Sibling Rivalry

Siblings...I have a feeling this is going to be Part One of many, many posts about sibling rivalry, disagreements, etc. as my children grow.  Now I know my baby is only 11 months old and can't talk yet, and I still have a toddler, but the, 'It's Mine!' has already started. 

There is only so much you can do during this baby stage.  For those with slightly older kids and needing help with sibling issues, I love the book Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too by the same women (Faber and Mazlish) who wrote my fave, How To Talk So Kids Will Listen.  Stay tuned for more on this book later.

But for now, I am dealing with a toddler, soon to be preschooler, in the egocentric stage where everything is centered around her.  Psychologist Piaget said that kids at this ego centric stage (ages 2-7) can only see things from their point of view.  AND they imagine that everyone shares their point of view too, because of course their view is the only possible view that exists, right?  So basically it means they are almost incapable of sharing.

We can try to teach them to share, which I started at like 6 months of age by modeling sharing, but that's all we can do, model and hope that they eventually will get it.  But for the most part, they just aren't there yet.  For modeling, I am always sharing things such as giving her bites of my dinner and letting her know I am 'sharing' (because she never wants to share her food with me ;)  And I model sharing with things we play with, like play dough, or taking turns with her Legos.

But we have hit a rough patch lately with her baby sister where everything is "Mine!" as our 11 month old is crawling and getting into everything, which of course is causing complete meltdowns by our toddler. 

It looks something like this:

I'm Scared Mommy

Lately my little 2 year old (soon to be 3 year old), has said, "mommy, I'm scawed of the wolf'," and "the wolf is going to get me!"  This is usually when we are walking down our hall to her bedroom, and it's a dark hallway.  After trying to get to the bottom of this so called wolf, it seems that she is convinced a wolf is in her room when the lights are off and so she is afraid to go to her room alone.  (And where she got the idea of a wolf, I have no idea- no Little Red Riding books either).

And so it begins!  The 'afraid of the dark' and 'monsters' thing is starting.  I have been dreading this fear, as I know almost all children go through this.  But THANKFULLY, she is still able to go to sleep at night without drama of the dark!  Phew.  But I know any day now she is going to say she is afraid of the dark and can't sleep, wants to be in our bed, has to have all of the lights on, needs me to check the closet for monsters, etc.

So what is a parent to do?  And most importantly, what I am going to do?

Nursery Design

As promised, I have a much lighter post today than last week's serious business.  Today, I FINALLY finished my baby's nursery.  Can we say, second born?  Yes, my poor baby Belle is 10 months old and I finally completed it.  With my first baby, I had the nursery done when I was 8 months pregnant!  Having a toddler and infant makes it impossible to accomplish much these days.  Life before babies?

So, drum roll please... ta da, here is the finished product!

My first daughter's room is pink, pink and pink (with a little black here and there).  So this time, we chose gray for the walls and a purple for the accents.  A much more modern feel than the other one, that's for sure.  And Ikea had a lot to do with it, like almost all the main stuff came from Ikea.  We also chose to keep a queen bed in there in case we had guests, since we no longer have a guest room.  Plus, it was awesome the first several months for me to co-sleep with her in the bed when I stumbled in there at 2am to feed her.  (on a side note, I had her in our room the first 4 months, so when we moved her into her room, she was waking up a lot, hence the big bed for mommy and baby- sigh, but that's another post :).

As far as the design, I did have a few things before she was born believe it or not.  The bedding (Pottery Barn Kids), the crib (Ikea), nightstand and dresser (Ikea), and the not so attractive chair, which was a hand-me-down from her big sister, were all set up before I delivered her.  I at least had to have something for her when we brought her home!

We then added the light fixture when she was a few months old (Ikea), the pom poms and the crystal knobs we replaced on the Ikea gear (Hobby Lobby)- much better than those iron looking knobs that come on everything they sell! We also made her name letters, purchased at Hobby Lobby we painted them white, then hot glued purple ribbon on the back and hung them on the wall.

But just this week, yes at 10 months, I finally got the rug (Urban Outfitters), the nightstand lamp- it's white but kind of showing yellow in these pics (Ikea), chevron pillows (homemade, care of my sweet friend Kate), curtains and rod (Ikea), 'B' wall art from Etsy and framed scrapbook paper from Michaels.

And here's my little ginger girl crawler showing off her new room!
 

So what do you think, you like?