taking his hand, giving him a hug. Ariel takes advantage of the affectionate outbursts, reveling in the attention from his idol, and hugs back with all of his might. And when Ariel threw up on Friday night, Elan lovingly offered him a popsicle as soon as we got home.

Even nicer, Elan is just as proud of Ariel's developmental successes as we are, and cheers each new skill alongside us. Ariel tends to try and pee on the toilet before his bath (hell, he's naked anyway, right?) for the sole reward of the praise his older brother lavishes on him for it, along the lines of: "Oh my GOSH, Ariel! You are so great! You're such a big boy! You pished on the toilet just like me! Mommy, did you see that? Ariel gets a star for sure!" Insert hug here.

Of course he was just as encouraging when Ariel removed his diaper in his crib during a time-out, and peed on his blanket in a desperate attempt to get my attention. "You took off your own diaper? Good boy!"

At the beach over the weekend, when Ariel ran too far away from my comfort zone, and I yelled for him to head back, Elan took charge. He marched over to Ariel, leading him back to me with one hand on the small of his back, and I could hear the lecture poor Ariel was being subjected to from far: "It is dangerous at the beach! There are some bad peoples who try to take little kids and steal them and if you are not close to Mommy and Daddy and me we can't protect you. Okay?"

But I really think yesterday took the cake. I'd been waiting weeks for the letters from the boys' school letting me know which classes they were placed in this year, to find out which teachers they'd be having. So when the envelopes finally arrived, I ripped them open immediately only to find that neither child had been placed with the teacher I'd requested. I'm a reactor, so I probably said something like:

"G-d dammit, WTF! The school can't give me ONE good teacher? What the HELL??!" As I collapsed on the sofa in fury.

Elan was there, unfortunately, and immediately bombarded me with a series of, "What? What's wrong? Who's a bad teacher? WHAT, Mommy?!"

"Nothing," I muttered, and called the school.

The administrator explained to me that Elan was put with all of his friends, and that the teacher he'd been given was a strategic decision based on her understanding of Elan's personality from the past two years.

"Fine," I relented, sighing. The school staff always manages to out-talk me, to make me feel about as big as Ariel's pinky toe.

"And Ariel's class was divided by birthday," she went on. "The teacher you wanted for him has all of the older two year olds, and Ariel's teacher has the ones with birthdays falling in September and after. He's a September, right?"

"But he's used to hanging out with older children all the time," I protested. "He might not be two yet, but he went to camp this summer with three and four-year-olds, and held his own perfectly. He speaks circles around lots of other two-year-olds. I want him to be challenged!"

"There are areas of development and preparedness other than verbal that we look for," the woman replied. "We look for different things than the parents do. But I'll tell you what - give it a week with the younger class. I'll keep an eye on him. If we agree that he's not being challenged enough, we'll switch him to the older class. Okay?"

I agreed, but none too happily. My brother and sister-in-law were there, and when I hung up, they were looking at me, expectantly. "So?"

"Whatever," I grumbled. "Ariel's just going to be in a class with babies walking around with pacifiers who don't talk."*

"WHAT?" Elan demanded, eyebrows skyward, clearly furious. "What happened with the teachers??"

"Nothing," I explained. "You're in a class with all of your friends. You'll like your teacher. It'll be great."

"BUT ARIEL IS GOING TO BE IN A CLASS WITH BABIES WHO USE PACIFIERS AND CAN'T TALK???" He yelled. Like, not acceptable!

I couldn't help smiling. The other two were fully cracking up, hands covering their mouths. Elan didn't notice, and continued:

"He CAN'T be in a class like that. Ariel is NOT a baby. It's not fair! He can't be with pacifiers! What are you going to do?"

He just wanted Ariel's first year of formal education to be educational! Was that too much to ask?!

"Calm down, babe," I began, in as reassuring a voice as I could muster. "Bernice said if the class turns out to be too young for Ariel, she'll switch him to the other class. To Noga, the teacher you had when you were his age."

"She'll switch him? If they are all BABIESWHODON'TTALKANDWALKAROUNDWITHPACIFIERS?"
I suppose he felt the point needed to be repeated, for maximum impact. To make sure I, too, wasn't okay with this, that I realized the injustice of it all. That I'd do my job, as a mother.

Later, we went to the Tar Pits, and Y left his office for a few minutes to meet us there and say hi. After a running-across-a-field, open-armed reunion, Elan breathlessly filled Y in: "Daddy, you won't believe this, I'm in a class with all my friends but they might be putting Ariel in a class with babies, with pacifiers, who can't even talk yet, but Bernice said if it's really like that he can switch to Noga!" Y looked at me, the corners of his mouth quivering with the effort to control them. Trying to take Elan's concern seriously.

I thought about how nice it was not to be the only drama-queen, the only world-is-coming-to-an-end fatalist in the family anymore.

And I knew someone else, someone closer to his own age, would always have Ariel's back.

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[*For the record, I have NOTHING against pacifiers. My kids just never took to them, though I often wished they would. I was just angry and that's what had popped out of my mouth.]