Our vacation concluded with a four-day visit at the home of Minh's sister, brother-in-law, and three year old niece, Scuppy. During our stay there, Tai got lots of good quality time with his aunt and uncle as well as his grandparents and he got to meet his great-grandmother for the first time.
Apparently Scuppy and her mom had spent the previous week getting ready for our visit -- baby proofing the house, setting up the pack-n-play, and locating and washing all of Scuppy's old baby toys. She was very excited about the prospect of her baby cousin coming to live at her house for a few days.
Until we got there.
The first 90 minutes or so were great. Scuppy was so excited to see us and she and Tai were fascinated with each other. And then Tai had the nerve to start touching her stuff. Scuppy became very possessive of her things and frustrated at Tai's inability to understand essential English phrases such as: "Stop touching me," "You can't play with that," and the ever-popular "Don't crawl there."
The poor thing. She's three and (thus far) an only child. I understand that it's hard to have your world disrupted by a little crawly-grabby-drooly guy. All the adults in the house expended much effort talking to Scuppy about Tai and babies and about sharing. We'd never let Scuppy know, but Minh and I found it pretty funny the way she scowled at him. To the left is a picture of her patented Furrowed Brow that she employed whenever Tai got too close.
It was really too bad she had such a hard time, because all Tai wanted to do was be near her. Credit goes to Scuppy, though, for owning her issues and admitting them publicly. Tai was playing in the yard with some plastic cups and then Scuppy decided she wanted to play with them. Instead of battling her, we let her have the cups and moved Tai over to a very low swing that he could hold on to and swing back and forth. Suddenly, Scuppy announced that she wanted to use that swing. I asked her if she really wanted to use it, or only because Tai was using it and she proudly stated, "Only because Tai is using it."
I should say that it was not all bad. They did indeed have some stretches of quality time together (see picture, right). This was excellent practice for Scuppy, though, because in March 2008 she will be getting a baby brother. Luckily, he won't be born crawling and grabbing at her things, so she'll have several months to warm up to him.
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